"The descendants of those who imprisoned me here shall die — quickly, if they grovel for mercy. All will make a useful contribution, however. They are the raw materials for my army of conquest!"
— Xakhaz, Beneath Nightmare Castle (Fighting Fantasy)
Gamebooks can have vile villains.
Entries within each group are by publication date.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
The following have their own pages
- DC Literature (Super Powers Which Way Books)
- Goosebumps
- Indiana Jones
- Transformers
Other Examples
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Examples
- Prisoner of the Ant People & War with the Evil Power Master, by R.A. Montgomery: The Evil Power Master is the leader of an alliance of planets that were angered by being rejected for membership in the Lacoonian System, and plans to conquer the Lacoonian System. In his first outing, he develops a weapon that can destroy the universe. In his second outing, he is far more direct, destroying two planets, Haemog and Arouth, killing billions of beings. He threatens to destroy three more planets, including Earth, if the Lacoonian System does not surrender to him. From there the story branches into different paths: He takes the form of marine biologists and attempts to destroy the planet Lacoon, the System's capital; he destroys a colony on the planet Follop. In some endings, he is defeated, but at a terrible cost, with his destroying three more planets before he is defeated.
- Space Vampire, by Edward Packard: The titular Space Vampire is an invader from the planet Akbar who acts more like a Serial Killer than anything else. Sneaking aboard the civilian ship Petya, the Space Vampire kills a passenger every night, with several endings involving the Space Vampire reaching Earth in order to go on a killing spree. No matter the story path, the Space Vampire leaves a trail of bodies in his wake. In one ending, the Space Vampire kills everyone on Petya, except for a teenage girl, which he intends to turn into a vampire so she can help him murder everyone on a space colony. If you choose not to confront the space vampire, he follows you on into a science vessel and murders the entire crew. Not needing to kill humans to survive, the Space Vampire kills for his own amusement rather than for survival.
- Journey to the Year 3000 Super Adventure, by Edward Packard: Styx Mori is an evil dictator who controls the world in the year 3000. He has enslaved everyone on the planet; the lucky ones are forced to build monuments to his ego like his summer palace, while the unlucky ones are put into military prisons where they are beaten, starved and deprived of sleep. Some people have escaped to planets like Mars to be free from his tyranny, but he despises the idea of anyone living outside of his rule and sends his military forces to Mars to kill any rebels they find. He is shown to be very cruel in how he deals with dissent, attempting to send the main character in a rocket ship to either freeze to death on Mars or burn alive in the sun.
- Tattoo of Death, by R.A. Montgomery: Big Guy is the leader of the Red Flowers Gang and Anaconda is his right-hand man. Under Big Guy's direction, the Red Flower Gang is involved in a human trafficking operation. Big Guy takes money from poor families in China, and sends them from China to America in a tramp steamer, where living conditions are poor and many die during the trip. When the steamers reach America, Big Guy forces the Chinese immigrants into smaller boats a mile or two offshore, with many drowning or getting captured by immigration officials. Anaconda is Big Guy's point man in Los Angles, recruiting children to join the Red Flowers Gang. During the story, Big Guy and Anaconda are shown to be ruthless criminals, with Anaconda willing to kill gang members, who are young boys, for being a liability, either brutally killing them by hand or feeding them to a shark. One ending involves the protagonist tipping of the cops about Big Guy and Anaconda's operation, but when the cops investigate the drop off point, the criminals are long gone, having murdered all the immigrants they were transporting that day, leaving a trail of bodies scattered on the beach.
Examples
- Issue #1's "House of Death": Judge Death is, as usual, presented as a maniac who desires to spread death across the world. Brought back with the dimensional generator, Judge Death used the Brotherhood of Baal to kidnap and murder hundreds of people. When Judge Dredd arrived to investigate the matter, Death sends his fellow Dark Judges after him and then tries to kill him personally, succeeding in one of the endings, after which he proudly announces his intention to slaughter the entire population of Mega-City One.
