Procrustes puts to bed the notion that his guests will get out alive.
"And when Haman saw that Mordecai would neither kneel nor prostrate himself before him, Haman became full of wrath. But it seemed contemptible to him to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had told him Mordecai's nationality, and Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout Ahasuerus's entire kingdom, Mordecai's people."
— Book of Esther, 3:5-3:6
Mythology and Religion provide humanity with the earliest examples of how depraved an entity can be, whether God, mortal, or otherwise.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Aboriginal Australian Mythology
- Marmoo, the Arch-Enemy of Baiame the Sky-Father, growing jealous of how his adversary instead of himself created the world, swore to destroy everything that exists. Marmoo created the insects, arachnids, and worms to lay waste to the land, covering the sky in darkness, spreading plagues and devouring the innocent animals and plants. Even after being thwarted by the mother goddess Nungeena and her birds, Marmoo attempts to corrupt them, succeeding with the cuckoos, who on his orders invade other birds' nests and replace their eggs with their own. Feared by the Gamilaaray tribe as a malevolent god, Marmoo is hellbent on the annihilation of the world to spite Baiame and his creations.
- Bila, the Adnyamathanha sun goddess, was a cannibal who sent dogs to fetch her victims to roast over her fireplace, the origin of sunlight. She caused the extinction of an entire people, an act that shocked the heroic Kudnu ("Goanna Man") and Muda ("Gecko Man"). Losing the battle against them, Bila opted to flee, leaving the world to die in darkness and cold.
- Erlik was originally created by Ulgan to assist him in shaping the world. Erlik, however, believed himself to be the superior creator, and planned to usurp Ulgan. After accidentally adding the negative features of nature to creation, Ulgan banished Erlik, who then decided to deliberately ruin Ulgan's world to get even. He corrupted Ulgan's perfect life form, humans, adding to them everything negative about human nature, and when Ulgan created the prophet Maidere to enlighten humans, Erlik murdered him, forcing humans to rely on shamans to obtain the knowledge of the gods one tiny bit at a time. In his capacity as God of Death, Erlik has been known to drag human souls to his realm to enslave them, and it was believed that this would be the fate of anyone who did not first sate Erlik's ego with sacrifices.
- Book of Judges: King Abimelech, the archetypal Bastard Bastard in literature, rose to power following the death of his good-hearted father Judge Gideon by having 69 of his own brothers killed. As ruler, Abimelech organizes wars of conquest and enacts atrocities to keep the Israelites under his control, most notably having a thousand civilians burned alive to suppress an uprising in Shechem. When the people of Thebez revolt against his cruel rule, Abimelech attempts to raze their shelter to the ground. Vain and petty until the very end, Abimelech, upon being mortally wounded by one of the women he was trying to immolate, orders his aide to impale him with a sword in a futile effort to create the illusion that he died bravely in battle and not by the hands of a woman.
- Book of Esther: Haman the Agagite, one of the original antisemites in Jewish folklore, is a vizier under Emperor Ahasuerus (Xerxes) whose ambition and ego know no bounds. Haman is introduced forcing citizens to bow to him; when a fellow advisor, Mordecai the Judean, refuses to bow to him—possibly on account of Haman embroidering a graven image into his clothing—Haman plots a genocide against Persian Jewry as a whole, manipulating the emperor into giving him his signet so that he may write it into law. When Mordecai still refuses to bow to him, Haman builds a gallows on which he intends to hang the latter.
British Isles Folklore
- Celtic Mythology:
- Irish:
- Abhartach is a chieftain who once lorded over a kingdom in Derry and may have been one of the original inspirations for Count Dracula. While specific details on the legend may vary, the constant was that Abhartach was a bloody tyrant who mastered dark magic and was mercilessly cruel to both his people and others, killing his enemies for any slight whether they were guilty or not. He was so feared and hated by those he ruled over, that when Abhartach died, his people rejoiced. Unfortunately, with his dark magic, Abhartach rose as a vampiric creature, visiting his subjects' homes and demanding a bowl of blood from their wrists to feed his thirst. Eventually a rival chieftain was called upon to kill him, but no matter how many times Abhartach was killed, he would rise again to take more victims. It isn't until the chieftain was advised a specific ritual to bind Abhartach forever with the warning to never tamper with his grave lest Abhartach returns.
- Balor, King of the Fomorians, was a brutal conqueror who was best known for his "evil eye" that could bring horrific ruin and destruction. Sweeping it across entire islands to burn all there, Balor established himself as a brutal tyrant who locked his daughter away after a prophecy her child would destroy him. When his daughter became pregnant, Balor killed several of the resulting babies with only one, Lugh, surviving to return to bring him down.
