Xenoverse origins / R-044
King AleistarOrigin story
Warden of the Attitude Adjustment Program
Human by birth. King by declaration. Goblin management by terrible career choices.
Read the origin ↓
Placeholder artworkHuman by birth. King by declaration. Goblin management by terrible career choices.
King Aleistar is one of the few humans to hold real authority inside the ToxicGoblin XENOVERSE.
He wasn’t born into goblin society. He wasn’t elected. There is no royal bloodline, ancient prophecy or legitimate kingdom behind the crown.
Aleistar simply declared himself King.
Somehow, it stuck.
Today, he operates under the authority of the Goblin Council as administrator of the Attitude Adjustment Program, better known throughout the XENOVERSE as the AAP.
The goblins aren’t his servants. They’re his coworkers, staff, accomplices and frequent administrative nightmare.
Aleistar’s specialty is humans.
More specifically:
Humans with attitude problems.
Chapter 01
Before the Crown
Aleistar’s history isn’t heroic.
Before encountering the goblins, he spent years operating in some of humanity’s least respectable corners. His past included slave trading before he eventually found himself running a strip club.
The second profession taught him considerably more than the first.
Night after night, Aleistar watched money, attraction, jealousy, ego, intoxication and desperation collide under one roof.
He became fascinated by leverage.
People said one thing and wanted another.
People who considered themselves impossible to manipulate became remarkably cooperative once someone discovered the correct incentive.
After years behind the desk, Aleistar reduced human behavior to what became his infamous Golden Rule:
“Everybody has a price. Find the currency.”
Sometimes the currency was money.
Sometimes attention.
Sometimes status.
Sometimes access.
And sometimes it was whatever Aleistar vaguely referred to as party favours.
The lesson stayed with him long after the club did.
Placeholder artworkChapter 02
The Divorce
There was another reason Aleistar became the man the goblins eventually encountered.
He had once attempted an ordinary life.
Marriage.
Children.
Property.
Something approaching respectability.
Then his marriage collapsed.
His wife divorced him. Half of what Aleistar considered his disappeared with the marriage, and his relationship with his children was torn apart in the process.
Aleistar became bitter.
Very bitter.
Instead of treating the divorce as one disastrous relationship, he turned it into a worldview.
Every liar reminded him of his ex-wife.
Every entitled customer became further evidence.
Every manipulator became another case study.
His resentment eventually expanded into a personal crusade against what he considered entitlement, manipulation and the culture that enabled it.
Whether Aleistar’s philosophy describes humanity or merely describes Aleistar remains a matter of considerable debate among the goblins.
Mostly because they don’t care.
They thought the angry human was hilarious.
Placeholder artworkChapter 03
Then Came Kandi Kane
Every institution needs a founding legend.
The Attitude Adjustment Program has the Kandi Kane Incident.
Kandi Kane was trouble long before Aleistar arrived.
She had discovered that several managers at a goblin-run strip club were remarkably susceptible to her charms.
So Kandi went to work.
She flirted.
She lied.
She bribed.
She played managers against one another.
She convinced different men that each occupied some special position in her life while quietly extracting whatever she could from all of them.
Money started disappearing.
Rules mysteriously stopped applying to Kandi.
Employees who challenged her suddenly found themselves in trouble with management.
Before long, Kandi Kane was behaving less like an employee and more like the queen of somebody else’s club.
The goblins knew they were being played.
They simply couldn’t figure out the game.
Aleistar could.
He had seen it before.
And he had absolutely no intention of throwing Kandi out.
That would have been too easy.
Placeholder artworkChapter 04
The First Attitude Adjustment
Aleistar did something considerably worse to Kandi’s ego.
He demoted her.
Her VIP privileges vanished.
Her preferred treatment disappeared.
Her influence over management was severed.
Then Aleistar removed Kandi Kane from the duty board entirely.
In its place he wrote:
304
And handed her a serving tray.
The woman who once had managers scrambling to bring her drinks was now responsible for bringing drinks to goblins.
The goblins embraced the arrangement enthusiastically.
Orders became increasingly ridiculous.