- Issue #2's "Dragoncorpse" & Issue #4's "The Ring of Danu": Elfric is a Dev-El, who enjoys bringing death and destruction to all mortals, and especially to his Arch-Enemy, Sláine. Using an ancient dragon as his vessel, Elfric slaughtered the dwarves and destroyed their village the moment he was freed by them from a magical prison. Sending various monsters to kill and torture the remaining dwarves, Elfric accepted their offering of young women as sacrifices, gleefully devouring them. Engaging in a battle with Sláine, Elfric, in one of the endings, managed to get his hands on a magical shield, Dormath-Death's Door, which he used to unleash all the monsters from Hel upon Earth, endangering the whole world. After being defeated, Elfric tried to thwart Sláine's efforts to gain the Ring of Danu the Earth Goddess, constantly trying to torture and kill him.
- Issue #5's "Space Zombies": General Hayg is a former Souther general who decided to pursue his own ambitions. Seeing that the war between the Southers and the Norts will never end, Hayg betrayed his own people and kidnapped the Larson family, a family of genetic clones, which he wanted to use to create an army of zombie Super Soldiers. Reducing the father of the family to a feral monster, Hayg sent him to kill Rogue Trooper when the latter arrived to his base to stop him. Openly announcing his desire to use his army of zombies to destroy both the Southers and the Norts and slaughter millions, Hayg will try to trick Rogue Trooper to surrender to him in exchange for his sparing the child of the family, and upon succeeding in one of the endings, Hayg gleefully decided to experiment on the child anyway, after he finishes torturing Rogue Trooper.
Examples
- City of Thieves & The Port of Peril: Zanbar Bone, aka the Night Prince, is an Evil Sorcerer who murdered his own parents for their fortune, and began to sacrifice fellow students at his academy for power. Defeated, Bone later established his own base of operations where he also secretly rules Blacksand through Azek Vazur, causing untold atrocities and torture. Zanbar Bone happily sacrifices innocents for power, and unleashes his Moondog hellhounds to run rampant and kill innocents when he is denied a victim. Later revived, he leads his armies to the slaughter, rising to demonhood and being known as the potential Antichrist of Titan.
- Island of the Lizard King: The Lizard King, once a chieftain of the lizard men of Fire Island, took over the island's penal colony and converts it into a slave camp, forcing hundreds of prisoners to toil away in the island's gold mines, resulting in their deaths. Eager to ensure his dominance, the Lizard King bonds with a powerful Gonchong to make himself invincible and immortal, and launches raids across numerous islands around Fire Island over the course of several years, abducting more slaves when his current batch runs out and leaving numerous coastal villages in ruins, as well as conducting inhumane experiments on prisoners and even his own lizard men servants to ensure total control over his subjects and his eternal dominance.
- House of Hell: On modern-day Earth instead of Titan, Lord Kelnor, Earl of Drumer, is a wicked Satanist who inherited Drumer long ago while making pacts with a powerful demon known as The Master who takes the form of his butler Franklins. The Master and Keldor fed Keldor's own sister to his vampire lieutenant, before taking countless people to gruesomely sacrifice for demonic power with Keldor's cult. Working in tandem, the two abduct many innocents, in many cases having them tortured with some in so much pain that they lose their minds, before they are sacrificed. When the protagonist arrives, Keldor wastes little time trying to have them sacrificed as well, willing to stop at nothing to preserve his dark powers.
- Space Assassin: Cyrus is a power-hungry despot who revels in performing cruel, inhumane, Body Horror-inducing experiments on his test subjects, from his Planet Spaceship base called the Vandervecken; every now and then, Cyrus will regularly send mutant and robotic minions on various worlds to abduct multiple lifeforms for him to mutate for his own sadistic pleasure. His experiments ranges from fusing humanoid DNA with feral genes, turning subjects into reluctant werebeasts or animals; stitching multiple lifeforms together into Frankensteinian beasts to create what he considers to be "perfect lifeforms"; and having test subjects stripped of their free will after being converted into mutants, where they will become Cyrus's servants aboard the Vandervecken. Stopping at nothing to control the galaxy through tyranny, Cyrus intends to unleash a high-powered radioactive isotope capable of spreading at rapid pace and mutating an entire world's population, simply to prove himself to be above all and to bring the universe groveling before his knees.
