The ancient war god roars and trembling armies shuffle towards one another...
Bandos blasts each army's stragglers with fire, prompting the others to move more quickly. The two mobs meet and hack hopelessly at one another until only one remains, reduced to a handful of bleeding wretches.
A pitiful spectacle, barely worthy to be called a battle. Why can these warriors not live up to the glories of their ancestors? He rains fire on the survivors, killing half of them and sending the others scrambling over corpses to escape. He feels anger welling in him, stronger and more enduring than any he was capable of feeling as a mortal.
Bandos raises a poisonous mist to finish off the last surviving combatants. One of them raises a feeble hand towards his god, seeking desperately for mercy, but Bandos is unmoved as the last survivor chokes and dies.
They are his toys! And he will smash them if he wants to!
—Bandos, wrathful at his banishment at the end of the God Wars, takes his frustration out on his remaining followers on Yu'biusk, Bandos's Memories
(Memory 12).
(Memory 12).In the fantasy world of Gielinor, where an average quest sees the world threatened by Humanoid Abominations, Evil Sorcerers, and Artifacts of Doom, there are some villains so utterly vile that they strike fear and hatred into the hearts of even the most veteran adventurers.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Video Games
- Amascut the Devourer was once the pet cat turned deity of rebirth to the Menaphite gods Tumeken and Elidinis, but for reasons unknown fell to madness and became the pantheon's greatest enemy. Seeking to unmake the works of her family, Amascut created monsters that devoured the souls her brother Icthlarin guided to the afterlife to spite him and sought to corrupt or destroy the lesser gods after her parents were banished after the God Wars. Seeding the gods Crondis and Scabaras with corruption to turn them into cruel overlords, Amascut bestowed the worst fate on the monkey goddess Apmeken. Once the happy goddess of friendship, Apmeken had her senses torn away to be turned into demons that drove her monkey followers to near extinction and exile. In modern times, Amascut seeks nothing less the absolute destruction of the human kingdoms in the Kharidian desert by manipulating into waging brutal wars on one another and striking the weakened cities with deadly plagues, ultimately wishing to rule over a lifeless wasteland filled with damned souls to feast upon.
- Bandos, the Big High War God, was once a genocidal warlord who murdered his people's sleeping god despite fully knowing his home world would die as a result. Becoming a god, Bandos turns the once peaceful goblinoids of Yu'biusk into a savage horde that he treats like playthings and leads them to the world of Gielinor to fight in the God Wars. As one of the main instigators of the apocalyptic conflicts therein, Bandos is among the gods banished and takes his fury out his remaining followers on Yu'biusk by forcing them to wage war on one another until the world is completely destroyed. Trying to return to Gielinor, he spitefully chooses a goblin tribe that turned to peace with mankind and tried to corrupt them into razing the nearby kingdoms. Although failing, he nonetheless returns with all the other gods during the current age and takes part in Sliske's game of deicide to claim the Stone of Jas. While slain early in the conflict, Bandos had intended to use the artifact's power to spread endless war and raze countless worlds as a monument to his glory.
- Lord Lowerniel Vergidiyad Drakan is the tyrannical overlord of the dark land Morytania and seeks to cast down vampyre society and return his people to being savage and bloodthirsty monsters. Drakan earned his kingdom by waging war on the angelic icyene and forcing their queen Efaritay to surrender by threatening her human husband and their son, yet turned him into a vampyre regardless and forced him to hunt his own son for millennia. Drakan then turned the lush nation of Hallowvale into the fetid swampland Morytania, converted the surviving icyene into his vampyric slaves, and forced the humans into run down villages and slums to be routinely drained to the point of anemia. Growing tired of his people becoming weak as "farmers", Drakan ultimately sought to return the vampyres to their home world Vampyrium and turn their human slaves "free range" to hunt them for food and sport, and was more than willing to murder his own people and even family if they stood in the way of his nightmarish ambition.
- Glough, in Old School, is a misanthropic gnome who sees human growth and expansion as the greatest affront to gnomish sovereignty on Gielinor. Taking advantage of his position as head tree tender, Glough hires a human agent to poison the Grand Tree, on which much of his race lives, and captures the agent to convince his king to go to war with mankind. Using a fleet of ships, he then intended to lead a great army to exterminate every living soul in the human kingdoms. Discovered and arrested, Glough makes an alliance with the sentient monkeys of Ape Atoll and convinces them to assist in a future invasion. Unbeknownst to the monkeys, Glough is torturing captured gorillas and injecting them with a mutagen that turns them into savage monsters, intending on spreading the mutagen to the rest of the island. With an army of demonic apes, Glough leads a final devastating assault on his own people and intending genocide for daring to make peace with mankind.
