Villain Critique Thread (Because Its About Damn Time!)

What change? It ultimately boiled down to her subordinates being more of a family than her actual family. I don't see where you got confused.

In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.

I just wondered when after she started working with her subordinates she began to see them as family and if there was a specific moment, considering it might have been difficult to get close to others.

RISE

It wasn't difficult for her. They were all "strong," in her view; they had good first impressions, and she connected with them from there. It's pretty simple.

In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.

UmLovely- I like it/her a lot! Interesting concept, tragic, and a character I find genuinely sympathetic while also scary villain-wise. I like the idea you have going of the actual Lilith being deep down on the inside and still wanting revenge. Sorry I don't quite have any criticisms, but she seems well developed and interesting to me.

---

Note: This character comes from a side-project I worked on, which was a light and comedic superhero story running on Rule of Funny half the time. He's not by any means a serious bad guy, but I do want to know what you guys think of him and maybe if you think I could use him again in any other story.He was one of the few characters who was actually mine (I asked my friends for characters), which is why I'm using him as opposed to one of the more "serious" villains.

Name: Danny "Night Man" Walker

Age: 18

Personality: Despite being a member of the supervillains and dating the leader (Clementine), Danny is basically a dork with a dark costume. He's been a fan of comic books ever since he was a little kid and secretly idolizes superheroes. He's also by far the nicest member of his team, and when not in battle, can even treat the heroes like friends if his girlfriend isn't around. Besides his geeky interests and unusually nice attitude, he's also horrible at joke telling. He knows it, too. This doesn't stop him from using horrible puns at any moment, hoping that one day, someone might laugh. Even though he's not a bad person, though, he does enjoy his life as a villain and wants to prove to his team that he's more than the boyfriend of their leader.

Abilities: In addition to having a girlfriend with lightning, weather and possession powers who is protective of him to a dangerous level, Danny isn't too weak on his own. He has ice powers, as well as limited control of darkness and the ability to see in the night. Later on in the story, he develops a genre savvy battle style that is pretty much Just Shoot Him, except with simply freezing the heroes on the spot to capture them rather than murder them.

Weaknesses: He's often a goofball even in battle and, early in the story, is easy to catch off guard. Danny is rarely taken seriously by the heroes, and so if Clementine isn't around, they might just double team him and take him out right away.

Goals: Danny wants to help his girlfriend Take Over the World and defeat the superheroes.

Motivation: Part of it is his love for Clementine; it's genuine, and he genuinely wants to help her. Another reason is the fact that he just finds supervillainy to be fun, and he likes getting to battle the heroes- it makes him feel like he's in his own comic book. Finally, he wants to prove to people that he's more than just the dork, but he can actually be a threat.

Role In The Story: Second-in-command of the Epic And Evil Ensemble Of Evildoers (he came up with the name) and boyfriend of Clementine Frost, team leader. He spends much of the time with his girlfriend or helping out in battles. At one point, when they lose a big battle, some of the other members blame him and complain to Clementine that he's useless as a bad guy. Offended and angered, Danny temporarily leaves before Taking a Level in Badass, where he comes back with a newfound battle strategy and stuns everyone else. He turns into a legitimate threat while keeping his normal personality in tact. In the end, he's the one to refuse to have the battle in the sky to avoid a Disney Villain Death, and even when the villains lose the big climatic fight, Danny simply shrugs it off and prepares for next time. As the characters are graduating from high-school in the end, he tries to propose to Clementine, but she declines as she and her parents are leaving to train in the North Pole for a year. He asks to come but is turned down- she wants him to lead the team in his absence, and he agrees. In the end, he is leading some of the other villains in a small fight against the heroes.

Backstory: Ever since he learned that his mother was a superhero, Danny dreamed of being just like her. He read comics religiously and often ran around the house with a cape fighting imaginary enemies. When he was thirteen years old, his powers came in- Ice and Darkness. Danny was scared at first, because he didn't have control over his abilities and realized they were too dangerous for him to be a hero. So he decided to be a villain, and embraced the new life ever since.

Relevant Tropes:

• Affably Evil
• An Ice Person
• Casting a Shadow
• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Becomes this...
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: After being this
• Adorkable
• Closet Geek
• Pungeon Master
• Card-Carrying Villain: Just like every bad guy in the story
• Useless Boyfriend
• Took a Level in Badass
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones

edited 8th Dec '14 12:45:14 PM by Sibuna

Happy Holidays to everyone! Have a great end of the year, and an even better 2015- you all deserve it!

I feel like I killed the thread :(

Happy Holidays to everyone! Have a great end of the year, and an even better 2015- you all deserve it!

Don't worry. Thread dies occasionally.

Now let me revive it...

I like Danny. His shade of Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain is oddly cute, and I'd like to think that even after he gets dangerous his general appearance still lends to this, in the Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass style (but tell me if I'm wrong). At any rate, a geeky, meek non-evil supervillain I can root for.

I should also note that I especially like that he combines the loveable geek aspect with being a pragmatic fighter. You'd think a villain fascinated with the idea of being a villain would make a point of employing things like gloating and such. Danny just (figuratively) shoots. Nice.

One gripe, though. I still can't see why simply having the power of frost and darkness would make him qualify himself as a supervillain. Does he have an underlying reason for it, like his attachment to the notions that powers are good/evil? Something else?

Now, allow me. This one's again from an old story that mostly stayed in concept papers but never actually saw light of day.

The City of Klatrov, also known as the Sanctum of Man, is a dimension-faring, warmongering city that travels to other worlds to conquer them, drain their resource, and move on, like locust. Then, one day, they come to the world called Terithia. This is one of the people in charge of the city.

Name: Adel Brasbaur

Age: 53

Personality: Adel possesses a certain type of charm more often than otherwise found in psychopaths, vile but smooth, a friendly face that barely hides its contempt. Just a few minutes of chatter with him is enough indication that he doesn't exactly follow the same line of thinking that most people share. Utterly amoral, sadistic, condescending to a fault, yet suave and captivating in his mannerism, Adel never hides how much of a bastard he is, instead revelling in it, adopting it as a persona, so to speak. He understands people well enough, and more than well enough their thought process, their morality, their tendency to be attached to things, their love, their loathings, their fear, and indeed he's a master in using these aspects to manipulate people to his end. In his presence, one is a helpless slave; obedient and shaken with fear, yet inspired enough to remain loyal.

Abilities: As the top alchemist of Klatrov and head of the Sacred Fountain guild, responsible for enhancing the dimension-faring city's supersoldiers as well as some specialised warfare equipment, Adel's craft is unmatched. An uncaanny weapon developer, his Aetherrot plague as the prime evidence, Adel's forte lies in human enhancement. His most succesful work, the artificial, magic-enhanced soldiers 'Hares', now serve as Klatrov's elite force, and their excellence in combat has been proven many times in the field, crushing the city's opposition with their deadly combination of immense magical force and advanced weaponary.

Weaknesses: Out of the workshop, he's just a middle-aged man who has a few toys to use in defending himself. Adel's also terrible with guns, and despite being the number one alchemist of Klatrov he has no innate magical affinity whatsoever.

Goals: To one day become the Grandmaster of Klatrov, the highest ruler of the Sanctum of Man.

Motivation: The classic greed and powerlust. As an alchemy prodigy he learned to view himself as above everyone else since in his youth. As he climbs up the rank, he becomes more and more clouded by the vision of grandeur he has for himself. Ever so ambitious, he has now come to the point that the Grandmaster position is in is reach, and, being Adel, he's not going to let it slip off his grasp. Power and wealth also help to ensure that, despite all the atrocities he commit in pursuit of the alchemy craft, he will remain untouchable by the Sanctum, effectively having total freedom in his inhumane research of the matters arcane. It's a bit of a cycle.

Role: The Dragon with an Agenda, Bigger Bad of the story.

Backstory: Adel's history is not as intriguing as the footprints he has left climbing up the hierarchy of the Sacred Fountain. Hailing from a familiy of civil officers, Adel joined the Fountain as soon as he graduated. Along the way, he worked with the Fountain's alchemists to create various equipment and substances for military use, but got a breakout when he proposed the concept of Aetherot plague to the Fountain's then head. It is then that Adel Brasbaur earned the position as a senior alchemist and earned his own research team. It is also then that thing went downhill. The head of the Fountain died of a seemingly natural cause a few years after that, and Adel was installed as its new leader, at which point his magnum opus, the Hares, come into play. Their creation was considered the most important breakthrough of Klatrov's technology since the city's "departure" from its homeworld. These artificial humans, bred for war, wields immense magical power and are physically stronger than any healthiest man alive, would go on to play an important part in the defeat of many of the city's enemies, and for each victory his goal of assuming the Grandmaster position drew even closer, up until the strongest of the Hares, his 'daughter' Marinette, began to display abnormalities in her behavior. Abnormalities that may threaten him directly.

Tropes

A God Am I: A shade of this. The teachings of the Sanctum of Man put heavy emphasis on man's ability to achieve, that man at their greatest can rise above even the angels of Abiciel. As they actually went to war with the Six Churches and won, despite the Six Churches' blessing from the Six Seraphim of Abiciel, the people of Klatrov haveevery reason to view themselves at least almost equal to the angels. Adel, being a prodigy of alchemy the likes of which never before seen in Klatrov, naturally sees himself a deity of sort. Many of the Klatrovans agree with him.

Abusive Parents: His 'daughter', Marinette, is an artificial human and the first of the Hares. Born from his wife, Eleanor, he's effectively her father, but Adel never views her as anything of such calibre, despite the insistence that she is indeed his daughter. Naturally, he treats her like garbage, caring only that she's raised to fully utilise her magical affinity and physical strength. In turn, Marinette has nothing for him but contempt.

Complete Monster: Adel, like any good scientist/researcher, completely disregards morals and ethics when it comes to alchemy. His experiments often require use of prisoners of war as test subjects, and his philosophy when it comes to weapon designing is to create something most effective at killing, nevermind how inhumane the method said weapon employs will be. At times, he skirts the line between viewing people as expendable objects to be used in his study, and seeing them as playthings for him to enjoy tearing apart however he likes. All in all, a sadistic bastard.

Dragon with an Agenda/The Starscream: He has an eye on the Grandmaster's throne. He also certainly has plans to overtake it, though he acts as a devoted Sacred Fountain head, for now.

Faux Affably Evil: Even the people who know how much of a bastard he is finds his demeanor at times pleasing and the man strangely charming. Of course, it's just a persona he adopts. Being suave just makes him look even more invulnerable, something Adel really likes.

Mad Scientist: Natch. Mad alchemist, in this case. Note though that despite his primary interest aside from gaining more power in Klatrov being the advancement of alchemy, Adel has a preference for inventions that kill people, horrifically if possible. The Aetherrot plague, for instance, is viewed by some to be the product of pure evil.

Sissy Villain: Adel's a bit feminine, especially for a married man with a child (though admittedly that child is an artificial supersoldier he engineered, rather than sired himself. He's been this way since he was young though, with his high-pitch voice, rather feminine clothing choice, body language and all.

edited 16th Dec '14 7:53:20 PM by arreimil

On the foundation of glass a dream is built. And, like glass, it shatters.

Adel's a detestable SOB and despite the alchemical tinges, it what I'd dub a mad scientist classic—a Josef Mengele wannabe who prioritizes sadism over science and loves to talk up his own brilliance. That's not a criticism, keep in mind; just a statement of how the character reads to me.

I'll admit that I find mad scientist types to be somewhat overdone. Your post, however, says that Adel is only one of several people who run this city. I'll be curious to see who the other villains in control of the city are, and how Adel interacts with them. That, to me, will be much more interesting than his standalone traits.

---

From the same story as Belial and Rex who I've posted on above, another member of The Unshriven Legion's leadership caste. This may be the last one from this series that I post on in a while, as I'm going to have to come up with some more characters.

Name: Nila Crux

Age: Early twenties

Personality: None. Belial shattered Nila's mind, leaving nothing behind—no willpower, no emotion, no ability to trust or believe in others, nothing save a faint desire to die. I'd call her a suicidal nihilist, but that would, in fact, be overstating how much of her is left. She's a hollow shell, with no real agenda of her own, following Belial because he's the person who is the most familiar to her, and she can't think of a reason not to.

Abilities: Nila's contract is with the word "Void", and since our fear of nothingness is more engrained in us than our fear of just about anything else, this makes her one of the most powerful contractors around, capable of effecting far greater areas and larger numbers of people than anyone else in the series. She can create airless vacuum zones and trap people in them, erase victims from existence, and summon darkness and cold. She can drain life energy, create black holes, and, at her most extreme, strip an entire landscape of every defining feature, reducing city's to a few piles of rubble, and slicing away mountains. She can also do all the dark energy attacks you'd expect of a video game character with the Power of the Void to do, and can even whip up the odd Lovecraftian horror, because in the end, what matters is the pop culture conception of the void, not what it actually is.

Weaknesses: Nila's power is vast, but it does nothing to enhance her physical abilities, and if you can survive long enough to close with her, all you have to do is execute a twenty-something with no combat training, and no real interest in defending herself. She's almost completely incapable of planning, and while she'll execute any order she's given to the letter, she cannot improvise in a fight or outside of it.

Goals: None. Nila doesn't have goals in the way you or I would think of them. On some level she wants to die, but there's just not enough to her left for her to act on that impulse. Otherwise she just follows Belial's orders, helping him work towards his Final Solution of his fellow contractors.

Motivations: Again, none. Nila does not have the strength of personality to formulate her own objectives. She would very much like to be dead, but she doesn't commit suicide or even put herself in situations where she could easily be killed—she doing so would be disobeying Belial's orders, and she does not have the willpower to do that.

