Sandbox / Monster: Dungeons & Dragons

"Great Goddess, Mother of the Dark, grant me the blood of my enemies for drink and their living hearts for meat. Grant me the screams of their young for song, grant me the helplessness of their males for my satisfaction, grant me the wealth of their houses for my bed. By this unworthy sacrifice I honor you, Queen of Spiders, and beseech of you the strength to destroy my foes."

"Death to all who oppose Cyric. Bow down before his supreme power, and yield to him the blood of those that do not believe in his supremacy...[S]lay those that are weak, of good persuasion, or false prophets....[C]lergy of other faiths...are false prophets and forces who oppose the One True Way. Bring death to those that oppose Cyric's church...only Cyric is the true authority and all other authority must be subverted...[K]eep all folk afraid, uneasy, and in constant strife..."

— Dogma of Cyric, Prince of Lies, Forgotten Realms, Faiths and Pantheons sourcebook

Dungeons & Dragons, having been around since 1974, is the Trope Maker and Trope Codifier for the Tabletop RPG. It is thus no surprise that inhabiting the worlds within the multiverses are some utterly vile characters.

An entry under Tabletop Game doesn't mean they don't appear in other media as well. It simply means that their entry is located there as that's the main medium they reside in.

Works based on the franchise can be found at their respective media pages (e.g. The Order of the Stick can be found at Webcomics, while Critical Role can be found at its page).

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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Multiple Settings

Examples

• Orcus, Prince of the Undead, is a demon prince who became a god. With horrific, blasphemous rites, even by the standards of evil gods, Orcus seeks to convert all that lives to his undead slaves. Constantly attempting to wipe out living regions, Orcus later achieved godhood and expanded his influence, before being murdered by another god. Returning as Tenebrous in Dead Gods, Orcus went on a god-killing spree before inspiring massive catastrophes across the planes. Seeking to punish life itself for his death, Orcus wiped out a world with a plague and kept the souls in tortured anguish, intending on massacring the City of Sigil and converting its inhabitants into an undead army to steadily exterminate all life in the multiverse. Returning to his demonic status, Orcus continuously seeks his lost godhood, even rerouting souls from his nemesis the Raven Queen to him so he may twist them into his own slaves. Seeking to usurp the Raven Queen's divinity, Orcus's ultimate goal is to enslave and convert every soul until he remains the only deity, with all life ceasing to exist save as his mutilated hordes of undead.
• Yeenoghu, the Beast of Butchery, is the demonic patron of gnolls after slaying the god Gorellik in the Dawn War. A single-minded beast, Yeenoghu's doctrine involves mass murder with Yeenoghu dreaming of civilization overthrown and the utter erasure of order so that all living beings are exterminated as food or entertainment for the gnolls, who are subject to death at any time for failure or at Yeenoghu's whims. Promoting torture as part of his rites, Yeenoghu frequently inspires horrific crusades, taking innocents to be tortured and hunted by his followers in his realm while intending on repeating this on a cosmos-wide crusade—something he may have already achieved if not for his own single-minded brutality.
• Kostchtchie is the demonic patron of rage who attempts to subvert the worship of the Frost Giants from their deity Thrym. Having begun life as a mortal warlord who led his armies to multitudes of atrocities before being slain by the Eladrin Paragon Gwynharyf after annihilating his own followers, Kostchtchie's angry soul rose to power in the abyss to become so vile that even other demon lords loathe him for his evil. Advocating genocide and mass murder, even seeking to exterminate any frost giant who fails to worship him, Kostchtchie even kidnapped a Valkyrie named Geirskögul, raping her to beget a half-fiend daughter whom he tortured to open a gateway to the realm of Ysgard, leaving Geirskögul broken and insane.
• Doresain is the most favored exarch of Orcus and one of his most ghastly followers. A tyrant who rules over a bony wasteland known as the Kingdom of the Ghouls, Doresain brings in droves of innocents from all over the multiverse and the City of Doors itself, pulling them in through portals to either dump them into feeding pits full of ravenous ghouls or become the subject of exquisite and gory feasts. Doresain enslaves his most prized followers to eternal hunger to ensure their loyalty, presiding over all manners of atrocities in the Kingdom—from savage torture, to designing clothes of Genuine Human Hide, to performing plays for an audience of butchered corpses in the Theatre Of The Fleshless—all in preparation for Doresain to bring up a horrible Primordial and exterminate all existence with it, enslaving the souls of all life in tortured undeath to Orcus.
• Vlaakith CLVII, debuting in Planescape, really makes her mark in "The Lich-Queen's Beloved". Ruler of the Githyanki, Vlaakith is a powerful undead tyrant out to become a god. To prevent any challenges to her rule, Vlaakith takes those with potential and devours their souls, turning them into powerful undead monsters under her control, doing the same to those who anger her and imprisoning countless others in living agony within the walls of her fortress Susurru, the "Palace of Whispers". Vlaakith painfully experiments upon her captives, also intending to wipe out the Githzerai race, and has many sapients abducted and kept in living agony or fed to her half-dragon creations, with one Illithid prisoner frozen under a spell of eternal agony. Should she succeed, Vlaakith kills half her capital city in her ascension and intends on leading the Githyanki on bloody crusades through the cosmos.
• The Apocalypse Stone: Prince Garloth Pescheour is passed over to succeed the noble Pescheour family for his noble brother Alain due to his own personal selfishness and cruelty. Garloth later returns, driving Alain into a gibbering, crazed wreck, before turning everyone in the castle into horrible monsters, erasing their identities. To obtain the family treasure, the Stone of Corbinet, the linchpin of the world itself, Garloth hires adventurers to kill the monsters, without informing them of said monsters being innocent people Garloth had mutated. Upon realizing the theft of the stone has led to a dawning apocalypse, with demons and devils running rampant and everyone on the world about to die, Garloth decides to simply flee for a new world and to not return the stone to save the current one. A man of unbelievable pettiness and selfishness, Garloth decides if he cannot be king, then the entire world can burn for all he cares.
• Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress: Urishtar Nightwyrm is a shadow dragon that happened upon the fortress of the title during her exploration of the Shadowfell by the design of a being she suspects is plotting against the Raven Queen. In order to empower herself and the fortress itself, Urishtar diverts the path of souls in the Shadowfell to instead lure them into her clutches, whereupon Urishtar consumes or twists them for her own purposes. Urishtar hands off any problems—defined as anything from "denying Urishtar" to "failing to try harder"—to her sadistic Torture Technician Kailash, a rakshasa brutal even by the infamous standards of his kind. In her cruelest touch, Urishtar fertilizes her own eggs with captured souls, leaving the resultant hatchlings as stillborn abominations neither living or dead. Urishtar has seen herself displacing the Raven Queen itself and works endlessly toward this, no matter how many souls she has to rip from the cycle of life and death.
• The Bastion Of Broken Souls: In this 3.0 adventure, Ashardalon is an incredibly ancient, powerful and wicked red dragon. Already a cruel and rapacious creature in his own right, after having been mortally injured by a powerful druidess who didn't live long enough to celebrate the deed, he managed to sustain himself by substituting his own failing heart with a denizen of the Abyss, a Balor. The demon was not enthusiastic about this, and Ashardalon had to search for another way to extend his lifespan. He discovered an Eldritch Location deep inside the Plane of Positive Energy where the souls of every living creature are born and reside before getting a body. There, he settled down with a few of his servants and began devouring pre-incarnated souls in order to live forever. This act causes countless beings across the universe to be born without a soul, horribly alive and at the same time utterly dead. If the PCs call the dragon out on his crimes, his answer is that he doesn't care, as long as he gets to enjoy eternity as the self-styled "ultimate predator".
• Elder Evils:
  • Kyuss, The Worm That Walks, was an Evil Sorcerer who wished to become divine. Having all his followers murdered and killing his own priests to make a flayed robe of their skins, Kyuss became a monster neither god nor man. Imprisoned, Kyuss created countless monstrous spawn to kill innocents and work to free him, often twisting his worshippers into abominations. While his minions slaughter freely, Kyuss attempts to have himself freed by leveling entire cities or annihilating all existence if need be, caring for nothing save his own power.
  • Edwin Tolstoff is Kyuss's right-hand man. An Evil Sorcerer who once murdered his fellows, Edwin was imprisoned by his daughter, but twisted his grandchildren to Kyuss's worship and had them murder their mother to free him. Causing more death when freed, Edwin steals the Sphere of Annihilation to use it to free Kyuss, not caring that this will suck in all of existence and create the utter annihilation of all that exists.
• Monstrous Arcana's The Sea Devils trilogy (Evil Tide, Night of the Shark, Sea of Blood): Baron K'thstraam is a sahuagin war leader who throws in with the Deep Mother to destroy the world. Allowing the Deep Mother to enthrall his own kind, K'thstraam leads raids that devastate Angler Island, killing many and dragging others back to serve as food for the sahuagin, with others taken as slaves or sent to be subjected to ghastly experiments by a collaborating priestess. K'thstraam takes others and has them slowly devoured by sahuagin, intending on sacrificing captives with the Deep Mother to revive her god and drown the world.
• Tomb of Horrors: Acererak is a cambion demilich who founds cults, so he may manipulate their members into being his shield, resulting in their deaths when convenient. Creating the titular tomb of horrors to entrap adventurers, kill them horribly and drain their souls for his dark purposes, Acererak crafted even more tombs, in some cases wiping out entire cities or civilizations to do so while experimenting on countless innocents to create undead monsters, while also crafting a device to drain the souls of the dead to eventually create a new god to unleash to destroy as many innocents as possible. After his supposed defeat, Acererak returns to seek godhood by draining the essence of dead gods. Killing countless people via undead attacks, Acererak even orders a mass suicide of his followers to empower his abilities, intending on becoming a being strong enough to challenge the gods themselves and rise to force every living thing in the multiverse to suffer.