- Trial of Champions: Carnuss Charavask is a wicked slaver who is Driven by Envy of his brother Baron Sukumvit. Carnuss launches raids to kill, and take survivors as slaves where he proceeds to treat them atrociously to find one who will survive his brother's infamous Deathtrap Dungeon. Carnuss has them tortured mentally and physically, put through grueling tasks, and forced to kill one another until only one remains so he may send them to near-certain death, hoping to show up Sukumvit and win the plaudits himself. As one of the most deeply personal foes in the series, Carnuss will kill countless slaves, putting them through the worst torments imaginable, just for a chance to spite his superior brother.
- Creature of Havoc:
- Zharradan Marr is the former cabal mate of Zagor and Balthus Dire, and easily the worst of the so-called "Demonic Three". After the trio murdered their mentor, Volgerra Darkstorm, Zharradan struck out on his own, becoming the despotic ruler of the region around Trolltooth Pass, and aiming to extend his rule over the whole of the continent. Using mind-control drugs and fear to keep his soldiers in line, Zharradan assembled a slave-mining force and an army of cannibal monsters, sacrificing countless sapient beings to the mines and his army's hunger. Experimenting with transformational magic, Zharradan Marr transformed the Captain of the Galleykeep into the titular Creature of Havoc, then turned it loose in his dungeons, arranging for the Creature to encounter, kill, and cannibalize many members of the Galleykeep's former crew along the way. More than happy to discard his henchmen for failing him or outliving their usefulness, Zharradan's final attempt at manipulating the Creature into killing Vallaska Roue and handing over the secrets of Elven magic that would grant him mastery over the very stuff of life, cemented his position as one of the worst beings on the continent of Allansia.
- Darramouss is a half-elven lich and Zharradan Marr's personal Torture Technician, tasked with orders of carrying executions which Darramouss welcomes with delight, gleefully having prisoners privately tortured in his dungeons before sending them to their deaths. After being granted control of the Yellowstone Mines, Darramouss's first course of action is to have the mine's previous keeper, Hannicus, blinded before throwing Hannicus into his torture chamber and ending the paying system of labourers, turning Yellowstone Mines into a slave camp. Regularly organizing large-scale raids for more slaves, Darramouss even dabbles in necromatic mutations, turning selected prisoners into mindless monsters which he sends to aimlessly roam the mines and devour attempted escapees.
- Beneath Nightmare Castle: Xakhaz and his wicked right-hand-woman Senyakhaz are a pair of evil sorcerers. Long ago, Xakhaz formed the Cult of the Howling Gods, starting a war while twisting countless people into misshapen monstrosities. Defeated and sealed off, Senyakhaz works to unleash him upon an unsuspecting world, awakening him beneath Neuberg Keep while mentally enslaving Baron Tholdur and killing those in her way. Senyakhaz delivers countless innocents to Xakhaz to use as "raw materials", where he twists them into misshapen monstrosities and uses others to enhance his own body, the two even using a monstrous plague to twist people into mutilated monsters. Plotting to escape Neuberg, Xakhaz gleefully remarks on his plots to slaughter the descendants of those who imprisoned him and use them for "raw materials", raising a new army of agonized beasts to sweep over the world, killing and transforming all in Xakhaz's path.
- Crypt of the Sorcerer: Razaak, obtaining incredible power after ghastly deeds, becomes a powerful lich after being slain by the hero Kull, who he damns to living death in retribution. Originally seeking to rule Allansia, Razaak furiously spread misery and pestilence, killing many people via plague when being refused. Awakening long after, the lich begins spreading new plagues and draining the life of many victims to turn them into undead slaves. No longer content with ruling the living, Razaak means to kill every living being in Titan to make them his undead servants for all time.