Drinks were returned.
Tables summoned her back moments after she’d walked away.
Every complaint was met by Aleistar quietly opening his ledger and making another mark.
But serving drinks was only the beginning.
Because eventually the club closed.
And 304 still had work to do.
Placeholder artworkChapter 05
Cleanup Duty
Aleistar didn’t assign 304 the easy cleaning jobs.
No polished bar tops.
No empty glasses.
No sweeping an already-clean entrance.
He gave her the places everybody else hated cleaning.
The bathrooms.
The destroyed VIP booths.
The sticky floors.
The private peep rooms.
Every revolting corner left behind after another night of goblin excess became 304’s responsibility.
There was a particular symmetry to it that Aleistar enjoyed.
Kandi had spent months behaving as though the club’s ordinary workers existed beneath her.
Now she cleaned up after them.
Aleistar watched from behind his desk.
Cigar burning.
Ledger open.
Every dollar Kandi had stolen was recorded.
Every outstanding debt was calculated.
Every complaint earned another mark.
She would work until Aleistar considered the ledger balanced.
Placeholder artworkChapter 06
The Crown Ceremony
Then came the moment that transformed a disgruntled former club owner into King Aleistar.
One evening, Aleistar gathered the club’s goblins and announced that someone was finally going to receive recognition appropriate to their station.
A crown was unveiled.
Kandi saw it.
For one glorious moment, the former queen of the club apparently believed the ceremony was for her.
Aleistar walked toward the crown.
Picked it up.
And placed it on his own head.
There was no election.
No vote.
No coronation committee.
Aleistar simply announced:
“King Aleistar.”
The goblins erupted.
Whether they were cheering sincerely or simply found the entire thing hysterical has never been conclusively established.
Then Aleistar turned toward 304.
And handed her the mop.
The resulting image became one of the foundational legends of modern ToxicGoblin lore:
King Aleistar occupying Kandi Kane’s former VIP booth, crown on his head and cigar between his teeth, while the former queen of the club cleaned the wreckage around him.
The crown never came off.
Neither did the title.
Placeholder artworkChapter 07
Patient Zero
Something happened to Kandi during those weeks.
The games stopped.
The manipulation stopped.
The theft stopped.
The constant attempts to control everyone around her disappeared.
She showed up when expected.
She performed her assignments.
She stopped demanding special treatment.
Most strangely, the woman who had once considered ordinary club work beneath her appeared increasingly comfortable with her new position.
The goblins had watched Kandi Kane enter Aleistar’s orbit as an uncontrollable queen bee.
What emerged was 304:
calm, compliant and strangely content.
That transformation attracted the attention of the Goblin Council.
They summoned Aleistar.
They wanted to know exactly what he’d done.
Aleistar reportedly leaned back, lit his cigar and gave them four words:
“She needed attitude adjustment.”
Those words became a name.
The Attitude Adjustment Program was born.
Kandi Kane became its unofficial Patient Zero.
And Aleistar got himself a new job.
Placeholder artworkChapter 08
The Attitude Adjustment Program
The AAP — Attitude Adjustment Program is Aleistar’s answer to the personalities he believes have become consumed by entitlement, manipulation, dishonesty and ego.
Aleistar considers the program justice.
Others might call it revenge wearing an administrative uniform.
Both descriptions are probably accurate.
His own failed marriage undoubtedly shaped the institution. Aleistar never pretends otherwise. The AAP allows him to transform decades of resentment into something systematic.
There are procedures.
There are classifications.
There are training programs.
There are ledgers.
There is an alarming quantity of paperwork.
Nobody expected a human to teach goblins bureaucracy.
Nobody expected the goblins to enjoy it.
Yet somehow Aleistar created a functioning organization from creatures naturally inclined toward disorder.
That might be his most frightening talent.
Placeholder artworkChapter 09
The Aleistar Method
Aleistar rarely relies upon a single technique.
He studies people first.
What do they want?
What do they fear losing?
What gives them status?
What happens when you remove it?
The Aleistar Method attacks the pedestal rather than the person standing upon it.
Privilege becomes responsibility.