Dark Sun

Examples

• Rajaat, the War Bringer, was a Pyreen who despised the Green Age he was born into. Desiring a return to the Blue Age to achieve a sense of satisfaction, Rajaat organized the ruination of the world, training the Champions of Rajaat and having them commit genocide on almost every race of the world of Athas, some being rendered completely extinct. Rajaat planned to betray the Champions and exterminate humanity as well in the end, before being defeated and sealed. In the end of the Prism Pentad, Rajaat emerges again, intent on exterminating most life in the world, gleefully enacts revenge on some of his treacherous former disciples, hellbent on bringing ruination to Athas for the sake of his own twisted desires.
• Borys of Ebe organized the betrayal against Rajaat when he realized the Champions would not be spared. Gaining the title "Butcher of Dwarves" for his actions, Borys even wiped out entire cities of innocent dwarves, fully committed to their extermination. Killing several other Champions to become a Dragon by draining the life of a city, Borys keeps his master sealed away to maintain his own power base, sacrificing a thousand innocents a year for their energy. When Kalak is overthrown, Borys threatens to raze the city, killing many innocents in his attacks on other areas, and tortures the dwarf Caelum to death after vowing to Caelum's son Rkard he will murder his parents in front of him; an oath he promptly attempts to fulfill in full when he sees Rkard's mother.
• Dregoth was betrayed by the other Sorcerer Kings when on the cusp of becoming a new Dragon, surviving in undeath. Obsessed with godhood, Dregoth plots to ascend even higher. One of the most sadistic and twisted sorcerer kings who carried out genocide on the giants, Dregoth purged all demihumans from his regions, massacring them down to the last child. Turning countless people into the reptilian Dray to worship him, Dregoth also had countless innocents killed in blood sacrifices to him, while creating armies of undead slaves, even bargaining with the elf Luubarra Fire Dagger to give him her tribesmen to kill and raise up. Intending on an act of atrocity to rise to godhood, Dregoth plans to wipe out the city of Raam and kill all within as a final act, choosing Raam simply out of spite to Abalach-Re for offending him.
• Abalach-Re was the Sorcerer Queen of Raam and the Champion of Rajaat responsible for the genocide of the orc race. In ancient days, out of jealousy, she masterminded the betrayal of Dregoth and destruction of his city Guistenal. By far the most chaotic of her peers, Abalach-Re treated Raam like her own personal plaything and allowed chaos and anarchy to reign supreme, but she ensured her people still feared her by forcing anyone she actually deemed a threat to fight to the death in Raam's gladiatorial pit. She was also a notorious rapist who forced any man who caught her eye to be her consort before killing him when she grew bored, and any children resulting from these unions were simply tossed aside as soon as they were born. When not tormenting her people, Abalach-Re committed many atrocities to increase her power base by attempting to enslave the undead of the cursed Black Waters oasis and even attempting the same ritual Kalak created by impersonating an angelic being and sacrificing thousands of good-aligned people in her mad quest to become a Dragon.
• Sorcerer King Kalak of Tyr, the former Champion of Rajaat responsible for the genocide of the ogre race, reigns over Tyr as a sadistic tyrant who forces the people into poverty, promotes slavery and barbaric gladiator fights while killing people, including loyal servitors, for completely petty offenses . At one point, Kalak demands one man kill himself just to show his loyalty, and when the man begs, Kalak forces him to slowly disembowel himself as punishment. Seeking to become a Dragon like his former comrade Borys, Kalak plots to suck the life out of tens of thousands of citizens of Tyr, not caring that he will likely destroy the rest of his city in the process. During a coup, a wounded Kalak even drains the lives of his own loyal bodyguards to prolong his life and ascension.
• Queen Trinth was a Githyanki warlord obsessed with conquering Athas and enslaving its psionically empowered populace to fulfill her megalomaniacal ambitions. Trinth set out to create a portal between Athas and the Astral Plane when she came upon the Gith, mutated survivors from when her people first came to Athas. Viewing Trinth as their new queen who would give them control of Athas, the Gith were gifted with metal weapons and made to raid local settlements to acquire slaves to mine iron and build the gate to the Astral Plane. In truth, Trinth was disgusted with what she saw as abominations and only intended to use the Gith as Cannon Fodder in her invasion and then exterminate them when they were no longer useful. Furthermore, hundreds of Gith were sacrificed to empower the new Nightmare Gate they had constructed. After enslaving the people of Athas, Trinth intended to lead them in a war of genocide against her people's ancient enemies, the Githzerai, before turning them on Vlaakith and her followers and assuming control over the Githyanki race.
• Eevuu Silt Stalker and Luubarra Fire Dagger are the chieftain and defiler of the dreaded Silt Stalker raiding tribe, widely considered the most brutal and savage elves on Athas. Eevuu leads his tribe with an iron fist and kills anyone who challenges his rule, not caring when his people suffer massive casualties in raids. He personally loves leading his tribe on raids of villages, forts, and caravans wherein they slaughter everyone they can find, reveling in the bloodshed itself. He ultimately wants nothing more than to cast down the walls of the city-states and butcher everyone to satisfy his own unquenchable blood lust. Luubarra whispers in her chieftain's ear to push for evermore bloodshed and loves to torture and experiment on any prisoners they bring back. Secretly, Luubarra made a pact with Dregoth to send him prisoners to be made undead in exchange for the power to become a Sorcerer Queen. When she ran out of prisoners, she sent her own clan, the Fire Daggers, to their doom and seeks to do the same to the rest of the Silt Stalker tribe.

Dragonlance

Tabletop Game

Examples

• Cyan Bloodbane is a green dragon who despises elves above all else. When the elven king Lorac was enslaved by a Dragon Orb, Cyan arrived to whisper horrible suggestions in his ear with the power of the orb making them real, poisoning the land of Silvanesti and killing its people, driving others to insanity and death. Years later, Cyan would disguise himself as an elf and convince the Slvanesti elves to erect a magic shield, but without telling them that the shield would literally drain the life of every living thing in Silvanost, allowing him the pleasure of watching every elf suffer and die while he tormented them from the shadows.
• Lanther Darthassian, Spectre of the Blackened Starjewel, is a seemingly-crippled member of the Legion of Steel who is a former Knight of Takhisis and member of the brutal Tarmak Empire. Lanther, faking his disability, betrays the Missing City to the Tarmaks and helps to murder its good-aligned dragon overlord, the brass Iyesta. Lanther's actions lead to a massacre of hundreds with more enslaved by the Tarmaks when Lanther personally murders members of the Legion. Lusting after the knight Linsha Majere, Lanther seeks to make her his and manipulates her into dueling and killing one of the Tarmak Emperor's daughters, a former lover of his he's grown tired of, so she won't bother him further. Lanther destroys several of Iyesta's dragon eggs for Tarmak rituals and also uses his magic to torture Linsha and her own beloved, the bronze dragon Crucible, before Linsha escapes. When he pursues her, Lanther tries to kill her friends, kills one baby dragon in the egg and opts to use his magic to rob Linsha of her mind so she can bear his child as an empty shell.
• Gellidus the White, aka Frost, is a white dragon who won his territory in bloody struggle and murder like any other Dragon Overlord. After he is the only Overlord left, Gellidus makes a bond with the Dark God Chemosh and uses a ritual to channel the worship of other gods to Gellidus himself to enhance his power and intellect. Gellidus mentally enslaves the silver dragon Silvara as a potential consort and forces her lover, the elflord Gilthanas, to do his bidding with Silvara's fate as blackmail material. Using his Whitescale society for murder, discord and to start wars for him, he also has a drug spread through Ansalon's communities that are highly addictive. In the White Apocalypse path of Price of Courage, Gellidus reveals his intention: the drug can be detonated in its users, creating a killing frost called the Deathchill that will spread over the world and kill everyone and everything save Gellidus himself, leaving him to reign over his new kingdom of death as a divine dragon.
• Malystryx the Red, aka Malys, one of the first and mightiest Dragon Overlords, is a titanic and brutal monster who carved out territory by simply incinerating anything in her way. After settling in Krynn, Malystryx hunted down and murdered other dragons, taking their skulls and inciting a dragon purge. Using the skulls as a sinister totem, she mutated the land around her into a hellish wasteland and allied with barbarians and ogres to destroy and enslave any innocents left. Malystryx killed her own mate to complete her totem and proceeded with a genocide of the kender race, only prevented by the Heroic Sacrifice of the warrior Riverwind. Establishing herself as a brutal tyrant, Malystryx would occasionally attack random targets for her own amusement, delighting in the instinctive fear she spread. Without doubt, Malystryx was the most evil dragon ever to set foot in Krynn.
• Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness, is the head of the Pantheon of evil deities. Unlike her fellow evil gods, who may have people they care for, Takhisis cares only for her lusts, greed and power. After mothering the second generation of Chromatic dragons, Takhisis brutally killed two of them solely to make a point to the others. Takhisis threatened the world multiple times, sending her armies out to commit a host of atrocities, with her servants enslaving whole countries in living nightmares. Takhisis betrayed all her gods by stealing the world of Krynn at the conclusion of the Chaos Wars against Father Chaos after she abandoned her followers and forced every soul of those who died into an army of the dead. Not even her own followers are safe from her.
• Morgion, Lord of the Bronze Tower, is one of the cruelest of the evil pantheon. A cold misanthrope who believes every mortal should suffer before the end, Morgion advocates disease and pestilence to plague mankind and forces his agents to spread them under threat of being consumed by his illnesses should they fail. Rarely associating with others, Morgion uses the Minotaur Wars to attempt to usurp the Minotaur race in Takhisis's absence. Spreading a mass plague to kill countless followers of the heroic Faros Es-Kalin, Morgion advocates endless sacrifice and death with intent to make the Minotaurs his race to spread plague and wipe out all life while boasting he is the end of all things.
• Onysablet the Living Darkness, better known as "Sable", is the Black Dragon Overlord who participates in the Dragon purge to build a totem. Overrunning civilized land to kill numerous innocents, Sable kidnaps countless innocents to subject them to horrific experiments. Known for her scientific depravity, Sable has innocents regularly abducted to be transformed into her abominations while expanding her domain. Assisting Malystryx in her own monstrous plans, Sable plots to ramp up her experiments no matter how many die to satisfy her curiosity.

Other Media

Literature

Examples

• The Legend of Huma has the two rival heads of the forces of Takhisis:
  • Galan Dracos, a ruthless sorcerer and founder of the renegade Brown Robes, sheds his humanity to unleash hereto unseen levels of death and slaughter. When Huma opposes Dracos, the sorcerer kidnaps Huma's friend, the mage Magius, and tortures him to death. Intending to unleash Takhisis on the world to all but annihilate it, Dracos plots to betray even the goddess and ascend to ultimate power.
  • Crynus, astride his dragon Charr, leads the Dragon armies with war crimes a regular occurrence to his style of war. Under Crynus's auspices, the armies slaughter endless civilians and massacre every civilized region they come across. Thrilling in battle, Crynus often leads his men with full orders to butcher whatever they see. His ultimate goal is to unleash Takhisis and show up Dracos, while enjoying the thrill of Huma's death.
• The Citadel, by Richard A. Knaak: Valkyn, once a follower of the neutral Goddess of Magic Lunitari, devoted himself to the darkest magics and the flying citadels. Allying with the Black Dragon Army, Valkyn abducts numerous mages to use them as fuel for his weapons. Valkyn also sways the gargoyles to his side, with the chieftain Stone tortured, with his wings removed for opposing him. Valkyn showcases the might of his citadel by annihilating civilian targets and intends to wipe out entire cities to force Krynn into submission. When his former lover Serene opposes him, Valkyn tortures her and murders Stone for his opposition.
• Taladas Trilogy, by Chris Pierson: Maladar an-Desh, aka Maladar The Faceless, is the cruel emperor of Taladas. When the series begins, Maladar has been dead for centuries and is remembered in terrifying legends. Flashbacks reveal Maladar was The Caligula of the old empire who conducted ethnic cleansing, invented torturous deaths for thousands—he was particularly fond of impalement—and he kept a slave boy he molested until the boy managed to poison him. After death, Maladar's influence lived on, his soul trapped in a small statue of his likeness. After he's revived, he spreads his influence to modern Taladas, inciting brutal wars to create enough bloodshed to prepare his resurrection. His initial choice of vessel is an innocent boy, but he simply bodyjacks the boy's father instead and enslaves goblin races to send them to their deaths as a cover for him to awaken his army and conquer Taladas anew.

