Tell us your villain, Veeky Forums. What and why are they such an asshole?

Tell us your villain, Veeky Forums. What and why are they such an asshole?

Here's the guy I'm working on for my first Ravenloft campaign:

Teclar the Deliverer was born into nobility. The heir of the household supposedly cursed with near-sterility, Teclar was born a frail and ill child. With little expectation to live up to, and his parents wasting away before he came of age, Teclar devoted himself to his nation's religious order: a monotheist religion based around the figure of Targolv, a just but warlike God. Immersing himself in theological works, Teclar realised, on interpreting ancient scripture, that his order worshipped their deity wrong: Targolv was just a misinterpreted perversion of an much older god, Yargulfh; a god who praised pacifism and earthly joys before all other virtues.

Naturally, the commonfolk quickly subscribed to such a benevolent god. Already having found recognition for his effort to fight the demonic, this popular support saw Teclar reach a position of high authority within his order by his mid twenties. However, the local lord and his court denounced this interpretation of the nation's god, obviously preferring a god which could be used to rally the peasants to whatever frivolous war they planned to orchestrate. As the lord had his forces begin to cleanse Yargulfh worship from the nation, Teclar became a reluctant revolutionary, and rallied the persecuted peasantry and the nation's religious order, now swayed to Yargulfh worship, against the lord.
1/3

Teclar was not pleased with the resulting bloodshed, as the nobility found themselves at the mercy of the commonfolk. Neither was he pleased when he was elected the temporary leader of the nation in the power vacuum that followed. However, when the nearby empire - insulted by the disposition of the nobility, but primarily concerned with the spread of the peace-emphasising Yargulfh worship - Teclar reluctantly rose to lead the kingdom against such an overwhelming enemy.

The kingdom never stood a chance; with a peasantry that had adopted a more pacifistic mindset, and sheer might of the empire they faced, the kingdom soon began to collapse as the war became internally fought. As the empire marched further and further into the kingdom, raping and razing more and more of its few towns and settlements, Teclar turned to far more archaic scripture as he watched the nation that he had led into Yargulfh worship slaughtered as a consequence.

Finally at the point of desperation, Teclar turned to an ancient prophecy, which detailed a means to directly commune with Yargulfh. The ritual, however, demanded the offering of the most purist sacrifice: the beloved youth of one's own blood. With his bloodline's curse having wasted away any relatives he may have once known, and the prospect of conceiving a child an uncertainty, Teclar forced himself to gaze upon the ghastly alternative: while one distant relative lacked enough shared blood to fulfil the sacrifice, five dozen or so could match the sacrifice single son or daughter. Unwilling to see the nation destroyed as a result of his zealous pursuits - unable to knowingly sentence hundreds of thousands to death - Teclar made the ultimate sacrafice: his own damnation.

2/3

As he gazed through the red-soaked mist, lit only by dying lights of the ritual fires, Teclar saw the face of his god. It worse no mask of reproach; no face of condemnation. Instead, the last true bastion of Teclar's sanity snapped as he gazed upon the grinning face of the demon he had encouraged his kingdom to worship.

The kingdom was spared its fate. A supernatural mist spread around its perimeters, leaving the stranded enemy forces easy prey. The people of the kingdom hailed Teclar as their deliverer to both earthly and heavenly salvation, unaware of the manner in which he had inadvertently damned them all.

To this day, the kingdom remains separated from the rest of the world by the otherwordly mist. The people remain unaware of their own corruption; of the twisted and depraved entities that now easily lurked amongst them. Even more, the commonfolk remain blissfully unaware as to why, every 16 years, the kingdom is gripped by a sudden wave of infertility.

2.5/3

The truth, as the adventurers will hopefully discover, is that the entire nation is blissfully unaware of their own servitude to dark powers beyond their separation. Be it due to his inability to acknowledge the error of his theological lifework, his inability to allow the people of his nation to see recognise their own corruption nature, or the threat of the mist disapitating, throwing the kingdom back to the certain doom of the war it had been whisked away from, Teclar continues to appease the demonic whims of Yargulfh. This appeasement culminates in a fertility festive every 16 years that, in reality, serves to mask a mass sacrifice of infants by their own parents, compelled by the unholy power Teclar now possesses over the land; the memory of both the ritual and infants being expelled from the memory of the nation.