Role in story: Nila is Belial's Dragon, acting as his personal guard, and mouthpiece. She relays orders to other members of the Unshriven Legion, including field commander, Rex, kills anybody Belial tells her to, and defends him if he's attacked. She's also the older sister of series' Lancer, Basil Crux, and becomes his focus as he tries first to redeem her, and then, after realizing that she cannot be fixed, to put her out of her misery.

Backstory: Nila's parents where government authorised contractors who kept a toe in the criminal world. This bit the family in the ass when her elder sister, Karol, fell under Belial's influence and murdered the rest of the family save Basil (whom she missed), and Nila, whom she kidnapped and handed over to Belial. Nila did not yet have a contract, and had showed little likelihood of gaining one, but Belial was interested in seeing if he could force a contract onto her. He trapped her in her own personal hell for months at a time, destroying her will power and erasing her personality, while at the same time implanting psychological blocks that would stop her from disobeying him. In the end, when she was little more than an empty void in the shape of a person, he contacted the concept of "Void" and forced the contract on her, making her into his personal attack dog.

Relevant tropes: Being Tortured Makes You Evil, Cain and Abel (with Basil), Dark Action Girl, Death Seeker, The Dragon, Emotionless Girl, Empty Shell, Mouth of Sauron, Power of the Void, Straw Nihilist, Weak-Willed

Owch. Nila's definitely got some Alas, Poor Villain vibes, if she's even a villain at all. Belial is a dick.

---

Next from me is Essachan Sherruk. Yet another Eclipse villain, but one who has yet to show how depraved he really is in writing. My goal is to make him the most horrific General Ripper of all time.

• Appearance: As a man who wore reflective, stainless steel armor, Sherruk's face was completely obscured from view by a one-way black visor. Metallic, claw-like cheek-guards curved at the tip of his chin. Three cylindrical slots clamped over the visor, making his helmet resemble that of a medieval knight - or a prison cell. Black cloth encased Sherruk's palms, triceps, and ribs; the rest of his body was covered by the armor. His gauntlets were tipped with triangular claws overlapping one another over his fingers. In short, take BG9's helmet from Bleach and merge it with the Sith Trooper from Knights Of The Old Republic.
• Backstory: More machine than man, yet neither all the same, Essachan Sherruk is a Physical God who settled upon the continent of Canaan, populated by millions of indigenous animals and humans. Legends say that Sherruk terraformed the land and produced one of the earliest forms of industrialization onto the Earth. Said industrialization came at a price - in what the descendants of the survivors call the "Tech Dawn," Sherruk's very materialization as the God of Metal drove thousands of animal species to extinction, ruined much of the ecosystem, and terraformed Canaan into the hyper-technical continent of Caerleon. Upon his full materialization as a humanoid, Sherruk sought to "evolve" the land into something more to his liking, rationalizing it as something between Manifest Destiny and the White Man's Burden. He imposed a policy of assimilation; he morphed the people into vaguely biomechanical war machines, and conducted reeducation facilities in order to kill their native cultures. After meticulous and varied experimentation, Sherruk successfully transformed them into what is now known as Armigers, a type of Aura Users who materialize their metallic Battle Aura as Powered Armor (in reality, the human forms are "shrouds" that are shed to reveal their real forms). With the Amigers as his hatchet-men, whole areas of land of what was once Canaan are invaded and occupied by Caerleon, and settlements were constructed around the land of those humans; the end result is the deprivation of basic utilities and denial of human rights to the non-Armiger inhabitants. Eventually, Sherruk was christened Imperator of Caerleon upon his decision to personally lead the Armigers to further conquests.
  • The reason for his more hands-on approach of recent years is due to his history with Alice Sitchri, the Succubus main character; unlike most of Skuurnur (who see her as a way to gain good publicity ala Defeating the Undefeatable) or Siacade (who literally see her as The Devil, but are the only ones who can match her pound for pound), Sherruk holds frothing disdain for her very existence as an anomaly with no logic masquerading as something else entirely. He sees her as nothing trying to be everything, and everything trying to be nothing; a monster desperately searching for something, but never being able to gain or keep anything because she is Nothingness, and must be turned into Nothingness "like the monster she is."
• Personality: On the surface, Sherruk is a calm, though snarky figure, whose mind is similar to that of a super computer. Academic and analytical, he's prone to monologues over the remnants of a ruined city, the composition of warring armies, areas in battles, and weaponry used in battle. He can lapse into scientific deductions on psychology, and a quirk of his is to reference various numbers (questions, casualties, mile radius, et al) at any time. He particularly likes the Rule of Three, and holds at times deranged superstitions over certain numbers due to his deductive mind. However, behind that supercomputer-on-legs image, Sherruk is a totalitarian, jingoistic imperialist, infamous for his intolerance of failure, his Never My Fault demeanor, his perfectionist drive, his indifference to others' well-being, and his penchant for social engineering towards his whim. He firmly advocates for war against Skuurnur, to the point of seeming Trigger-Happy, and he is always the first to call for "punitive interference" (even preventive war) against those who threaten his empire while dressing it up as a humanitarianism. A master of propaganda, Sherruk is adept at engineering public opinion towards his favor through Half Truths rather than falsehoods, and promotes a militaristic mindset throughout his Empire. Known for lapsing into Orwellian euphemisms as well, like "This war is for peace."
• Abilities: As the avatar of metal, he easily overpowers all other elements arrayed against him (minus lava), and he is known by the moniker of The Bulldozer for his overwhelming display of power. Missiles shaped like footballs, limbs that contort into artillery units, hands that transform into miniguns - anything and everything is possible with him as long as it is metal.
• Goal: At his core, if he cannot understand you, he sees nothing better than to destroy you - to the point of obsession. To that end, he's as bad as it gets - he forces his Armigers to throw away everything they have in exchange for becoming walking war machines, overthrows governments hostile to his rule, installs pro-Caerleon juntas in those overthrown governments, and engineers false flag operations in order to incite wars between his rivals. He has since made a career out of creating enemies for the express purpose of annihilating them in order to maintain his imperium among Armigers. In a way, he is the personification of perpetual war and all that entails.
• Role: He is the Imperator of Caerleon, a military society where every citizen is a soldier. As Imperator, he is their military autocrat, molding the nation in his image with impunity. His treatment of the humans of Canaan amounts to target practice, as a way to test his new toys. He attempts to disrupt the Balance of Power by isolating, dismembering, and destroying all of his enemies. While Eclipse was designed with a Big Bad Ensemble in mind, Essachan Sherruk is intended to be the de facto Big Bad in the Earth-specific plot thread.
• Fate: Tentatively, when he is fighting Alice, she would either absorb him into her Pocket Dimension body, thereby isolating him forever, or crack his helmet and use her Indoctrination in order to get him to submit to her orders bit by bit. Maybe both, ultimately, because the end result is that she plunges him into his most horrible fate - he is left without an enemy. Now unable to wage Forever War, an at the mercy of goddess who will never obey him, Sherruk is compelled - perhaps through indoctrination or by his own will - to turn his his weapon upon what he now denotes as his greatest nemesis - himself.

edited 30th Dec '14 4:52:26 PM by Serocco

In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.

Responding to your message from earlier.

Not too bad. He seems to have a Prometheus-inspired backstory. Sounds a little to comic-bookish for my taste, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. He kind of reminds me of Ronan the Accuser from Guardians of the Galaxy.

What are his weaknesses? Does he have any family or friends? Who supplies him with his weapons and equipment?

I didn't take Prometheus as an inspiration, actually. It was just concocted off the bat. His weakness is lava. As the god of metal, he can counter or subjugate nearly every other element, most especially darkness (unless he is himself covered in shadows). He has no family, because again, he's metal.

He's a self-sufficient creature; remember, he's The Emperor of Caerleon. He wants to expand his Armigers from Powered Armor to "artillery units on legs," or even war vehicles ala the Chopper from Halo 3, but he's unable to do so due to evolution not working that way, so wants schematics for weapons of mass destruction from a defense contractor named Overwatch. Skuurnur is currently working out a deal with Overwatch that Sherruk vehemently opposes and is trying to undermine.

edited 1st Jan '15 5:57:49 PM by Serocco

In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.

I wasn't referring to the movie... Prometheus - The Titan in Greek mythology.

edited 1st Jan '15 6:00:02 PM by Aprilla

Oh. The dude who brought fire to the world. That also wasn't the inspiration. I happened to write Sherruk in as Imperator of Caerleon before I concocted his backstory. I had Caerleon as Armiger-majority from the get-go, so I figured "Oh, I need an explanation for it," and that's how I made his backstory.

edited 1st Jan '15 10:21:37 PM by Serocco

In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.

@Ambar Sonof Deshar: I generally like this kinds of characters so I'm totally thumbs-up with this Nila person. Was her name suppose to invoke the Latin word "nihil"? If yes, that's really on-the-nose, I'd recommend changing it. Beyond that, I think the quality of this character depends on the villain she's serving.

So, I guess here's my guy...

Name: Holly Ashe

Age: 40 to 50's

Personality: She has a very warm and enthusiastic demeanor. She tends to treat family, friends, total strangers and enemies with the same degree of openness and affection. Almost always cheerful and giddy - tends to giggle a lot and has a childish sense of humor. She also really likes nature and art, mostly music and painting. Another character described her as "a cool aunt". I think that sums her up pretty well.

Abilities: The magical power to make things explode, basically. She tends to get along well with most people so you could call her "charismatic" though she doesn't exactly command respect or loyalty.

Weaknesses: Self-rightousness and hypocrisy though she's gotten slightly better with that in recent years. Difficulty taking action for or acknowledging personal faults/past mistakes. Also, very bad karma mixed with a misplaced sense of "everything will work-out in the end".

Goals: Primary goal is to avoid retribution for her past crimes. Secondary goal is to destroy a crazy robot but she's not making much effort towards that goal.

Motivation: Fear and guilt. Belief in karma. She used to be all about high-minded humanistic ideals but she has kind of given-up on those.

Role in the story: Her actions are what led to the story's conflict though she herself rarely directly participates in the story.

Backstory: Initially, Holly was a member of the "upper caste" in her civilization. During her early adulthood, she discovered that she had "combustion magic" powers. With these powers, she and her comrades started a rebellion which lead to her becoming a leader of an independent country. She enforced an esoteric set of laws which lead to the nation caving-in on itself, full-scale civil war style. She also assisted in the construction of an omnicidal giant robot, which was pretty bad. Once it was clear that she wasn't going to win the war, Holly went into hiding, secretly pulling strings and assisting some of the stories other antagonists.

Relevant Tropes:

• The Atoner: Subverted, she believes that she can't redeem herself
• Beware the Nice Ones
• Beware the Silly Ones
• Five-Bad Band: Dark Chick in one group, the Dragon-in-Chief in another and the Bigger Bad of the overall story
• Elemental Power: She has the power of "combustion"
• Friend to All Living Things: Comes across as this
• God in Human Form: She's an avatar for a deity called "He Who Shouts Power". That's the source of her magic powers.
• The Pollyanna: For the most part
• Villainous Legacy
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Used to be

edited 2nd Jan '15 12:24:55 AM by WSM

@Ambar: Nila sounds like a really tragic character. From the way you've described her, I'm not even sure she qualifies as a villain. She sounds more like a robot, than a person. She can't be evil any more than a gun can't be evil. Of course, that just makes her even more incredibly sad. The fact that she kind of wants to die but doesn't even have the initiative to do that. Btw, I really love this whole "make contracts with Words" idea, and the concepts used so far are very creative. Void and Hell are awesome powers to associate with. It sounds incredibly cool! Belial also sounds like a completely despicable person, someone who the audience will really want to see have their ass handed to him.

@WSM: I'll admit, I'm a little confused about Holly. On the one hand, she doesn't believe she can atone and wants to destroy the omnicidal robot she created, but on the other, she's still working with other villains and masterminding events? That second part makes it sound like she still has some kind of evil plan in the works while she's cleaning up the mess from her old one. Or am I misreading that? I will say that I do enjoy her personality as somebody's "cool aunt." I'd also like to know more about her goals as a former Well-Intentioned Extremist.

This guy's from a fantasy series I'm working on.

Name: Baelurg

Age: 139

Appearance: Even among trolls, Baelurg is a hulking brute made of muscle, standing at eight-and-a-half-feet-tall, compared with most trolls' seven. His skin is gray and thick, resembling a rhino's hide. His eyes are yellow and he has two prominent horns resembling a ram's growing from his brow. His hair is long, black, tangled mass. He drapes himself in the furs of the mammoths he's hunted and wears red war paint over his face.

Personality: Faux Affably Evil to the core, Baelurg is essentially an Ax-Crazy version of a Boisterous Bruiser. He's the kind of person who would kill your entire family then leave you for dead, only to buy you a drink and try to "catch up on old times" if he ran into you again. At least part of the reason for his insanity is that his berserker-state, the Fury, comes over him very easily when compared to other trolls, meaning it takes very little provocation for him to enter his killing mode and a lot of effort for him to pull himself out of it. He adopted his jolly demeanor as a way to mask his true nature from others and keep himself from flying off the handle when he was younger. Unfortunately, after he joined the army and experienced war firsthand, it became more difficult for him to control when the Fury takes him, and exacerbated his psychotic tendencies. His friendliness is now far more recognizable as a façade than it was when he was a teenager. While his biology can at least be partially held at fault for his murderous nature, the truth is Baelurg just likes killing, even when out of the Fury. It's one of his greatest joys, second only to fighting, particularly against skilled opponents. His devotion to fighting was initially fueled by his father, who went against tradition by being a male who joined the religious caste, rather than a soldier. In a culture filled with Proud Warrior Race Guys, Baelurg's been looked down his entire life by people who think he must be a coward due to his father's pacifism. Because of this, he threw himself into his warrior training to prove he wasn't another "cowardly weakling." Eventually this desire evolved into being known as one of the greatest warriors of all time, someone legends will be spread about.

