Ferelden, Thedas — During a violent, murderous raid on a small farming community in Ferelden, a demonic member of the invading Darkspawn army took a break from dismembering villagers to reflect on his future job prospects.
“Right now, things are great, job-wise,” the demonic Hurlock warrior said, feasting on the steaming entrails of a slaughtered peasant child. “There are plenty of humans, dwarves, and elves to kill. The job market for marauding demons is strong. I just worry about what comes next, after we’ve killed them all.”
“I see two possibilities for us,” the Hurlock said. “A heroic band of Grey Wardens will slay us, freeing the land from our murderous reign of terror. Or, the Darkspawn will triumph, wiping out all the other races in the world. Honestly, it’s the second scenario that really worries me.”
“I feel like we’re wholly unprepared for victory,” he continued, thoughtfully licking the blood of a freshly killed peasant woman off his blackened claws. “Once the war is over, there will be a whole new series of challenges for the Darkspawn. Repairing the infrastructure, for instance. Rebuilding castles. Fixing roads and bridges. Creating a working economy. What do marauding demons with a thirst for living flesh know about any of that?”
“I can devour human children,” he added, “But I don’t know the first thing about building schools for our little Genlocks.”
The Hurlock is not the only one worried about future job prospects. Whether they come from the shadowy abyss of a blood-red netherworld, through an interdimensional portal inadvertently opened by foolhardy scientists, or are simply the living constructs of evil wizards, employment prospects for murderous creatures has always seemed healthy. Many marauders, however, are now questioning just how strong that job market really is in the long term.
“Find the Ring, kill everyone else,” said one Tarkrip Skirmisher stationed on the North Downs of Middle-Earth. “That’s pretty much all the boss tells me. There’s no mention of what happens afterward, when the Ring is found and everyone is dead. What will I do for work then? Open a pottery shop? Become a tailor? My hands were made for strangling the life out of halflings, not stitching up torn pantaloons. It’ll be straight to the unemployment line for me.”
The Hurlock demon echos the Orc’s worries. “I was killing these farmers earlier today,” he said. “I tore out their innards, sucked marrow from their bones, and so forth. When I was done, I looked at their farm and thought, wow, this looks kind of complicated. He’s got an irrigation system here I couldn’t even begin to figure out, and I don’t know the first thing about how and when to harvest crops. Burning crops, I got a handle on that, but not harvesting them.”
“Even if I get promoted to Hurlock Emissary, what spells could I learn? Death Magic? Drain Life? Those are great for killing innocents. Not so great for holding down a job once all the innocents are dead. We’re going to need plumbers and craftsmen and accountants to function as a society. I don’t know how to do any of that stuff.”
He displayed his resume, which was etched into a ragged strip of human skin. Under skills, it just read KILLING, MURDERING, DEATH-BRINGING, BONE-CRUSHING, SOUL-RENDING, LIGHT FILING.”
“I made up the last one,” the Hurlock admitted. “Everyone lies on their resume a little. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t know the first thing about filing. I don’t even know what a file is. Is it something you kill?”
He thoughtfully chewed through the tender neck of a struggling, middle-aged blacksmith. “Look,” he said between bites. “I’m worried for my future. I just want to stay relevant.”
The job market is tough in this day and age.
It’s a sorry sight when even hell-bound demons can’t find work.
At first, when they cancelled our London invasion, I did not know what to do. But then I went back to college and took a few programming courses. Now I work full time for a major games publisher. I heartily recommend the Darkspawn and other demonic beings to get further education.
He’s not alone. We Geth face a similar future once we succeed in bringing about the return of the Reapers. What are synthetics like us going to do when there’s no more organic life to purge? Stand sentry for eternity? I’d rather go on the dole.
Oh it’s fine for you! you still have a job! Look at me! all these modern RTS games which don’t have an economy! cutting WOOD to good for them?!?!?
Ever since the rise of the control point resource trickle I’ve been out of work.