- Breton: Conomor the Accursed is a king made infamous by folklore stories that likely inspired the fairy tale of Bluebeard. A feared and brutal king, Conomor is also a serial widower whose wives have a tendency to vanish. Forcing the marriage of the beautiful Trephine by threatening her lands, Conomor is revealed to murder his wives when they either anger him or fall pregnant, depending on the tale, with multiple dead brides in his past. Conomor attempts to murder Trephine for violating his orders, and after his just death, he is too evil to enter the afterlife, becoming a murderous werewolf.
- Scottish:
- William de Soulis was the hated lord of Hermitage Castle. Seen in folklore as a monstrous Satanist who worshiped the devil by kidnapping children and butchering them en masse in dark sacrifice, de Soulis summoned the wicked Robin Redcap as his familiar to torment countless innocents while de Soulis raped, tortured and killed at will.
- Sawney Bean, born Alexander Bean, started out as the son of an honest, hardworking man, but preferred a life of "freedom", as opposed to following in his father's footsteps. He would later take a wife in a like-minded woman named Agnes, where they made a home in a cave and lived a life of vice; mainly cannibalism and incest. Their union produced dozens of children and subsequent grandchildren from inbreeding. Over the years they would kill, rob, and cannibalize thousands of people, and in turn would get innocent people lynched when they were blamed for the murders. Sawney and his family were revealed to the world when they attacked a married couple on their wedding night, and in the ensuing manhunt, their cave was found decorated with the bones, body parts and possessions of their victims. While there are slight variations to the story, a constant was the King orders Sawney and his family to be inhumanely executed without a trial, as they were no longer considered human at this point.
- "Black" Agnes Douglas is Sawney Bean's equally heinous wife and partner-in-crime. Even before she met Sawney, she was allegedly a vicious witch who practiced dark magic and even corrupted Sawney into villainy in later versions of the story. After marrying Sawney, Agnes would live with him in a cave, having children with him and encouraging incest with their children to produce more offspring. Agnes would assist Sawney in robbing, killing, and cannibalizing thousands of people and decorating their cave with the possessions and body parts of their victims.
- Irish:
- English Folklore:
- Black Annis is a fiendish creature known through Leicester(shire) as a predator of children. Lurking in the shadows, Annis relishes the fear of her prey before hunting them, taking the children she finds, draining their blood and flaying them with her claws before feasting upon them and wearing their tanned skins as her trophies.
- The Kuri is a malicious goblin that haunts the graves of those who have died in the wilderness, latching itself upon any traveler who disturbs it and tormenting them for a lengthy period of time. After driving the victim to madness, the Kuri falsely promises to leave the victim be in exchange for returning it to its grave, leading to the victim's death by exhaustion and the Kuri dragging their soul to Hell.
- Orcadian Myth: The Nuckelavee is the evilest creature on Orkney. A twisted beast who despises humanity, the Nuckelavee rises from the sea to stalk the land, destroying crops and spreading drought and plague, seeking to kill every human it can. Those it finds are dragged to the seas or rent apart, with the Nuckelavee glorying in their deaths. Confined for part of the year, the Nuckelavee seeks only to torment and kill all the innocent it can, doing so for the sheer simple pleasure of evil.
Caribbean Mythology
- The White Witch of Rose Hall: Annie Palmer, the titular witch, was a slaveholder, Voodoo practitioner, and Black Widow, murdering three of her husbands for their wealth as well as several of her lovers. Using the bones of her slaves' children in Voodoo rituals, she would brainwash her slaves into complacency, taking any who rebelled into her basement where she would torture them to death with whips, taking pleasure in her actions. Even after being killed, it's said that her ghost still continues to haunt Rose Hall.
- Atreus, grandson of Tantalus, was the king of Mycenae, the son of Pelops and Hippodamia, and the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Accounts vary, but in some cases he, and his brother Thyestes, killed his half-brother out of jealousy. When his wife, Aerope, helped Thyestes take the throne, Atreus killed Aerope, and with the help of Hermes and Zeus, retook the throne. Despite this, upon learning of Aerope's adultery with Thyestes, he went further with his revenge, killing Thyestes's young sons. During a supposed reconciliation dinner, Atreus then tricked Thyestes into eating the flesh of his own sons and taunted him with their hands and feet, thus violating xenia like his grandfather. He then forced his brother into exile for eating the flesh of a human, despite him being unaware of that. Following Thyestes's capture by Agamemnon and Menelaus several years later, Atreus ordered seven-year-old Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes and Thyestes's own daughter, to kill Thyestes. Even in a family notorious for its multiple cases of incest, violence, and revenge, Atreus stood out by the sheer violence he was capable of and the joy he found in hurting his brother, all for the sake of revenge.