- Slaves of the Abyss: Bythos is the all-powerful Master of the Abyss who has existed for several millennia and seeks to make himself stronger by abducting entire populations to be imprisoned into the Prison Dimension in his Abyss. Capable of summoning swarms of enchanted hornets, Bythos will sic his creations into towns and cities, where the hornets can sting hundreds of people at a time, causing the victims to be rendered unconscious before waking up in the eternal darkness of the abyss. If an adventurer escapes Bythos's initial hornet swarm and makes it into the Abyss to challenge Bythos, Bythos will cast a spell which will turn them into sapient crystal golems, still capable of thought and aware of their surroundings, but having absolutely no control of their bodies, where they will then be forced to serve Bythos for an eternity.
- Stealer of Souls: The wicked archmage Mordraneth perfects the art of robbing beings of their souls, with every victim killed by his designs reaped, or pulled from the afterlife. In order to create an army of living nightmares, Mordraneth tortures the souls in his captivity, subjecting them to their worst fears to manifest their nightmares, even attempting to wipe out his enemies' entire lands, while adding more to his soul collection. Unwilling to ever stop, Mordraneth will kill and enslave every soul he comes across if it fuels his ambition.
- Vault of the Vampire & Revenge of the Vampire: Count Reiner Heydrich is the ruler of Mauristania who murdered his elder brother, Siegfried, to seize control of his family holdings, and keeps his younger brother, Wilhelm, insane and terrorized. Ruling over the nearby lands, he abducts and preys upon countless young women to kill them or turn them into vampires, giving some to his sister, Katarina, for their blood. In Revenge, his influence spreads and he has an entire monastery killed with many more innocents killed to add to his undead ranks, all the while plotting to drain the life of an army of sleeping vampires to empower himself and destroy all he can to become a true vampire king.
- Tower of Destruction: Zeverin the mage is a former student of the elven wizard Elokinan. Betraying and murdering his mentor and all of his fellow mages, Zeverin enslaved their souls to eternal torment and allied with the Night Demon Relem to create a tower powered by pain and anguish. Forming a Sphere of Destruction, Zeverin begins obliterating random villages to test it, keeping prisoners locked up and tortured, including one of his renegade apprentices who he later murders via a fast aging spell. Zeverin's ultimate plan is to open a path to the pits of Hell and unleash demon hordes on Allansia, believing he will be allowed to rule what remains.
- The Crimson Tide: Eunuch Pantu, a sapient snake-demon masquerading as a human, took over the mind of Emperor Maior, the lawful king of the Isles of Dawn, and influences Emperor Maior to reject delegations of peace with the neighboring kingdom of Hachiman. Manipulating a decade-long war to break out, Pantu enjoys a comfortable position of power while having entire villages destroyed, even hiring a personal mercenary army to capture civilians as slaves, and have anyone who attempts an audience with Emperor Maior thrown into dungeons to be tortured and killed.
- Moonrunner: Karam Gruul, The Inquisitor General of Brice, is a brilliant and devious killer who committed countless war crimes, including flame spells on a border and torture within his Tower of Inquisition. Escaping justice and intending on restarting the horrible war, Gruul also uses an undead Serial Killer to create victims, having others murdered and tortured, or mentally enslaved to become his creatures, including the story's hero who turns out to be his former Moonrunner, a lycanthropic creature forced to commit atrocities at Gruul's bequest, all so Gruul can cause as much horror as possible and escape justice forever.
- Night Dragon: The Bone Stalker Mage is a twisted half-dragon monster and the leader of the Cult of the Night Dragon. Drugging entire populations, the Bone Stalker Mage initiates a system of Human Sacrifice, massacring others and attempting to awaken the Night Dragon itself. The Bone Stalker Mage has people turned into twisted abominations, even experimenting on baby dragons to make them monsters, all to eventually end the world and kill everyone by awakening the horrific Night Dragon.
