Subpages cleanup: Complete Monster

Malware has indeed been brought up before by this one....persistent Troper who would NOT drop him. Like, at all. He was rebutted....then came back months later ranting that he didn't understand why Malware didn't count. It was weird.

Regardless, Very Melon is correct here. Ghostface (Real name Zs'skayr, but there was no way I was gonna continuously repeat that name in the EP) isn't THAT heinous in the grand scheme of things, and Malware, while....MAYBE heinous enough (BIG maybe though), his back story is pretty messy.

Basically, he was created by Azmuth to be the first of a new race of techno aliens, but he was a flawed creation, thus why Azmuth named him "Malware". The inherent nature of his "flaws" plus this cold attitude displayed by Azimuth drive Malware kinda insane with rage against Azmuth, and his whole scheme in the present all boils down to his anger that his "father" never recognized him.

edited 27th Apr '17 5:51:46 PM by Ravok

Pretty sure Malware's disqualified due virtue of both failing the heinous standard and a sympathetic backstory... from what I know, the guy's seriously rocky relationship with Azmuth is enough to disqualify.

Ninja'd.

edited 27th Apr '17 5:52:27 PM by Scraggle

An emphatic yes to Vilgax. Having seen the series on and off, I'm glad to see him proposed.

As for Ghostface and Malware, I'm not sure. I don't remember them well enough.

Vilgax? If I didn't know any better I would have thought this was a late April Fools joke but actually reading through the EP I will give him a . It seems like this series has extinguished the little mitigating factors that made him a 99% Monster in the previous series.

edited 27th Apr '17 5:56:50 PM by username2527

Omar. Will come back to Vilgax.

Vilgax

to Vilgax.

Now what happened to the last MIB candiate? Who was he anyways and why didn't he count?

I weighed in with them behind the scenes...his name is Z-Ron, a supposedly cuddly little guy who's in truth a vicious carnivore and killer with the bones of dozens of sentients in his ship who tries to eat a little kid and has a penchant for 'playing' with his food. The issue is there's a line from Kay (who knew Z-Ron was a monster from the get go) that Z-Ron's just like any other member of his species. Kay makes a reference to "Yep, Z-Ron meat eaters. That's just like 'em.".

Yea to Vilgax

edited 27th Apr '17 6:39:39 PM by Lightysnake

to Vilgax, sounds like he invalidates any redeeming qualities by the end.

If he throws those mitigating factors away, then to Vilgax

Austin: Please add to drafts.

Shall we cut Shine from Ripper Street?

Please do. I'm for keeping Claxton, but what about the other one G-Editor submitted for a possible cut?

Vilgax.

Vilgax

@ACW: I did, but I tried to keep it separate from the DC Animated reformat. It can be found under it.

So, after waiting a month for the book to arrive, and taking a day to reread it, it's time to talk about The Iron Tower and it's Big Bad, Modru. Before we get started though, a brief history of the series in question before someone notices the obvious and points it out.

So, once upon a time author Dennis McKiernan wrote a LOTR fanfic about an alliance of Dwarves, Elves, Men, and Hobbits reclaiming Moria from the Orcs. Realizing that this was not, of course, publishable, he changed the names of all the characters and places, dubbed it The Silver Call and sent it off to a publisher. The publishers liked it but worried that with all of its references to past events in the setting's universe, it would confuse the readers, and thus asked him to produce a series set beforehand, to fill in those gaps. From this emerged The Iron Tower, which was published in 1984, with The Silver Call following shortly afterwards.

Needless to say, Iron Tower owes a lot to LOTR. There are entire scenes—most notably, of course, a trek through a mine guarded by a Kraken and infested with an ancient evil—that are of necessity lifted directly from Tolkein. The story also apes Tolkein's writing style, and, sadly, his perhaps unintentional racism. On the upside, his Hobbit knockoffs, the Warrows (and especially Danner) are more badass than just about any other small folk in fiction, and eighties feminism had happened, so the book treats its female cast better than many of its contemporaries. Also Goblins, Orcs, and Trolls are all one species with serious size dimorphism; I don't know why I like this feature but I do. McKiernan went on to write many more books set in the universe he'd created, and eventually the setting of Mithgar took on a life of its own and came to resemble Middle-earth less and less (or so fans of the series tell me; I haven't read past Silver Call). So with that out of the way, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Modru.

Who is Modru? What has he done?