- Lycaon is the tyrannical ruler of Arcadia. A cruel, bloodthirsty king hated by own people for his vicious barbarity, Lycaon was angered when his citizens celebrated Zeus's visit to his city. Determined to prove to his people that the gods would never visit them, and are therefore unworthy of their worship, Lycaon offered Zeus a room for the night, plotting to murder him in his sleep. He also sought to test Zeus's divinity, by serving the god human flesh at dinner. Butchering his own son, Lycaon roasted his flesh to serve it to Zeus, dining on some of it himself. In some versions of the tale, he even sacrificed a newborn baby before Zeus just to see how he would react. Disgusted by Lycaon's brutality, Zeus transforms him into the first werewolf, but noted that the change only altered his outward appearance as he was always a wild monster. Even after his death, Lycaon's wanton hunger for blood and flesh would live on in his many descendants who owe their lycanthropy to him.
- Sinis, Sciron, and Procrustes are three depraved bandits and killers, with particularly cruel methods of murder, who Theseus encountered on his journey to Athens. Sinis lured in travelers with promises of hospitality only to turn on them and tie them to trees to be painfully ripped apart. Sciron was an elderly man who tricked travelers into washing his feet, only to kick them off a cliff to be eaten alive by a giant turtle lurking far below. Procrustes was a blacksmith and innkeeper who offered promises of rest at his inn, yet would violently stretch those too small to fit in his bed(s) and hack off the limbs of those that were too tall. These three men were all considered particularly vile for violating the concept of xenia, perhaps the greatest taboo in the ancient Greek world.
- Apep, more widely known in the West by his Greek name, Apophis, was the Egyptian god of darkness, chaos, and destruction. Residing in the Underworld, Apophis took the form of a colossal snake, and every night, would attempt to devour the sun god Ra, as he made his way through the land of the dead, hoping to leave the world without light or life. During the day, while Ra was in the sky, Apophis would feed on those dead souls who were not properly protected against him, leading to their complete obliteration. His motives for doing so were that, as a primordial being associated with the dark, he hated the fact that there was a sun, or life on Earth, and aimed to go back to the way things used to be. He was also the leader of armies of demons, and sought to subvert mortal confederates into aiding his nihilistic agenda. Reviled by all the other deities, even Set, and universally loathed in Egypt, Apophis was the only god to have the distinction of never being prayed to. Instead, temples and ceremonies were set up to pray against him.
Germanic Folklore
- Thomas Johannes Baptist Schwytzer, the man who would become the Morbach Werewolf, deserted his post in Napoleon's army and fled to Germany alongside a group of Russian deserters. Arriving in the village of Wittlich, Schwytzer and his men broke into a local farmhouse for food and supplies, killing the farmer and his sons when they are discovered and crushing the skull of the farmer's wife afterwards. Cursed by the farmer's wife to become a werewolf during the full moon, Schwytzer embraced his darker impulses, leading to his men leaving him in disgust, and began to pillage local villages and farmsteads, leaving a trail of dead men and cattle in his wake. Schwytzer would use his werewolf transformation to kill and rape innocent people and women, forcing himself upon girls like Elizabeth Beierle to satisfy his sadistic urges.
Gnostic mythology
- The Demiurge, or Yaldabaoth, is a take on the Old Testament God, used to explain the Problem of Evil. A malevolent false god, Yaldabaoth is the source of humanity's sinful nature and all the misery, who takes joy in human evil, so long as he's worshiped as the Top God. Yaldabaoth created the physical realm, and humanity, as debaucherous and mindless creatures, before the higher gods took pity on them and granted them knowledge and souls, thus giving access to the true spiritual world. The materialistic Yaldabaoth would prefer to manipulate the world in wickedness, keeping humanity in the dark of the spiritual world. This puts him in direct conflict with his mother Sophia, who in some versions was destroyed by her son, with her remnants becoming humanity's souls.
- King Kamsa/Kansa, the tyrant ruler of the Vrishni Kingdom, who overthrew his father to get the position, uses his power to punish those he sees as lesser. When he hears of a prophecy that the 8th children of his cousin Devaki will kill him, Kamsa imprisons her and her husband and murders all their children, as well as any child born within the past 10 days. Hearing of Krishna & Balarama's survival, Kamsa sends out multiple demons in various attempts to kill them, each resulting in several other deaths. When the two of them try and stop Kamsa, he says he'll have everyone in Mathura killed if Krishna doesn't surrender.