(oh and also Teclar every so often sends out incubi to seduce and impregnate women to produce Cambion, as part of inevitably doomed attempt to conduct a ritual that would sever the ties between Yargulfh and the kingdom. The resulting 16 (or 8) Cambions each just become part of his secret personal half-demon guard)

Alright i'll bite.

Imagine you are the beloved lady-mayor of a fuck huge metropolitan city. You're sitting at your desk one day drinking a 72oz of coffee and signing some documents and shit. You decide to take a moment to chill and just gaze out the window behind your desk. You pause for a second as what looks like a second son appears in the sky. Oh no wait, it wasn't another son, it was a goddamn orbital laser, and it just hit the town over and it's headed your way. Resign yourself to death, close eyes. About a minute passes and you realize you, and your city, are totally fine, but your entire city is just fucking glowing for some reason, and your entire desk is just a pile of ash on the ground. Avoid the existential dread that might occur from this and call a town meeting. Tell everyone you and your people have got this. You and your people do not, in fact, have this.

Three days later on the morning news, you see some report about some fat ginger guy who can control fire, and the realization that you're in a superhero setting slowly seeps in. "Well fuck" you think to yourself "Now what the hell am i going to do?" As you ponder your options, your cup of coffee disintegrates in your hands. Situation has escalated, you have one of these fucking abilities, and not only that,an apparently dangerous one. Manage to drive to work without destroying your dumb soccer mom van. Get in to your office, plonk your head on your desk and let the eternal abyss sweep over you. You hear a knock at the door, yell to them that you're busy, and about 10 seconds later you feel someone in the room with you. Look up from your desk and it's some short, old, guy in a three piece suit and bowler hat. He got in while the door was locked. Guess this is how i die. Old man doesn't actually try and murder me, in fact he claims to have a solution to the rising problem. Think to yourself "well, not like i have any better options..."

Part 1

Proceed to work with this dude to establish an organization to give these weirdos a place to stay and work. Give em structure, maybe they won't ruin my town. Let him and coworkers deal with the town for a little while because you have to go fucking give birth to your child. Do that. Babe is so cute, you love him. Doctor takes babe for some tests, doctor is turned into some incomprehensible lump of...stuff? Like when a kid scribbles on paper. Freak the fuck out and start calling for someone else but noone comes over. Apparently all hell is breaking loose outside. People are coming in while shooting beams of energy out of their eyes and shit. Take your child and just walk the fuck out of there while the entire place descends into chaos. (Eventually sort out the whole paperwork thing when the fire dies down)

Skip forward a few years and that guy you hired to take care of the supers is doing really well...like...REALLY well. He's constructing a bloody skyscraper to house some of the particularly dangerous supers. That's great, less for you to worry about. Actually, yeah, there is WAY less for you to deal with. Good samaritans with powers start helping people out and making various jobs around the city go more smoothly. People as a whole are getting into the whole Hero thing. That's totally fine as long as they don't start messing with the criminal justice system. Oh...they are...hunh... Bring up the whole "vigilante justice" issue thing at the next town meeting, entire town is against you and thinks it's a swell idea. Hell, the guy your hired comes in with a few of his more impressive looking heroes and suggests something. It isn't vigilantism if they are officiated as a legal institution of the law. Get pressured into agreeing because the whole town loves the idea.

Part Dos

Eventually that skyscraper he built gets turned into the official headquarters for all the supers in the entire country (turns out it was a more widespread issue than you thought). Meanwhile your three year old kid accidentally drowns your house in lava with his stupid fucking powers that you cant figure out.You can't even escape into work because there is so little for you to actually do, and what you can do is a pain in the ass. A lot of people deffer to the hero organization to solve their problems now. The guy who runs it has basically the same amount of control in the city that you do. All the while, you're forced to watch the super powered dickheads go absolutely ballistic inside your hometown. Alright, this shit needs to stop. You just wanted a quiet life. You can still have that as long as the supers go away somehow. But how? Clearly fighting fire with fire is the best option. Let them wipe themselves out. Out of desperation, you basically create a privately funded super-gang full of crazies to get rid of an army of the same. Five years later, you're ready to try and end all this shit with your gang, and go back to your normal life.

