"I am about to make slaves of the entire population of this planet, and then there will be no more secrets. There will be no magic hidden from me. And when the Faceless Ones return, this world will be remade as a place of splendid darkness."
—Nefarian Serpine, first book
Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain have fought many horrors over the years, from Eldritch Abominations to Serial Killers to religious zealots and supremacists. These remain the most viciously cruel and horrifically evil.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
open/close all folders
Examples
- Nefarian Serpine, a fanatical worshipper of the Dark Gods known as the Faceless Ones and The Dragon to the warmongering sorcerer Mevolent, had a Red Right Hand that caused agonizing death to anyone he pointed at. Among his many crimes committed during the 300 Year War, Serpine killed Skulduggery Pleasant's wife and child in front of him as a distraction to capture the detective, proceeding to horrifically torture him for days before finally killing him and sticking his corpse on a pike for all his enemies to see. Later offered amnesty at the end of the war, Serpine began plotting behind the scenes, killing Gordon Edgley in order to get his hands on the Scepter of the Ancients. Serpine uses its immense power to massacre the Irish Sanctuary in the hopes of restarting the war, claiming the Book of Names, and using it to first enslave humanity before forcing those with the knowledge he needs to tell him how to summon his Dark Gods; when foiled, Serpine's final act is a spiteful attempt to make his nemesis further suffer by using his red hand on Valkyrie. Eventually resurrected years later, Serpine expresses utter disgust at his Leibniz counterpart for even considering the possibility of reforming and unrepentantly swears to once more tear away everything Skulduggery loves, well-earning his place as the Skeleton Detective's most hated enemy.
- Doctor Nye is a demented war criminal formerly employed by Mevolent, infamous for the twisted experiments it performed on prisoners. An unrepentant Sadist who attempts numerous times to put Valkyrie through perpetual dissection, Nye is hired by the Roarhaven mages in their efforts to take over the world, helping fray international tensions for the War of the Sanctuaries. In its final and most evil outing, Nye allies with President Flanery in his genocidal war against sorcerers and tortures numerous soldiers—to the point where they would gladly kill themselves to end their agony—to find a way to give mortals temporary access to magic via Nye's addictive "Splash" drug. While the experiments are successful for the survivors, these Splashes cause horrific physical and mental damage to their users, making Flanery's Super Soldiers unstable and prone to killing each other rather than their enemies. With Splashes nonetheless made available to police officers and militaries all over the world and leading to countless deaths in Flanery's inane war, Nye proves itself utterly bereft of morals and willing to side with anyone to further its research.
Examples
- The Faceless Ones: Batu was a mortal born into a family of sorcerers. Upon learning of a way to summon the Faceless Ones from Trope Kessel, Batu murdered him and gave his corpse to the Sea Hag for his soul to suffer underwater for decades. Reforming the Diablerie fifty years later and arranging for Baron Vengeous to complete his Grotesquery, Batu befriends and murders every experienced Teleporter still alive so that none of them can close his gateway. Upon revealing himself to Valkyrie in the battle with the Diablerie, Batu can only express pride and exhilaration at the destruction he has caused, offering his followers up as vessels for the Dark Gods under the guise of protection from their horrible wrath. Envious of the power and longevity of sorcerers, Batu is willing to destroy the world in order to achieve godhood, arrogantly thinking that he will become one with the Faceless One that possesses him.
- The Necromancer Trilogy (Dark Days, Mortal Coil, Death Bringer):
- High Priest Auron Tenebrae of the Necromancer Order wants to live forever by enacting a ritual called the Passage, wherein the Death Bringer will kill around three billion people to block the stream of life. Having recognized Skulduggery Pleasant's aptitude for Necromancy, Tenebrae gave Serpine his signature Red Right Hand and ensured that the detective's soul would be able to return to his body should the technique be used on him; when Lord Vile was subsequently birthed from this process, Tenebrae did nothing to prevent his unhinged massacres or reveal his identity, merely amusing himself with the thought of his creation walking about. In the present, Tenebrae arranges for a Remnant to Mind Rape Finbar Wrong to learn the identity of the Death Bringer, remaining apathetic to stopping the devastation that ensues when the spirit escapes before having everyone outside of the Order who knows the truth of the Passage assassinated by way of Bison Dragonclaw's reckless contracts with various dark entities. While styling himself as the savior of the world, Tenebrae is in truth nothing more than a self-centered Immortality Seeker uncaring towards the carnage he leaves in pursuit of his goals.