Abilities: Like all trolls, Baelurg has a state of mind known as the Fury, a berserker-like state that increases his strength, speed, reflexes and tolerance for pain. Unlike most trolls, however, his Fury is significantly more pronounced, enabling him to do feats that other trolls can only dream of. Also, despite his insanity, he is an exceptional duelist and has a keen strategic mind when it comes to battles.

Weaknesses: His enhanced Fury is both a blessing and a curse. While he usually has a keen tactical mind, when he falls prey to this state, he's consumed with rage and his former strategy goes out the window and is replaced by "kill everything that moves." In this state, he's prone to making stupid mistakes.

Goals: Participate in as many epic battles as possible, die a warrior's death, and become a legend. Probably important to note, he doesn't actually believe his people will lose the war, he just thinks the battle will be glorious.

Motivation: A love of fighting and killing, and a deep need to prove himself as a warrior.

Role: The nemesis of The Big Guy, The Heavy of Book Two and a recurring villain until Book Five.

Backstory: A troll born to the Soloth Clan, Baelurg was raised in a society where martial prowess was prized above all else among men. When his father broke tradition and joined the religious caste, Baelurg experienced great shame and ridicule. His father was seen as a coward and a weakling, a reputation that was passed down to Baelurg all his life. Wanting to prove himself, Baelurg threw himself into his warrior training when he came of age in order to prove himself to everyone. It was during his preteen years where he first found out how easily the berserker Fury came over him. He tried to hide and suppress this side of himself by adopting a friendly and jovial persona that he never let drop. When he was old enough, he joined the army where he was a soldier who served under General Guldrin. Unfortunately, his exposure to actual battle only exacerbated his condition and he was discharged for his wanton cruelty to his opponents as well as his erratic and reckless behavior endangering his comrades. A week after returning home, he challenged a renown veteran to a duel over a perceived insult. The Fury overtaking him completely, Baelurg murdered his opponent and was subsequently banished from his country. He went overseas and joined a string of mercenary companies, eventually settling into an infamous group called the Hellhound Ravagers, which he took over after killing the previous leader and those loyal to him. Taking up a number of bloody contracts, when another nation began a war of "expansion" into troll territory, which was actually a campaign of extermination, Baelurg saw an opportunity for the war of a lifetime and offered his expertise on battling his home nation.

Tropes:

• Arch-Enemy: Serves as one to Guldrin, given his obsession with defeating the legendary General. He once served under him in the army, and was eventually discharged by him. While he's bitter about being kicked out, he's more concerned with facing a Worthy Opponent than he is avenging a past slight. He goes to increasingly vile means to draw Guldrin into combat with him. Guldrin, for his part, views him as a disgrace to his people and a rabid dog that needs to be put down.
• Asskicking Equals Authority: Far and away the strongest member of the Ravagers. He's managed to survive a few assassination attempts on his life from underlings who wanted a change in management.
• At Least I Admit It: While he recognizes that he's a psychopath who gets off on killing, he really has no tolerance for people who say they're killing others for an abstract "greater good" rather than for their own selfish reasons.
• Ax-Crazy: Despite his friendly attitude, he's an incredibly unstable person who suffers from moodswings and is prone to extreme acts of violence for little to no reason. He was much more stable, though still bloodthirsty, when he was younger but his time in the war sent him off the deep end.
• Bad Boss: While he usually pals around with his men, due to his anger issues, he'll still sometimes kill minions for giving him bad news, for failing him, or just because they're in range when the Fury takes him outside of battle. His Number Two constantly advises against this since soldiers don't loyally follow a commander who will kill them.
• The Berserker: Like all trolls, he can enter a state of mind called the Fury, a berserker like state where he's able to shrug off pain like it's nothing, his strength, speed and reflexes increase tremendously, and he becomes a near unstoppable killing machine. The only downside is that strategy becomes harder when you’re consumed with rage, and part of his insanity means that he can enter this state with very little provocation.
• Blood Knight: Fighting is his greatest joy in life.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Just because he's evil doesn't mean he's not a colossal ham who loves the thrill of battle.
• Card-Carrying Villain: He sometimes refers to himself as "evil" or a "monster" but it's mostly done in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. When asked whether or not he literally sees himself that way, he responds that if you spend your life killing people for fun, agree to help commit genocide against your own race, and have nearly every person you come into contact with call you "a monster" except your minions who Rape, Pillage, and Burn, then you’re probably a monster. This doesn't really bother him because, as he points out, people remember monsters.
• Death Seeker: His eventual goal in life is to die a glorious death in combat against a Worthy Opponent, a death that will spawn legends. When his death actually comes, it's nothing like he wanted it at all.
• Duel to the Death: What he prefers to do with exceptional warriors he's captured, as well as his prisoners of war, though in the latter case it's more for entertainment than for actual tests of skill.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being one of the most blatantly evil characters in the series, he will not cheat in duels. When a newbie soldier tries to earn Baelurg's good graces by murdering Baelurg's opponent in a Duel to the Death just as Baelurg was about to lose, Baelurg immediately repays the man by ripping his head off. He then allows his opponent's family to go free, as that was what Baelurg had promised his opponent as a reward if the man succeeded in besting him. He also despises cowards and Armchair Military.
• Fair-Play Villain: See Even Evil Has Standards above. While everything is permitted in war, in one-on-one duels, he will never cheat.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's a funny, jolly and hammy person who's just as likely to buy his men a round of drinks and lead them in a Bawdy Song as he is to disembowel innocent people for giggles.
• Freudian Excuse: His father was a devout pacifist and broke tradition among trolls by joining the religious caste, instead of being a soldier. Baelurg threw himself into battles and honed his skills as a warrior to prove that he was nothing like his "cowardly weakling" of a father.
• Frontline General: Even if his men aren't always safe from his wrath, he at least will fight alongside them during battles.
• Glory Hound: His secondary motivation is to create a legend about his prowess as a warrior. He does get a legend, but it's not the way he wanted it.
• The Heavy: For Book Two, while the Holy Council is the mastermind of the plot to destroy the trolls, Baelurg is the one actually putting the plot into action.
• Loser Son of Loser Dad: How he was perceived as a child, and why he's so determined to prove himself as a warrior.
• Older Hero Versus Younger Villain: Guldrin is two centuries older than Baelurg who is in his late twenties by troll standards. Baelurg has wanted to kill Guldrin ever since he served under him the army.
• Psycho for Hire: He joined his nation's military for the rush of battle, the chance for glory, and the freedom to kill people. When he was discharged for his erratic behavior, then exiled from his home country for murdering another veteran in an illegal duel, he joined a mercenary group for the same chance to hurt others and create his own legend. He goes so far as to align with an empire that wants to wipe out his entire race just because of how much fun he thinks fighting a war against his own Proud Warrior Race Guys will be.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: His mercenary group's modus operandi, though Baelurg himself doesn't engage in the rape part. Not exactly a Pet the Dog moment though as he's completely fine with his men "enjoying the spoils of war."
• A Real Man Is a Killer: What he believes and the reason why he's so contemptuous of his father.
• Villainous Friendship: He's Vitriolic Best Buds with his Number Two, Jerem. Of all the underlings he's killed in a blind rage, Jerem is the only person Baelurg actively restrains himself from killing. The reason for their friendship is that, despite Jerem being a puny human, he's one of the only people who never shows fear in addition to being a keen strategist. Jerem's death at the hands of the heroes sends him immediately into his deadliest berserker rage yet.
• Villainous Valor: Say what you will about Baelurg, but he's not a coward, he leads from the front, and he's smart enough and strong enough to take on and survive seemingly impossible odds.
• War Is Glorious: He believes this to the point that he'll wage one against his own people for the fun and challenge involved.
• Worthy Opponent: He views Guldrin as one, but Guldrin is too disgusted by Baelurg's actions to have any sort of respect for him.

edited 30th Aug '15 11:09:10 AM by OccasionalExister

I like this guy. For one thing, it's good to see a troll get some actual personality for once. I'm glad you evaded making him completely void of redeeming quality as well. Berserker style villains have a penchant for being either a) without characterization beyond that or b) utterly and stereotypically evil. This guy evades that. I'll note that his father also sounds like an interesting fellow. Do we ever meet him?

---

The following are a pair of villains from Gangland whom I've been meaning to write-up for a while. They'd be the Big Bad Duumvirate of Season 4, taking over from Omar Asif. To provide some context, at this point in the story, with Cale Brownlow long dead, the cartels forced out of town, and the Medici having collapsed under Omar's assault, Villain Protagonist Svetlana "Lana" Rossokovsky is the uncrowned queen of the city's underworld. Her special relationship with the Anti-Gang Task Force has also gone public, though her personal connection with protagonist Mitchell Michaels remains under wraps for the moment. All is quiet on the Western Front...right up until these two appear on the scene.

Names: Jade Queens (aka AK-52, BorgPrincess, and about half-dozen other handles) and Lucy Chambers

Ages: Early twenties and late thirties respectively.

Personality: Jade's antisocial in every meaning of the word. She's been a shut-in for much of her life, and in person, even when she's at her most functional, there's something off about her behaviour. She's got a lot of the verbal tics and physical twitches one would associate with some autism spectrum disorders, all of which she camouflages under a look that's one-third Goth, one-third punk rock, one-third 20s gangster, and all her own. She's got an intense hatred for all forms of authority, and particularly the state, which she views as being there to oppress people and restrain their freedom to dream, an affinity for street thug culture despite being from a middle class background, and a tendency towards viewing herself as a supervillain. She's vengeful, psychologically sadistic, and very, very volatile.

Lucy's a pillar of the community on the surface. She's a high-society heiress who's given hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity, and is heavily involved in community outreach projects to try and save street kids and bring them to Jesus. Scratch the paint job though, and you'll find a thoroughly shattered, badly repressed lesbian, with a twisted up version of Leviticus constantly running through her head. She's got a number of serious substance abuse problems, and is prone to chemically-induced psychotic breaks during which she'll try to torture and murder anybody she views as a sinner. Eventually, as her addiction worsens and her crimes catch up with her, her personas bleed together, leaving you with a very rich, very hateful woman who is desperate to avoid prosecution.

Abilities: The computer system that Jade can't get into hasn't been designed yet. She can access government documents, bank records, personal files, you name it. She knows which politicians like to shoot porn of themselves with hookers, which CEOs have been in rehab, you name it, and she's prepared to use it to blackmail them all into giving her what she wants. On the physical end of things, she retains control over the White Sharks (more on that below) and through them has access to a lot of street corner level criminals. Perhaps her greatest asset, however, is her ability to predict exactly which buttons to press to bring somebody's personal life crashing down around their ears.

Lucy, while high, is an out-of-her-mind berserker who probably wouldn't notice a .45 to the chest. When sober she's a very well-off woman who is an expert at sweeping evidence under the rug. She can hire legions of lawyers, private security firms, and more, and her social status alone is enough to get her out of most jams.

Weaknesses: Jade's the definition of a Non-Action Big Bad. She has to get somebody else to do her fighting for her, because in a direct confrontation with the police or one of Lana's thugs, she'd be dead. She also lacks the resources that other series' big bads have had at their disposal, which means she has to be very careful about how she spends her money and uses her men. If she overreaches, she won't last long.

Lucy's a hardcore drug addict and has all the weaknesses that come with that, including chemical dependency, an inability to think clearly, and an ever increasing inability to keep the two parts of her life separate. She's also very, very protective of her reputation, to the point where if she were to stay out of prison, but be outed as a lesbian (let alone a Serial Killer of prostitutes) she'd regard it as a loss.

Goals: Jade wants to destroy Mitchell Michaels. She aims to ruin his reputation, lose him his job, cut him off from all of his allies, and then kill him. Simple as that.

Lucy, once she realizes what she's been doing while under the influence, wants to dodge the consequences for her actions, and, having decided she likes it, continue her campaign to "rid the world of evil". To do that, she's going to need Lana dead and the police off of her case.

Motivations: Mitchell arrested Jade's best friend and nearly busted her, and since she takes everything personally, that's all the motivation she needs.

Lucy's a fundamentalist who views the sexually active—let alone the homosexual—as unclean. She thinks the world would be a purer place without them, a thought she normally suppresses, but which once it gets out there, she can't put back in the box.

Role in story: Jade was a recurring villain in Seasons 2 & 3 (see below) who graduates to Big Bad in Season 4. Swearing revenge on Mitchell Michaels for putting her best friend in prison, she and her gang, The White Sharks (an unholy blend of backalley drug dealers and white collar cybercriminals) proceed to go after him on every level, publicizing his relationship with Lana, blackmailing the mayor into investigating his unit, leaking his address and those of his family and friends to every criminal in the city, and contracting a series of killers to try and take out him and those he cares about. Eventually, Jade reaches out to Lucy, forming an alliance against both Mitchell and Lana. The net result of her actions is to have many of Mitchell's cases thrown out, freeing Alexandr Rossokovsky in the process.

Lucy's introduced in Season 4 as a client of one of Lana's drug-dealers. She snaps while under the influence and murders a prostitute who she thought was soliciting her. The prostitute in question works for Lana, who starts looking into the murder, while Lucy tries to cover it up—only to realize she enjoyed the murder, and to set out to commit more, convincing herself she's on a crusade. The repeat killings eventually make her the subject of investigation by both police and Lana, and she tries to have Lana killed to protect herself. She eventually crosses paths with Jade, forming an alliance against Mitchell and Lana in the last couple of episodes. Her actions force Lana to take a good, hard look at her drug business, and realize that she's doing a lot more damage than she thought she was, eventually prompting her Heel–Face Turn.