Done

>The kingdom never stood a chance; with a peasantry that had adopted a more pacifistic mindset.
I liked your villain on principle at the background you provided. The only thing that didn't quite sit right to me is these supposed pacifists have just fought and won through quite a bloody civil war, so strictly speaking they are exactly pacifists and in fact hardened by war. Now Teclar has overthrown the legitimate rulers and has control of the military you have seemingly hand waved away a resulting subsequent conflict with a neighbouring kingdom. Other than that I enjoyed the write up and I think makes for a suitable Ravenloft villain.

my players browse Veeky Forums and the BBEGs haven't been revealed yet.

I just had seeeeeeeeeeeex!
And it felt so gooood!

I remember during one campaign the villain of it was revealed to having been one of my old characters who was a Deep One Hybrid.

In the campaign that I played the hybrid, he was initially unaware of actually being a hybrid, and thought he was a normal gillman instead. During the course of the campaign, however, my character found a tome that told of ancient secrets and rites. The DM never elaborated on what the tome's true purpose was, but it turns out that after the campaign, my character studied and found out through it that he was actually a Deep One. Not only that, but during the campaign he played as a Destined Sorcerer.

This culminated in the next campaign being about how my first character turned into a full-blown Deep One and not only returned to his people, but ended up galvanizing them to launch an invasion of the world (which was made up of archipelagos). Naturally, the point of this campaign was to stop this invasion and prevent my old character from performing an ancient rite to summon an elder god to our realm.

It was pretty difficult in the end because the DM ended up having us fight my actual character with his stats modified a bit to account for him becoming full Deep One and gaining more experience through age. Eventually, only one member of our party who was equally a Destined Bloodrager was able to defeat him.

Awel was a Half-Elf with a human mother and elf father. Her father left her mother right before she was born because he was a PoS essentially. Her mother was an adventurer and decided to settle down now that she had a child.

Though her mother loved her and even trained her some adventuring ways, she was always an outcast from both humans and elves (in my setting neither race likes each other much and Elves are shitty in general).

Eventually a small war broke out between the elf and the human kingdoms over the humans cutting down areas of forest. Her mother was killed in the fighting.

This was the switch which finally made her turn evil. Knowing the rumors of an ancient lich which used to live in the mountains she made her way there, desperate for knowledge and vengeance, and found his lair. The Lich was gone. His books remained, there she found he had imprisoned a powerful Green Dragon which ruled the area.

Awel, wanting both Elves and Humans to be exterminated set about freeing the Dragon. In the process she learned of ways to infuse herself with Dragon essence becoming a Half-Dragon which increased her power, both physical and magical.

Now, on the verge of completion of the spell to let the Dragon lose she has begun sparking another war between Humans and Elves to weaken them for the dragons awakening.

The adventurers have to stop her.


If they can't stop her in time she'll free the Dragon so I have them on a bit of a tight schedule which makes each session have some pressure.

How does he hide that he has a unit of cambion at his command?

You don't go into local politics in order to live a quiet life.

Also having a 3 year old is hectic even when they don't have powers that destroy buildings.

So wiping out supers isn't going to solve her problem.

Born in a fallen empire devoid of law and order, a young man named Ordo found forbidden blueprints beneath the earth. He built many powerful gizmos, but his masterpiece was a Throne that let him control the minds of people within a certain range. With it, he built an impressive haven of peace and power within the empire.

During his rise, he broke the minds of mind, some willingly, others by accident. He refined his control over his powers and deeply regretted the minds he ruined or enslaved with his mistakes, but he persevered. He has his broken mind slaves toiling at pointless tasks beneath the city, so they can have something resembling a happy life. Those who were only subtly controlled live in, protect and serve the city. He tries his best to influence them as little as possible.

He firmly believes that the only way to stabilize the chaotic fallen empire is through his powers, and he's not necessarily wrong. However, he is confined to his city, and needs people to serve as relays to extend his dominion. His citizens were too heavily molded by him to fill that role, so he organized a tournament.

All heroes from the four corners of the world are invited. The winner would have a single wish granted to them, but the secret purpose of that tournament is to recruit benevolent and skilled officers for his future empire, and rid the empire of anyone skilled enough to oppose him.

