YMMV / Dungeon Keeper Ami

• Complete Monster: Keeper Malleus was a worshipper of the Dark God Murdrul. When facing Ami, Malleus decides to sacrifice his loyalist minions just to spite her. After Ami defeats him, she explores his mind and finds that he burned his home country and threw the inhabitants into a giant pit, where they were forced to cannibalize themselves for food while Malleus laughed at their suffering. He had a harem of Sex Slaves, whom he kept chained and malnourished and also used as Breeding Slaves, so that he could sacrifice their newborn children to Murdrul. He enchanted a king into slaughtering his family, and turned a fertile nation into a lifeless desert. By the time she's done trawling his mind, Ami is so disgusted by him that she has given up on making the memory delve harmless; she takes what she needs from his mind forcefully, leaving him a drooling vegetable, and then snaps his neck with her Keeper powers.
• Crazy Is Cool: Mukrezar starves out an underworld city by buying all the food to make the world's biggest cake, massively overpaying for it so that their greed would override their suspicion, and then cuts off their normal resupply routes in a way that won't trigger the mutual defense treaties. Then he trolls the Bile Demons that come to complain about it by offering them some of the cake, and insisting that it isn't poisoned.

• Memetic Badass: Ami's Dark Empress persona has become so infamous that the forumites compiled a memetic badassery list:

The List

• 1. Surfacers put lipstick on pigs. The Dark Empress puts lipstick on Horned Reapers.
• 2. The Dark Empress went to negotiate a cease fire. The city surrendered.
• 3. The Dark Empress cannot die. Death has been humiliated by her so many times he stays as far away as he can.
• 4. The Dark Empress once gave an unremarkable mercenary a fraction of her power. That mercenary now spars the Avatar.
• 5. The Dark Gods once got angry at the Dark Empress for walking into a light temple. She let them off with a warning.
• 6. One of the most dangerous keepers in the world once attacked the Dark Empress. She didn't notice.
• 7. The Dark Empress decided to eat out once. The inn was destroyed.
• 8. Despite what you might have hoped, the Dark Empress did not forget about you.
• 9. The Dark Empress came up with a plan, and destroying every other keeper on the planet was the simple part.
• 10. If you can see the Dark Empress, she can kill you. If you can't see the Dark Empress, she can still kill you.
• 11. A group of wizards were once tasked with summoning the Dark Empress. Just drawing the summoning circle drove several of them insane.
• 12. The Dark Empress tortures pieces of a god for fun.
• 13. The Dark Empress doesn't bother eating the bodies of her slain enemies. That's what minions are for.
• 14. A Goblin tribe once joined the Dark Empress. They now defeat underworld armies.
• 15. The Dark Empress was once told that water and stone couldn't be set on fire. She took that as a challenge, so she set a stone temple at the bottom of the ocean on fire.
• 16. It generally takes years of study to become even an apprentice in a field of Dark Magic. The Dark Empress merely has to consider the implications. Mastery comes with actually studying the field for maybe a week.
• 17. It is well known that golems are obscenely expensive to power with Magic. The Dark Empress keeps a dozen in her own image around at all times.
• 18. It was once assumed that the Dark Empress had a spell to blow up anti-magic wards. It has since been discovered that this destruction is merely a fringe effect of her magical powers.
• 19. She claims to have mutated the population of Salthalls into monsters on accident. Most would prefer not to believe her, because frankly doing it on accident is much more terrifying...
• 20. She blackmailed the light gods.
• 21. The Dark Empress has what seem to be siblings. She is the weakest of the lot.
• 22. Her mother orders all of them around. Gulp.
• 23. The Dark Empress holds the world record for fastest recruitment of a Horned Reaper. He is even posting glowing employment reviews!
• 24. Most keepers require a dungeon in the area in order to attack. The Dark Empress will fuck you up from the other side of the world.
• 25. A vampire once bit the Dark Empress. After a week of utter agony, the vampire died.
• 26. The Dark Empress is said to be fond of Ice Magic. However, we have it on good authority that she is also very fond of lava in enemy dungeons.
• 27. The Dark Empress once defeated a keeper using only Ice Golems, using them like they were goblins. That she did so on a dare is unconfirmed.
• 28. The Dark Empress is a master of torture. Bile Demons, Warlocks, and Mistresses all agree that she immediately targets any weaknesses and is extremely creative when she is upset at you.
• 29. The Dark Empress kills those she no longer as a use for. However, she has never done this because she has never run out of uses.
• 30. The Dark Empress's voice is so seductive she convinced a fairy soldier to join her just by talking.
• 31. A Warlock once offered to give the Dark Empress the perfect feminine form. The Dark Empress refused, she already had it.
• 32. The Dark Empress was stabbed in the heart once, she regretted the loss of the clothes most.
• 33. The Dark Empress has the most powerful Warlock in the world in her employ. She uses him as a pillow.
• 34. The Dark Empress had her way with a Horned Reaper once. It fled, never to return. (The dark gods forced it to come back anyway, so she strung it up overlooking a temple of the Light. Then they forced it to fight her in a duel, so she punched it in the gut and put it out of its misery.)
• 35. The Dark Empress had her way with a Dragon once. It came back for more.
• 36. The Dark Empress is so convincing that every surfacer she's ever talked to has agreed to serve her.
• 37. No one knows which Dark God or Goddess The Dark Empress worships. Some now consider that the Dark Temples she has made in the past are actually dedicated to herself.
• 38. Vampires spread misinformation about Garlic in order to weaken their would-be enemies. The Dark Empress used garlic effectively against them anyway to make a point.
• 39. The Dark Gods prevented the Dark Empress from using Imps for a time. The Dark Empress took that as a challenge in order to make Rats able to do the work of Imps. The Vermin Lord remains quite jealous at being denied this gift.
• 40. The Dark Empress knows so many secrets and spells and hidden knowledge that the smarter Dark Gods now turn to her for advances, advice, and boons.
• 41. The Dark Empress once got one of the Dark Gods to style her hair during one of their conversations.
• "42. THE ANSWER!"
• 43. Most keepers find the power upgrade from having a Dungeon Heart a massive bonus. The Dark Empress considers it a tool of convenience.
• 44. The Dark Empress once destroyed some of her own hearts deliberately, banishing her to the realm of the dark gods. We have information that while banished, she caused Crying Death great pain and torment. Also, she had relations with another Dark God(dess) while there. The Unraveller has made it known that she really wants to meet with her again, and her priesthood has been ordered to extend all courtesies. We can only conclude that she felt the need to personally express her displeasure with a certain dark god, and court another on the side.
• 45. Some ask whether the Dark Empress has enough magical might to do something. This is actually quite simple. The answer is always "Yes".
• 46. The Dark Empress once heard there were 2 constants in life: Death and taxes. So she began by making the government refuse to accept her taxes. (And then humiliated Death.)
• 47. Every Keeper has a myriad of minions at his disposal at scaling combat strength, from the lowest fly to the mightiest dragon. For the Dark Empress this scaling begins with an untrained Goblin directly followed by a Reaper.
• 48. Normal Keepers sacrifice leftover attackers to their God after successfully defending their dungeon. The Dark Empress skips the "successfully defending" part and directly sacrifices the attackers while they are still attacking.
• 49. Crying Death was thought to be the master of all undead, until he crossed The Dark Empress. Now even lowly zombies choose to serve her instead.
• 50. A Dark God retreated in humiliation after the Dark Empress destroyed nearly all of his worldly influence. She punished his temerity for continued existence by replacing his one remaining enticement to serve him with one that is strictly better in all ways for those who serve her, instead.
• 51. Conquering a Duchy is a good first date activity for the Dark Empress.
• 52. Some men like to think they're god's gift to women, The Dark Empress' boyfriend is her god's gift to her.
• 53. The only reason the Dark Empress' Consort is not God's Gift to Women is because the Dark Empress doesn't share.
• 54. Lightsiders pray to the gods to ensure a good harvest. The Dark Empress uses Necromancy to ensure a good harvest.
• 55. A dark god has tried to possess the Dark Empress twice. The first time, his temple exploded as a warning. The second time, the Dark Empress enslaved him.
• 56. Only one member of the Shining Concord Empire has ever encountered the Dark Empress and avoided capture. He ran away the instant he realized she was near.
• 57. To avoid working for the Dark Empress, a group of orcs came up with the most impossible condition they could imagine. The Dark Empress considered it a simple request.
• 58. The Dark Empress doesn't bother putting bars in her prisons, she just makes people's eyes evaporate if they leave.
• 59. The Mukrezarian blockade was impenetrable for 15 years until the Dark Empress started crossing it at her leisure. The first time, she punched through it. The second and third times she just ignored it.
• 60. The Dark Empress once heard there were 2 constants in life: Death and taxes. After making the government refuse her taxes she started making the gods refuse her death. Now they all demand that she be captured alive.
• 61. Before the Dark Empress entered the Dread Fog Exclusion zone, no one knew what was inside because no one had encountered it and survived. Now everyone knows; she’s inside it!
• 62. Standard procedure to mold Adamantine requires being a Acolyte of the Light, using Their powers to soften it. The Dark Empress used her own life force to do the same thing.
• 63. The Dark Empress heard about her civilians' fears of an army of undead assaulting her dungeon, then did everything in her power to assuage their fears. Now the Undead are on the civilians' side, and Nimbadnur is ablative armor for all other assaults.

