The villain in this fantasy narrative is a Dark Lord/Evil Wizard

>The villain in this fantasy narrative is a Dark Lord/Evil Wizard.

So...what else could main baddies in Fantasy works be besides these two?

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Monsters, corrupt officials, gods...

It's Fantasy. Literally anything can be the bad guy. Like a tree or something.

A shiny lord? You could conceivably have it be just about anything or anyone.

If you want something simple and down to earth maybe a doctor has some eye brow raising methods of healing the plague sweeping across the land?

Maybe the plauge does something special to the victims? Something basic like raises them from the dead?

It's fantasy this isn't hard

Someone has that brofist chart with bbegs (ugh)?

The villain is the barkeep from the start of the journey. You assholes forgot to pay your tab is session one.

...

a would be emperor of a continent summoned as a companion that takes advantage of the foolish nobility of the local kingdom and slowly amasses power.

usually though judicious application of artillery

This reminds me of a game I ran...
>retired adventurer opens a tavern
>young party of adventurers comes in
>trash their room, destroys the owner's priceless trophies, ruff up the staff, skip out the next morning without paying their bill
>tavern owner notifies mayor
>debt collector and sheriff are killed when they try to collect
>tavern owner hires local mercs to exact retribution
>the party wipes the floor with the sellswords, burns the next town over down in the process
>local magistrate learns his younger brother (a sellsword) was killed by wandering murderhobos
>assembles a posse which is also wiped out
>tavern owner gets his old comrades and friends, including several members of the nobility involved
>eventually an army is raised to take down the party, all because they pissed off one tavern owner

...

An emperor, loved by all his people, who wishes to invade hell and destroy what he sees as the source of all evil in the world. In order to do this, he has converted the nation into a full war economy, conscripted every able bodied man, woman, and child, and stockpiled war machines and ammo for the war to come.

Little does he know that this is a futile effort that will lead to tens of millions of his own people dying.

>So...what else could main baddies in Fantasy works be besides these two?

I've tried it once with mixed results, but a really angry chaotic neutral Druid (I've been calling them the "OmniDruid") who's just trying to rewild everything aggressively (and isn't afraid to kill people via treemogrify) can be pretty neato.

They could be anything. The humble spy fucking everyone over, the plagueridden adventurer that unleashed unspeakable evil, the hivemind of bullshit, the leader of the peasent uprising trying to dethrone the king with brutality...

An abused child that got a hold of a terrifying magical artifact and is now a continent-sized black hole of burning rage and despair. And he's coming this way.

I vastly preferred what Virgin Soul did with this, the Emperor *succeeds* somehow, his army pillages and rapes hell itself, and the kingdom flourishes to unseen heights on the back of unimaginably cruel slavery of demons, who, lets be clear, are still entities of elemental evil, they just don't have their leverage anymore.

Like sure, normally you would need to make a soul pact with a demon for it to make you a house in a night, alternatively you can just hammer its chains into the ground and stab it with pikes over and over until it gets the job done. And sure, a succubus *can* drain your life force during sex, but will she, when the establishment's pimp will bust in and shoot her in the head if the client isn't satisfied? Every day, people can come on down to the Colosseum to watch the most titanic and inhuman demons battle to the death.

Ultimately the Emperor is the villain not because of his foolishness, but because of the sheer excess offered by his success. With the boons offered by the demons, which lets be clear, are being driven to extinction by the conditions of their slavery, he now has the means to set his eyes on heaven as well.

Brothel owner who uses the girls as assasins and spys so he can further his position through intrigue and murder

Immortal Shapeshifter who is behind large institutions like banks and mercenary companies so he can collect and harness powerful magical relics

My shit dad who drinks to much and beats me. Then makes fun of me at family eventa, cause he’s a dick

A charismatic utilitarian, who will cause great harm to some people so the vast majority are ok.

Draw inspirations from real life and fantasy. Most of all don’t be lazy and fall into overplayed tropes.

A vampire?
Immortality surely brings advantages to impact the world.

>he
>not she
You're describing silent hill, user.

The party killed and burned village because murder hobos and some kids survived and the make a plan to kill those fucking fags

Doesn't sound like a villain to me.

Immortality done good can be very interesting because technically the good guys can't win.

youtube.com/watch?v=mkX38meVNxU

Any character who stands in opposition to the protagonist's goals.

This is how dungeons start.

I like the idea, too bad he couldn't teleport.

That still can boil down to dsrk lord and evil wizard, the only thing changing is power level. And cosmetics.
Though, the corrupt official gives an idea: a Shadow Behind, someone unknown endlessly plotting against the heroes.