Others

• Dragons of Autumn Twilight film:
  • Takhisis is the Goddess of Darkness and Queen of Dragons, who battled the Gods of Light from the beginning of time. In the first age, Takhisis waged a war across the entire world of Krynn, slaughtering and burning everything in her path, until she was banished by the Gods of Light. In the present, trying to free herself and prevent the return of the Gods of Light, Takhisis leads her followers to conquer the world, land after land, leaving death and destruction behind, while ordering her minions to hunt down the heroes.
  • Verminaard is the chief priest of Takhisis who organizes the conquering of Krynn for his queen and prepares everything for her return. Burning down lands, murdering and torturing hundreds and enslaving masses of people to work in his mines, Verminaard threatens to kill their children if they disobey his commands. Tracking down Blue Crystal Staff, which capable of bringing back Gods of Light, Verminaard annihilates village after village, enslaving more people and planning to wipe out the Elves in their homeland. When the heroes managed to free his slaves, Verminaard orders his dragon and minions to kill them all, children included.

Eberron

Tabletop Game

Examples

• Mordain the Fleshweaver, once a normal elf mage named Mordain d'Phiarlan and member of the Twelve, delved into forbidden magic and perfected the art of fleshcrafting. Practicing it upon innumerable living beings to agonizingly turn them into horrific new forms of life, Mordain was said to prey on children and adults alike in his quest for new knowledge. Finding a new home in his own "Forest of Flesh", Mordain continues to experiment upon those he can, and is just as likely to release a plague to examine the results or to unleash other monsters on people, driven by an insatiable form of malignant curiosity.
• "Chimes at Midnight", "Quoth the Raven" & "Hell's Heart": Genius Inquisitive Viktor/Victor Saint-Demain has his massive ego bruised by Baron D'Medani and plots a gruesome revenge, recruiting serial killers to commit murder all over Sharn with intention of wiping out the Baron, his House and to drop D'Medani's beloved daughter Zelina to her death. Foiled and placed in a sanitarium, Viktor manipulates a troubled man into becoming a serial killer who kidnaps and tortures his victims to death, with the intent of sending the heroes to die against him after creating a large body count. Locked away in the asylum of Hell's Heart, Viktor uses his manipulative brilliance to take over, allowing the insane doctor in charge to torture other inmates, before recruiting more serial killers. Having the D'Medanis captured, Viktor tries to have them killed, intending on framing the heroes for poisoning Sharn's water supply to kill thousands upon thousands of innocents, releasing his killers on the population and "clearing" his name to take advantage of the horrible chaos.

Other Media

• Online's "Demon Sands" module: Queen Lailat is the demonic ruler of the Menechtarun desert and the one behind the region's perpetual violence. Summoned to Eberron by King Raiyum, Lailat helped him achieve lichdom and then imprisoned him in his tomb so that she could turn his kingdom into her own personal killing field. Lailat led the Firebrand gnolls to become vicious man-eating slavers, taught the Vulkoorim scorrow to adopt ritual sacrifice, and set them against each other and Menechtarun's surviving humans simply to enjoy the violence. When the players raid her lair, Lailat is shown to have killed another adventuring party and revived them to fight for her as undead, reanimating them each time they die to ensure that their suffering never ends. She also keeps a rakshasa bound as a Sex Slave and considers replacing him with a player when he dies. A boundlessly cruel tyrant concerned only with causing as much violence and suffering as she can, Lailat is a vicious monster even among demons.

Forgotten Realms

Tabletop Game

Examples

• Bhaal, Lord of Murder, a member of the Dead Three along with Myrkul (as well as Bane), was once a mortal assassin who ascended to godhood as the God of Death. Interpreting "Death" as "Murder", Bhaal's dogma dictated that his followers make it a habit of killing innocent people on a regular basis as sacrifices to Bhaal. Receiving a vision of his own death in the Time of Troubles, Bhaal sired countless mortal children with the specific purpose of serving as his eventual Soul Jar. Despising all of them simply for existing, Bhaal left a curse to condemn them all to pain and suffering while arranging for them all to be murdered in hopes of bringing him back to life and punishing them for their very existence. Responsible for countless deaths and the entire Bhaalspawn crisis, Bhaal remained a figure of terror and hatred to all other Gods, even his ostensible allies.
• Myrkul, Lord of Bones, was the old god of death before Kelemvor. While Kelemvor has a firm set of morals and only tolerates the Wall of the Faithless because it's necessary for the continued existence of the other gods, Myrkul was an utter sadist who, besides creating the Wall, took gleeful joy in witnessing the agony and suffering the Wall caused. He is stated to have ruled his faith with an iron fist, purposefully leading his followers through sheer fear of his retribution, and executing anyone who defied him, be they man, woman or child, in sadistically brutal fashions, such as burning them alive in a giant furnace. His greatest atrocity, however, was what he did to one of his best priests, who had had enough of the injustice of the Wall and attempted to destroy it. Initially, he just left the priest to rot on the Wall, but just before the priest fully merged with the Wall and attained some measure of peace, Myrkul decides that he hasn't suffered enough and transforms the priest into a mindless being of pure, unbridled hunger that feeds on souls, then sets it loose upon the world, knowing full well the chaos it will surely cause.
• Cyric, the Prince of Lies, was in the aftermath of the Time of Troubles, when the three prime gods of evil died, raised to godhood for his evil in order to replace them. Cyric proceeded to prove his cruelty by murdering and oppressing other gods, sending his servants to steal faithful worshipers from the afterlife to torture in his realm, and instituting cruel punishments on the dead. Cyric invented new ways to drive beings mad, even succumbing to them himself for a time. Even after regaining his sanity, Cyric gleefully murdered his enemy Mystra, the Goddess of Magic, inflicting the hideous Spellplague that scarred the face of Faerun forever and claimed many lives.
• Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders, is the goddess of the Drow, of spiders and of chaos. Once a member of the Elven pantheon, the Seldarine, and named Araunshee, Lolth betrayed the Seldarine out of growing malice, discontent, and lust for power. She betrayed her husband, the chief elven God Corellon Larethian, to his enemy, the Orc God Gruumsh, and tried to help the destruction of the Seldarine. When she failed, Lolth fled to the Demonweb Pits and led her chosen race, the Drow, into the Underdark, becoming a twisted and cruel goddess. Lolth would soon trick her own grandson into absorbing the essence of a demon lord to corrupt him into serving Lolth as her champion forever. Lolth had the Drow establish a society built on sadism and backstabbing, solely for her own pleasure, with cruel edicts consisting of demands for the sacrifice of every newborn male child at birth and demands for her priestesses to carve out the hearts of males they grow too fond of. What sets Lolth apart from other evil gods is that she cares nothing for her race or her worshipers, viewing them as merely tools for power. For her own amusement, she will capriciously withhold her favor from loyal Drow just for the pleasure of seeing them die. Lolth has nothing less than genocidal fury towards all surface elves and routinely directs her followers to murder them. After becoming more powerful, Lolth proceeded to purge the Drow pantheon of other deities, ending her victory by seemingly murdering her own children, Eilistraee and Vhaeraun, with savage glee.
• Shar, Mistress of the Night, the Dark Lady, featured in a story arc in the comics and more prominently in the novels, is one of the oldest and most evil of all the gods. The Lady of Loss, Shar despises the life-bearing universe her once-beloved sister Selûne created and sought to wipe it out. Foiled, Shar formed a faith based around loss and nihilism with her clergy subverting and destroying hope itself. Shar even maintains a tower where she imprisons those who enjoy freedom so she may savor their despair, and during the Time of Troubles she manipulated Selune to destroy her mentally and eventually kill her and all her friends and worshippers. Taking a more proactive role in the modern day, Shar helped to destroy the goddess Mystra and unleash the Spellplague, later having her chief worshippers unleash the Shadow Storm to blanket all Faerun in life-stealing darkness, a prelude to the Cycle of Night where Shar intended on reducing all of creation to nothingness so she may better enjoy the cold, black void yet again.
• Aerisi Kalinoth was a moon elf noblewoman who grew up as a Spoiled Brat. Despising elven society for not obeying her every whim, Aerisi became the prophet of the evil Elemental Embodiment of air, Yan-C-Bin. Having people sacrificed to her master, Aerisi masterminds the Elemental Evil attack on Neverwinter, trying to destroy the city and kill all present. In the Princes of the Apocalypse module, Aerisi is revealed to rule her court as a brutal tyrant, killing even minstrels who displease her, and testing out destructive artifacts on innocent gnome colonies. Aerisi intends to summon Yan-C-Bin to ravage the world, especially planning on destroying elven nations in her petty revenge.
• Dygah is an Ulutiun wizard hailing from the Great Glacier who was banished from his village for poisoning their water supply. While Dygah proclaimed it was an accident, he was secretly trying to mind control the whole village into making him their leader. After being refused admittance from nearby settlements, he swore revenge on not only his village but on everyone in the Great Glacier. He made his way to a village of fellow exiles, murdered their leader and took over, and turned them into a group of ruthless bandits who practiced kidnapping, rape, and murder. Upon discovering the location of his people's sleeping god, Ulutiu, Dygah intended on stealing Ulutiu's necklace to unfreeze the entire glacier and murder the 50,000 innocent people that lived there. The unfreezing of the Great Glacier would also cause massive and devastating flooding throughout northern Faerun that would further kill hundreds of thousands, a fact Dygah apathetically disregarded for the sake of his petty vengeance.
• Zaiden is the leader of the largest gnoll tribe in service to Yeenoghu. A monster the moment she was out of the womb who ignores even the few societal standards the gnolls have, such as their familial connections, Zaiden butchered all her siblings soon after birth, sacrificed her mother and made her father her unwilling mate until she tired of him as well. Nowadays, Zaiden dreams of the day Yeenoghu will make her his bride and spends her days having countless people tortured and slaughtered—including many of her own luckless minions—on scales unmatched by any of his other followers.
• Al-Qadim:
  • The Golden Voyages' "Broken Talons": Melisende is a cruel, cold-hearted sorceress who works with her father on the island of Kaff. Using her magics, Melisende crashes sailors onto the island, lures them to her father, then works with the man to torture and experiment on their captives, turning them into ghoulish pirates that Melisende then releases into the seas to cause chaos. Melisende has done this to countless men, leading to untold pain and death, and when the PCs arrive on Kaff, Melisende tries to repeat the process on them, successfully subjecting half of the PCs' crew to the horrible fate.
  • A Dozen and One Adventures's "Weave of the Carpet": Ali al-Lazan is a member of the Brotherhood of the Flame who burns people and pets alive for fun, loving nothing so much as consuming innocent lives in fire. Savoring torture by fire of his victims, Ali intends to burn down the local royal palace, plotting to fly over it and rain flame and down upon all innocent lives. Should he be exposed, Ali will attempt to annihilate the local market.
  • Cities of Bone: Sumulael has made himself master of a lost city. Without any regard for even his wife, Sumulael kills many people to be raised as zombies to serve him, even killing women to populate an undead harem to satisfy his perversions. Sumulael also subjects his victims to grotesque tortures and experiments, letting his creations tear slaves apart for his amusement, always seeking to add more to his twisted kingdom.
  • Corsairs of the Great Sea's "Of Water Dark and Deep": Faizah, the ghul-kin High Priestess of the Cult of Istishia, takes advantage of her god's neutrality to sacrifice innocent people in his name while reaping the benefit of his powers. Faizah has a special predilection for child slaves, using the Waters of Devotion to fully snuff out the will of her victims, to the point most of the cult are victims of the Waters of Devotion. Children who prove immune to the Waters are simply murdered.
• Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus: Thavius Kreeg of Elturel, after making a pact with the infernal Archduchess of Avernus Zariel, promised to condemn his entire city to Avernus to become fodder for Zariel's prosecution of the Blood War. Taking advantage of his "hero" status, Kreeg then flees Elturel to leave it to its fate while he attempts to do the same to Baldur's Gate.

