Dark Minions Thread

The Dark Lord has Risen! And he calls all creatures of the night to him! This is a thread to post pictures of cannon fodder, be they orc, owlbear or undead. Discuss minions and what it would be like to a be a faceless antagonist in an army of evil. Cliche's not bad, goblins, wolves and bats are fun! But new is good too, let's get some fresh ideas while we're at it

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Do you guys prefer your antagonist minions to be purely evil or multi faceted?

Personally nothing gets me hotter then a gold ol' fashion dark lord and his army of darkness. I know I know, a bit overdone these days, but who doesn't like seeing a black hoard amassing on a field of green?

This picture is badass. It's a non-traditional army of evil, I don't know, eastern inspired?

These days I see more of the 'muh morally grey grim gritty world where everyone is an asshole' in TTRPG's but that could be just shit luck on my part. I agree though, dark lords from dark lands with dark armies and dark waifus is great.

Speaking of evil eastern inspired armies.

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That's true, there is a push for "they're not evil, you've just been conditioned to think that way" type of narrative tweist. Which is all good and fine, sometimes it's fun to play a morally gray, super complicated game.
And sometimes, it's fun to play a straightforward "Kill the orcs, topple the tower" session

Personally a fan of multifaceted minions that are sympathetic individually yet still end up serving an absolute evil. The decent people doing horrible things situation.

Though regardless of sympathy I love professional minions that almost look like they aren't actually that bad. Tyranny's Disfavored are a good example of minions that can make you forget at times just how horrible a group of people they really are because of their loyalty and honor system.

Thanks for the dump by the way.

I really liked the orcs from Peter's Jackson's take on the LOTR trilogy. WETA workshop did an AMAZING job with makeup, so much better than the CGI abortions in the Hobbit triology. The LOTR orcs were so realistic and disgusting. Real, visceral evil.

Everyone is purely evil as long as they're not on your side.

Do Evil Men count? I've always enjoyed my dark hordes having a mix of monsters and men.

S'good point. We all got a little orc in us. Although the noble orc theme of WoW rubbed me the wrong way for some reason

Evil men count, they're probably what evil fey armies of legends passed were based off of. This picture I'm posting is a good example of "otherness" and strange customs that characterized evil armies in old fantasy. Of course, it's just men in African garb, but to the Africans European knights might have been an evil hoard of ghosts

>That's true, there is a push for "they're not evil, you've just been conditioned to think that way" type of narrative tweist.

I'd say it's more of a "if this world was real, how the fuck could an completely evil society exist without collapsing?" issue than some kind of narrative twist.

No one has problems with always chaotic evil orcs - as long as they are made in some wizard lab. It solves the question of a chaotic evil society, because orcs don't have a society. They're alchemy lab babbies.

Given how that's from Conan, I'd say those are the black corsairs.

Allies and friends of Conan from back when he was a pirate.

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Anybody got goblins? Good ol' fashion child stealing ankle biters?

Make way for one of the first depictions of an evil hoard.

Monsters come in all sizes. You can't have a dark army with a pants-shitting giant to accompany them

without a giant*

I like the idea of evil dwarves. I think in folklore a lot of them were evil, or at least, no friend to man

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Gotta love white witch warriors

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>those tiny siege towers

Ive always wanted to play a campaign as henchmen in a generic supers setting.

Just the idea of being one of those faceless goons and trying to deal with heroes that are waaaaaaay out of your keague seems appealing for some reason

Have you ever seen Venture Bros or Frisky Dingo? They have good goon interactions

bump

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This is interesting. I thought Mordor culture as depicted in the trilogy did a pretty good take on an evil society. It was literally just a hierarchy of brutality and slavery. Sure it collapsed without Sauren and his wraith Lts., but it worked as long as there was an all powerful despot on top. Drow society, while ridiculous, is also a working depiction of an evil society. Though, like Mordor, they have a diety calling the shots

Evil dwarves is something I rarely see.

The main one I can think of is GeeDubs' chaos dwarves.