Backstory: Jade was vice-president of her college's AV club (her best friend, Sarah, was president), which brought her to the attention of a couple of white wannabe-gangster dope dealers who were looking to exploit the chaos after Alexandr Rossokovsky's fall. The gang tried to divert some money from the banks to their accounts so that they could expand their operations, starting a fight with one of the actual street gangs in the process. Mitchell came down on them to stop the violence, and Jade, who found being an outlaw a fascinating experience, launched a coup and took over the gang, renaming it "The White Sharks", taking them into online fraud, identity theft, credit card scams, and other forms of cybercrime, while still keeping a foot in the world of low-level drug dealing. They eventually ran afoul of Omar Asif in Season 3, and Mitchell busted them again, arresting several members of the gang, including Sarah, who Jade had recruited. Jade recovers from this, expands the size of The White Sharks, and vows to get back at Mitchell one way or another.

Lucy was raised by parents who were socialites by day and fundamentalist psychotics at night. They wanted her to represent the family, date their friends' sons, and eventually marry the man they wanted her too, all while at the same time beating a message of "sexuality is bad" into her skull. When they found out she was interested in other women, they tried to pound it out of her, sending her to "conversion therapy", physically abusing her, and eventually setting her up to be molested by the "nice Christian boy" they would try and force her into marrying. Lucy turned to alcohol and then harder narcotics to cope, eventually metamorphosing into the tightly repressed, self-loathing, and incredibly angry woman that she is today.

Relevant tropes: The Bad Guy Wins (Jade goes to prison, but ruins Mitchell's reputation and gets Alexandr Rossokovsky out of jail, further endangering his life) Base on Wheels (Jade spends some time operating out of a Mack truck with a wi-fi connection), The Berserker (Lucy on bath salts), Big Bad Ensemble—>Big Bad Duumvirate, Bitch in Sheep's Clothing (Lucy), The Chessmaster (Jade), The Cracker (Jade is one and has a bunch more on staff), Corrupt Corporate Executive (Lucy), Dark Action Girl (Lucy), Serial Killer (Lucy), White Gangbangers (the physical half of Jade's gang)

Baelurg sounds very fleshed out. How long did it take to write him? Over the course of years or did you make him in a few brainstorms or character fusions?

@Deshar

Do Jade and Lucy ever meet in the story? Despite their differences in views I think together they would raise more hell than they could alone, and provide an awesome [Foil] to one another. If they can ever avoid going at each other's throats, the world would be in some hellish trouble.

Name: Abyzou

Age: 25

Personality: Control Freak. Narcissistic. Passionate. Nymphomaniacal. Over-dramatic. One who gorges on the pleasures of life.

Abilities: Abyzou has Bascany (derived from the greek work baskanos, or bewitching/cursing), an ability inherit to Succubus. She has the power of flight, and emits Glamour which makes her pleasant to all human senses, dulling the instincts of those around her.

Weaknesses: Poorly Educated in History, Mathematics and Logic. Despite understanding language and some human psychology, she heavily relies upon the intelligence of her thralls and mindslaves to solve her problems for her. She feeds on people's life energy through skin-on-skin contact, but inherit her victims emotional and mental ailments. If she feeds on a chronically depressed person, she becomes chronically depressed as a side effect for a couple days.

Goals: Amass a civilization of human thralls to worship her, praise her, do whatever she desires and protect her from other Succubi and those who she cannot control with her powers.

Motivation: The ability to control the minds of others eventually became a NEED to control others. Despite being far more beautiful than most humans, she is one of the least attractive succubi in the story. She wishes to control the world to keep them blind, to praise her as a goddess when she knows she is a failure, to celebrate feats she never did, to worship the beauty she does not believe exist, and to love her as slaves, than to hate her of their own free will.

Role in the story: She is a Decoy Antagonist for the beginning of the story. Another villain kills her, and is initially praised by the hero's team until they figure out WHY he did it...

Backstory: She originally wanted to dethrone an incubus dictator by using her powers of bascany to create an army to fight him. Eventually as she released more people from their mind control, she learned that they could express dislike for her, they could mock her, learn her secrets and weaknesses, and even plot to kill her. Nobody cared who she was or what she did, unless she made them. Her fear of this eventually inspired her to not release them from her own bascany. She defeats the Incubus dictator, but replaces his dictatorship with her own, pulling even more people into being her slaves.

Relevant Tropes:

• Always Chaotic Evil: Succubi can only survive by absorbing the life force of others, can only feel pleasure by removing it from their victims, and whose only role as a living being is a psychopathic super parasite. Succubi attempting to choose passive or helpful lives starve to death, go into suicidal depression or are killed by succubi willing to take advantage of them.
• Beauty Is Bad: Succubi believe beauty should be flaunted and worshiped over those who don't have it. Anyone less attractive than yourself is below you.
• Evil Feels Good: Abyzou is freed from her anxiety and depression when she is praised by everyone she has enthralled. Knowing a person under her control can never act on their own behalf is so pleasing to her that the first thousand she acquires isn't enough.
• Emotion Eater: When Abyzou feeds upon enthralled humans, she absorbs their emotional state as a side effect. When she is feeling anxious, depressed and miserable, she will feed a perky and cheerful subject until they are completely devoid of happiness, then summarily dispose of them.
• Horny Devils: Subverted, as Succubi don't need to have sex at all to drain the life of their victims, and is instead a lie perpetrated by the Succubi themselves to make their prey seek them out voluntarily.
• [[The Vamp]]: Abyzou plays to her type insisting she isn't as ruthless and evil as other succubi, and only wants to be protected in exchange for a world of pleasure. She uses the promise of pleasure that she never delivers, to entice her victims to do her bidding.
• Villainous Breakdown: Abyzou catches a sexually transmitted disease when she tries to rape one of the characters. While temporary and treatable to humans, it is a death sentence to succubi, which causes Abyzou to slowly slip into despair as the person she tried to demoralize with rape, will be the one who kills her.

edited 8th Jan '15 1:55:27 AM by Aespai

Warning: This poster is known to the state of California to cause cancer. Cancer may not be available in your country.

@Ambar: The current plan is for the second book to take place deep in troll territory, so Baelurg's father would meet with the heroes and play a role in the series. I don't have a name for him yet, but I do have some backstory planned for him and plan to make him a woobie. Essentially, he's just a really Nice Guy who's never liked violence (but doesn't hold anything against soldiers since they're fighting for their country) and has always been dedicated to helping others. His life has been horrible but he's never acted bitter about it and he's never let it dampen his altruistic motives. A recent idea I've had is for him to adopt the young girl who was a member of the family Baelurg spared following his duel. For added poetry, I think she'll also flaunt societal convention and become a soldier, becoming the famous warrior Baelurg always wanted to be known as in the process.

I always like the villains you post here, mainly because no matter how vicious or creepy they are, they always feel human at their core. They're like real, fleshed-out people instead of just obstacles for your protagonists. Lucy in particular I have a lot of sympathy for because I could easily see how she turned out so crazy. She's scary as hell, but how could someone who faces that kind of upbringing and trauma not turn out like that? She reminds me a bit of a fundamentalist version of Robert Quarles. Even Jade, despite seeing herself as a kind of supervillain, feels like a person. How is her relationship with the friend that Mitchell busted, by the way? Also, I like how both of these villains are female, because I haven't often see women serving as these character types. I can't remember the last time I've seen a female cracker or fundamentalist Serial Killer. Combined with their respective backgrounds and styles and they both feel really unique.

@Aespai: Thank you, that was really nice of you to say. It was a couple months before I came up with the current version of Baelurg, and he did go through a few character fusions. I'm actually still torn on whether or not to implement this current version or the previous version I had for him. That latter version was actually portrayed as a Tragic Villain. He still loved fighting and killing, but he had enough of a conscience to realize what he was doing was wrong and try to repress it. Unfortunately, his Fury made killing a compulsion and he eventually convinced himself he couldn't suppress that side of him and he may as well embrace it, becoming a Serial Killer then psychotic mercenary. He also originally had a lot more standards, loved his father and his death was intended to be an Alas, Poor Villain.

Abyzou, I really like. In fact, I like your idea for succubi in general. Despite being "psychopathic super parasites," they almost sound like a tragic race. They're literally incapable of feeling positive emotions unless they rob them from someone else. Even if they wanted to be good, they'd either die or just be easy pickings for the rest of the species since most of them have no such reservations. "Be evil or die." It sounds like a pretty hollow existence, overall. I could see why they'd gorge themselves on pleasure to forget it. I've never really thought much about the societal aspect of an Always Chaotic Evil race, but it sounds like it'd be really interesting to explore. I actually pity Abyzou to an extent because of this, and since her need for power comes mainly from fear of her subjects and thralls, as well as self-loathing. She definitely sounds leagues more interesting than most succubi villains I've seen, who usually have little depth aside from being Horny Devils. Good work! I do have one question. Is Abyzou's bascany more power than others of her kind? For some reason, I assume that since she's "ugly" by succubi standards, the others may look down on her which means more power would be more useful in gathering support and keeping others of her kind in line.

edited 9th Jan '15 3:53:27 PM by OccasionalExister

• Name: Silmarul "The Despair King" / The Prince of Violation / The Hopekiller

• Age: Easily as old as the universe. Came into being in the last one to fight the Old Gods.

• Personality: Silmarul is one of the Powers That Be, and not a very nice one, as you can tell from his titles. To be precise, he is the God of Mutation / Change, Despair, Cancer, and Bodily Horror. He views the warping of the human body into interesting new shapes and configurations as enlightening, and that submitting to his alterations allow humans to readily see things that mortals shouldn't see, which would drive "lesser men" to madness. In that way, he thinks he's doing humanity a service. As far as he is concerned, change is good, and the more you subject yourself to, the better. Despair, on that note, is also good - because despair forces people into slow acting changes to their behaviour, and moving through the "wastes" of despair can produce "great enlightenment". However, he is a very tricky deity, in that what he thinks is enlightening probably doesn't match up with what his subject thinks is so. Silmarul also governs over cancer - with an interesting stipulation that as long as you're in the Silmarul Cult's good graces, the cancerous developments can be...overseen and directed. As far as Silmarul is concerned, cancer has been observed to cause great despair, which is in line with his bizarre thought pattern. The more humans succumb to despair, the more change they bring trying to move through their despair. It is also safe to say he finds Body Horror beautiful rather than repulsive, and in his own way, Silmarul desires to bring as much of his beauty to the world as possible...

• Abilities: Being one of the Gods of Darkness, his power is cosmic - he can easily warp reality within certain spaces, and even outside of them, his powers are top tier. With a simple tap on your forehead or even a gaze, he can do anything from bring back all your trauma or cause many, many pustules and cancers to form. To an extent, he's even capable of sewing life...well, his own kind of life. Most of his creations are (fundamentally) slugs, snails, botflies, bats, giant bacteria, ooze creatures, rats, and crows.

• Weaknesses: Despite his trickiness, he's also remarkably short-sighted when a goal is within reach. Khaos utterly humiliated him on accident when he was working to try to humiliate Varancain through this weakness. He also has much less power in the "direct worlds", unless a place has been pledged to him. Even then, he can rarely if ever show himself physically.

• Goals: Spread his unique vision of a world, and possibly take command of the Dark Gods.

• Motivation: When Silmarul existed in the Old God Verse, he was a farmer named Silas Marin. He was crushed by despair at the realization he toiled to become "pure" for Old World Matthew, for nothing, because Old World Matthew confessed, after his Heel Realization, that it was all psychosis and none of his acts were sincere. Silmarul thus decided purity itself was a false idea. After fighting Kathon and the rest of the Old Gods, Silmarul decided the best way to combat the "purity zealots" to come was to create the exact opposite ideal.

• Role in the story: Occasional Bigger Bad.

• Backstory: Silmarul was a member of a fighting force in the Old World, fighting against the even greater evil that was the Old Gods, and the Old God of Chaos, Kathon. Following this war, Silmarul became an advisor to Khaos, the Dark King of Justice, and was one of those who advised him to seek war with the Light Gods following The Pillaging. Silmarul however did not know that Vicelogia was responsible. Tellingly, as to Vicelogia's morality, not even Silmarul liked that, and made a point of "not betraying him, but certainly not associating with him any more."