Literature

The Legend of Drizzt

Examples

• The Icewind Dale Trilogy's The Crystal Shard: Akar Kessell is the self-proclaimed Tyrant of Icewind Dale who formed a pact with Crenshinibon, the titular Crystal Shard, to fulfill his megalomaniacal aspirations. Even before finding the Crystal Shard, Kessell murdered his mentor, whom he considered like a father, on the order of a cabal of evil sorcerers in the hopes of gaining power and prestige. Ultimately nothing more than a loose end to tie up, Kessell was abandoned in the wastelands of Icewind Dale where he found Crenshinibon and set out to use its power to conquer Toril. Kessell would use the Crystal Shard to enslave countless goblinoid tribes and mind-control innocent women to be his sex slaves. Kessell soon grew bored and, against the advice of Crenshinibon, set loose his armies on the Ten-Towns where thousands where slaughtered, but, proving himself an inept leader, he was outwitted and defeated by Drizzt and the Companions of the Hall. Despite Crenshinibon being known for its corrupting influence, Akar Kessell proved to be a monster all along who was buried beneath an avalanche by the Crystal Shard when Kessell's own power lust grew too much for even the Shard to handle.
• The Dark Elf Trilogy & Legacy of the Drow: Matron Yvonnel Baenre, the de facto ruler of the Drow nation Menzoberranzan, is also the most evil Drow yet seen. Yvonnel Baenre keeps the city in its dark, chaotic state while destroying Drow houses she judges have outlived their usefulness. Her own children live in fear of her, and when dealing with her most hatred rivals, the Oblodras, Baenre annihilates their House, sending every inhabitant, even the slaves, to the Abyss to be tortured eternally. Baenre's ultimate goal is to conquer the dwarven kingdom Mithrill Hall, and for this end, she has enslaved the soul of its first king for two thousand years. She also utilizes her Illithid ally to forcibly and painfully mentally torture and devour the minds of those she wishes to interrogate while allowing her children and house to torture those who catch their eye. When she assaults Mithril Hall, her goal is nothing less than the deaths or enslavement of all in her path.
• Transitions' The Pirate King: Arklem Greeth is a powerful lich and the leader of the Arcane Brotherhood in Luskan. The de facto lord of Luskan, Greeth sought to expand his influence by weakening the Sword Coast and the Silver Marches. He made Luskan a haven for the very worst pirates and tried to dissolve the recent peace treaty between the orcs and dwarves, catching the attention of Captain Duedermont and Drizzt respectively. In the ensuing coup, Greeth displayed his evil by releasing ghouls to butcher the people of Luskan and killing thousands when he set his base to explode when he retreated. Even after losing, he was driven by revenge against Duedermont and destroyed supplies needed to feed Luskan's people and burned the ship, the Sea Sprite, to ensure the captain would die in the ruined city. His supposed love for his Dragon, Valindra Shadowmantle, was also made moot when he sent her off to die and then raised her as a lich, proving he cared for her only as a tool. While ultimately only a pawn for Jarlaxle and Kensidan, the titular Pirate King, Greeth was vile enough that every faction agreed that he needed to be eliminated.
• The Neverwinter Saga:
  • Sylora Salm is a Thayan sorceress working under the orders of the Archlich Szass Tam to complete the construction of a Dread Ring, a powerful necromantic artifact. To go about this, she follows her rival Dahlia Sin'felle into the bowels of Gauntlgrym and mind controls the dwarf Athrogate into unleashing the Fire Primordial imprisoned there. This causes a volcanic eruption that destroys the city of Neverwinter and kills tens of thousands. Sylora uses the corpses to empower the Dread Ring and to create an army of ash zombies that constantly assault the survivors. Sylora is also shown to be pure evil on a personal level when she manipulates a cultist named Jestry into falling in love with her and then twists him into a constantly suffering abomination to serve as her bodyguard, and dominates the now insane undead Valindra Shadowmantle into being her servant.
  • Herzgo Alegni, unlike most of the relatively few rapists in the Forgotten Realms setting, likes preying on kids. At one point, he and his warband raided a village, killing all the men and taking possession of the women. Alegni took a woman hostage to force her 10-year-old daughter, Dahlia, to let him rape her. When he was finished, he had his men hold Dahlia upside down to make her more likely to get pregnant before he broke the mother's neck for fun. He also uses a powerful magical sword to enslave Artemis Entreri (a former villain who had undergone a Heel–Face Turn and just wanted to be left alone) as his personal assassin, and used the sword to stab pain directly into Entreri's soul whenever he was pissed or just plain bored. He also commits murder for the pettiest of reasons, such as somebody naming a bridge after somebody else besides him, even though he had nothing to do with the bridge's construction.
• The Neverwinter Saga, Companions Codex & Homecoming (Drizzt): Tiago Baenre is considered one of Menzoberranzan's most promising young males. A ruthless, capable fighter obsessed with rising high in the storied Baenre family and becoming a legend to his people, Tiago dreams of destroying the legendary renegade Drizzt Do'Urden. Leading attacks on dwarves that kill multiple innocents, Tiago also ruins Drizzt's reputation by framing him for demon attacks, and also helps to manipulate the orcs into savagery by having the peaceful King Lorgru deposed and replaced with a brutal warlord. Tiago leads his new army in an attack on Sundabar, killing massive amounts of civilians, and personally beheads the king before turning his forces to attack the city of Nesme, resulting in the butchering of countless innocents. Tiago interrogates a survivor by threatening to kill a child, and when the survivor gives in, he has the child killed because she took too long to answer. Tiago has the duke of Nesme crucified and amuses himself by "allowing" knights to escape before hunting them down and torturing them to death, in one case having his dragon ally swallow one alive to digest him slowly. Tiago, named as Weapons Master to the restored House Do'Urden, frequently rapes the brainwashed elf Dahlia Sin'Felle who has been installed as the puppet leader of the House, and also rapes a half-drow ally to demonstrate his power over her. His obsession with Drizzt eventually leads him to hunt down the older drow to become a legend by killing him. Tiago stands apart as the single most evil male Drow in the setting, his crimes fueled by nothing more than his own ego and attempts to amuse himself.

Others

Examples

• Brimstone Angels: Adolican Rhand is a sadistic and ambitious Netherese wizard-lord who takes an interest in Farideh in Lesser Evils, stalking her and eventually drugging her. It's later revealed that Rhand is a Serial Killer with a fondness for raping and murdering young women who catch his eye, a fate Farideh barely escapes. He later tracks her party to the lost library of the archmage Tarchamus, hoping to claim a spell the legendary wizard used to wipe out entire cities. In The Adversary, he aligns himself with the forces of the Nine Hells to harvest the souls of Chosen, splitting their god-granted powers between them, though he ultimately intends to double-cross the devils. As part of this bargain, Farideh is forced to work with him, using her power to see souls to sort out the real Chosen from the fakes; when she refuses to comply, Rhand has dozens of innocent captives—including children—summarily executed until she relents, intending to make Farideh his latest victim once she outlives her usefulness.
• Counselors and Kings trilogy: Akhlaur is a necromancer who combines the worst traits of a Mad Scientist, Evil Overlord, and an Evil Sorcerer, performing grotesque experiments on living captives—often though not always elves—so that he can puzzle out the secrets of life and death and acquire their power. He treats servants and captives alike with the same bored disdain, since he views all other people as being equally worthless. In addition, he forcibly turned his former best friend into an undead horror under his complete control, and together, they tried to murder his other former friend to steal his kingdom.
• Songs & Swords series & Evermeet: Island of Elves, both by Elaine Cunningham: Kymil Nimesin is a Sun Elf who utterly despises Moon Elves and views the reign of the Moon Elf Moonflower dynasty as the worst atrocity to ever befall Elvenkind. Kymil organizes a conspiracy and begins to have the Moonflower family murdered one by one, including the goodhearted King Zaor and many of his children. Manipulating the half-elf daughter of one victim, Kymil plans to use her abilities to destroy the remaining Moonflower dynasty, even murdering the assassin who killed Zaor to keep the secret. After his initial defeat, Kymil sells out to the Gods who are elvenkind's worst enemies, including Lolth herself. Kymil assists in an attack on the elven kingdom of Evermeet where he even allows the monstrous Elf-Eater to be summoned, caring nothing for the genocide of his own people as long as he can fulfill his megalomaniac fury.
• The Twilight War trilogy & The Godborn, both by Paul S. Kemp: Rivalen Tanthul is one of the 12 Princes of Shade, the remnant of the empire of Netheril, and the most powerful of his brothers. Rivalen is the Nightseer, High Priest, of the Dark Goddess Shar, and murdered his own mother to instill his family with the loss needed to turn them to Shar's worship. Rivalen mentally tortures his younger brother Brennus with the vision of the murder and mocks his father, High Prince Telamont, about loving Rivalen too much to stop his mad plans. In the vision, Rivalen's dying mother simply asked Rivalen to hold her hand so she wouldn't be alone, to which Rivalen calmly denied her request, in order to savor her suffering. Rivalen engineers massive casualties and Shade's takeover of the lands of Sembia, savoring the bitterness and pain of those he betrays. A century after Sembia's takeover, Rivalen attempts to finish Shar's manifestation, revealing his ultimate goal: to die and take all that exists in Toril with him. Defined by his cruel nihilism and utter lack of regard for any living being, Rivalen sought deaths on scales that not even Gods such as Cyric would attempt.