• Nightmare Fuel:
  • While imprisoned by Arachne, Ami witnesses a prisoner being turned into an animated skeleton. The first step is to animate the bones, after which the skeleton...removes the rest.
  • The Fairy Sisters react this way to seeing their sister Cerasse's internal organs in the episode "Convoluted Rescue Plan, Go!" Thankfully for all those involved, the fairy was just made partially invisible instead of being horribly killed and raised as an undead horror as the fairies initially thought.
  • Another example of characters reacting to a Nightmare Fuel situation occurs in-story in the episode "Assault on Wemos", where Keeper Mercury observes Zarekos torturing Keeper Wemos in graphic detail. The details in that scene do border on being Squick.
  • The priests of Crowned Death gather 8,000 civilians to sacrifice for a ritual. Male, female, young, old, they don't care. In order to prevent them from trying to escape, the prisoners all have their eyes gouged out with magical knives.
• Rooting for the Empire: Mukrezar's evil, but hilarious, and his nefarious activities mostly happen to Acceptable targets because he's too intimidated to go after Mercury.
• The Scrappy:
  • Tiger. To some readers, her having become Ami's bratty evil twin makes her hilarious. To others, it makes her insufferable. She may be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap after we understand Tiger's motivations better.
  • The fairy scouts seem to get this a lot. How much time is spent focusing on just how doggedly they assume every single thing Mercury does is evil tends to get annoying. They can't really be faulted for the attitude that all Keepers are bad regardless of their intentions, but the scenes involving them seem to drag on forever. We get the point already, Pusakuronu. Good Is Dumb. Justified though.

• Viewer Gender Confusion: Since Keepers can possess their minions' bodies, too many viewers have had a hard time keeping track of what Keepers are what gender; Keepers Alphel and Arachne both being females are two good examples. It doesn't help matters that Keepers can alter their forms. It also doesn't help matters that Mercury refers to a person's gender by what body they're inhabiting or possessing, rather than what gender they themselves identify themselves as being or were actually born as, such as when Mercury referred to herself as a male when possessing the Reaper's body in the episode Mad Science for Beginners.
• The Woobie: Ami. Gets transported to the world of Dungeon Keeper by pursuing Jadeite into a portal during a Sailor Senshi mission. She immediately gets roped into a Deal with the Devil situation with a Dungeon Heart, which binds her to the world in question and will send her soul directly to the Dark Gods when she eventually dies. If she didn't agree to the deal, the Horned Reaper in the dungeon would have killed her on the spot. The Light Gods want to imprison her forever to protect Ami's world from the Dark Gods' influence and all that entails. Until she finds a way to free herself from being a Keeper, she cannot go home again. And she keeps getting into humiliating situations. Granted, Ami is not going to let any of this stop her, but it's still going to be a long road home...