• Relevant Tropes:
• Alien Blood: Better not let any blood from a Silmarite or any of their creatures get on you. Its ALWAYS poisonous.
• Beneficial Disease: The one good thing to come of him was that, during Book II, a group of cultists, happy that Matthew saved them from Sharon Tate Roman, cured the toxin Roman's assassin used on him...with a disease called "Toxin's Bane Disease". It is a disease that actively goes after other toxins and impurities within the body.
• Break Them by Talking: One of his less well known roles is as "a dominator", as in, he governs over control exercised on a victim. He even gives this horror of a lecture in one short story; "You can never escape me. I will follow you to the ends of the Earth and beyond even that. I am the Prince of All Violation. I destroyed your old life, but I can give it to you again, as long as you submit to me. You will submit, or you will DIE!"
• Brown Note: Silmarul's Etchings will blast away your SAN and usually give you an interesting modification or two...or three...
• Combat Tentacles: Often given to his followers, but Silmarul himself is always depicted as having two of them, one on each shoulder, curving downward.
• Deal with the Devil: And if you want my advice, do not sign on for any of this creature's deals. It never ends well, and even when Silmarul intended to honour his end of the deal, it involved selling a pre-teen boy's soul to him. And remember, Silmarul is not known for being kind to souls in his domain.
• Despair Event Horizon: Silmarul's Cultists see this moment as a gift - by moving past it, they can thus overcome their pain and become greater than they are. Thus, they thank their deity for these kinds of moments.
• Eldritch Location: Silmarul's Personal Plane of Existence, called "Rot-Haven". There are no chapters set in Rot-Haven, thank goodness, but simply visiting it functions as someone's Dark and Troubled Past. It apparently is essentially a dark copy of the Earth, but where every individual present has surrendered to despair and willingly afflicts him / herself with greater and greater Body Horror to move past the despair. It is also called "The Land of Eternal Cancer".
• Even Evil Has Standards: Warped, cruel being he may be, but even he detested how Vicelogia deceived Khaos. So much so, he conspired to tell Khaos, but apparently Vicelogia threatened to expose something about Silmarul.
  • He was also the first Dark God to decide, hey, lets stop being hostile when someone new on the block is threatening omnicide, during the crossover Tri Age Cataclysm.
• Evil Feels Good: Disturbingly enough, his devotees very much like what their new appearance feels like.
• Evil Is Visceral: Basically the God of it. A few examples:
  • The Silmarul Pus Fly: After having a Silmarul Rite performed, a person's back swells up with huge boils and cancers...which start producing these rather squishy flies. They're made of parts of a human body. No matter what, do not allow them to grow too big. Otherwise, they pupate, and what comes out is heavily You Really Do Not Want To Know.
  • The Bloating Curse: Better hope you're curse-proofed if you're going in against Silmarites. This curse causes spontaneous development of fatty tissues in tremendous amounts. You now also taste very delicious to certain creatures summoned by the cultists.
  • The Dread Keepers: Semi-human creatures that directly serve Silmarul, they have around seven legs, three heads, usually one nested within the other, and the third emerging from the chest. The arms behave like rubber, do not seem to have bones, and are usually twelve to fifteen in number.
• Evil Smells Bad: Silmarul's Cults usually make quite a noxious odor when they set up shop. You can usually find them just based on it.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Poor Matthew woke up during that time in Book II to looking into the Head Cultist's eyes...on his right arm.
• Fantasy Pantheon
• Flies Equals Evil: He can even manifest as a skeleton with millions of swarming flies around it. One common Attack Spell for the Cultists is called Devouring Swarm, which siccs a whole ton of hungry Pus Flies on you, summoned out of Rot-Haven.
• Gender Bender: He can offer this if someone feels dissatisfied with their gender. However, he is not happy if someone just wants to change their gender. Hence why his Mind-Flayers are infamous for, ah, gathering transsexuals. "I just have so many gifts to give...why not take more?"
• God of Evil: The rest of the Dark Gods can be very nice to their worshipers. Heck, even Varancain the Deceiver is viewed as more acceptable, and he's the guy who basically says "Lets make Dragons and go on a rampage."
• Jackass Genie: Silmarul can have an extremely, sadistically sick sense of humour. Hence why you should avoid those deals.
• Mad God: He was driven mad, granted, so there is at least an explanation for why he is that way. But still, this is a deity that thinks giving someone tentacles instead of an arm is not just acceptable, its the right thing to do.
• Mad Scientist: Some of his minions fulfill this archetypal role - churning out horrid monsters simply because they looked interesting like that.
• Malevolent Mutilation: Silmarites will mutilate themselves to keep their deity happy with them. Including one guy managing to get a huge blade implanted into his arm, the hilt incoroporated into his elbow flawlessly.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: A very common addition sent from him. After all, you're more helpful if you've got more arms...
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Any Worshiper of Silmarul.
• The Pig-Pen: When directly summoned by a worshiper, Matthew, in hiding, almost vomits due to the smell. And even the cultist, who's used to some pretty fucked up stuff, can barely handle his own Patron's...fragrance.
• Plaguemaster: Silmarul can think up some pretty fucked up spells to attack people on a societal level. One time, the Azure King made the mistake of trying to commit genocide against a countryside of Silmarul Worshipers who weren't even kidnaping anyone or doing anything horrible. Silmarul's wrath poured out in the form of the Corrupting Blight - by the end, the Azure King lost his younger brother, his parents, and half his military force before "performing an act of repentence" to end the terror. Silmarul himself considered the Corrupting Blight the least bad thing he could've done.
  • Tellingly, he thinks Ebola is "one of my finer works", though he also insinuates he's not done mutating it yet.
• Poisonous Person
• Power Perversion Potential: ...lets just say, for some people, changing into things can be an erotic experience. Silmarul is positively delighted such people are attracted to his Cult.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: If Silmarul feels like giving you a real blessing, he'll hand you one of these. In particular, one guy got a selection of mono-molecular tentacles on his shoulders, functioning, basically, as Absurdly Sharp Whips that move extremely fast. Another cultist got what amounted to a pair of mouths on his hands...that can breath flesh-corroding toxin.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Warper's Tome. Instead of blasting a user's sanity, every time a spell in it is used, some interesting Body Horror happens to its user.
• Too Kinky to Torture: The Silmarites are used to a lot of different sensations, to the extent it is next to impossible to torture them. Sharon found this out the hard way when she infected a Silmarite with necrotizing faciitis...and he promptly squeeled with joy.
• The Virus: And with abundant Viral Transformation's. Most of his more magical plagues rarely stop at just necrophying the body. He will then "refill it with a different kind of life". You don't want to live through that.

edited 2nd Mar '15 5:25:53 PM by NickTheSwing

Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.

Re Simarul: He sounds like an especially horrifying and revolting villain, though not one without his sympathetic traits. His ideas of beauty and enlightenment are disturbing, but the fact that he's sincere in his belief that he's helping people through infection, mutilation and inducing despair does a good job of giving him depth while simultaneously making him even creepier. I am curious what kind of despair he inflicts on his followers that they're so grateful for. Does he shatter their worldview like what happened to him, or does he do something like have their loved ones murdered? Does he ever make an attempt to take over the Dark Gods?

The following character is from the same fantasy series as Baelurg is.

Name: Vaultrus

Age: 77

Appearance: Tall and lean with a gaunt, pockmarked face. The top of his head is bald, but the gray hair that grows out the back he styles in a short braid. He's also managed to cultivate a very impressive Wizard Beard.

Personality: A creature who lives for the pursuit and fulfillment of personal pleasure, Vaultrus is a man with an affinity for drugs, alcohol and sex. Vaultrus has spent his life being selfish, arrogant, and narcissistic. Some of this can be attributed to his early childhood. He was born to a poor family, where he was just another mouth to feed among his eight siblings, and was expected to work hard for the good of the family. When Vaultrus was taken by the Sorcerer Union for training, he found himself to be naturally gifted with magic. This natural talent made him feel special, which contributed to his growing arrogance and self absorption. He became dismissive and contemptuous of non-magic users and most of his peers, whom he perceived as less talented than himself, and treated them horribly. His talent, as well as the fact that he was no longer required to do the hard work and manual labor he did at home, caused him to put in as little effort as possible during both his studies as well as his job. Also, his deprived background and the luxurious conditions of his school, contributed to him overindulging. Vaultrus is petty, unable to take responsibility to his actions, and maliciously vengeful against those who show him disrespect. He has little empathy for others, and cares only about satisfying his own desires. The few people he does sincerely treat decently, he either does so either because they make him feel good about, or reminds him of, himself.

Abilities: An immensely smart and powerful sorcerer, his area of expertise is on Elemental Magic, lightning in particular. He's also a skilled practitioner of Blood Magic, which he uses to boost his own powers as well as to heal himself and allies, though at the cost of another's life. His power can also be amplified through the multiple magical amplifiers he creates.

Weaknesses: Despite his magic being incredibly powerful, using too much of it, too often, takes a severe toll on his body. He also has a habit of using his raw power as a crutch, substituting it in place of skill or finesse. His belief in his own superiority over other sorcerers and non-magic users means he has a habit of underestimating his opponents. Also, despite how much power he has, he's still a frail, old man and has no physical combat skills to defend himself with.

Goals: To absorb Mikhael's criminal faction and connections within Golden Port into the Thieves' Guild, back them in eliminating their competition, and essentially take over the city's underworld for his superiors.

Motivation: Finish his job so he can keep ensuring his continued protection by the Guild, keep getting paid, and keep fulfilling his lifestyle of debauchery.

Role: He's the Arc Villain of Book One's B-Plot.

Backstory: Born to a poor family with eight siblings, Vaultrus was the only member of his family to possess magic of any kind. Partly out of fear of his powers, partly so they would have one less mouth to feed, Vaultrus's parents gave him to the Sorcerer Union for training and development of his powers when he was thirteen-years-old. A brilliant student, Vaultrus was able to coast by on his natural talent with only the barest amount of effort. Unfortunately, his natural talent contributed to both his growing arrogance and laziness, while the luxurious conditions of his school were such a contrast to his impoverished background that he became prone to overindulge in the school's excesses. He had few friends thanks to his abrasive personality and contempt for his less talented peers. He managed to graduate with top marks at twenty, finished his apprenticeship in ten years, and was granted a job as a magical researcher at one of the Union's universities which he held onto for twenty years, during which time he had several apprentices of his own. While he managed to continue to coast for years, eventually he had to exert himself, and though several times he attempted to change his attitude and put in the effort, his laziness, selfishness, arrogance and constant desire for pleasure were too ingrained in him to be ignored. Over the years the quality of his work became erratic, he used skilled apprentices for their talent and sexually harassed the beautiful ones, and became known for abusing substances. Only the good will of his own former mentor protected him, and even that couldn't save him when he literally stole the research of one of his apprentices. Vaultrus managed to cling onto a position at the university, but he was demoted and his wages cut drastically. Chafing at the perceived slight, Vaultrus contacted a known black-market representative and began selling Sorcerer Union secrets: designs for magical apparatuses, black magic rituals, and even guides on Human Sacrifice. He was eventually exposed, fired, expelled from the Union, and sought after by local law. He only escaped punishment thanks to the Thieves' Guild, who made up his unknown client base. His prodigious talent and knowledge were seen as highly useful for the Guild, and Vaultrus himself ended up a mentor to Guild sorcerers and enforcer for the organization, a job that he's held onto for nearly thirty years.

Tropes:

• Arc Villain: He isn't the Big Bad of Book One, but he is a major villain for the second most prominent subplot in the book.
• The Archmage: He's an immensely powerful magic user to the point where some of his superiors believed he was talented enough to be the Grand Master of the Sorcerer Union, which is essentially what the setting's version of The Archmage is. He never officially made a bid for the position though, because he didn't want the responsibility, notoriety or scrutiny the position entails. Of course, since he's a colossal dick, it's not like he had any supporters anyway, though he's delusional enough to believe getting the title would be trivial if he really wanted it.
• Black Cloak: Always goes around in one, which is actually not the common fashion of the Guild. He just finds them comfortable and likes the way they look. At the very least he has the sense to operate mainly at night.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: With his natural talent, raw power and ability to absorb information almost effortlessly, he had it in him to be one of the greatest sorcerers in the world. However, he was much more occupied with personal pleasure and the boons his position granted him than actually contributing to the study of magic. His work frequently suffered for his laziness, and he actually went so far as to steal one of his apprentice's research.
• Dirty Old Man: First seen with two prostitutes, both of which are a third of his age, and he used to sexually harass the younger apprentices at his university. In fact, he pretty much lives in the brothel while coordinating efforts for the Guild to take over the town.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Love might be a stretch for a person like him, but he does like his little sister, who was the only family member to keep in contact with him over the years. However, a major reason for him liking her is because of the Big Brother Worship she showed him as a child and her awe over his magical abilities. In his conversation with Mikhael where he mentions her, it's important to note that while he mentions caring about her, he can't even remember basic information about her life, such as her last name after she married.
• Evil Old Folks: In his seventies and an utter bastard.
• Evil Sorcerer: He's a powerful and unethical sorcerer who practices incredibly horrifying and torturous Human Sacrifice rituals to boost his magic.
• Glass Cannon: He's got a lot of raw magic power in him, which usually leads to One Hit Kills if he hits his target, but he's still a frail, old man. If someone can get around his defenses, he's easy to take down.
• Grumpy Old Man/Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: He was always a Jerkass but it's increased drastically with age as he's become more embittered with his life. Now he's a cantankerous asshole to everyone for pretty much no reason whatsoever other than he can't be bothered with any social conventions.
• The Hedonist: He really only lives for personal pleasure, which includes copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and sex.
• It's All About Me: He betrayed the Sorcerer Union by selling magical artifacts and secrets about Black Magic to The Syndicate because he wanted revenge against the organization. The reason he wanted revenge? They demoted him and cut his pay... because he didn't do his job, abused substances, sexually harassed apprentices and stole their research for himself. His current work with the Guild is also motivated purely by selfishness and a desire to protect himself, no matter how many people he has to hurt in order to do so.
• It Gets Easier: He did actually reach his own personal moral crossing when he committed his first murder by showing Guild sorcerers how to perform Human Sacrifice. He managed to get through the ritual, but threw up as soon as he was in private. Unfortunately, killing became much easier for him over time.
• Mouth of Sauron: He serves in this capacity to the head of the Thieves' Guild, though he isn't the only one the boss has on standby.
• Narcissist: He's smug, entitled, self-absorbed, selfish and unable to perceive the fault in his actions or empathize with other people unless they remind him of and/or make him feel good about himself.
• Never My Fault: He blames the university for both his demotion and turn to crime despite everything causing it clearly being of his own doing.
• Pet the Dog: Ironically, he's more of a mentor to Dmitri than he ever was to any of his actual students. He does seem to feel some empathy for Dmitri's plight, even going so far as to stand up to Dmitri's father, Mikhael, ordering him to stop abusing the boy. A part of this is because of his own parents' neglect and eventual abandonment.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He only works for the Guild for the money and the protection from the law. Despite spreading the influence of a really horrible organization that's ruined countless lives, he doesn't go out of his way to Kick the Dog and really only acts as evil as he "has to." That being said, the things he "has to" do for his job are so horrific that this trope doesn't make him sympathetic at all. He's also impossible to empathize with since he's selfish, self-absorbed and unpleasant as a person.
• Smug Super: He's incredibly arrogant about how powerful his magic is. Underestimating his non-magical opponent is what gets him killed.
• The Svengali: Vaultrus didn't take many apprentices, but the ones he did were brilliant, talented and used by Vaultrus completely for his own advancement. The most overt instance of this was a case where he actually stole an apprentice's discoveries and passed it off as his own. As mentioned above, his attractive female apprentices also went through a lot of sexual harassment.

edited 11th Jan '15 6:03:47 PM by OccasionalExister

Sounds like we have a textbook narcissist here. I find it interesting that, going off of your description, he's actually one of the most powerful villains in the setting, but is held back by his own lack of effort.