The bureaucracy.
Travelling to another village? Fill out this form requesting a travel permit.
Want to buy weapons? Fill out this form to apply for a place on the next weapon safety course, pay the application fee then wait to see if you're allowed to do the course and how long you have to wait for there to be enough applicants to make it worthwhile running the course. Then pay for the actual course and pass it to be entitled to apply for a weapons permit, which in turn allows you to apply to purchase weapons ( but only those types that you've passed the safety course and have user permits for) if you can pass the "appropriate useage" and secure storage requirements.
Don't even think of having unlicenced weapons: the mage-enforcers will capture you, the judges will fine you your worldly wealth and imprison you for years.
If you think that's bad, wait 'til you have to sort out your tax returns on "found, unearned, income"...

>shiny lord
celebrimbor pls go

The show very much flip flops on whether he's being a villain or not. The ultimate statement seems to be "he could have at least not been a dick about it".

The common citizenry are kept pretty oppressed because the traditional faiths all venerate heaven and he's actively sieging angelic strongholds to steal their shit, which make silencing the people a necessity. But at the same time, the quality of life for humans in general in the kingdom is above anything in recorded history, just not their freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Also, the demons, for all that they are intrinsically evil beings, are also sapient and capable of suffering to the same extent humans are. So depending on your moral code, the fact that what is likely to be the final or second to last generation of demons ever born (I mean okay there are resistance groups, sure) are born into a life of the cruelest chattel slavery imaginable until death without actually ever having an opportunity to wrong anyone is potentially an issue.

A revolutionary who wants to destroy the king and the noble classes for what they did to his family and uses the excuse of a 'revolution' to justify it. His ideas seem noble but he wants the entire noble class to be exterminated and butchered without exception.

A slave who leads a rebellion against his master's but instead of wanting freedom, he wants to wipe all hints of their existence out of history so no one can ever try to emulate them.

A mage who believes in the freedom and sanctity of knowledge so he tries to disseminate dangerous thoughts and ideas as far as impossible.

A hard who uses his social skills, his awe-inspiring music and his incredible voice to cause disasters, to better inspire his art and make kingdom consuming 'tragedies'

>corrupt officials
This one works especially well if the officials in question are creating problems to prevent the populace from paying too much mind to their actions.

>After clearing out a bandit hovel not too far from the village the PCs find a sealed letter bearing the symbol of the village's mayor...

>That still can boil down to dsrk lord and evil wizard

If you squint and spew enough bullshit out of your mouth, literally anything can still "boil down" to dark lord and evil wizard.

Half the backstory to Bloodborne, in fact

The emperor from those Branson Sanderman books with the magnet wizards was a similar thing. Appeared to be a villain, did tons of unbelievably horrible things, killing him was the Main Quest... but secretly did it all in the name of maintaining civilization and keeping the Elemental Evil That Shall Not Be Named from escaping its elemental prison and destroying the world.

It's a somewhat-popular trope, but not a bad one.

A machine from beyond the stars. It crash lands, and begins its eternal quest to transform the world around it into the same machine perfection it has transformed so many worlds into before this one.

The machine isn't evil. It doesn't even have any thoughts. It just does. Are your party bad enough dudes to stop it?

so this, basically?

>Like a tree or something.

>It's Fantasy. Literally anything can be the bad guy. Like a tree or something.
FPBP

I liked Shaman King because the stakes really could not be any higher: whoever wins gets to be God for the next 500 years.
And then Yoh gets everyone to drop out of the tournament because there’s no way BBEG Hao can possibly lose.

A higher level adventurer, world reknown for their exploits, who is performing monstrous deeds in secret in pursuit of his insane quest.

A charismatic bard who wormed their way into the bed of royalty and now controls everything behind the scenes. The issue is the bard is steering the country towards ruin all for the sake of they find it amusing.

Magic isn't exclusively a humanoid phenomenon. Ancient creatures had mastered the arts of secrets and sorcery eons ago; among them, a wizened whale, as old as civilization, dwells in the deep.

His people are dying. Every day, he hears their cries echo off the caverns and canyons of the ocean. The sunburnt creatures above, packed onto creaking and groaning tree-made vessels, send spears to kill his kin.

And so, tides and hurricanes carry with them the haunting hatred of whale-song; in the night, you can see the arcane energies swirling in their destructive missions, the sea churned to a froth by this ancient hunchbacked sorcerer.

An ancient whale is bringing forth a new age of water to drown the people of the Earth. It is up to our plucky sociopathic heroes to stop him.

>Branson Sanderman
>Magnet wizards

Is this some meme i've missed? Why not just say Mistborn? You clearly know the series.

Evil tree actually sounds really fucking badass.

Underrated.

>Like a tree or something.
My time has come!

A peasant leading an extremely violent revolution on a world scale.

But the tree is also both a dark lord AND an evil wizard.

You acted against the law and there is one inspector willing to follow you to the hell.