- Warmaster Iorwerth is the lord of the elven Iorwerth clan and sought to enslave a death-obsessed aspect of the goddess Seren and use its power to commit genocide on the other clans and rule as the sole tyrant of elvenkind. After winning the Civil War, Iorwerth spent centuries hunting and massacring the survivors and manipulated the human King Lathas into allying with him to free the Dark Lord, Seren's aspect, in exchange for helping him claim greater power from his brother Tyras. While Lathas faked a plague, Iorwerth disguised his followers as the Mourners and had them use quarantined citizens as slave labor, intending to massacre the entire population of Tyras's city as sacrifices to finally awaken the Dark Lord. As his plans crumbled around him, Iorwerth fed the souls of his dying soldiers to finally empower the Dark Lord, only to be devoured himself when he couldn't control it.
- Lathas Ardignas, King of Kandarin, is Iorwerth's equally vile cohort who sought to use the power of the Dark Lord to claim land and power that he believed to be his birthright. Taking advantage of his brother Tyras traveling to the elven lands, Lathas fakes a great plague by having the Mourners poison the food supply of Tyras's people and builds a massive quarantine wall to cut off contact and turn their city into a hellish ghetto. Tricking the Adventurer into believing Tyras was responsible, Lathas has them clear the way to elven lands and assassinate Tyras and giving him complete control over the kingdom. When the truth is eventually revealed, Lathas is overthrown in a revolution and admits that he was fully aware and complicit in the plot to massacre his brother's citizens and reveals his true selfish depravity, with his intent to turn the depopulated ruins into his own personal garden.
- Nomad was once an orphan who lived a brutal and miserable life and became the Scourge of Souls to ensure he would always survive, no matter the cost. Nomad founded the game of Souls Wars to lure countless heroes to their deaths so he could absorb their souls and forever stave off death and increase his power to overthrow every master he ever served. Becoming a delusional madman, Nomad claimed the gods were evil beings manipulating and feeding off their mortal worshippers, and so began using the death god Icthlarin's fortress to draw in innumerable souls and shredding and stitching them together into a constantly suffering abomination. Claiming to make this new god to benefit and be controlled by mortals, a defeated Nomad reveals that he believed only himself to be worthy to wield its power. Nomad ultimately proved to be a selfish hypocrite far more monstrous than the gods he espoused to be the true enemy of mortals.
- Sigmund is among the leadership of the human supremacist cult, Humans Against Monsters, but turns away from his organization when they prove too soft for his genocidal xenophobia. Seeking to destroy the peaceful cave goblins, Sigmund tries to ignite a war between them and humanity, unconcerned with the human lives lost, and later tries to do the same with the dwarves by using the newly built tram to run down the goblin ambassador. Deciding to take more direct action, Sigmund and his followers attempt to flood the goblin's underground capital and eventually resort to poisoning the goblin's children and launching an all-out assault on their society. When not torturing goblins to death for fun, Sigmund states without hesitation that he would rather die than live in a world not dominated by humanity.
- Sliske is outwardly the silliest and most humorous among the otherwise stern and humorless Mahjarrat, yet, in truth, was by far the most dangerous and depraved of his kind. A vile trickster even in ancient days, Sliske murdered the brother of his best friend Azzanadra and framed a rival tribe who was wiped out in retaliation, and would use his unrivaled shadow magic to force living victims to be puppets in theater shows during the time of the Zarosian Empire. In modern times, Sliske sought to reignite the apocalyptic God Wars by murdering the peaceful god Guthix and setting up a game of deicide among the other gods for the power of the mythical Stone of Jas. When the World Guardian proved troublesome to his plans, he sought to hurt them by torturing and murdering their loved ones. Ultimately, Sliske was acting as an envoy to the Elder God Jas herself in order to trick her into believing the current universe needed to be destroyed and remade, all simply because he thought current existence was too "boring" for his own twisted tastes.
Novel trilogy, by T.S. Church
- Lord Sulla was the leader of the Kinshra five years before the current age, and by far the most monstrous man to ever call himself a Black Knight. Corrupting Zamorak's well-intentioned ideals to indulge his sadism, Sulla would lead raids on villages to slaughter everyone—including children—even allowing his dogs to hunt and devour survivors. Sulla became the Lord of the Kinshra by forcing his predecessor's lover to murder him and leads an artillery barrage on a Saradominist monastery to butcher the defenseless monks there. Sulla would thereafter lead a devastating assault on the White Knights of Falador and nearly slaughter the entire city before being driven back. Rescued by the werewolf Jerrod, Sulla traveled to the city of Varrock and blackmailed nobles and fed his enemies—alive and screaming—to Jerrod to assume power.