Status becomes anonymity.
Manipulation becomes accountability.
Someone accustomed to being served might find herself serving.
Someone obsessed with status might discover her name has been replaced by a number.
Someone who believes certain work is beneath her might suddenly become intimately familiar with a mop.
Aleistar doesn’t believe everyone has the same weakness.
He believes everyone has one somewhere.
His job is finding it.
Placeholder artworkChapter 10
The Cigar
Then there is the cigar.
Nobody knows exactly what is in King Aleistar’s enormous signature cigar.
Aleistar claims it’s tobacco.
Almost nobody believes him.
The cigar became an important AAP training prop sometime after the Kandi Kane Incident, and goblin folklore has produced dozens of contradictory explanations for its reputation.
Some insist the smoke itself has unusual properties.
Others claim Aleistar imports a secret ingredient from somewhere outside conventional XENOVERSE territory.
A persistent rumor claims each cigar is imbued with one of Aleistar’s mysterious party favours.
Aleistar has never confirmed the story.
He has never denied it either.
Whenever someone asks what exactly he’s smoking, the King usually smiles.
And takes another drag.
Placeholder artworkChapter 11
Human Among Goblins
Despite the crown, Aleistar does not rule goblin civilization.
The Goblin Council outranks him.
His relationship with the goblins is closer to that of a senior coworker who somehow accumulated an absurd amount of institutional authority.
He organizes them.
He argues with them.
He drinks with them.
He occasionally has to explain why explosives are not an acceptable substitute for filing cabinets.
And when Aleistar produces a plan sufficiently outrageous to interest the Council, the goblins provide something invaluable:
goblins willing to execute it.
Aleistar supplies structure.
The goblins supply chaos.
The AAP exists somewhere in between.
Placeholder artworkChapter 12
Never Mistake Him for a Mascot
The ridiculous crown makes Aleistar easy to underestimate.
That’s usually a mistake.
Behind the cigar, jewelry and self-appointed royalty is an extremely intelligent administrator.
He understands incentives.
He understands vice.
He understands manipulation.
He has money, resources, influence and the backing of one of the strangest governing bodies in the XENOVERSE.
He’s physically imposing enough that few people volunteer to test whether the old man can still fight.
And then there are the rumors.
Years spent around goblins have apparently changed Aleistar.
Stories circulate about strength a human his age shouldn’t possess, events he shouldn’t have survived and things witnessed inside AAP facilities that nobody can adequately explain.
Ask Aleistar whether any of it is true.
He’ll probably tell you everything has a price.
Then ask what you’re willing to pay.
Placeholder artworkChapter 13
Long Live the King
King Aleistar is a contradiction even by ToxicGoblin standards.
Human among goblins.
King without a kingdom.
Bureaucrat of chaos.
Administrator of the Attitude Adjustment Program.
He took bitterness, vice, decades of questionable life experience and one spectacular confrontation with Kandi Kane and somehow turned them into an institution.
Today, somewhere inside the TG XENOVERSE, another file inevitably lands on Aleistar’s desk.
He opens it.
Studies the photograph.
Reads the complaint.
Takes a slow drag from that enormous cigar.
Then reaches for his ledger.
Because somewhere, according to King Aleistar…
someone needs an attitude adjustment.
Placeholder artworkChapter 14
KING ALEISTAR — CHARACTER FILE
Full Name: King Aleistar
Species: Human
Universe: ToxicGoblin XENOVERSE
Affiliation: Goblin Council
Organization: Attitude Adjustment Program (AAP)
Position: AAP Administrator
Title: Self-Appointed King
Former Occupations: Slave trader, strip-club proprietor
Specialty: Leverage, incentives, administration and attitude adjustment
Management Style: Weaponized bureaucracy
Signature Item: Aleistar’s cigar
Defining Event: The Kandi Kane Incident
First AAP Subject: Kandi Kane / 304
Known Doctrine: The Aleistar Method
Golden Rule: Everybody has a price. Find the currency.
Current Status: Active
Threat Level: Ask the Goblin Council
Best Advice: Don’t end up in the ledger.
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