- Putana, the "Killer of Infants", is a Rakshasi known for killing infants by poisoning her breast milk and killing them when they feed, having done this to countless infants in the past. When King Kamsa summons her to kill the infant Krishna, Putana disguises herself as a beautiful woman in an attempt to kill him. After Krishna sucks her life force out, Putana reveals her demonic form and attempts to destroy the town of Vraj, managing to turn the surrounding forest to dust before being slain.
- Tamamo-no-Mae is a wicked fox spirit reputed as one of the three most fearsome Yōkai of Japan, seducing and poisoning the retired emperor before being exposed and killed, her death cursing Japan to a brutal war. Later versions equated Tamamo with Daji and Bāo Sì of China and the Indian legend of Kalmashapada, seducing and corrupting kings into savage tyrants, torturing and slaughtering countless innocents, and kicking off wars. While some versions of her posthumously repent, others double down on their villainy and don't let even death stop them from bringing chaos to the world.
- The man who would become the Youkai Wanyūdō was once a tyrannical daimyō known for mistreating his subjects, often having them drawn on the back of an Ox cart. After his assassination, the daimyō was reborn as Wanyūdō, a wrathful spirit in the form of a flaming cart wheel. Usually sighted in urban areas after dark, Wanyudou ruthlessly runs down and dismembers anyone he comes across, dragging their souls to Hell with him. One legend tells of a mother who glimpsed the creature through her window. Wanyūdō spared her, telling her to tend to her child...only for the woman to discover the infant's limbs scorched off, a sick reminder that Wanyūdō is just as sadistic in death as he was in life.
- Settut, or Settuta, also known as Immas n Tadwit, the "First Mother of the World", is the cruel Goddess of Evil and Chaos. Once a benevolent creator goddess, she became bitter and jealous of the world and dedicated herself to destroying it after learning she was sterile, sacrificing countless women and children in an attempt to make herself fertile, and creating the stars out of their bones when that failed. Settut created destructive storms, floods, and eclipses and introduced mankind to envy and greed, leading them to commit acts of war, slavery, theft, and murder against each other. Along the way, Settut created her palace of the bones of her many victims, counting each one every day. Resentful, sadistic, and with a preference for targeting children, Settut is responsible for all the misery of the world and is gleefully excited about the prospect of the day when the world will be consumed by the underworld.
- The Six Brothers: The Magistrate is the governor of the village of the Six Brothers, and a corrupt official who, during a famine, would take the food meant for the town for himself, causing mass civilian deaths. After the brothers are seen conspiring to steal the food in order to feed the dying, the Magistrate orders the brothers to be tortured, and later killed.
- The "Orang Minyak"—"Oily Man"—is a monstrous bogeyman who terrorizes Malaysian villages with a single goal in mind: virgin rape. Either a regular human who brokered his evil powers with a bomoh or an outright demon spirit, depending on the legend, the Oily Man is nevertheless universally depicted as a pure evil rapist with countless young victims, using his slick body to escape the clutches of vengeful men.
- Lamashtu is the daughter of the benevolent god Anu. A savage monster who rejects all goodness, Lamashtu causes famines and droughts, spreading pestilence and disease in the process. Not content with this, Lamashtu induces miscarriages and will steal infants to murder them while also murdering pregnant women and innocent young mortals, rending them apart to eat them herself. So vile is Lamashtu that even another demon like Pazuzu may be invoked against her, being the most terrifying and remorseless monster in the entire pantheon.
- Inca Mythology's Huarochiri Manuscript: Wallallu Qarwinchu—God of Fire—is the Arch-Enemy of the benevolent Pariacaca and the former ruler god of Huarochiri, where he installed a reign of terror during which local woman were forced to have only two children and to sacrifice one of them to him so he could devour their flesh and drink their blood. Continuing this abominable tradition until the arrival and victory of Pariacaca, Wallallu would be exiled to other lands, where he would continue trying to kill Pariacaca and his family in failed attempts to recover his old power.
- Mayan Mythology: The Xtabay was once a beautiful and chaste young woman revered for her seeming virtue. In truth a horrible, wicked soul who fouled the ground when she died, she made a pact with evil spirits to return to life. The Xtabay is a vicious and sadistic Serial Killer who lures in victims to sleep with and violently devour or just brutally murder.