- Cleric Vandameer Craven initially seems to be nothing more than a sycophantic supporter of Tenebrae, but quickly proves to be far worse. Horrifically experimenting on Melancholia St. Clair, Craven unveils her as the Death Bringer and takes over the Order after she kills Tenebrae. Craven continues the attempts to initiate the Passage and sacrifices his loyal followers to evade capture, before cowing to Melancholia's growing insanity and protecting her life in the hope he'll be spared from her omnicidal intentions. A self-serving coward concerned only with preserving his own life, Craven abandons even Tenebrae's flimsy pretense of saving the world in his spinelessness.
Examples
- Damocles Creed denounced his brother-in-law Mevolent during the 300 Year War for straying too far from the Faceless Ones' genocidal teachings. Searching for a descendant of the Dark Gods powerful enough to summon them back to Earth, Creed has experimented on thousands throughout the years to find this "Child of the Faceless Ones", with all his subjects turning into faceless, catatonic Kith. Many of his Disciples are themselves descendants, groomed to gladly step forward to partake in this procedure. Taking over as Arch-Canon of the Church of the Faceless in the modern day, Creed's growing political power allows him to resume his Kith experiments and upstage China Sorrows as Supreme Mage, subsequently enabling him to appoint Sense Wardens in Roarhaven to remove dissenters. Creed's ultimate plan is to use a massive ritual powered by three years of sacrifices to send out an "Activation Wave" across the globe, killing everyone in its wake by either turning them into Kith or melting them until it finds the Child. Upon turning himself into the human conduit of the Dark Gods, Creed has the Child summon the Faceless Ones in an effort to wipe out billions, enslave the remaining mortals, and force their twisted ideology of hate upon the world.
- Martin Flanery is the idiotic President of the United States, chosen by Abyssinia to be her mortal pawn in creating an Unmasqued World. Flanery gleefully goes along with Abyssinia's vile plans while insisting they were his all along, sacrificing the soldiers stationed at the Whitley Naval Magazine to be slaughtered in an attack that will expose magic to the world. From there he intends to lead the mortals in a war against sorcerers, bombing his own country to destroy the American Sanctuary and setting up a dynasty in the aftermath of the carnage. Although these initial plans are foiled, Flanery takes advantage of the Faceless Ones revealing themselves to the world to continue with his genocidal declaration of war, employing Doctor Nye in turning mortal soldiers into magical Super Soldiers while ignoring the many dangerous side effects, all the while whipping the masses into a hateful frenzy as sorcerers attempting to save them from the Shalgoth are instead executed via firing squads, hangings, and being burned at the stake. A blithering moron who would condemn the entire world to nuclear armageddon to satisfy his fragile ego, Flanery is the embodiment of the worst humanity has to offer.
- Dead or Alive: In a Bad Future where Valkyrie's younger sister Alice is brainwashed into becoming the Child of the Faceless Ones, Damocles Creed remains just as cruel as ever, ruling over a totalitarian theocracy where his malevolent worship of the Dark Gods is enforced on a global scale. Having killed around 2,000 people with the Activation Wave before finding and indoctrinating the 10-year-old Alice into becoming the fanatically murderous "Malice", Creed exposed magic to the world to create panic and chaos in a brutal, 6-year-long war, before using Malice to summon the Faceless Ones so they could slaughter billions and subject countless alien worlds throughout the universe to their genocidal conquest. Leading their worshippers as the High Exalted One, Creed has the surviving mortals either enslaved to work all forms of grueling industry or reduced to "cattle" whose souls are regularly harvested in mass sacrifices to feed the Dark Gods. Creed has ruled in this manner for 72 years, with blasphemy or even mild remarks of sympathy for "subversives" regarded as capital offenses leading to days-long public torture before the offender's soul is taken for the Faceless Ones to devour.
