(Also Titled: The Ongoing Diary of Thppgrg, Goblin Minion)

As ever, readers who are new to the diary, please scroll down a bit to where you see the Thppgrg tag. Click on it. Yeah, that’s right. Otherwise, if you missed part nine, you can just click here. (Art by Chris McFann.)

DAY THIRTY-SIX

Monday. Oh, wow. Just . . .

Where to even start?

First and foremost, the new Assistant Manager is awful. AWFUL. Awfully awfulishly awfillingly SUPER-awful. Duper. Awful. Anyway, apparently I’m supposed to “work” while at work now. And to back-prioritize our synergy-disambiguations and, still moving forward, both game-changerize AND value-add the execution functionality of not only action items, but also item-actions and what might or might not have been “actuated itemizers,” which I guess are either a thing now, or I had stopped paying attention and drifted off a little bit mentally and might have made it up completely. And to wear a tie.

Not certain where to obtain one.

That was not, apparently, a problem for Neil. Who is now also my boss, along with several (possibly dozen-plus?) other people. Yes, I am apparently reporting to Neil the giant tie-wearing, acid-spitting giant spider now, as are many other people—including the unintelligent undead on Level 1—and then HE’S reporting to a he-medusa named Larry on Level 5, who is reporting to a psychic otyugh on Level 13, who reports to two different cryohydras (Levels 34 and 7, 5 and 8 heads, respectively) who have the same mummy-minotaur on Level 29 for their boss, who then reports to a were-hyena cleric who is the assistant to a miniature dragon-turtle sorcerer who is the secretary to an imp barbarian/ninja (precise level of dungeon not clear at this time ) who reports to the hill giant wizard who reports to the efreet (levels in some 3PP class I’ve never heard of) who reports to Stonnehyldd the Super-Smart Stone Golem down on Level 38.

Oh, and she works for somebody named Kevin. I think he’s a chuul.

Kevin’s boss is a cowboy-hat-wearing naga lich named Heywood Rantoul who rides around on a heavily chromed, cobalt-blue retriever with both bat-wings AND bug-wings. It’s pretty rad, actually. He’s got it all decked out with speakers and leather seats. He teleported on it to right outside Level 1 today. It was awesome.

While he was touring the building, he told one guy—Morris, a possibly-half-demonic sentient anklyosaurus-skeleton who works in shipping on Level 86—to “put ’er there,” even though Mr. Rantoul doesn’t have any arms. Or hands. It was really funny watching the guy sweat what to do.

Then he said he was “just joshin’ ya” and made a joke about golf and then later he blew Morris up with a bunch of fireballs. It was easily the highlight of my day.

Mr. Rantoul might be my new evil role model. I can’t wait to have that much power and that little accountability.

I’m pretty sure that Heywood —since that’s what he told everyone to call him, not including the people he blew up—works directly for one of the partners in the Exceptionally Evil Corporation, but I couldn’t be really sure on that. If I had to guess which one, though, I would definitely go with “Hastur”—it’s like 3-in-8 odds that’s the right name.

Anyway: Neil has been made Associate Project Double-Interim Vice Director for my department. Which apparently means this floor, and some other ones, too (maybe?). I’m not really clear on all this, or how it works, or even what “it” is, precisely, and I didn’t want to ask too many questions because (a) I do not want to look stupid, (b) I do not want to hear the answers explained at length because they will no doubt be very boring, and (c) I do not actually care.

Neil has also not, to be clear, forgiven me for my earlier, inadvertently racist slight regarding the ability of giant spiders to be good DJs, which I’m still not sure was quite as offensive as he claims it is, on further consideration, but whatever.

He’s the giant acid-spitting spider, I guess.

Also, he appears to be even MORE mad at me for not seeking him out to make an apology earlier, and also then for having strategically important poker nights without him.

Ugh.

It’s all quite passive-aggressive.

And so are my punishmen—I mean “assignments.” I now have to do quarterly projections, whatever those are, and do a task-force forward-action priority reassessment presentation on Thursday, whatever that’s supposed to mean, which is passive, and also I’ve been given the job of hitting the two-foot-long super-poisonous centipedes that have been added to Level 1’s pit traps with a stick when they invariably crawl out of the aforementioned spiked pits.

Which is pretty aggressive.

The worst part is that adding two-foot-long super-poisonous centipedes to the spiked pits was a really good idea. And that I gave the idea to Neil—when he was “crowd-sourcing item-action development agendas” from me and the skeletons—who is taking credit for it with Larry, which is annoying. But worst of all, it wasn’t even actually my idea in the first place: it was something that Mr. Bliss mentioned casually when he was doing some grout work and fixing the windows in Sigvald’s room.

So that’s not great.

I mean, it’s good to have an evil mentor, I guess, but I would kind of prefer one who I could get a hold of more easily and more consistently. And it would be really cool to be in a position wherein I could implement these free evil plans, rather than have my jerk boss take credit for them with HIS jerk boss.

Also, I appear to be involved in a prank war with a dwarf now.

More on that when more is known.