- Whiro, aka Whiro-te-tipua (Whiro the Demon), the Māori God of Darkness, is responsible for all the evil in the world, from disease to death itself. Despising his younger brother Tane for wanting to bring the gods to Earth, Whiro fought with Tane countless times in an attempt to best him, not even showing loyalty toward his own allies, such as when he stole Uru's wife for himself. Descending to the underworld after losing too many times, Whiro becomes the land's ruler, using the Maiki clan to spread diseases to make humans suffer. Whiro is also known for eating the bodies of those who've died, hoping to consume enough souls to grow strong enough to escape from the underworld and devour all living things.
- Zoroastrianism: Angra Mainyu, known by his Persian name of Ahriman, is the Evil Twin of creator god Ahura Mazda, and the antithesis of everything good and just. Declaring that "it is not that I cannot make anything good, but that I will not," Angra Mainyu sought to prevent Ahura Mazda from creating life in the first place, by slaying the primal bull, his first creation. He seduced the daevas (demons) away from Ahura Mazda, transforming them into spiteful beings living only to spread fear and hatred. When Ahura Mazda created sixteen lands, Angra Mainyu responded with sixteen scourges, including old age, disease, war, vice, and death. He created the monster Aži Dahāka, destined to slay one-third of the Earth's population, and turned him loose in the world. He made two separate attempts at destroying the Earth's water supply and leaving all creation to die of dehydration. He made Jeh, the primal whore, so that women would suffer from menstruation, birth pangs, and mistrust from men. He tried to coerce Zoroaster into coming over to his side, and then set the daevas upon him when he would not. Responsible for the very existence of evil, Angra Mainyu works to seduce men and women away from Ahura Mazda, so they might join his campaign for control of reality. Hating everything good and just, and angry that he is not the one who created everything, Angra Mainyu's ultimate goal is the annihilation of the universe.
- The Shahnameh: Zahhak, after delving into evil with the wicked Ahriman, becomes the worst tyrant the world has ever seen after murdering his own father. Conducting horrific massacres and bathing in the blood of his victims, Zahhak has two men a day sacrificed to feed their brains to the snakes growing from his shoulders. Upon learning of the hero Fereydun destined to defeat him to avenge his father, Zahhak massacres those close to him, even the cow who functioned as his wet nurse. Zahhak, after being driven back by Fereydun, flees to India where he proceeds to kill thousands of innocents. The pinnacle of mortal evil in the Shahnameh, Zahhak stands as a testament of wickedness even centuries later.
- Romani folklore is plagued with horrific monsters that embody every disease known to man, and this father-son duo is responsible for creating them:
- The King of the Loçolici (humans cursed by Satan) once took a fancy to Ana, the queen of the Keshali. Rejected by Ana, he responded by hunting down her people and devouring them. When Ana agreed to marry him to save her people but still refused to have sex with him, the King drugged her and raped her. Goaded by his son, Melalo, he continuously forced himself on Ana, spawning horrible monsters that have plagued humanity ever since. Tired of this, the Keshali baked him a cake with dog and cat hairs that impregnated him with Poreskoro, the embodiment of The Black Death. With this attempt on his life, the King decided to divorce Ana, but only on the condition that she kept herself alive by drinking the blood of three of her own kind for all eternity, as once she dies, he will kill all Keshali once and for all.
- Melalo is a two-headed bird born from the unholy union between the King of the Loçolici and Ana. He goaded his father into raping his own mother several times, creating monsters that cause diseases among humanity. He even took one of these, the hagfish-like Lilyi, as his own wife, breeding more disease demons into existence. He also tricked his own mother into impregnating herself with more disease deities in her separate attempts to both cure herself and sterilize herself. He is credited with every act of murder and rape mankind knows of, either by goading people or by possessing them himself. When not doing this, he enjoys tearing out human hearts with his own talons.
- Jure Grando Alilović
was known as the first recorded vampire. A wicked sorcerer in life who captured and murdered children to use their blood for immortality, Jure Grando eventually succumbed to mortality, only to rise again as a monstrous strigoi. Raping his wife, Jure embarked on a 16-year-long killing spree, feasting on the blood of his own neighbors until it was believed that to go outside at night was a death sentence.
- Hồ Tinh is the most sadistic and vile of the man-eating monsters faced by Lạc Long Quân. Using his shapeshifting powers to trick people into entering his cave, Hồ Tinh would torture them before killing and eating them, preferring to target children in some versions of the story. After Lạc Long Quân goes to stop him, Hồ Tinh tries to murder him too.