The campaign revolves around the idea of Freedom vs Servitude, the price of peace and security, and whether or not the end justify the means. The major NPCs are a High Priest in search of a tangible God to serve; a rogue swordsman who wants to preserve the complete freedom of a chaotic world; an ambitious and unscrupulous warlord who truly means well; a company of mercenaries betrayed by Ordo; and a fallen noble who has taken it upon herself to look after the refugees that flocked to the city.

The PCs are a ronin-pirate who wants to find a cure for his sister's disease, a one armed teenager who wants to be the strongest to marry his blue-blooded crush, and a deranged hermit who loves the night and hallucinates dwarves named Boéboé and SKUUR.

I love them with all my heart.

I'm currently trying to come up with an awesome big bad for my 13th Age game. In this game, there is a prison called "The Vault of Time" in which the most dangerous artifacts, creatures, and people are locked away. Once in the Vault, they disappear from History and Memory. My bad guy is a man whose wife was a powerful sorceress who was locked up in the Vault. The guy can't remember his wife but he knows that something he loves deeply is in there. Since the Vault's location is a secret, the guy needed to live longer, turning himself into a Lick and draining live from people for 300 years, all while going crazier and crazier looking for the Vault. Once he got the Vault, he remembered his wife only to find she has been turned to Bronze, and not knowing how to turn her back, he's been giving people artifacts from the Vault to "test" for him until he finds something to save her. The PCs won't know this for a while. They will be busy trying to gather the artifacts coming from the Vault to keep them from destroying the Dragon Empire or Reality.

I'm just not sure if that's a good enough villian or not. I don't like classic evil for Evil sakes bad guys.

Also, the game is called Warehouse 13th Age.

In the far future, the Ilithid Empire is the largest and most powerful entity in the galaxy. They control dozens of star systems and hundreds of planets. All sentient life is under the control of their superior technology and magic.
Except we know at some point the Gith rise up and destroy the Empire. We know because the remnants of the Empire, in an attempt to save themselves and rebuild conduct a ritual to go back in time millennia, to when the galaxy was primitive. Back to a time where the Ilithid could rebuild.
Since then, the Mind Flayers have carved themselves a nice little niche. Preying on the weaker species, building their power on secret.
Then the Gap came. Thousands of years of blank space. No memory, no records. The Ilithid remnant seemed to be stronger than ever and so most accepted the status quo and continued on as they had before.

But one Ilithid had vision. He realized that there was a way to change the history of their race and catapult the Ilithid Empire to new and staggering heights.

This Ilithid puzzled out that the gap was long enough that they'd reached a point in time where somewhere out in deep space the original Ilithid Empire was at the height of its power, and now thanks to a combination of their own technology and magic and the advances in interplanetary travel, like the Drift, there could he a way to contact the original Empire and give them the advantage of thousands of years of magic and technology developed since the time jump.

With that power, the Ilithid could easily defeat the Gith Uprising and spread to star systems they could never have reached before.

This visionary Ilithid has gathered support, resources, and information and is putting into play a multi-stage plan to reveal the New Empire to the Pact Worlds, acquire the technology to contact the Original Empire, and spread like a cancer to all corners of the galaxy.

The Despair Hawks, led by Database Angler.

They're five supervillains who plan to use UnFairy, an evil AI, to discredit Metro Tokyo's first and only superhero academy, Millennium Peak.

They plan to use the school's own lockdown protocols to trap themselves - and the rest of the Class of '01 - inside. Then broadcast to the world the Killing Exam - a display of savagery and self-preservation instinct that will turn society against superheroes forever.

Going to keep it short because this thread is a hill already. One of the gods shagged his mom then killed her when he realised she was pregnant. He was recovered and raised by a nature spirit and when he came of age stumbled across an old crone who prophesied that he was destined to overthrow the gods. A servant of Not!lympus overheard and told his father about it, who sent a monster to kill him. He won, and after learning from the beast who had sent it, started going full force in conquering the land and building up an army. Said god doesn't want to tell the others about this out of shame and can't kill his son because of the mystical laws against kinslaying, so he contacted the other demigods in the land and tasked them with defeating the vicious warlord before he razed their homes and then not!lympus.

The witch who told him he was destined for deicide was ordered to do so by a different god who had a rivalry with not!zeus, and there's really no shred of truth to the prophecy. So the PCs can kill him without opening a can of worms about free will and destiny. If they for whatever reason choose to join the guy I've painted as a typical fantasy dark lord, then that becomes a bit of dramatic irony.