Video Games

Baldur's Gate series

Main series

• Neb the gnome is a criminal first encountered in the first game in the cells of Baldur's Gate's Flaming Fist Headquarters, where Gorion's Ward is forced to work with him to escape their wrongful imprisonment. Neb cheerfully reveals, through a riddle, that he's killed 33 children. He appears again in the second game, having stolen a slab of Illithium ore. Cornered at an abandoned house in the Bridge District, Neb sinks to a new level of depravity by summoning the spirits of his young victims and forcing them to fight for him even as they cry. While the Baldur's Gate trilogy is well-stocked on criminals, murderers and supernatural threats, Neb's grimly realistic sadism and the horrific idea he represents make him stand out as easily one of the cruelest and most disgusting minor villains in the series. Even the inventory description of his head intones that "rarely has a more despicable being roamed the land".
• Siege of Dragonspear: Hephernaan is supposedly a cleric in service of the Shining Crusade, but is in truth the servant of powerful devils. Manipulating the Crusade's leader Caelar Argent, Hephernaan made her think she could save her uncle Aun from the Abyss, inspiring her to raise an army under the false belief of storming the Nine Hells to liberate the souls of the victims of the first Dragonspear War. Hephernaan oversaw the deaths of thousands and a near-catastrophic war on the Sword Coast as a member of Caelar's inner circle, but his ultimate plan was to lure Gorion's Ward to Castle Dragonspear. Gleefully gloating as he reveals his plans in the final chapters of the game, Hephernaan uses the player's divine blood to re-open a long-closed portal to the plane of Avernus, intent on opening Faerun and all Toril to a Baatezu invasion at the hands of his master Belhifet that would see every living thing killed or enslaved to devilish torment forevermore.
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn:
  • Jonoleth of Suldanessellar was a powerful elven archmage who attempted to become a god. Punished by being stripped of his soul and elven lifespan, renaming himself "Jon Irenicus", or "Shattered One", he concocts a scheme to achieve both godhood and vengeance. With countless experiments to perfect the process of transference of divinity, Irenicus helps to engineer murders and risk a war in Baldur's Gate to capture the Bhaalspawn hero, killing several of their companions and awakening the powers of the dead god Bhaal in his children via induced pain. After taking over a mage's prison from within, Irenicus takes the souls of the prisoners for use in his ritual to steal the souls of the Bhaalspawn and his sister Imoen before arranging for the Drow to attack Suldanessellar, providing him cover to steal the essence of their god-tree so he might steal its energies and rise to godhood with Suldanessellar destroyed in the process. Confronting the Bhaalspawn and his former lover, Queen Ellesime, Irenicus at last abandons the last vestiges of feeling he had for Ellesime and declares that he will at last have the vengeance and power he most desires.
  • Rejiek Hidesman is an Athkatla-based tanner who moonlights as the Skinner Murderer; his modus operandi is Flaying Alive the paupers and beggars trying to survive in the Bridge District. Fleeing after the player confronts him with evidence linking him to his murders, the lower reaches of Rejiek's home are discovered to be littered with flayed and rotting corpses and even a shirt made entirely of Genuine Human Hide. Escaping, Rejiek resurfaces after causing the disappearance of a young woman, Raissa, having infected himself with a virus to become a "skinless dancer", a monstrosity that wears the skins of humans to disguise itself. Switching identities with Raissa, Rejiek tries to trick the heroes into murdering her, and when this fails, he attacks them in anger. Even after his own death, Rejiek leaves his curse upon Raissa to try to make her give into the monstrous instincts of the skinless dancer.
  • Throne of Bhaal expansion pack: Amelyssan the Blackhearted, former High Priestess of Bhaal, poses as a kind figure, saving the children of the dead God from the brutal blood purges and giving them sanctuary in a city. However, behind the scenes, she is the one manipulating the purges, killing any with any connection to Bhaal, while simultaneously forming a clandestine group of powerful Bhaalspawn called The Five to plunge the world into war. Amelyssan manipulates the heroes into eliminating the Five, but not before she allows their armies to invade the city, slaughtering everyone within, including the refugees who trusted her. Having gathered all of their Godly essence, Amelyssan is willing to throw the cosmos into disarray to, instead of resurrecting her God, betray him and take his place as the new Lord Of Murder.
• Baldur's Gate III:
  • The Absolute is the supposed God of the Cult of the Absolute. In truth an Illithid Elder Brain, the Absolute planned its own slavery at the hands of the Chosen and proliferated its spawn to kill countless innocents to create new Mind Flayers. Responsible for countless examples of slavery, mass murder, and death, the Absolute plots its release to seize control of the plan and raise an army to start a war and seize control of the world, and perhaps even the multiverse, while dominating every mind to worship it, which will cause the utter extinction of other gods.
  • Enver Gortash, Chosen of Bane, is the mastermind of the Absolute's plans to spread Illithids across the Sword Coast and keep them supplied with sentient brains. Under Enver's leadership, the cult commits massacres, slavery, and more atrocities while plotting murders in Baldur's Gate to increase his political power. Enver plots to kick off a bloody war so he can "save" the city and advance the cause of Bane with his own power increased. Not even those who trust Enver are safe, as he was the one who sold his loyal Tiefling bodyguard Karlach to the devil Zariel years ago.
  • Raphael is a cambion and the wicked son of the lord of the eighth circle of Hell, Mephistopheles. A fiendish maker of one-sided deals with mortals, Raphael screws them over so they can be dragged to Hell for eternal torture. Raphael also is not averse to cheating if he doesn't get his way and even preys on children in his deals. Raphael is also a sadist who enjoys hurting and preying on others and has the sister of Korilla Heartflame tortured and implicitly raped. Causing chaos and death in search of the Crown of Karsus, Raphael intends to use it to bend all nine circles of Hell to himself and will sexually enslave the Player Character as he plans a full scale invasion of all the Realms to put them under his control if he succeeds.
  • Dolor is a fiendish Dwarf with aims to join the cult of Bhaal through murder. Sent by Orin the Red to incite a conflict between the Cult of the Absolute and the city, Dolor has been killing people to ascend to become a follower of Bhaal. Using a special poison to paralyse his victims, Dolor then proceeds to mutilate them while they're alive and conscious to remove their hands. Utterly sadistic, Dolor boasts to his final victim about how much fun he's going to have finding ways to torture and kill him.
  • Cazador Szarr is a powerful vampire lord with 7,000 vampire spawn in his lair. The master of Astarion, Cazador was a hideously abusive monster who regularly abused Astarion and the others by raping them, and forcing them to participate in sex with one another or with prey to lure them to Cazador. Thinking only of his ascension, Cazador plots to sacrifice all his spawn for greater power, even the children he has turned into vampires. Having left behind all humanity, Cazador informs Astarion that he, like anything else Cazador has made, was created "to be consumed".
  • Auntie Ethel is a seemingly sweet, pleasant old lady who lives alone in the wilderness. Far from the helpless old woman she presents as, Ethel is actually a Green Hag who delights in the suffering of others. Ethel encourages innocents to bring their needs to her, only to cruelly corrupt their wishes and place them in torture or death, with numerous victims in her lair. Some have been turned to stone or living walls to watch her kill heroes, while others are enslaved via masks to carry out her commands, unable to stop themselves. Ethel later kidnaps and devours a child to birth her own Hag, gleefully using the child as a Human Shield when she is confronted.

• Dark Alliance II Spin-Off: Mordoc SeLanmere, the White Prince and Pale Knight, is a powerful vampire lord who assists the Spirit of Hatred in attempting to wipe out the city of Baldur's Gate. When she fails, Mordoc steals her powerful fortress, the Onyx Tower, and slowly begins murdering and converting others to the undead to destroy Baldur's Gate for his Mulhorand allies. Mordoc proceeds to transport the Tower into Baldur's Gate and sets about to kill or turn every living thing in the entire city into zombies, using their lives to enhance his powers to near godhood.

Others

Examples

• Demon Stone: Ygorl the Slaad Lord, imprisoned with his nemesis Cireka in the Demon Stone, still manages to reach out to shape events to his liking. Bidding trolls to attack and slaughter the town of Nesme to harden the heart of guardsman Rannek, along with hill giants to attack a wood elf settlement to do the same for half-drow Zhai, Ygorl has his dragon ally Caminus launch a brutal attack on a civilian town so he may arrange himself to be freed and resume his fight with Cireka. Intending on being the one to destroy and conquer most of Faerun, Ygorl has his allies launch numerous attacks until Cireka is dead, whereupon he intends to sweep in with his Slaad across Toril.
• Icewind Dale: The wicked devil Belhifet disguises himself as Brother Poquelin to steadily recruit people to his armies so he may conquer Ten Towns. Using evil beings to wipe out anyone who may get close to the truth, Belhifet intends on sweeping over Ten Towns to destroy it and reap the souls of all there for his infernal armies so he may unleash Baator upon the mortal plane. Even before being defeated, Belhifet rapes many women to father half-devil children to further his plans. After his defeat, Belhifet turns out to be the secret villain of the Siege of Dragonspear, having tried to kidnap and torture Caelar Argent as a child. The secret master of Hephernaan who manipulated all the evil of the Shining Crusade, Belhifet intends on the utter devastation of the Material Plane.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: Black Garius, the self-proclaimed "Master of the Fifth Tower", is the supposed leader of the Cult of Shadow, a group of necromancers that plunders grave sites and old battle sites for corpses to their army and tries to free the King of Shadows. In reality, he wants to exploit the King for power; treats his subordinates as expendable pawns; and was ready to wipe out the remaining cultists as soon as he was done with the ritual to bind the King. However, the ritual is botched and he dies; afterwards he is revived as a Shadow Reaver, a lich-like undead and a slave to the King. He's perfectly fine with this state, however, as his master has augmented his magical powers. His greatest atrocity in the game was ordering the massacre of a peaceful village in order to frame the Player Character, who had thwarted his efforts. If you prove yourself innocent in the court, he shows no regret over the people that died, but is enraged over his minions for failing him and kills Lorne on the spot if you didn't do it yourself.