I don't know if you were planning to do this or not, but the bit about his having used and abused a succession of highly skilled apprentices? Sounds like a solid backstory for a more threatening antagonist later on, and would provide a built-in Freudian Excuse.

---

This will be my final post on Gangland for a while. I give you Alexandr Rossokovsky, Svetlana's father, and Big Bad of Seasons 1 & 5.

Name: Alexandr Rossokovsky

Age: Mid-sixties

Personality: Alexandr's fearless, overbearing, and obsessed with respect. As the dominant figure in the city's underworld for the better part of thirty years, he's used to getting what he wants, when he wants it, and sees anything less than total submission on the part of a potential rival as a challenge to his authority. When the series opens, his success has gone to his head, to the point where he's plotting to exterminate the Medici family for no other reason than the fact that they've had a good year profit-wise, and he's genuinely shocked and offended when the police try to stop him. After his stint in prison, he reverts to who he was thirty years earlier: a careful planner who is nonetheless happy to shoot his way into power, and for whom nothing, not even family ties, is more important than his reputation as a man who should never be crossed.

Abilities: Alexandr headed up the largest criminal syndicate in the city, and had all the resources that entails. He kept a death grip on the legal system, with agents planted throughout the police department, the DA's office, and city hall. His connections extend even farther afield, and it's well within his means to fly additional muscle in from out of the country; he's also smart enough to have a number of hidden bank accounts with which he safeguards his fortune.

On the physical level, Alexandr started out as an ex-soldier turned contract killer in Moscow, and while years of being The Don have dulled his skills, they've never completely worn away. A couple of years in prison see him dust them off, and by the time he's let loose in Season 5, he's a match for any other gangster on the street.

Weaknesses: Alexandr's supreme overconfidence, and need to make everyone submit to him, are what do him in every time. He's unable to just leave well-enough alone, and his overwhelming need to not only be in charge, but to make everybody who is not in charge suffer for it, get him into a lot of turf wars that could have been avoided. His need to cripple the Medici caused them to hire Cale Brownlow and the Dixie Boys out from under him in Season 1, destroying his empire, and his homicidal campaign against his own daughter in Season 5 draws the ire of every law enforcement and criminal agency out there.

Goals: In Season 1, Alexandr wants to launch a war of extermination against the Medici, and recruits Mitchell Michaels and the Dixie Boys for this cause. In Season 5 he's out to reclaim his empire from Svetlana, and punish her for disobeying him.

Motivations: Alexandr has a compulsive need to be respected and feared. He needs everybody to be terrified of him, and it's this need that drives him as a criminal, regardless of circumstance.

Role in story: Alexandr is the father of Villain Protagonist Svetlana "Lana" Rossokovsky, and is the target of protagonist Mitchell Michaels' undercover operation in Season 1, where he acts as The Big Bad, controlling most of the city's illicit activities, importing psychotics like the Dixie Boys, and setting off a Mob War with the Medici. His fall at the end of Season 1, and the implosion of his city-wide criminal empire, sets off an escalating chain of gang violence, as Lana, Cale Brownlow, the Medici, the cartels, Omar Asif, and every street thug in town, try to exploit the situation for their own ends, and carve out their own slice of his old territory. When Jade Queens' attack on Michaels' reputation sees many of his cases thrown out, Alexandr is released from prison in Season 5, where he discovers that Lana has a) taken his place as the city's kingpin and b) wracked with guilt over the situation with Lucy from Season 4, is planning to sell off the entire business. Alexandr's refusal to let that happen sees him try to snatch his crown back from his daughter, triggering a Rossokovsky family civil war in the process.

Backstory: Alexandr grew up poor and angry in one of Moscow's more miserable neighbourhoods. His father was a petty criminal who never amounted to anything, while his prostitute mother was an even greater failure, committing suicide in front of her son one evening. Determined never to wind up like them, Alexandr tried to impress his personality on everybody, which saw him expelled from school for violence, and earned him a dishonourable discharge from the Russian army, before entering the field of organized crime, first as a hitman, and then as The Don. He eventually moved to North America, seized control of most of the city's gangs, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Relevant tropes: Archenemy (to Mitchell, and eventually, Lana), Archnemesis Dad (to Svetlana in Season 5), Badass Grandpa (especially in Season 5), Big Bad (of not only Seasons 1 & 5, where he's The Heavy, but of the show as a whole; even when he's in prison, the cast are left dealing with the fallout from his actions), The Don, Evil Old Folks, It's Personal (with Mitchell and Lana both), The Mafiya, Manipulative Bastard, Offing the Offspring (attempted in Season 5), Sanity Slippage (at the end of Season 1 and again at the end of Season 5)

Whew, it's been a while since I've been here! Alexandr is my kind of villain; he gives off a sinister yet stately feel, if that makes sense, a ruthless individual who has seen and done horrific things to get where he is and now sits in a position of immense power. Plus he's part of the Russian mafia anyway, and that always gets my attention—specifically since they're never portrayed with the same sense of honor that the Italians are in these types of stories, always being cold-blooded killers. His relationship with his daughter Lana is intriguing since he's definitely trying to kill her later, so getting into how he feels about destroying his own child is certainly something I'd want to see.

"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake." —Edgar Wallace

Another Clockwalkers villain, though once again a character from the world's mythology and not one who appears in the story proper.

• Name: The Red Dragon Jurlath

• Age: Unknown, though as one of the first—if not the first—dragons created, he was already ancient by the time of his death.

• Appearance: Jurlath was far bigger than the average adult dragon—who themselves are the size of a four story building. The structure of his legs put him on all fours most of the time, though he was capable of rising up on two legs for short periods of time. He possessed two pairs of wings, a large upper pair and a significantly smaller lower pair. Jurlath's scales were a bright blood red that glowed in the sunlight. His mouth was wide and filled with razor sharp teeth and a "mane" of hard spikes grew at the base of his neck. As a male dragon his horns were shorter than those of a female.

• Personality: Jurlath's personality remains conflicted among the dragons due to being Shrouded in Myth. Some say that he was wise and compassionate and held a just rule over the dragon race. Others insist that he was a brutal and scheming monster who desired domination at all costs and used force and deceit in order to accomplish his goals. What is agreed upon is that he turned upon the Goddess Zalakshi and declared her unfit to control the world of Rica. To that end he devoted himself to killing and eating her in order to take her power for himself and become Rica's new ruler. He was single-minded and ruthless in this pursuit, disregarding the lives lost in his battle with her or the consequences to the world itself.

• Abilities: Jurlath was the most powerful of the dragons. His scales were impenetrable not only to ordinary weapons but to the claws and teeth of other dragons as well. He was an extremely capable flier, able to read the slightest variations in air currents and flow with them to outmaneuver anything coming at him. Jurlath could breathe torrents of fire from his jaws large enough to set the land on fire for miles and hot enough to boil rivers and melt mountains.

• Weaknesses: He was a creation of Zalakshi and was thus animated by a fragment of her endless Life Energy. All that had to be done to defeat him was to rob him of that spark. However this could only be done by the goddess herself.

• Goals: Jurlath wanted to eat Zalakshi and gain her omnipotence, immortality and Reality Warping abilities for himself to rule the world in her place. Whatever else he may have wanted to do after this has been lost to time.

• Motivation: He viewed Zalakshi as unfit for her role as the world's ruler despite being its creator. Jurlath believed that his age and wisdom gave him the right to take the role of her replacement.

• Role in the Story: Though only mentioned once or twice by dragons, Jurlath set into motion the events of Clockwalkers. Without his actions, magic would never have come into the world and the tragedies caused by it would never have occurred. This includes the Sinestel Empire that created the Big Bad and the disaster that devastated Rica, and led to the current state of the world at the start of Clockwalkers.

• Backstory: Depending on the storyteller, Jurlath was either the first dragon Zalakshi created when she spun the race from the clouds or he is simply one of many who were created during this same event. Either way, he was the most powerful and soon established himself as the ruler of the dragons and none dared stand against him. Accounts of this rule vary; some state that Jurlath's reign was just and orderly while balanced with great compassion since he viewed himself as their appointed guardian. Others state that Jurlath ran roughshod over the other dragons, forcing them to cater to his whims and brutally destroyed anyone who attempted to subvert his leadership. As Jurlath ruled over the dragons, he also observed the other mortal races Zalakshi created due to her fascination with the development of intelligent life and her ever-changing whims. Zalakshi's enigmatic words to each of them that they were her "first" creations soon developed into a bitter dispute over who was her favorite species. War broke out among the races, resulting in death and suffering all across Rica. However Zalakshi would do nothing to clarify her point and refused to even intervene to stops the wars due to being bored by the whole affair. Infuriated by what he saw as her callous disregard for the lives and welfare of her own creations, Jurlath plotted against her. He gathered to his side one thousand of his staunchest supporters and led them into battle against Zalakshi in an attempt to kill the goddess and devour her remains. Jurlath and the Flight of One Thousand battle the goddess across the world, destroying the land, sea and even the sky with their ferocious blows against one another. Combining their strength, the One Thousand were able to inflict an injury upon Zalakshi at long last—a bleeding gash across her left cheek. In retaliation for the wound Zalakshi tore the life force from all the dragons fighting against her, Jurlath included. Though the battle had been won, the goddess was left with a wound that would never heal. As her blood sank into the ground, it formed pools of liquid Mana, that would become the catalysts for magic. By drinking this blood, mortals could take on a small semblance of her powers and replenish their supply by drinking from these endless fountains. Thus magic came into the world, born from Jurlath's rebellion.

• Relevant Tropes:

• Achilles' Heel: His body was animated by a tiny spark of Zalakshi's energy. Technically this is every creature of Rica's weak point, but it can only be exploited by Zalakshi herself. Unfortunately Jurlath challenged the one opponent that could take advantage of such a weakness.

• Anti-Villain: It depends on who is telling the story. While the majority of the dragons view him as an evil figure who rebelled against the world's creator to seize power for himself, a small subset view him as a morally superior crusader for justice that rebelled against a callous and uncaring deity. What makes it even murkier is that the myths and legends from all the races bear evidence of Zalakshi being a childish Almighty Idiot with a short attention span. It is possible that he simply mistook her inability to grasp the situation as heartless abandonment of her children.

• Badass: Jurlath was an ancient and powerful dragon able to wreak unspeakable devastation upon the land if he so chose, and he challenged a goddess to battle with the full intent of killing and eating her.

• Badass Baritone: Naturally given that all dragons have deep rumbling voices regardless of gender, but his voice was described as a rumbling growl that shook the clouds like thunder.

• Breath Weapon: Like all dragons Jurlath could breathe fire. However his fire was in a league of its own; one concentrated breath was said to set miles of land on fire and instantly incinerate anything caught within his flames.

• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Jurlath inflicted a gash on Zalakshi's face that never healed, but in exchange his life was snuffed out and his race was cursed with never being able to use magic for fear of suffering a hideous fate.

• Cannibalism Superpower: He not only wanted to kill Zalakshi, he wanted to eat her. He reasoned that eating her body would allow him to gain access to her ability to create life, alter the world, as well as her immortality. Added to his already great powers as one of the first dragons, he would become an invincible ruler of the world.

• Curse: After Jurlath and his Flight of One Thousand were defeated and Zalakshi saw that drinking her shed blood granted mortals a small fraction of her power, she decreed that the dragons would never be able to benefit from that power. If they did drink it, they would rot from the inside out and become a walking corpse unable to truly die and condemned to eternal torment.

• Nigh-Invulnerable: Jurlath was unable to be injured by any weapon, whether it was man-made tools or the claws or teeth of other dragons. This has led to speculation by several people as to whether or not he could be harmed by the modern weapons or airships the people of Rica possess at the time of Clockwalkers.

• Smug Super: Regardless of whether the legends depict him as a power-hungry traitor to the dragon race or a misunderstood hero trying to better the world, both aspects agree that he was very assured in his power to the point where he didn't even take challenges to his rule seriously anymore, failing to even acknowledge them when another dragon was brave enough to make one.

• Time Abyss: Jurlath was ancient before before magic came into the world—thousands of years before the primeval empires that the people of Clockwalkers study had even begun to come into existence.

• The Paragon Always Rebels: Jurlath was the most powerful of Zalakshi's dragons and some tales even say he was the first of them to come into existence. Yet he still rebelled against her and did his best to destroy her.

• Rage Against the Heavens: His battle against Zalakshi is this, with her being a goddess and him raising an army of a thousand dragons to fight her. Slightly played with since Zalakshi wasn't literally in the heavens but wandering around the mortal world.

• Up To Eleven: He had the standard set of dragon powers, but all of them were far superior to any dragon that has ever existed.

• Villainous Legacy: He is indirectly responsible for everything that has happened in Clockwalkers. By spilling Zalakshi's blood, Jurlath led to the discovery of magic. This in turn led to the creation of powerful empires and kingdoms that used magic, such as Sinestel which created Azelas the Founder. Azelas was then able to trick the Sinestel empire into destroying most of the world using a magical spell, and later went on to found its own country in order to pull off yet another devastating arcane ritual.