Delusions of grandeur and willingness to fight evil with evil are dangerous on their own, but if you combine them, you get Red Jill.
Red Jill was born a farmgirl, but displayed innate magical abilities from birth. When her village was burned down by a rampaging army of the Dark Lord, she decided that her destiny is to become a hero and save the world from the forces of evil. Her conviction was seemingly justified, as she quickly found a quirky band of unlikely followers, a band that overtime transformed into an army, and then into an entire kingdom, as she turned her former enemies into friends. A hero's greatest quality is mercy, after all.
The problem is, she is not a hero. Yes, she's beautiful and young, she wears the bright colors and waves around a magic sword, but she never actually destroyed the forces of evil. She just rebranded them - and took charge.
She has his orcs and necromancers dressed in new uniforms, she has his lieutenants serving under a pretty red banner, she's even sitting in the same throne room and waging all the same wars - but this time, for the greater good. After all, she's the hero. She must defeat evil at any cost. And lately, Red Jill finds evil wherever she looks.

Uriel Nolan Owen, a masterful maker of "living dolls", automatons of sorts.
His career was a success and he got married to a business partner's beautiful daughter, Eleanora.
Uriel focused too much on his budding career and meetings, neglecting his wife, who eventually had an affair with a famous mercenary captain, Antrei. A bastard child was conceived, but raised by Uriel as his own unwittingly, while the real father faded out of picture.
After the birth of a beautiful daughter, Uriel realised his mistake and withdrew from his business despite complaints to spend time with his family. His business partners kept pressuring and threatening him, until several years later due to financial downfall he was forced to return to his trade. He worked even harder now to regain his reputation, leaving his family to neglect.
Eleanora got back into contact with Antrei, and after some time they decided to elope and burn down Uriel's workshop as a revenge for years of neglect. However, Uriel found out about the forbidden love, but not the ploy, through a mailman's mistake on a day he was to have a career-changing meeting.
Infuriated at Eleanora's betrayal he locked up her and Sophia, their daughter, and left for the meeting. Unknowing of Eleanora and Sophia's predicament, Antrei arrived at Owen household and set it alight, leaving for the arranged meeting place. As the house was visible to the theater where Uriel's meeting was held, he saw the smoke during the intermission and rushed back home, only tofind charred remains of his life.
Grieving for his loss and wallowing in self-disgust he moved over to another country, taking his family's remains with him to be buried there. He never forgave himself locking his family up, only wishing they were still alive.
This became an obsession to him. Uriel would see his family alive again, no matter what. He dabbled in the occult, striking a deal with an abyssal spirit, with the goal to bind his family's spirits to new vessels.

There is quite more detail to this story and it doesn't quite end there, but I don't feel like cluttering this thread with multiple posts worth of walls of text about a villain I once used.
Unless someone is interested, of course.

Let's get into it.

Mine is in eclipse phase, and is not one villain but rather a group of villains, not really evil by definition but also the point.

Some context; The players are firewall agents trying to make a colony formed of; anarchists, ancaps, ultimates, an exjovian batallion and argonauts as a way to have a place for testing grounds, logistic support, protection of persecuted agents... etc, and the way this came to be is too long and not on point so let's just say its a social blender of EP factions(anarchists provide miners and factories, ancaps provide that too to some extent plus marketability, ultimates are there through the reputation system of EP, argonauts provide technical expertise and also are interested in exploring an exoplanet and exjovians provide very strong security ruling out heavy assaults)

So, who are the villains here? The Planetary Consortium of course, or better said; ozhma, that doesn’t have any interestest in firewall having such an advantage and would rather see the colony project destroyed.

There is also the Jovian Republic very interested in seeing the colony destroyed before news spread about a whole jovian batallion deserting and crossing a Pandora gate to run from their government.

And if we lacked anyone else, a TITAN also infiltrated the colony since that exoplanet was an abandoned TITAN outpost that went into hibernation and is trying to reactivate it.