Betrayal at Baldur's Gate (HR="haunt revealer")

Examples

• Bhaal is the god of murder, and the Big Bad of the game. Sealed away within Baldur's Gate, Bhaal spreads his influence to corrupt the city and plague it with monsters. Throughout multiple Haunts, Bhaal orders his followers to murder the innocent whenever possible. These orders include having a follower create art out of the organs of a nobleman to spread fear throughout the city; commanding a swarm of carnivorous rats to devour the populace; and creating a cloud of darkness to suffocate every citizen within Baldur's Gate. In the Haunt The Dark Light of Bhaal, Bhaal uses a magical lantern to break the mind of the HR to turn them into a bloodthirsty maniac, orders the HR to kill their friends, and, if the Traitor succeeds, Bhaal has them search for more victims to slaughter. In the Haunt Battle of the Bhaalspawn, Bhaal calls for his children to gather in Baldur's Gate before influencing their minds to convince them to all fight to the death, cackling with delight as he watches. Responsible for more Haunts than any other villain in the game, Bhaal treats Baldur's Gate as little more than a playground to cause death and destruction.
• The demilich, Acererak, is the Big Bad of the Haunt Sphere of Annihilation. Prior to the Haunt, Acererak corrupted the mind of the Traitor into being his loyal servant. Giving the Traitor the titular Sphere of Annihilation, as well as a talisman to control said sphere, Acererak orders the Traitor to use the sphere to gather souls for Acererak to feast upon. During the Haunt, Acererak has the Traitor use the sphere in an attempt to kill and absorb the soul of every citizen within Baldur's Gate. If the Traitor succeeds, Acererak thanks the Traitor by killing them and devouring their soul as well. In the Haunt The Death Curse, to stack up on souls, Acererak and Ras Nsi send a Yuan-Ti to gather souls to hasten the spread of the titular Death Curse, intending to have it infect the entire world. If the adventurers discover a note left by Ras Nsi, it's revealed that Acererak has infected his own ally with the curse as well.
• Hail Olhydra!: The titular Olhydra, the Princess of Evil Water, is a archomental from the Elemental Plane of Water. Wishing to control the Material Plane, Olhydra transforms the HR into a Morkoth before brainwashing them into being her servant. She then opens up a portal to her home plane in an attempt to flood Baldur's Gate and drown all of its inhabitants. If the Traitor succeeds in assisting Olhydra in her goal, Olhydra will enter the Material Plane to expand her rule, intending to flood the entire planet to make it her own.
• You'll Have The House Slaad With That: The Traitor from this Haunt is secretly a Death Slaad who disguised itself as an adventurer. Prior to the Haunt, the Death Slaad sent its offspring to attack the heroes, only to kill its own children to earn the trust of the heroes. While traveling with the heroes, the Death Slaad secretly implanted several Slaad Tadpoles inside them that will eat the adventurers from the inside. When the tadpoles are ready to emerge, the Death Slaad reveals its true form to the adventurers, and tells them about the Death Slaad placed inside them solely to see them panic. If the Death Slaad succeeds in killing all of the heroes, it'll note how it inflicted the same fate upon countless other adventuring groups in the past for its own amusement, before moving on to infect all citizens of Baldur's Gate with its spawn, intending to have the city to be the first of many to be infested.

Honor Among Thieves

Examples

• Szass Tam, master of Thay, is an evil Lich who was no longer content to be one of the ruling Zulkirs. Luring in the population of the capital city, Szass Tam cast the Beckoning Death to consume the souls of the people and turn them into undead abominations he used to conquer the entire land. Sending his agents through the land to expand his empire, Szass Tam is the mastermind behind the scheme to unleash the Beckoning Death upon Neverwinter and expand his domain.
• Sofina, an undead Red Wizard and servant of Szass Tam, assisted in the Beckoning Death and blocked numerous civilians from fleeing their horrific demise. Infiltrating Neverwinter and placing its Lord Neverember into a coma to secure the rise of Forge Fitzwilliam, Sofina assists in all Forge's depravities and betrayals. Summoning the Beckoning Death, Sofina plots to unleash it on the civilians of Neverwinter only to furiously rain magical destruction upon the city when the attempt fails.
• Forge Fitzwilliam is a seemingly charming con artist, who betrays his old friends Edgin and Holga while "adopting" Edgin's daughter Kyra out of sheer delight in having someone he can shape and mold to look up to him while poisoning her against her father. Forge runs Neverwinter as a despot, with killer Gladiator Games and efforts to wipe out the forest druids. Plotting to flee with his treasure, Forge lures the entire city to the latest games to die in the Beckoning Death and threatens to murder Kira should Edgin try to stop him.

Kingdoms of Kalamar

Examples

• Harvest of Darkness: Y'nene is a powerful vampire and servant of evil gods. Responsible for a multitude of atrocities and human sacrifices, Y'nene reveled in his vampirism for centuries until growing bored. Seeking to sacrifice a hundred virgin maidens to the dark god Zazimash, Y'nene would create a hundred new vampires and set them loose upon the world for a mass of slaughter. Sealed away in defeat, Y'nene attempts to lure power hungry villains to unleash him and then find one hundred new virgins to sacrifice and complete his plan.
• The Fate of Heroes: The vicious half-fiend Baletak and his Child by Rape, Teelia, are a vicious "Brains and Brawn" duo mutually united by their love of bloodshed. Teelia schemes to enact a gigantic war between two nations, with Baletak acting as the frontman for this. Baletak assassinates at Teelia's whin and tears apart the countryside himself, mangling entire families to death, all so the two may plunge the land into as much death as possible.
• Garden of the Plantmaster: Lamash is a wood demon who was summoned by the Planemaster Clahz in his bountiful gardens. Torturing Clahz for years in horrific ways. Lamash turns the gardens into a place of corruption, having his creatures kill people, while twisting others into corrupted and tortured monstrosities. Patiently, Lamash intends to unleash them all over Tellene, to make the world his garden where all within are turned into twisted and tormented forms of life for him to play with.
• Blood and Shadows: The Dark Elves of Tellene:
  • Joleriel Halibeth was the youngest daughter of the twilight elves' House Halibeth. Becoming a worshipper of the Hatemonger. Joleriel converted many to his worship and killed her entire family before blaming her fiancé on their wedding day, killing him and massacring the town they were in to begin a war with the lowland elves. With no true intention of winning the war, Joleriel sacrificed many of her own people, prolonging the bloody conflict to put the twilight elves further under her thumb and lure them towards evil where she would set up a system of nightmarish tyranny in the name of the Hatemonger.
  • Drow'deltha, granddaughter of Joleriel and the Hatemonger, murdered her own mother Meluria and attempted to have her twin sister Persephinae murderedto seize control. Known for torturing servants and peasants for the joy of it, Drow'deltha eventually changed the theocracy to worship only her, launching a brutal Civil War to subjugate her own people. Intending on killing her sister and even dethroning and replacing her own grandfather, Drow'deltha embarked on a campaign to subject all the elves to genocide or to her own tyranny.

Planescape

Tabletop Game

Examples

• Duke Rowan Darkwood, the Factol of the Fated, was once a righteous man who lost everything he loved, but ultimately decided to spend the rest of his life obtaining power no matter the cost. After wandering the planes for a time, he set his sights on Sigil, the city at the center of the Multiverse. He quickly usurped leadership of the Fated through blackmail and abused the faction's position as Sigil's tax collectors to gain money and prestige, at the cost of ruining countless lives. Realizing the Lady of Pain was the true master of the city, he planned her downfall by using the ancient Sigil spell to steal control away from her after discovering it from a mage entrapped in the Ebony Gem. To distract the other fourteen factions, Rowan masterminded the Faction War by pitting the lawful and chaotic factions against each other. He seduced the mentally ill young factol of the Mercykillers, sold her to an eternity of slavery to fiends, and tricked her faction into releasing dangerous criminals who murdered several other rival factols. The ensuing war resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people due to the devastating battles and from the Lady of Pain cutting off fresh food, water, and air when she closed the portals in and out of the city. Darkwood was sent to the mazes with the other factols, only to escape through ingenuity. Sent back 500 years, he went insane awaiting his vengeance, only to be sent back 10,000 years by the Lady the second time. Ultimately becoming the mage who created the Sigil spell, Rowan intended to enslave the Lady of Pain and turn Sigil and all its people into his playthings for all eternity.
• Alluvius Ruskin is a seemingly-kind old shop keeper who runs Tivvum's Antiquities, Sigil's largest portal key shop, but in truth hides dark secrets and terrible ambitions. Unbeknownst to anyone, Ruskin is an Incantifier, a sect of mages who absorb magic to gain power and immortality. Ruskin secretly wishes to find the Ebony Gem and use its power to dethrone the Lady of Pain. To find it, she masterminded a plot known as the Mindtrapper Conspiracy. Her pawn, a Dustman named Qaida, tricks unwitting victims into selling their bodies after death while secretly marking them to be murdered by Ruskin's other servant, the shadow fiend Ly'kritch. The fiend entraps their souls into gems, which it trades to other fiends to find the Ebony Gem. The traded gems are then given to Ruskin, who either devours the souls within for knowledge or sells them to be used as portal keys. Both processes annihilate the victim's souls and wipe them from existence, something Ruskin both knows and revels in. Ultimately, Ruskin intended to use the Sigil spell to cast down the Lady and absorb all the magic from Sigil, killing everything in the process.
• Harbinger House module: Sougad Lawshredder is an insane murderer who carved a bloody path of terror through Sigil in his mad quest to obtain godhood. Sougad was interred in the titular Harbinger House because he had a divine spark like all the other residents. A succubus named Nari learned of a powerful artifact that was speeding up the ascensions in Harbinger House and came upon Sougad when she infiltrated it. He told her of an evil ritual that would transform its user into a god, not telling her it only works on those who already have the spark. She releases Sougad to serve as a distraction while she conducts the ritual, while Sougad works on completing it himself. In the ritual, Sougad murders thirteen lawful victims by cutting each one a cumulative number of times, keeping them alive while slicing into them with the needed number of cuts. He further tortures his victims by electrocuting them with Shocking Grasp and forced them to suffer horrific visions with his Fear power. Driven from Sigil in the middle of his killing spree, he burns down a temple to a local power and kills all the worshippers because they weren't worshipping him. Returning to Harbinger House in the finale, he tricks Nari into killing herself when her ritual fails. If his ritual succeeds, Sougad's divine spark ignites and he becomes a lesser power of chaos and murder, free to spread suffering across the planes.
• Something Wild module: Garond the Claw is a devout servant of Malar, the evil god of the hunt, and masterminded a horrible scheme to greatly spread the power of his god. Normally content to hunt living beings in his god's domain, Garond one day found a secret portal to the Beastlands, one of the heavenly planes. Garond concocted a twofold plan when he found this untamed plane full of animal life. In the beginning, he used magical bowls to capture the souls of the spirits inhibiting the Beastlands. The spirits, taking the forms of sapient animals, were either hunted for sport by Malar's followers or fed to the evil god itself. Either way, the spirits were utterly destroyed when killed outside of the Beastlands. Eventually, Garond sought to move Malar's entire realm to the Beastlands permanently. Discovering a powerful mage called The One communing with the Beastlands itself, he kidnapped a dream hunter and forced her to give The One horrible nightmares of being hunted down and torn to shreds again and again. Connected to the Beastlands, the nightmares began twisting the plane and its inhabitants to savagery and evil, ultimately with the intent to transform the plane into a nightmarish realm worthy of his dark master.