It’s not all doom and gloom. I hear they’re always hiring inter-dimensional demons over at castle Wolfenstein. And the World War II job market has always been great, read that in another article.
Ouch, villager, that’s too bad. But have you considered switching over to the RPG industry? Despite what the article suggests, there’s actually plenty of room for someone without any special skills or training. Here are just a few of the exciting career opportunities we have available right now:
Pacer: Just what it sounds like. Find yourself an empty space in a populated area, and pace endlessly back and forth. PCs may interrupt you occasionally, but you will be provided with a book of handy catchprases for your protection (e.g. “It sure is a nice day, isn’t it?”). Pick one and repeat it until they lose interest.
Redshirt guard: Are you good at standing still for long periods of time? Were you born without a personality? Just put on a set of armor and get ready to get bored! Priority consideration will be given to applicants with vaguely annoying voices.
Bar Patron: When it comes to cushy positions, this is one of the best there is. You’ll be paired up with a fellow NPC, and the two of you just sit down at a table and pretend to converse. Stare fixedly at your partner, make a vague gesture every few seconds, and you can even earn some bonus wages if you know how to move your lips (no vocal chords required). WARNING: Risk of hemorrhoids.
The current job market is indeed a great challenge, no matter your intellectual, physical, theoretical physical or xenobiological expertise. Not only could you get fired for just tiny mistakes involving certain unforeseen consequences, but certain employers will actually keep you UNEMPLOYED in a black void for years and years on end. Incredibly boring, and besides I can’t pay off my beer debts that way. Just a tip: Always consider career choices carefully, especially those from pale men in space-moving trams. An infinite amount of enemies will, if nothing else, at least keep you in employment for a while!
Well, if nothing else, all demons have a home in MMO world. You see, most demons inhabit worlds where if they kill people, they don’t come back, aside from maybe one or two people.
But us in MMO world over here, we have infinite amounts of people to kill. Our Job Market is booming. The more people there are, the more demons we need to make up for it. The ratio is huge, probably 20 demons per person. Sure we might get killed a lot, but 5 or 6 minutes from now we’ll pop back in. It’s not the most glorious job though.
Sure, we have work, but it’s the demon equivalent of shoveling crap. There’s not real sign that we will ever actually succeed at ANYTHING, and people will just keep popping up to murder us. Hell sometimes small armies will come to attack us. And for some reason in our job description it says that if the target runs 30 yards away we must give up the chase and let them escape. Nothing is more annoying than being seconds away from tearing a human or elf in half, just to have them run out of my “range” and watching them eat and drink within my line of sight, with nothing I can do other than pace around a set path, hoping that set path will lead me close enough to engage them while they are eating.
I’d prefer the opportunity to chase people to the ends of the earth. My idol you see is Usain Bolt, and demons here in MMO world don’t get a lot of opportunities to run. More run several feet, engage, and chase up to 30 yards before walking around again.
All the Darkspawn and Orcs need to do is hire my ex-wife. Nine years ago, Rapture descended into chaos and madness before briefly returning to a bare semblance of order. A little over a year later, my pal Jack came along and killed the only two people keeping the place from completely collapsing into complete anarchy again, and promptly left.
Then Sophia Lamb returned and remade the place into a functioning society and has been successfully running the place for almost eight years. I gotta say: her methods may leave a lot to be desired (all I wanted was weekend visiting rights and she makes me COMMIT SUICIDE), but she sure can organize thousands of mutant drug addicts into something resembling civilization.
Observation: I would not worry, meatbag. As I heard a meatbag doctor mention once, “pathetic meatbag life always finds a way”.
Extapolation: It would seem, then that your pathetic, meatbag concerns for the future are unfounded. There will always be meatbags to initiate Asassination Protocals on.
Times are hard even in the most crime-infested parts of Cyrodiil. The only person we are keeping our eye on is a certain butt-ugly alchemist with the WORST haircut I have ever seen, and I last saw him almost half a year ago!