Others
Examples
- Armageddon Outta Here short story collection:
- "Friday Night Fights": The Promoter runs weekly death matches between magical creatures for the amusement of mortals. With sapient vampires as his most noteworthy attractions, the Promoter forces them to fight only half-turned into their monstrous forms, a state shown to induce incredible pain. They are also fed live humans before every match to keep their strength up. When his champion Caelan refuses to eat Valkyrie, the Promoter pits him against a stronger vampire—despite knowing that it's taboo for them to kill their own kind—and throws Valkyrie into the middle of the match between the two bloodthirsty monsters. Having hosted these fights for years and expressing a desire to rid the world of "parasites", the Promoter proves that humans can be far worse than any sorcerer or vampire.
- Get Thee Behind Me, Bubba Moon: Bubba Moon was a fanatical ally of the anti-Sanctuary and their efforts to start a global war between sorcerers and mortals. Visited by a "being of wonderment and awe" named Balerosh in a dream, Moon began a cult to provide sacrifices—preferably 14-year-old children—every month since the sixties, empowering Abyssinia's spirit to assemble her army. Eventually trapped in a ritual circle after astral projecting himself, Moon escaped by possessing a child named Pete Green. Moon rejoined with his cult and began tormenting Pete's friends, sacrificing one of them and later in life manipulating Chrissy Brennan into marrying an abusive man. Kidnapping Chrissy's son, Moon forced her to suffocate the father of the novella's narrator in his sleep, bringing the narrator back to his hometown so his son can be taken as a sacrifice. When the two interrupt his ritual, Moon torments them with visions as he gleefully reveals the guilt-ridden Chrissy's involvement and unleashes Balerosh to feast on his enemies.
- The Skulduggery Pleasant Grimoire: Abrogate Raze, the father of Skulduggery Pleasant himself, wandered the world in search of a part of himself he felt was missing. Eventually marrying Quinlan Forte, Raze murdered her after coming to realize love was not what he was seeking and left a trail of destruction in his wake as he usurped numerous cults in pursuit of his true purpose, allying with Mevolent as a high-ranking researcher in the 300 Year War. Finding his spiritual awakening in Gog Magog—the God of the Apocalypse, who was stripped of his power and banished by the other gods for annihilating countless civilizations—Raze set to spreading the word of the Destroyer, infecting numerous innocents with a Mind Virus that made them obsessed with worshipping Gog Magog and drove them to murderous, nihilistic insanity. Even after his imprisonment, Raze's legacy of death lives on as his acolytes continue to spread the virus, all to power Gog Magog—truthfully an amnesiac Abrogate himself.
- Bad Magic: Mr. Friendly is the "dark imagination made flesh" of Termoncara, where a Romanian man was falsely accused of murder and killed by the townsfolk. Born from the collective guilt of the murderers, Mr. Friendly and other monsters like him embodied the townsfolk's refusal to accept blame in favor of fearing those different from them, resulting in a massive increase in racist and homophobic murders as the monsters made Termoncara the "murder capital of Ireland" in just under two decades. Not content with this, Mr. Friendly schemed to escape Termoncara by manipulating the townsfolk into providing annual sacrifices for the monsters and murdering interlopers, personally killing his pawns should they fail. Seeking a host to possess, Mr. Friendly targeted the young Jamie Scanlon and began tormenting him, notably murdering his crush and gaslighting him into believing it was his fault. Mr. Friendly plans to seal his possession through massacre, setting his monsters to butcher the whole town while he tries to personally slaughter dozens of Jamie's classmates. Though born of fear and hate, Mr. Friendly goes far beyond his natural purpose to slake his sadism.