Other Media

• Planescape: Torment: "The Practical Incarnation" is a former incarnation of the Nameless One. Combining a wicked intellect with a lack of morals, the Practical enslaved an adventuring party to him, most notably by convincing a githzerai to follow him based on a religion the Practical invented. The Practical manipulated and murdered countless people, but the worst was what he did to the one woman who deeply loved him: after winning her love, he murdered her so her ghost, bound to the material plane by that love, would remain as a guide for future incarnations should the Practical's quest fail. At the end, the Practical confronts the current incarnation of the Nameless One and attempts to absorb him into the Practical's own consciousness along with all the others so the Practical can achieve his goals.

Ravenloft

Examples

• The Gentleman Caller is an Incubus who delighted in destroying the minds and hearts of others before fleeing the angel Isolde by escaping into the Mists. Becoming trapped there, the Caller is hunted by Isolde and seeks to escape the Demiplane of Dread, as well as sow destruction for its own sake. In Carnival, he seduces a young woman who goes to Isolde's side, incites a riot of people whom he later murders and attempts to kill his seduction victim so "Isolde's failure may be complete!" The Caller stalks the Lands of Mists, raping women to spawn half-fiend children while causing conflicts for his own ends. In one such incident, he raped Gabrielle Adarre to father her wicked son Malocchio, the memory of their night being so traumatic that she was driven catatonic when her memory of it was restored. Using his children as pawns for greater bloodshed and to help him free himself, the Caller remains one of the single most vile beings in the Demiplane of Dread and one of the most wicked Incubi in all the planes.
• Malocchio Aderre, the Dukkar, is the son of Gabrielle Aderre and the Gentleman Caller. Embracing his monstrous heritage, Malocchio used his powers to break innocents and toy with their minds, destroying and manipulating them. Not even his mother was safe, with Malocchio shattering her mind and leaving her cataonic. The ostensible ruler of Invidia now, Malocchio persecutes the Vistani people, seeking to subject them to genocide so he may reign unchallenged
• Frantisek Markov, Darklord of Markovia, was a pig farmer turned "surgeon" who would experiment on animals, resulting in their painful deaths. When his kind wife found out, Frantisek made her his newest experiment, where she lingered for three days in agony before succumbing to death. Becoming Darklord of Markovia, Frantisek creates the "Broken Ones", beast men who are subject to agonizing experiments. Any passers-by are turned into his experiments as well and devolved into Broken Ones, with the process so agonizing that many lose their minds and become Frantisek Markov's broken slaves in his kingdom of madness and horror.
• The pre-5th edition Tsien Chiang, Darklord of I'Cath, was a wicked princess of Kara-Tur who murdered her own father to seize power. Fascinated by the number four and its relation to death, she drew in four suitors to fight to the death before marrying the last, having a daughter and killing her husband. Having done this four times to gain four daughters, she bound her children's souls to magical bells to control them and frequently abused the fourth, the goodhearted girl Nightingale. Hunting for the secrets of immortality, Tsien Chiang would brutally torture scholars without counting while waging brutal wars and murdering her daughters' own suitors to erect fortresses of their bones. Finally attempting to murder Nightingale to spite the gods and killing even the Emperor, Tsien Chiang found herself damned and claimed by the Mists. As Darklord of I'Cath, no traveler is safe from her, and many find themselves turned into raw materials for her new fortress.
• Vlad Drakov, Darklord of Falkovnia, is one of the least supernatural Darklords, and unmistakably one of the most evil. Vlad was a mercenary captain from Taladas who arrived in the Mists and, after massacring a village, was driven off where he founded the kingdom of Falkovnia. A gruesome tyrant, Drakov enslaves or murders any nonhuman found in his borders and oppresses the people hideously, being a Serial Rapist who claims the right of First Night on any woman for her wedding night and believing women serve no purpose save childbirth. Drakov perpetrates horrific military campaigns with brutal massacres, and his own people suffer no better, with Drakov having people impaled for minor or imagined crimes, even being sure to impale at least one a night for his evening meal. The setting itself even concludes that if the Mists are a hell for those trapped there, "few deserve it more than Drakov".
• Daclaud Heinfroth, aka Dr. Dominiani, Darklord of Dominia, is the first of the Cerebral Vampires. Desperate to uncover the truth behind madness, Dominiani experiments on all those who fall into his clutches with horrific mental torture until they are insane, wasted shells. Those he tires of are given to his vampire orderlies or hungry dogs to rip apart. To seize greater power, Doniniani attempted to manipulate a bloody war against Kartakass to murder its lord Harkon Lukas and his own lover, Lukas's daughter Akriel. Involved in the plot to destroy famed monster hunter van Richten, Dominiani only cared that he could break the mind of such a famous stalwart against the darkness of Ravenloft.
• Baron Bakholis, former Darklord of Invidia, Gabrielle's predecessor, was a savage man well known for levying harsh taxes, killing countless innocents and abducting women to rape. Upon a woman he desired refusing his advances, Bakholis abducted her and her lover, having him eaten alive and tortured while she was subjected to gang rape by his henchmen. As she died, she cursed him with lycanthropy. Initially horrified when he devoured his own family, Bakholis came to love his curse and began killing people at higher rates than before, delighting in the savage murder of those who crossed his path, distinct as one of the few Darklords to relish in his curse.
• Jacqueline Montarri was a beautiful, vain thief who sought the ultimate heist in Castle Ravenloft. Murdering the elderly Vistani leader Madam Eva, Montarri was caught by the Vistani and sentenced to live even with her head removed. Hunting her true head, Montarri takes the heads of beautiful women with her vorpal blade, replacing and utilizing them as necessary. Devious and cruel, Montarri cares nothing for the fact that her heads still live, consigning them to torment in her keep as they live in horrendous pain and madness, steadily growing in torment as long as Montarri lives.
• Feast of Goblyns: Radaga is a ruthless, vain cleric who made a deal with the Dark Powers for youth and beauty. Obtaining the Crown of Souls, Radaga drains the life from women to stay beautiful, twisting other men into goblyns or undead monsters and directing them to massacre all in their path. Torturing a handsome woodsman's wife and family to death for the "crime" of not adoring her before torturing him in turn, Radaga utilizes his dying curse against others for her amusement. Radaga is also fond of Human Sacrifice and torture, intent on killing until she has carved out her own domain.
• The Beast Within: Mayor Charles de Tantoine is a Loup du Noir who often gives in to his bloodlust to don his wolfskin and become a savage werewolf, stalking and killing innocent people. Having gone on a killing spree in another town, Charles framed many innocent people for his crime to see them executed. Coming to Villebois, Charles became mayor after killing all his political opponents, and has used his magic of suggestion to frame over a dozen innocents for his crimes, having them hanged while truly believing they are guilty of lycanthropic murders. Charles even induces people to a stoic philosophy with public torture should they break it, while luring in travelers to serve as new victims for his endless bloodlust.
• Masque of the Red Death spinoff:
  • Dracula is one of the eldest and mightiest of the Red Death's servants. As Vlad the Impaler, Dracula subjected 100,000 Turkish soldiers to the stake, and his appetite for suffering was so great that he put entire villages to the sword, with men, women and children impaled and left to suffer for hours in agony. As a vampire, Dracula, who has killed so many in Transylvania that the region suffers from a population problem, later emerges to do the same to other regions. Happily turning the loved ones of his enemies, Dracula savors watching them trying to kill one another after, and is a vicious predator as either man or undead.
  • Delphine LaLaurie is initially presented as a charming socialite in New Orleans's French Quarter. In truth, Delphine was a Serial Killer who focused on her slaves, having countless innocents tortured and murdered with the "lucky" ones having eyes or tongues removed. After being driven from Louisiana by a mob, Delphine moves from region to region, mentally dominating her own family into participating in her actions and always aiming for areas where she has fresh access to servants who can never please her, long before she proceeds to torture and slaughter them as well.

Spelljammer

Examples

• Wildspace: Shazogroth is a beholder who was exiled from his people for his political views. Blinded and banished, the evil beholder ended up becoming a mage thanks to the group called the Arcane and learned of a superweapon called the Ravager. Becoming the captain Jon Tobart in disguise to convince the heroes to lead him to the items he needs to power the Ravager, Shazogroth intends on exterminating all the other Beholders he can. Not content to stop there, he intends to wipe out the heroes' homeworld and feeding on all the lives there to empower the Ravager before moving in, sacrificing billions to fuel his ship and plans of conquest.
• Crystal Spheres: T'laan is an ancient vampire that made a pact with Death itself to spread terror throughout the cosmos. Fascinated with mortal life, T'laan would experiment on and vivisect his victims, and indulges his baser instincts by raping and murdering women he captured. At the first world he came upon, T'laan led the genocide of the native population and fed upon the newly spawned vampires he created, all to blacken out the native star and create an undead haven called Darkspace. Setting his sights next on the heroic Greatspace, T'laan charmed the system's king before murdering him, framing his son, and sending assassins to silence him. T'laan then sought to blacken the local star as well to wipe all life from the system, and then take the remaining survivors to Darkspace to use as a self-replenishing food source.
• The Legend of Spelljammer: The Fool is a powerful lich that dwells in the bowels of the eponymous Spelljammer and is the greatest threat to those that live upon it. As a mortal captain named Romar, the Fool used the Spelljammer to go on a revenge-fueled rampage, and called on demonic pacts to turn him undead when the ship turned against him. Seeking to slaughter everyone onboard and convert them into his thralls, The Fool manipulates a group of human supremacists to bomb the elven academy and frame the goblinoid; gifts the treacherous neogi a specialized plague to wipe out the beholders; and sends assassins to murder the various factional leaders to ignite a massive Civil War. When a new captain was chosen, the Fool intended to lead a genocide of the whole ship as they were weak and starving, and use the Spelljammer's might to launch an extermination of all life.
• The Astromundi Cluster: Lugribossk is the proxy of the Illithid deity Ilsensine and the god of the mind flayers of Clusterspace. In ancient days, Lugribossk appeared before a society of mutant humans and answered their prayers of vengeance by using his divine power to destroy the entire world of Astromundi in a great cataclysm that claimed the lives of most of the world's inhabitants and shattered the planet. Turning these mutants into the first mind flayes, Lugribossk teaches them a culture of brutal oppression where slaves are treated as objects and any Illithid dissenters are put to death as heretics. Seeking to ensure mind flayer dominance in the cluster, he masterminds an act of ultimate evil, the Sundeath Apocalypse. Gifting his people an ancient artifact called the Sunslayer, he orders them to put out the twin suns and plunge the entire system into an eternal night that would kill billions. The remaining survivors would then be hunted down to used as slaves, food, and breeding fodder for the mind flayer war machine as they intend to spread Lugribossk's dark empire throughout the cosmos.