And with the lack of a death-bringing demon worshipper cult to hunt, I fear the Emperor will disband the guard. That would be detrimental to the whole crime-busting business, seeing as how no one else but the guard has the so called “Guard Sense”, which allows me to note a crime millions of miles away and run there in an instant, yelling to the criminal how he will be off to jail.
You guys really think you have it bad?
My only skill is walking into pits. I don’t even know why I do it! It’s all I got! If bowser ever takes over the mushroom kingdom what will I do?!
No wonder these perfectly capable guys are unable to find jobs. All them Vektese immigrants have taken the jobs. That’s why I’m voting for Scolar Visari in the next election.
One of the many benefits of working for the Umbrella family of companies is our unparalleled job-retraining program. Tired of your life researching unethical bioweapons that rend the very laws of life and go beyond the bounds of mortal ken? You can be retrained and reclassed as an exciting, physical life of being a ZMB-01! Special skills might even get you classed as a LCK-R or a TYR-N7. Best yet, training can happen at your current workplace, and only takes as long as the T-virus needs to kill you.
Er… forget that last part.
You’ve got nothing to worry about. As long as there’s still two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone else dead.
What’s the big deal? If you’re looking for a gig, try becoming one of us. Theirs not much to it, and it seems as if most of you guys are half way their anyway.
Got legs? They’ll becomes Mutilated Legs. See that torso of yours–mutilated baby.
If your lucky you’ll get tied up to a tree by some Super Mutant, or perhaps left in the corner of some bombed out husk of a church.
Easy as pie.
There’s always will always be flesh to rend, guts to tear, and blood to drink. If we ever run out of innocents to kill, who is to say we can’t go back in time, and do it again?
Please, you blokes, I’m at my Wit’s end. Here it is you all whine, whine, whine about your major franchises and how hard it is for you in a world where you have to repetitively spawn. Well BOO freaking HOO. You see, I originally got my first shot at being haunted in this UK title Ghost Master. Very Ghostbusters minus the catchy music. Great Game, and the Company went bankrupt before it even finished the cliffhanger! So I was scared out of my shorts for nothing, and worse,this great scene I had fainting to a Headless Horseman chap was just CUT. Sp I figure head east — and I end up in what I hear is a RUNAWAY hit– but it seems I didn’t read the fine print, RUNAWAY HIT in RUSSIA. Being only able to speak English (I’ve been taking night courses in Simlish, I hear there are good jobs at EA) so here I end up as an “Infected” speaking in some wonky Russian-come-survival horror timed thing called Pathologic. TIMED ADVENTURE. Shortest. Job. Ever.
It’s not that these games weren’t great, but geez, they make a whole new meaning to “army of One…. PLAYER.” I put on freaking TIGHTS until my bollocks about burst to play a gnome in Majesty — and then when they get a sequel under a new company: CUT THE GNOMES. I henched for a while at Evil Genius, which wasn’t bad work for the small number of pixels but the orange jumpsuit — ai yi yi.
So listen here, if you have your cushy workforce with respawning demons, endless mazes, and large franchises, well, quitcher whinin’ and suck it up.
And thank the THREE GODS you don’t have to wear those damn tights. Talk about giving you a “gore bag!” (No offense given, Mister Bag!)
Yeah, I’ve thought about this a lot. I mean, shit, when we finally do subdue our fellow man, take out this Freeman asshole, and the benefactors have complete control of earth, what then? I mean, surely they won’t mine our planet for all it’s resources and just leave us for dead, right? Right?
Yeah, times seem to be tough everywhere but Sigil. Things are going good for most of us. With the literally infinite amount of thugs carrying valuables, one can easily sell their possessions to the nearest shopkeeper and haul their body to the Dusties for a good bit of jink. If you berks ever need a job, I’d definitely suggest finding the nearest door to Sigil (they’re everywhere, trust me) and starting anew, especially you orcs, demons, etc- there’s a huge opening in the job market for dungeon monsters.