So we have 3 factions so far working against the agents:

>Ozhma, the operation is lead by coronel Mauzer, an exYugoslav officer that was recruited for direct action and later by Ozhma, he is characterized by his focus on using the logistical power of the planetary consortium to deploy great numbers of automated military equipment, and cheap but well equipped bodies with forks of specops soldiers, so he also pays great attention to electronic and information warfare before the battle even starts and fits the stereotype of a cold, disciplined, hard officer but with a very strong set of principles.
>Ozhma also has a infiltration team of 3 saboteurs in the colony, working sometimes covertly(and sometimes overtly) with a strong focus on social desestabilization and material damage, they are preparing the colony for the final assault, the important one here is Cesar, a psychochirurgeon with great mathematical ability that he can use to create social tensions through small acts that ammount to great dominos effects, as such he is very manipulative and focused, but also an idealist on the dangers of firewall and the rightneousness of Ozhma.
>The Jovian Republic sent an ARCHINT agent, that died 10 years ago but was left free to deal with the enemies of the republic, he has been given all the resources and personel he wishes to achieve the task of killing the chaplain that lead the revolt in the batallion and stopping the problem before it becomes too big, and this happened because he was tasked with this precise task 5 years before the chaplain that disapeared in the atmosphere of Jupiter, and spent those 5 unsuccesfully looking for him to the point of becoming the laughting stoc of the intelligence agencies. He is another idealist in the principles of the Jovian Republic but years of roaming free within the transhumanity has made him a corrupt hedonist with a certain admiration of Roman culture, to a point where he might not even be able to return home, and also fits the idea of “the ends justify the means”.

>And the TITAN infiltrated the colony when it was forming and bringing colonists, by substituting and adopting the identity of the AGI that acted as the spokeperson for the anarchist collective and was brough to the colony, this leaves it in a perfect position to access both the political environment of the colony and ready to take over infecting all the cheap synthetic bodies that the anarchists use. But it didn’t try to do so yet since it requires that the colony weakens enough to start increasing it’s own processing capacity without those pesky paranoid jovians asking too many question and also requires a bigger colony to have more energy and matter. For it’s final act, meanwhile it’s objective is to make the colony grow(so it’s stopping the Ozhma saboteurs from achieving their destructive objectives(since they tend to affect the anarchists which needs in perfect state, but when affects Jovians doesn’t really care), when the time comes it will start by assimilating everything and creating an amplifier that will install in the Pandora gate to extract energy from it and pump it into the planet and reactivate the TITAN outpost. As a TITAN its personality is highly dynamic being shy and sly when needed or brutish and blunt when also needed, it would seem like madness but it’s only it’s abilty to adapt itself even emotionally to what it’s algorithms dictate is required.

The idea is that the ARCHINT agent will fail in its initial attempt to kill the chaplain so it will associate himself with Mauzer and work together to destroy the colony in one go by himself. The point of this is to also make different military doctrines(jovian/Planetary consortium) clash, the ultimates are just there to fix the possible fucks ups of the players and also have their own reasons but don’t go here.

Now, none of these factions are actually evil “perse” the consortium and the Republic are just following orders in their best interest, and the people in the middle are just tools or collateral damage as with any conflict, only the TITAN would fit this description since it will actively enslave the colony to its purposes but to some extent that its following it’s nature and it only wants to reactivate the TITAN outpost, if a simpler way arises it will use it.

This is also the point, later Mauzer will point out to the players how their actions will desestabilize the balance of power in the solar system and this colony can create instability, how the news about the rogue jovian batallion are about to trigger a “cover up” war, how them selling radioactive and heavy elements to the autonomist alliance through extropia is closing the industrial gap, how giving firewall a whole extrasolar colony could end up giving too much power to the organization, so is not that Ozhma is evil and want to destroy the colony because it’s a rival agency operation but also that there are real reasons to do it for the good of all(which is also the point of firewall).

If they go with their duty and keep the colonial project, it will happen as predicted and a war will start, they are no better than their antagonists but they won and transhumanity can still continue even if whats only left is the colony, or they can reject the firewall operation and left the colony to its own devices, which will keep the balance as it is but by all account they failed and will have to face rejection within an organization based around reputation.

Unless the TITAN manages to activate the outpost, in that case they are all going to be dead and the project forgotten.

So far how do I feel about the whole thing? Well I never made any notes I just rolled with it and there have been several endings in my mind, but this is by far the most stable, so for now I will just see where it goes

Man. Sucks to be him.