Other Settings

Birthright

Examples

• Raesene was once the illegitimate son of the King of Andu. Slowly succumbing to a hunger for power and the growing rage inside him, Raesene joined the dark god Azrai and massacred his own people. Becoming the Gorgon upon absorbing some of Azrai's essence, he carved out the kingdom the Gorgon's Crown where he focuses on brutal conquest, harvesting bloodlines to kill their users and take them via Bloodtheft. Desiring to take the entire world for his own, the Gorgon brutally exterminates entire kingdoms that resist him.
• Rhuobhe loathed how humans once mistreated elven forests and became a notorious hunter of them, earning the name Manslayer for his savage zeal. Joining Azrai to exterminate humankind, Rhuobhe was the only elf who didn't desert him when it became clear what a monster Azrai was. Establishing his own nation, Rhuobhe seeks to kill humans, even helping to manipulate wars to trick them into killing one another. Rhuobhe even declares once he has killed every human man, woman and child, he will move on to goblins as well, even willing to torture and kill any elves who disagree with his genocidal mania, openly stating that he would see every elf dead if it meant humankind's extermination.

Ghostwalk

Examples

• Durgerth The Conqueror was a brutal barbarian warlord who converged upon Manifest, seeking to bring the god Aluvan under his heel. Massacring countless innocents and obliterating villages in his path, Durgerth intended to conquer death in Manifest. After conquering the city and learning his quest was in vain, Durgerth had Manifest massacred and burned, slaughtering elves around and destroying their sacred spirit trees which contain the souls of other elves before attempting to resume his conquests.
• Xaphan came to Inuitea in the service of the wicked god Orcus. Having every living thing killed and raised as undead monsters, Xaphan began the Lich Wars upon leaving Inuitea, attempting to invade all other nations to kill all that lived there. Raising every soul that fell to join his forces, Xaphan led a campaign of death scarcely seen by the world of Ghostwalk.
• The Devil's Cellar adventure: Stri'sn is a Yuan-Ti who serves the god of undeath, Orcus. In a scheme to assassinate a leader of Manifest, Stri'sn assists in brainwashing and murder with the goal of eventually wiping out Manifest. Known for her penchant for torture, Stri'sn takes many innocents and tortures them physically and psychologically for weeks, sacrificing some to Orcus while spending almost all her time torturing the rest in order to enjoy herself.

Greyhawk

Examples

• Iuz The Evil is the cambion child of the demon lord Graz'zt and the human witch Iggwilv. In his early career, Iuz rallied an army and launched a series of brutal campaigns that gave him the name "Lord Of Pain"; a name also earned by the atrocities he committed on innocents. Eventually, Iuz gathered powerful sorcerers and drained them of life to add their powers to his in a path to godhood. Eventually becoming a demigod, Iuz ended up feared by all those who knew him, with no care towards either of his parents or any in his way. He eventually resorted to murdering his formerly loyal servants and replacing them with Fiends solely for convenience and power.
• Vecna, the God of Secrets and Lichdom, is a once-human wizard who became the most feared of liches. One of the most monstrous villains to ever emerge from Oerth, Vecna's evil deeds have filled volumes, having conducted murders, massacres and in one instance at the city of Fleeth shortly after becoming a lich. When Vecna was unsatisfied with how the city's officials begged for mercy, Vecna had everyone in the city tortured and massacred before sparing said officials just to let them live with the agony. Vecna has attempted to kill all living things to revive them in a kingdom of undeath, before becoming a god himself. In the adventure Die, Vecna, Die, his most audacious act was attempting to consume all reality and kill everyone who existed, solely to remake it with himself as the supreme god. One of the most recognizable and monstrous villains in all of Dungeons and Dragons, Vecna is never satisfied no matter how high he climbs, and will never stop trying for more power regardless of the countless innocent beings who suffer and die for it.
• Ivid V, after murdering 122 siblings to take control of his kingdom before murdering his father, proves to be a warmongering tyrant who wages battles and wars that are best defined as genocide and has depopulated entire regions, with nearly half the region's populace massacred and hideously tortured. Ivid routinely wipes out entire families, slaughtering everyone remotely connected to his victims while condemning many to be tortured, healed, and tortured again for as long as he desires. Worse still is the Screaming Column, a structure where victims are beheaded with a blunt axe and their still living heads added to the column while aware and in pain forever.

Midnight

• The wicked god Izrador fell to Aryth long ago. Rising anew, Izrador launched brutal campaigns to take over the lands before resorting to more subtle means. Achieving victory, Izrador runs a nightmarishly despotic regime, with slavery, sacrifice, and more, all while seeking genocide on the remaining elves and dwarves. Draining the land of magic with mirrors that require Human Sacrifice, Izrador enslaves the souls of his victims and converts them to hideous undead monstrosities known as the Fell. Even his own elites fare no better, as one of his vaunted Night Kings was once a hero tortured and broken by Izrador into a corrupt shell of himself. Seeking to drain all of Aryth's magic, Izrador's ultimate plan is to return to the heavens and take over, overthrowing the gods of light and extending his evil reign across the cosmos.

Mystara

Examples

• Baron Ludwig von Hendriks is an insane aristocrat who rules the Barony of the Black Eagle. Von Hendriks has raids conducted where innocent halflings are often taken and enslaved, and is most infamous for the tortures he inflicts. In the Black Eagle Barony, being accused of a crime gets one put before his court. The problem is von Hendriks only cares how loud the victims can scream and devises nasty tortures that he's used on countless innocents.
• Bargle the Infamous, the Baron's former right hand man, is just as evil. As the Black Eagle Barony's number two, Bargle enforced its brutal reign of terror, and deserted it when it fell. Bargle had used many innocents and captives in twisted experiments. He later participated in destroying the flying city of the gnomes and captured a well-known cleric to father his child on her, after presenting her with the tortured corpse of her husband.

Ptolus

• Ghul, the Half-God, pretended to be the half-demon son of the previous villain in order to establish a base of power he called Goth Gulgamel in the great spire. Taking the name the Skull King, Ghul conducted horrible experiments to create and breed an army, while sacrificing children to desecrate his temples, imprisoning the souls of unborn babies as well to experiment on and trap eternally. Unleashing his armies, the Shrieking Hordes, in the Ghulwar to raze entire lands and murder countless innocents, Ghul held a special hatred for elves, many of whom were tortured to death in his dungeons. Some were twisted and turned into darker beings known as Harrow Elves, whom Ghul spared solely for the dark joy of seeing the devastation their new lives gave them. Upon being pushed back, Ghul later unleashed a brutal winter to freeze and starve many innocents to death, being remembered, for good reason, as one of the worst villains in the history of the world.

Scarred Lands

• Mormo is the titan of poison, snakes, and evil witches and hags. In perhaps her most significant act, when Gormoth—another titan who was technically her brother—created the viren—the first sapient race to be created by the Titans—she felt jealous of his creation and poisoned him with a species of parasitic worms so she could steal his creation, said worm infestation leaving Gormoth completely helpless and in agony for centuries as he writhed beneath the ground. Even when he finally recovered he was both permanently disfigured and Driven to Madness, and thus went around trying to warp countless other creatures into monsters. Additionally, Mormo was responsible for creating numerous Always Chaotic Evil races, including most species of hag; and frequently required Human Sacrifice, usually by throwing people into pits full of snakes or poisoning them to death. She was also extremely petty and cruel even to her own loyal followers. In one case, when a powerful hag spellcaster invented a spell to create an entirely new race of creatures, a jealous Mormo cursed the hag by turning her into a Darkwomb. Mormo even tortured her own child Chardun endlessly until he became the God of Evil she desired.

Other Media

Comic Books

Examples

• Advanced Dungeons And Dragons' issues #1-4: Imgig Zu is the ruler of a group of extraplanar beings who once seduced the goddess Selune to obtain access to the world. Defeated and sealed off, Imgig Zu managed to escape and later murders the mage who helped save Selune while spitefully crippling his son's hands and leaving him alive to enjoy his failure. Imgig Zu abducts other mages while letting his Drow ally Kilili murder them in gladiator duels for his amusement, all while intending on unleashing his people upon Toril to slaughter all they can so he may rule the world.
• Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons, written by Patrick Rothfuss & Jim Zub: Sebastian and Lucy are a duo of sorcerers who have been kidnapping babies and stealing shards to start a ritual to "cleanse" the world. Posing as innocent farmers whose child was kidnapped, they trick the Smiths into attacking a village of innocent ogres. They then use the chaos as a distraction to kidnap an ogre baby and steal a shard to complete the ritual. The duo then attempts to sacrifice six babies of various races to bring down the sun in an attempt to end all life in the world.

Films

Examples

• Dungeons & Dragons (2000) & Wrath of the Dragon God: The wicked Damodar is first the right-hand-man of Profion, seeking to dominate all Izmir. Damodar kills those in his path to recover a map that leads to the staff of dragons, torturing the heroine Marina for its location as well. Seemingly slain, Damodar returns a century hence while killing more people to obtain the Dragon Orb to awaken the evil Faluzure, the Dragon God of Decay and Undeath. Killing and torturing even more people, Damodar requests the dragon burn all Izmir to massacre the people, all for petty revenge on their ancestors for his first and well-deserved end.
• The Book of Vile Darkness:
  • Lord Shathrax is an Evil Sorcerer who covets the titular Book, seeking to recreate it with his own ends. Shathrax orders the Knights of the New Sun massacred while kidnapping the purest among them, the father of hero Grayson, and subjects him to constant torture to extract the "liquid pain" to use as ink for the Book. When Grayson finally makes it to him, Shathrax reveals Grayson was always his intended target, torturing him instead to complete the Book. Shathrax's final goal is to bring back the era of darkness the Book brought upon the kingdom of Karkoth centuries ago, to run the gutters red with the blood of all those he deems weak until all that is left is a kingdom of the strong and savage for him to rule over.
  • Bezz, the Vermin-Lord, matches his own master in evil, personally carrying out the slaughter of the Knights of the New Sun and more bloodshed besides. When Grayson integrates himself into Bezz's band—by being forced to kill one of its other members on Bezz's initiative—he and the others ingratiate themselves with a small town. When Bezz and the others try to make off with the town's treasure, Bezz deliberately forsakes a more peaceful solution to murder the town's leader while having everyone else in the town massacred to the last man. Having even loyal members of his own band killed afterwards, Bezz reveals to the last member Akordia, who's grown to love Grayson, that he only desires to see Karkorth plunged into darkness in accordance with his own Social Darwinist beliefs, taunting her that any punishment she could devise for Grayson will pale to the excruciation he and Shathrax put him through.

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