- Spellbreaker: Nazek is a mage who manipulates the hero into gaining access to Rissen abbey, whereupon he murders a mage to steal the Black Grimoire and summon the demon the Kurakil. Causing horror and misery across the land, Nazek initiates near-pogroms that result in innocents burnt alive and demons running rampant to kill others. Intent on summoning the Kurakil, Nazek means to unleash it on the world, which will result in the mass slaughter of almost every living thing.
- Knights of Doom: Unlike Lord Belgaroth and Lady Morgwyn, who embrace each other in marriage, the same can't be said for these two:
- Cadaver the Necromage, in life, was a Necromancer who destroyed the village of Myrton and turned their population into his own army of zombie serfs to Take Over the World. Slain in the past before his revival, Cadaver is even stronger and more evil as before, raising the undead to kidnap civilians across various settlements every night, besides having souls of his past victims sealed in enchanted runes adorning his crypt, aware of their predicament but unable to escape, with more spirits added with each nightly raid.
- Murgrim the Cruel is a Beast Man chieftain far more intelligent and sadistic than the rest of his kind, swearing allegiance to Belgaroth to relish in bloodlust. Carrying out massacres and burnings of entire towns with glee, Murgrim orders survivors incinerated in wooden cages, and is depicted in his penultimate confrontation dropping and raising prisoners hanging over a burning pit while delighting in their screams.
- Bloodbones: Captain Cinnabar, aka Bloodbones, is the ruler of the Port of Crabs, and an evil pirate who raids villages along the coast of the Diamond Sea, slaughtering and enslaving those he encounters. Cinnabar raids the hero's village at Clam Beach, slaughtering almost their entire family and people, prompting the hero to seek revenge. To achieve immortality, Cinnabar serves the voodoo deity Quezkari and delivers people to become tormented, mindless zombies at the hands of the priestess Ramatu, while occasionally massacring entire ships and cursing their crews to living death, sailing the waves eternally. Cinnabar also feeds the souls of his victims to Quezkari in exchange for immortality, plotting to stop at nothing in order to become the immortal pirate lord of the waves where he may pillage and kill forevermore.
- Night of the Necromancer: Unthank is the Evil Chancellor to the hero, tricking the noble lord into fighting a crusade, only to murder them upon their return to permit his Cult of the Dead to operate unrestrained. Unthank turns out to be the titular Necromancer, sacrificing innocent beings to the demonic Shadow King, having once handed over the souls of everyone in his home village for immortality, which he maintains via the death of innocents. Intending on sacrificing the hero's sister Oriana to summon the Shadow King, Unthank intends on giving the souls of the world to his dark master for power.
- Blood of the Zombies: On modern-day Earth instead of Titan, Gingrich Yurr is a psychotic Eurotrash Mad Scientist. Despising humanity, Yurr seeks to cause a Zombie Apocalypse to exterminate them all. In order to do this, Yurr begins kidnapping hundreds, performing inhuman experiments on them to transform them into the walking dead, intending to release them on the unsuspecting world to completely eradicate the living.
- The Gates of Death: Ulrakaah, the Queen of Darkness and the Mother of Demons, was once a beautiful priestess who succumbed to vanity and evil, trying to conquer Titan. Becoming a demon, Ulrakaah returns with a dark army, unleashing a demonic plague that warps its victims into demons, unleashing them upon Titan to massacre all they find so she can eventually reign over a twisted world of demonic, zombie slaves without care of who dies in the process.