• Your Soul Is Mine!: He fell victim to this. Zalakshi simply tore the spark of life-force—his soul—from his body and reclaimed it into herself, killing him instantly. All of his supporters suffered this fate as well, ending the battle within seconds.

edited 14th Jan '15 11:46:26 AM by Swordofknowledge

"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake." —Edgar Wallace

I think this is the first time I've seen a dragon character in this thread. The intrigue here comes from how he's Shrouded in Myth. Nobody really seems to know about who he really is, but if his goal is any indication, the idea that he's a scheming berserker seems to have more weight. Greed seems to be his biggest trait, since he wants all of that Life Energy for himself.

---

Another Eclipse villain - Dromouh Karath, another member of Skuurnur.

• Backstory: Karath was a mercenary who worked for a defense contractor called Overwatch. Unlike Stossuhl, who was himself a member of Overwatch in another continent, Karath knew of the existence of Aura Users from the get-go, and took offense at the prospect of being "replaced" upon seeing how many Aura Users were contacted as bounty hunters. When approached by Eraldo Supryor, Karath was turned into a Culliver, along with several other humans in the same region. Karath orchestrated several insurrections in his home country, leading to the overthrow of six different governments and the imposition of Culliver-led strongholds. The insurrections coincided with the rise of the People's Republic of Averrium, whose population grew heavily with the refugees and fugitives fleeing the Cullivers. The second Chancellor of Averrium, Adene Vyrese, who felt threatened, launched reprisals against Karath whenever his Cullivers tried to antagonize Averrium. Vyrese eventually launched an assault against Karath's main fortress; he killed her after a duel. Karath was immediately contacted by Skuurnur founder Eighinn Stossuhl, who recruited him.
• Personality: Notoriously paranoid, Karath is ceaselessly Trigger-Happy, willing to resort to violence at every instance that he feels "threatened" in any way. He often engages in victim blaming, assaults people who so much as criticize him, turns his back on anyone who finds his actions even if slightly questionable, and acts like a vindictive Spoiled Brat when given actual power. He is notorious for his frequent murders of unarmed civilians - one egregious case came when he shot a 2 year old with a toy gun within two seconds of seeing him, and pressed charges against the kid's parents because "his blood dirtied my helmet." This ceaseless arrogance and paranoia stems from his fear of losing his powers as a Culliver; he refuses to be "replaced" in any way.
• Abilities: As a cyborg, Dromouh Karath's arms were modified to contort into lantern shields, where both would carry slender cannons (which fire streams of radiation) at the centers of both shields. The shields can be used to pierce through flesh just as easily as blades, in addition to nullifying all forms of energy (or Aura) directed at him.
• Goal: As mentioned above, he fears losing his power above everything else, and will resort to every method in order to remain "relevant" to the world at large.
• Role: He is promoted Freiherr (lit. free lord), the highest commanding rank in Skuurnur, after killing a large ogre (who can't use Aura). He becomes Skuurnur's security czar, in charge of directing all policing forces in all territories conquered or significantly influenced by Skuurnur. His enormous control of the security corps allowed him to carve out his own mini-empire and sphere of influence, mostly from his continued persecution of Aura Users. His general inclination towards Police Brutality, although protected by Skuurnur, led to a power struggle between himself and the other Freiherren - think Xi Jinping vs Jiang Zemin in real world China, where the former is purging all associates of the latter (from companies to party officials) in an attempt to control the party entirely.

edited 16th Jan '15 12:11:18 AM by Serocco

In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.

Another Skuurnur - and I am going to guess this one is particularly deranged. Its like a collection of cyborgized versions of twentieth century dictators. And this one...well, I am seeing Idi Amin in him pretty strong.

• Name: Caine Dekeren

• Age: 20

• Personality: Caine is easily one of the stranger villains - he believes in all honesty that reality is rehearsed countless times through media and fiction, and that nothing anyone does in the present really has any impact with that in mind. As far as he is concerned, humanity and everything besides is nothing but a collection of narrative devices, and thus if he shoos someone "off stage" then there is no realistic condemnation. He seems to likewise think certain fictional characters "incarnate" through him, and in his utterly insane Truman Show Delusion, he has thought himself to be numerous different figures "incarnated into this universe". Do not mistake Caine for a comedic or ineffectual villain - while his orders are complicated and often require Malevolent to translate them, he has proven to be utterly dangerous and deadly in combat. While he enjoys a good chat during battle, once his opponents cease to "provide a purpose within the battle's narration", he promptly and mercilessly kills them without even a shred of emotion. As far as he is concerned, humans are nothing but paper and ink, working and toiling away simply for the end of the chapter, and the ultimate victory at the end, which in his mind will be his. In this way, he is extremely solipsistic - he believes he is the only real being, aside some exceptions he makes, such as Matthew. That said, he tends to get murderously angry if people deviate from the story he wants told, and outright kills such people and then tries to discourage others from even mentioning them. Caine also shows a surprising deviousness when manipulating people - he plays Elijah Gibbs, his own adoptive father and no slouch as a villain - and concealed the fact he worshiped the Dark Gods from Elijah even unto the old man's death. He also showed a rather disconcerting predictive ability, and some even allege that on some level Caine knew what his death would bring...and relished the idea fervently.

• Abilities: Caine's armor is called the Shadows' Executor Primari Armor, and was originally made for the first Grand General of the Dark Gods, Gaza'Bel. Who according to some sources dealt a grievous wound to the Light Gods' Herald Magnian. This armor makes Caine functionally Nigh-Invulnerable - the only thing that can pierce it is a sufficiently developed Magitek weapon, and even then it needs a certain thing to work. It also comes with the claws of a Nihility Demon, which gives him close quarters and long distance firing abilities, including the ability to outright summon energy from any of the Dark Gods' personal planes and shoot it at foes. Caine himself is a master at Penumbral Spell Circles, a rarely seen form of magic that even Ein Woe said few Human Mages have mastered. Caine has a number of runes placed upon his very bones, most simply reinforcing him, but four of them have notable effects, including: Sevenfold Avenger, which means after he gets hurt, his next spell charges up to 200% of its potential power level. Syndrome of the Sixfold, which lets him control the spilt blood on the battlefield with a deadly twist. Five Horrid Curses, which mean every single one of his attacks has additional "curse" element added on to it. And lastly Four Hated Days, which curses his rarely used swords, and makes the wounds it deals worsen over the course of four days.

• Weaknesses: Due to Caine's...eccentricities...he can be very easy to predict if you read up on who he's emulating this week. He cannot see himself deviate from his role in the story, meaning his movements can be predicted to a point. He also has a very exploitable chink in his armor in regards to Magitek. Its "Blessing Ignoring" attribute lets it cut right through that armor and hit Caine.

• Goals: He desires nothing more than to lead a host of Dark God forces up through Malevolent's Path, and then shatter the United States government. But that's merely step 1 - step 2 is to bring the world to Forever War, via brainwashing and take over plans, using psychology and magic together to turn the entire western seaboard to the Dark, all the better to be used as cannon fodder.

• Motivation: He feels his life was so contrived, so "story-like" that there's no way it was real. Thus, he devoted himself to "storyboarding" if you can call it that.

• Role in the story: The Dragon / Dragon Ascendant / Big Bad

• Backstory: Caine claims his backstory is irrelevant - "Like The Joker, I simply Am." There are hints he lived in a rather cut and dry household, as far as he is concerned. What matters is he was picked up by Elijah to be his "new son", and promptly repaid this generosity by starting to worship the Dark Gods. Caine began to plan to seize control of Elijah's Army, and turn the whole thing into a massive "Umbral Horde". He was even willing to ally with the Anti-Magical Faction to do this, and the willingness of the Mikinomi Family to tolerate him really shows how sincere they are in their "protect mankind from Mages" agenda. Caine even schemed with Malevolent to seize control violently, and led Elijah to the confrontation that ultimately took his life due to how weakened he was afterwards. Caine then promptly thanked the priest that killed Elijah by...trying to kill him. This proved the first "real" meeting between Matthew and Caine, who previously was just an enemy commander. Caine became fascinated with "the golden haired angel", almost to Yandere levels, and tying into his Truman Show Delusion, he had a very special role he wanted Matthew to play...