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I love the fact that under the black leather, grisly trophies, and "rough from the forge" look, the orcs legitimately had armour and weapon technology more advanced than that of man, dwarf and elf. Gondor had at best, late 14thC level, and the orcs were about 200 years ahead.

Same with their medical science. Brutal and cruel, but undeniably effective.

I, for one, believe in equality in evil!

They were focused on efficiency. They were ugly, threatening, and never made art a priority in design.
Dwarves and Elves are clearly good at their craft but get lost in the art of crafting and in mastering that art. Probably a good dwarven sword is much more resistant over time, but doesn't have the brutal efficiency of an orcish falchion.

>Make way for one of the first depictions of an evil hoard

As much as I love Renaissance demonic art, you're off by a several thousand years in Europe, and even farther in the rest of the world.

Orcs represent the uglier parts of modernity. That's why they're technologically more advanced and far more numerous than everyone else. They're also the only race that speaks with modern idioms. This is coupled and contrasted with them also being caricatures of invading barbarians. Tolkien explicitly says something to the effect of "we were all orcs in the Great War" in a letter

Yeah yeah, we all know Tolkien's "Races should be separate, industry is inherently evil, Jesus is good" messages.

Just let us have our industrial orcs. Public healthcare (sure, your face will be stapled with wire and the potion makes you have shrieking nightmares while it heals....), and gender equality (because you're all fucking snagas).

>Public healthcare
>Gender Equality
>State organized employment
>State regulated industry
>Darwinist meritocracy

A true utopia!

Not seeing much undead here

I do love me classic cliché evil minions who are evil purely because evil.

But I'd have to day my favorite bad guy minions are the "average joe working for the bad guys" angle.

These guys can be huge in their variety of alignments especially if they're conscripts who didn't get a choice to begin with. With these kind of enemies you can easily make up unique situations for the pcs while not having to actually change a thing besides how the minions act.

>group A consists of soldiers who live abusing their status as soldiers during wartime. They rape and pillage whenever they can get away with it.

>group b consists of soldiers who aside from a few officers were just poor farmers a few months ago and just want survive long enough to get home/desert.

>group c is a group of honorable soldiers serving what they perceive to be a honorable code or believe the atrocities they commit now will serve the greater good later

You can fit all of these different types of soldiers into the same army if you go the "average joe" route.

youtube.com/watch?v=Adfl3hp7QMg

Do brutal mercenaries count?

im a sucker for "dark minions"... in my fantasy setting (not really homebrew since i dont do Veeky Forums, only worldbuilding for fun) there are

uruk-hai type orc legions

goat beasmen armies

demonic goat beastmen armies

armies of giant elephant ogres

oni demon armies (in the oriental inspired part of the world they are basically orcs there. they are a race of interdimensional mercenaries)

vampire centaur armies (their head shapes are like hylden from LoK)

regular mongoloid centaur armies

underground batfolk armies (the cannon fodder would be the lower caste of wingless batfolk)

bunch of undead armies (my favourites are those of nations ruled by honorable liches and vampire lords, where people willingly become corpse soldiers for their nations)

wasnt their fault

the wall just got 10 feet higher

I like evil minions that require leadership else they start doing evil might makes right style.
And I like my lieutenants to have their quirks, and potentially be redeemable. Though naturally their minions wouldn't like that, so attempting to convert them is not only a risky venture for the pcs, but also for the lieutenants themselves.

Reminder that the Mahabharata had rakshasa fighting for both sides.

That's really less a Dark Lord thing, and more a necromancer thing.
You don't really see them in a mixed horde unless they've been subcontracted through some necromancers.

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Is that from the latest Berserk chapter?

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I used bugbears as the main footsoldiers of my Big Bad in a campaign where all the players were either new or unfamiliar with D&D stuff.
So NO ONE knew what the FUCK a bugbear was.
And no one told me until after the final session.

I've seen porn of this.
It was okay.

I would like to see that, got a link?

Well it was posted in a Veeky Forums thread, most likely drawn on the spot. carouse the booru o you're shit out of luck.