Examples
- Vonotar the Traitor was once a member of the magician's guild of Sommerlund, but sought to learn evil magic in conjunction with good magic to become more powerful. He sold out his nation and his people when he revealed to the Darklords that all the Kai Order would be gathered at their monastery for the holy Feast of Fehmarn, which allowed the Darklords to massacre the Kai and pave the way for their invasion. He was given command of an undead fleet of warships and prevented aid from coming to Sommerlund by sea and sent numerous assassins out to kill Lone Wolf to prevent him from retrieving the Sommerswerd. When Lone Wolf succeeded and helped beat back the invasion, he captured and tortured a former guildmate to flee to the icy wastes of Kalte to escape the wrath of both Sommerlund and the Darklords. He took refuge with the Ice Barbarians but murdered their leader and enslaved them with magical jewelry, often forcing them to commit suicide if they resisted. Ultimately captured by Lone Wolf, he was flung through a magical gateway into another dimension where he gathered the worst criminals in Sommerlund's history and attempted to cross back over to Magnamund to wreak his vengeance. While he was ultimately slain by the coincidental arrival of Lone Wolf, he served as an effective Starter Villain and showed just how far men can fall to evil in their pursuit of power.
- Zakhan Kimah is the cruel, tyrannical usurper king of Vassagonia. He began his career by leading the Sharnazim, Vassagonia's Secret Police, and would root out and torture any potential dissidents to the Zahkan's rule. Ever power-hungry, he made a pact with the Darklords and murdered the previous Zakhan, Moudalla, to seize control of the country. In exchange for the Orb of Death, he lured Lone Wolf to Vassagonia in the guise of peace talks with the intent of handing him over to the Darklords. When Lone Wolf escaped capture, he had the innocent boat crew that carried Lone Wolf denounced as traitors, publicly executed, and their heads stuck on pikes as examples. While Lone Wolf would ultimately end up escaping his grasp and slaying one of the Darklords, he stayed in their good graces by becoming the only human nation to ally with the forces of evil. He would go on to lead a great army for the Darklords and slaughter or enslave every village or town he came across as he made his way to the neighboring capital city of Tahou. Leading the assault on the city wielding the Orb of Death, he made it clear in his taunts to Lone Wolf that he intended to raze the city and murder every innocent inside the walls of Tahou.
- Archdruid Cadak is the lord of the Naar-aligned nation of Ruel and master of the Cener Druids. Commanding his ancient cult to master the arts of poisons and plagues, he sought to make the world of Magnamund appropriate to Naar's tastes by creating a deadly plague that would wipe out all life on the planet with the exceptions of those he saw as worthy. Under his guidance, the Cener Druids bred terrible abominations to use as Cannon Fodder, used biological weapons on neighboring countries, and captured enemy soldiers and civilians to use as test subjects for their poisons and plagues. When Lone Wolf destroyed the deadly plague, he swore undying vengeance on him and all he held dear. He would go on to capture Lone Wolf's closest friend, the mage Banedon, and torture him while trying to lure Lone Wolf into a trap that would kill both of them. Failing that, he made one final attempt to enact Naar's unholy designs by using the powerful Deathstaff to summon the demoness Shamath and resurrect Vashna, the most powerful of the Darklords. he intended to use Vashna and his undead legions to overrun Magnamund and annihilate the rest of the world. His plans were again foiled by Lone Wolf and the wicked archdruid was slain, but Lone Wolf had not seen the last of him as he makes one final appearance in Naar's evil realm as Lone Wolf trekked through it. He pleaded with Lone Wolf to free him from his well-deserved torment, but he only intended to trick Lone Wolf into taking his place in eternal damnation.
Others
- Carnage: Black, White & Blood issue #1's "You Are Carnage": The Carnage symbiote, captured by the US military, is bonded to an unnamed soldier as a successor to Agent Venom. Should the soldier not possess the willpower to resist its sadistic bloodlust, or choose to give in, the Carnage symbiote takes control of him and gleefully goes on a feeding frenzy in the Metro-General Hospital's maternity ward; brutally slaughters a trio of Ani-Men committing a bank robbery; and/or massacres a squadron of NYPD officers. Recaptured by the military after a horrifying rampage, the symbiote consumes its host from the inside-out until nothing but bones remain.