• Relevant Tropes:
• All According to Plan: When he outwits Aaron's attempt to seize control, he tells Aaron its "not your time for command yet", and says he planned for everything Aaron did, including some stuff he didn't do. It spooks Aaron out of ever trying that again. Whether Caine was telling the truth or was just Indy Ploying, its unclear.
  • Though if he could learn to apply this consistently...
• Antagonistic Offspring: In secret, to Elijah. Unique in that both parties in this were evil, and the father never knew the son was aiming for his death.
• Arch-Enemy: Caine aspires for this kind of relationship with Matthew. "You're the dutiful son, I'm the castout, you're loyal, I'm everything but. Face it - we were born to play these roles again and again and again..."
• Artifact of Doom: Caine has given a collection of Dark God Blessed Weaponry to his Five Bad Band, which also function as markers to let him watch them, in case they scheme against him.
  • Shout-Out: Its Caine - of course he gave them "special" names. Some are really obscure and require explanation.
• Asshole Victim: Nobody will miss Elijah Gibbs, trust me. Not that Gibbs himself even knew Caine had a hand in his death...
• Authority Equals Asskicking: To be the Herald and Scion of the Dark Gods, and meet them all regularly...that requires a lot of badassery.
• Ax-Crazy: In between the Truman Show Delusion, the periods he channels Joker, and the fact he's often described as cackling like a lunatic on the battlefield, yeah, its clear he threw his sanity out the window.
• Bad Boss: Like an insane kook such as him would be anything but.
• Bearer of Bad News: Caine was simply waiting for the guy to arrive, carrying the news that Elijah Gibbs was dead.
• Blood Knight: He deeply enjoyed the thought of fighting against and killing truly challenging foes, in line with Shiryu's belief system.
• Blood Magic: A powerful Sangramancer, Caine can use blood for his spells...
  • Bloody Murder: And of course, there's the aforementioned blood related spell rune.
• Body Horror: Some of Caine's forces are simply nauseating to look upon;
  • Silmarul's Sufferants; best described as huge, bulbous armored creatures veritably oozing pus and gore from several “piercings” across their form. Mostly they wield ship anchors with filth rubbed on them.
  • Zayufur's Hedonians: These sickos have a backpack with a potent drug cocktail, the tubes sending the cocktail into their bloodstream worked into their armor. The exact inversion of Feel No Pain – they feel every sensation painfully intensely, using it as fuel for some of their spells. Their weapons are called Serpentine Swords, which are semi-sentient, have mouths, and move extremely fast.
  • Varancain's Dracofolk: Humans with what can best be described as a huge reactor growing out of their stomach, constantly producing dragon-fire. These people have dragon's scales growing all over them, as well as odd bone-like growths and spikes. Their chief weapon is a pair of swords that grow right out of their arms.
  • Shiryu's Gristle-Drinkers: Ten to thirty feet tall, these Humanoid Abomination types somehow see despite having mouths in the place of eyes, they get warped as Shiryu needs to create a deadly, horrifying creature for war. Its mentioned they do live up to their name – leave one alone with a corpse, and it'll break it open and drink the bone marrow. Every inch of it is a weapon.
  • Azekred's Deepspiders combine the phobias of spiders, snakes and bats, and what's worse, these things used to be human, but became these feral beast-things after a procedure was done on them.
• Chekhov's Gunman by way of Minor Major Character: 300 years later, they're much much more important, but little Nathan, Johannes and Davis certainly don't look like the menacing villains they become much later.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Part of the reason why Caine has Malevolent, a much smarter organizer around – the rest of the Five Bad Band all too often schemes to take control of the Umbral Horde and do other nasty stuff with it. Aaron Cascade in particular wants to go on a murderous rampage throughout the country in general.
• Church Militant: Caine's personal troops, who take their belief in the Dark Gods and their devotion to their Scion to worrying levels. Notably, their belief can actually affect the physical world due to their runes.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Caine's spells can some times invoke this, powering themselves with his beliefs – and despite how insane these beliefs are, he believes in them a lot.
• Cool Boat: The boat he loaned to Legarte, Saecu Ombrage, which apparently had quite the arsenal. It also becomes Malevolent's personal force's getaway boat in the end.
• Creepy Child: Caine as a child showed worrying sadistic traits, and when its mentioned a girl he used to play with went missing a few weeks ago, the creepy little bastard giggles at the news.
• Dark Messiah: Caine is seen as this by most Dark God Worshipers. Khaos Worshipers see him more negatively.
• Daydream Believer: Caine has this belief – though a more demented version. Namely, as covered, everything that has happened and will happen has been rehearsed in media. Hence, he seems to think he's several fictional villains, or at least “channeling” them. While he never name drops who he is “channeling”, one can make a good guess based on the clues dropped.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: His favorite way of torturing and executing people – put them in a pit with a large number of Varancain's Draco-Imps, vicious little things with circular mouths full of rotating teeth and “hands terminating in seven knife-like digits”.
• Divided We Fall: Caine tries to pull this, attempting to drag the 317th in half via a fake Messiah, and even installing cults among the refugees who honestly believe Caine will save them. As he puts it "I said I would raze this whole damn collection of huts...I do not recall ever agreeing to spare anyone."
• The Dreaded: Even the cultists among the refugees don't like Caine; "We do not love the Scion. We do what we do out of fear of him. Khaos Protect Us, we fear Caine."
  • This really hammers in that the Dark God worshipers are not all like Caine – indeed, Khaos himself, while distracted with the Great War, tries to rein in some of the worst excesses.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: For what its worth, Caine gives absolutely everyone the chance to fight in his Umbral Horde. It doesn't matter what race you are, what age you are, what sex you are, and even the more persecuted magical groups get to have a place...well, for what that's worth.
• Evil Counterpart: Much to Caine's eternal irritation, he's this to Shin.
• Evil Is Hammy: Oh goodness gracious, this man cannot stay quiet. Oddly, he seems to go between shouting violently and suddenly whispering in a low, dark tone.
• Evil Mentor: The role he takes toward Aaron, Tobias, and Elwood. As shown three hundred years later, they definitely learned well from the Scion. He basically guided them toward the Dark God their particular tendencies were best suited for. Aaron's anger issues made him a natural fit for Shiryu, for example.
• Evil Virtues: Despite everything, you could say the Scion is definitely ambitious, determined, diligent, passionate and a born leader for the...kind of force he leads.
• Evil Weapon: Anatheme and Kugalatach both have less than benign intelligences living inside them. They can also levitate and fight independently.
  • At one point, he even gives Kugalatach to Elwood, purely so his commander could make use of the cursed sword's power against Sorata's brother, badly wounding the more experienced Esper in the process.
• Familiar: Caine has one called a Noctis, a strange creature that lives in his shadow and occasionally emerges to shoot Living Shadow constructs at people.
• Five Bad Band: And its composed of people Matthew and others knew before Book IV.
  • Big Bad: Caine himself.
  • The Dragon: Aaron Cascade, previously a Jerk Jock who was kicked off the team for his substance abuse, namely, crack cocaine and steroids. He returns covered in black, pulsating armor, and readily exercising his temper on everything that once laughed at him. He's also fully given himself over to Shiryu, worshiping the Dark God of Strife fervently by way of making an already bloody conflict even moreso.
  • The Evil Genius: Malevolent, the schemer, a master manipulator and strategist, and a devotee to all the Dark Gods. His official job is "Chaplain", but really, he's the head strategist with his own club of religious lunatics.
  • The Brute: Tobias Hainemann, "biological warfare's chief engineer". A devotee of Silmarul, Tobias has a huge number of disgusting mutations, including that his armor and clothes have fused with his skin. He claims, like Silmarul, that he just wants to share the pain and despair of mutation and mutilation Silmarul gave him to others to "help" them...
  • The Dark Chick: Elwood Sexton, formerly The Casanova and running joke of New Dawn, even worse than Aaron had it. He then became a Zayufur Worshiper, which changed little if anything. However, that in mind, even though he's the least emotionally mature of them, he's terrifying in his own way - he leads a particular corps called The Violators, and his personal wing of Green Wall is described as "offering everything a sexual sadist serial killer would need". He's Fridge Horror on legs, not to mention a Not-So-Harmless Villain.
  • Sixth Ranger: Malevolent's Cabal, but especially Typhon Legarte, the Insane Admiral who leads the seafaring portion of Caine's Army.
• Eye Motifs: Caine's forces have the emblem of a glaring red eye on the back of a black spider with its eight legs pointing outward, with the Blackened Praetors even incorporating it into multiple pieces of their armor.
• The Fatalist: In a truly disturbing way – Caine believes that everything has occurred once or twice already, and that we're simply playing out roles seen in media. Minor Characters can die for all he cares, as long as he can pursue his antagonistic role toward the protagonists of his choice...
• Faux Affably Evil: Caine sure acts well enough, but underneath his facade is an utterly deranged madman.
• Fridge Horror: On numerous levels, Caine is Fridge Horror on Legs. Consider the fact that this crazy Daydream Believer manages to stand before eight Gods, Silmarul, Vicelogia and Zayufur among them known very well for a lot of awful traits. And they not only tolerate Caine's neuroses, but encourage it. Caine has his own Herald, and its usually only the Dark Gods themselves who have Heralds and Scions. The Magic Gods, the people ostensibly with some of the greatest power outside of the Esper Association, are giving this man a very, very wide berth, and were even willing to abandon Odin when he decided to help Matthew. And then there's the fact Nihility Demons are supposedly on the level of a Magic God...how did Caine obtain one's claws and fashion them into his personal weaponry?
• From Bad to Worse: Elijah's large modern army, some of them illegally conscripted from religious psychos and Right-Wing Militia Fanatic's, not bad enough for you? Enter Malevolent and Caine, who bring with them the Dark God Cult, the Gristle-Drinkers, and inklings of a Forever War.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: If you told Elijah Gibbs a few years back that the skinny kid he picked up would pervert his "great army of light" and become Scion of All Eight Dark Gods, he'd laugh and then shoot you with a sun for the audacity.
• General Ripper: Came into power over Elijah's Army, and worships Shiryu. He treats the human soldiers as disposable unless they explicitly convert to Dark God worship, and even then you're still a pawn, just not one he throws out with abandon.
• Genre Savvy: Bordering on Dangerously Genre-Savvy, due to his unique view of the world, he's incredibly aware of what kind of work he's in – though the place on the sliding scale of idealism and cynicism is not quite what Caine thinks it is, his one blind spot – and he seemed to learn from previous villains' mistakes;
  • Acknowledges he has flaws, and cannot be everything, unlike consummate Perfectionist Sharon Tate Roman. So he hires Aaron Cascade for his ability to get the troops fired up about war and his battlefield command abilities – Aaron may be angry most of the time, but he's not stupid.
  • He picked Hainemann due to the fact Tobias is skilled in a field of magic and military capacity Caine doesn't understand. Hector Gibbs mostly used people with singular magical themes for his attack squads.
  • He picked Malevolent for his strategic mind and ability to “put his prejudices and detests aside and act sanely”. He also chose Malevolent because he knew Malevolent was good at organization where Caine was simply not.
  • He picked Elwood Sexton because unlike Nebiros, who just madly charged ahead, Elwood is a Not So Harmless villain skilled at deception and manipulation.
• Holier Than Thou: Inverted – Caine is Unholier Than Thou. He believes as Scion he knows what's best for those devoted to the Dark Gods, and anyone created by them. The Dark Elves would disagree, but again, being a Dark Elf is Suffering in New Dawn.
• Horrifying the Horror: Caine absolutely terrifies several Geigs, and they're the elite soldiers of the Dark Gods! Mentioning that Caine would not be happy if Elwood was late was enough to make the evil hedonist squirm and beat feet to make it to a meeting.
  • Its telling that even Odin doesn't like the idea of tangling with Caine. As he puts it "That man has the power of eight gods stirring in his blood...what he is, it cannot be called human any more."
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Several troops tortured by Caine remark they still occasionally feel odd sensations and pulling feelings even after Miles and Samuel rescued them. Given Caine is a Scion, and that the magic he used on them produced a spell leash connecting them to him, its a really bad sign.
• Lack of Empathy: Though in a different way than usual – he sees people as plot devices and narrative pieces. Who the hell cares if a bunch of NPC's get slaughtered? They are not sentient in the least, as far as Caine's concerned.
• Large and in Charge: Caine is a naturally tall man, but the armor makes it even more obvious. Tellingly, he towers over Arland Doss, and even managed to intimidate a fired United States Colonel into following his orders just by his sheer presence.
• Magic Knight: Basically - Caine has brutal claws, a magic sword, and a battle axe on his person, as well as uniquely deadly spells ready to do some nasty things to foes.
• Meta Guy: In a rather disturbed fashion - Caine describes Matthew's arrival as "And queue the Big Damn Heroes. Welcome to my show, Matthew. I'm sure in a few pages you'll peal outta here somehow, but just let me share...a few hints of the future." He not only sees no difference between fiction and reality, he denies there is a difference.
• Name of Cain
• Nightmare Fetishist: His reaction to Aaron Cascade showing up to a meeting drenched in blood? “I see you had an eventful morning, Cascade. I want the details...all of them...when this meeting is done.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Caine's drawings as a child include pictures of his peers ripped apart and arranged into a spell circle, and Caine talking amiably with a gigantic creature with a lot of tentacles. The last page is bright red, written very large, and simply says; “I KILLED HER”.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Book IV and the Battle against Caine in particular result in this - Matthew ruminates toward the end of things that for better or worse, the Scion of the Dark had changed the world. Magic was public, there were no more secrets, Phantom Claw disbanded in disgrace, Kyrio was missing presumed dead, and Matthew went from small town hero to an honored hero on the national level.
• No Yay: His obsession with Matthew gives off all kinds of Bad Touch.
• One Of Us: Caine makes explicit mention in the prologue of having a TV Tropes Account. For those of you who wonder, its "Scion Man 0009".
• Powered Armor: Given to him by Shiryu, who's something of an Ultimate Blacksmith God among the Dark ones.
• Praetorian Guard: The Blackened Praetors, beyond even his personal troops. They're just utterly nasty people who combine bodyguard duty with being some of the most elite troops in his army. Tellingly, less than seven percent of them die.
• Psychopathic Manchild: A blending of Type B and C – this is a man who believes fiction is just another “section” of reality, and that everything is simply a TV Show. He repeatedly acts like different fictitious villains, and even has a Minder in Malevolent and occasionally Hainemann.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Less on the first due to Caine's particular neuroses, but a lot of the other two. It really shows that Caine's forces do not adhere to the laws and customs of war, nor do they respect the Geneva Convention.
• Red Baron: Caine 300 years later is known as "Caine of the Sevenfold Curse".
• Religion of Evil: And his minister is Malevolent - Caine tries to create such a cult / religion, to convert the human portions of the Elijah Gibbs aligned army. He...doesn't get far.
• Room Full of Crazy: During the infiltration, Miles remarks when they look into Caine's room that “yeah, Mr. Scion's a total nutcase.” There's shrines to the Dark Gods across the room, the typical foul smell associated with Silmarul, and some sort of bizarre mural depicting Matthew.
• Shout-Out: Caine is the man for these - even Shin says he overdoes it. Though given Caine's Truman Show Delusion...
• Spikes of Villainy: Caine himself has quite the spiky suit of armor, and Orongur has six spikes on all six of its towers.
• Straw Nihilist: He seems to personally have a view this direction - if everyone is a narrative device, why then should he show anyone empathy or compassion? Nobody except the main characters are important anyway.
• Super-Empowering: He gave Aaron, Tobias and Elwood their powered armor, which respectively - Aaron got the Scarlet Dread Armor, which Turns Red when it absorbs a certain amount of blood, and which came with an axe Shiryu made from the tooth of an Eldritch Abomination. Tobias got the Filth-Caster Armor, which constantly secretes biotic toxins and a field of disease around him so severe it decays any other flesh within six feet of him. Its weapon is the Tainted Blackstaff, which spawns massive amounts of flies and snakes as a basic attack. And lastly, Elwood got the Aeon Killer Armor, which has a "Drake Mode" that lets him fly, and a Serpent Mode that makes him extremely fast. The armor also gives Elwood six back up arms, and a veritable armory of living weapons, including, at one point, Kugalatach.
• Supervillain Lair: Orongur, the main base of Caine's operations. Sakorm less so, being more of a field base behind Green Wall. Still, both are really eerie locations, and have been the site of a lot of disturbing events.
  • This plus Genius Loci is the true nature of the Green Wall. It is divided into five wings, namely: Urcang, Saetua, Goruai, Lanatu, and Ardulael. Each one is "maintained" by one of Caine's Five Bad Band, and only by defeating all five of them within their homebase can the Green Wall's unending advance by stopped.
• Tin Tyrant: Covered in black armor that has a lot of power and amplifications present – and definitely a tyrant.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: By all indications, he made his first sacrifice when he was around eight, the girl mentioned in the incident under Creepy Child.
• "Truman Show" Plot: Caine even argues there are expies of famous characters walking around. Who is an expy of who changes by the day, credit due to Caine's utterly disturbed, psychopathic mindset.
• Uncanny Valley: Caine as a child. He looks normal, but the look only heightens the reality that there was always something not exactly right about this boy.
• Villain Team-Up: Caine not only brings the Dark God forces to the table, he also brings Amanda Wallace, The Heretic, Lord Eclipse, Adrigath, and temporarily Mordecai.
  • And even among the Dark God forces, he managed to bring some of the more petty and ambitious ones to the wartable, including Abilius, Dhakar, and Fiend Rake.
• Worthy Opponent: He came to see Matthew as this to him - “Only Matthew, my dear angel and my opposite, is worthy of facing me at my zenith.”
• You Cannot Fight Fate: He tries to weaponize this – in his view, Fate is Immutable, and has been repeated numerous times. However, even the Dark God of Destiny seems to find his view of Fate utterly batshit.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Played in a very different manner – you may have outlived your usefulness as you are now, but what if someone were to give you a very unwanted One-Winged Angel transformation?
• You're Insane!: He gets told to his face he's insane by Matthew and some others. He simply nods and says “Such is one way of examining one's opposite.”

edited 3rd Apr '17 1:27:08 AM by NickTheSwing

Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.

Name: Sasha Maanan

Age: 160 (official), 215 (actual)

Personality: Unstable, to put it lightly. Swings between (apparently) 6-7 personalities at random.

Abilities: Powerful psion. Good tactician. Excellent strategist.

Weaknesses: Physically weak, poor in personal combat, has difficulty with short-term thinking.

Goals: 'Unification' of the two galaxies under one rule.

Motivation: Sociopathy + Seeing everyone not of her empire as inferior; she believes her only option is enslavment or extermination of her enemies.

Role in the story: Tries and fails to be a Sansha Kuvakei expy. Generally causes mild-to-moderate annoyance in enemy commanders.

Backstory: Refused entry to the Commonwealth Star Navy. Overreacted and went on a rampage. Of sorts.

Relevant Tropes: Ineffectual Villain, Complete Monster, Me's A Crowd (hooray clones!), and on very rare occasions, Not-So-Harmless Villain.

In short, she serves as a training tool for any competent navy, and when she does manage a success (hard to do with no allies), one of said navies goes and gives her forces a smack upside the head. Exists in the story to provide both comic relief and, occasionally, genuinely terrifying threats.