Modru is our Sauron stand-in, right-hand man to Gyphon (the Melkor/Morgoth stand-in) and Big Bad of The Iron Tower. During the War of the Ban, in the backstory, Modru led Gyphon's forces in Mithgar and nearly brought about the damnation of the world; details of this war and the crimes he commits there can be found in the Hel's Crucible duology which I have not read. When Iron Tower begins, Modru is preparing for war against all of Mithgar, and has used the Myrkenstone, which casts shadows all over the world, to shield his armies from the light of the sun (after losing the War of the Ban, he and those who serve him were damned to die in sunlight). While Modru himself does not put in a physical appearance until the second book, it's important to understand that he is not a case of Orcus on His Throne. Each of Modru's armies is accompanied by at least one, and in several cases, far more, of his emissaries, men whom Modru mystically lobotomizes, leaving them as drooling cripples, incapable of so much as feeding themselves without assistance. Modru can project his will through these emissaries, and in doing so, command his armies in person; over the course of the series we see that pretty much any unit of one hundred or more is accompanied by an emissary.

When the first book opens, Modru has caused an early winter to descend across Mithgar, leading to the beginnings of famine and other problem as Wolves, left void of anything to eat, begin preying on Men, Warrows, and livestock. He also sends his Vulgs to infiltrate the Boskydells, home of the Warrows, and scout it out. The Vulgs "disappear" numerous people, and during an attack on the party of Thornwalkers (Warrow rangers) containing protagonists Tuck, Patrel, and Danner, kill Tuck's friend Hob. We later learn that the Vulgs have also been intercepting King Aurion Redeye's messengers as they ride about the lands of Men, Elves, Warrows, and Dwarves searching for help; when one of the messengers reaches the Boskydells, the Vulgs kill him and Tuck's friend Tarpy while trying to stop the message from getting through.

Modru's horde reaches Challerain Keep, hold of King Aurion Redeye, and besieges it. When Aurion tries to parley with Modru's emissary, Modru has his Ghuls and Rucks try to assassinate Aurion, and Aurion's standard-bearer, Tuck, under a flag of truce. The horde eventually takes Challerain Keep, killing all but sixty or so of the defenders, and cutting down King Aurion as he tries to win free. Modru's emissary is killed by Danner, however, which halts the horde in its tracks for a time.

While this is happening, a force of Ghuls under command of another emissary attacks a wagon train that was taking Challerain Keep's civilians to safety in the south. Women, children, old men, and other noncombatants are butchered by the Ghuls, who kill everyone save Prince Igon, who escapes, and Princess Laurelin who is captured. The Princess is taken north to Modru's fortress in the wastes of Gron by the emissary who, along the way, murders a Ghul who defied his orders. When Laurelin meets Modru face-to-face she spits on him, for which he caves in her face with a gauntleted fist and pitches her into a dungeon to starve. He later remembers that he actually needs her "unblemished" for Gyphon, and refrains from striking her again, but not for altruistic reasons; again and again a scene plays out of Laurelin talking back to Modru, Modru preparing to strike her, and then remembering that he needs her alive and undamaged.

Modru's Ghuls enter the Boskydells where they burn down a half dozen Warrow villages, and kill, among others, Tuck's parents Burt and Tulip, and his girlfriend Merrilee's parents Bringo and Bessie. When Merrilee, Danner, and Patrel organize resistance against the Ghuls and kill a hundred of them at the town of Budgens, Modru torches Budgens and sets an ambush for the Warrow resistance and Brackenboro, killing hundreds. He also sends the horde from Challerain Keep to invade the Boskydells, razing far more towns, and vows to Laurelin that when the war is over he will have the Warrows exterminated.

When Elf Prince Vandior Silverbranch tries to free Laurelin, Modru has him strapped to an Ogru-run crank wheel and racked to death. Unable to physically harm Laurelin, he forces her to watch this. He also monologues to her about the victories his armies are winning in a dozen other kingdoms (and we are shown various glimpses of these battles, and all the people dying in them) and about his plans for the future, plans which include: enslaving the Dwarves to forge arms for him, working the Elves to death dredging a lake, and burning her father to death in a giant pyre that will use his subjects as fuel.

When the Royal Host, led by Laurelin's betrothed, King Galen (son of Aurion) rides north, Modru surrounds them with his army, intending to massacre them all. When Tuck enters the Iron Tower and tries to help Laurelin escape, Modru grabs him by the face and permanently disfigures him, then tries to beat him to death with a crowbar. Luckily, Modru catches his own reflection in the silver locket that Merrilee gave to Tuck, and unable to bear the sight of his own evil, flees, taking Laruelin with him. During the midst of an eclipse, Modru attempts to sacrifice Laurelin atop the Myrkenstone, in order to summon Gyphon back into the world and make the darkness permanent. He admits that he could have sacrificed anyone born in Mithgar on the 'Stone and that it would have worked, but that he thought it was funny to use "a royal damosel."

Luckily, this is the point at which things fall apart for him. Patrel and Danner open the gates to the Iron Tower (at the cost of Danner's life) and the Host escapes destruction, while Tuck fires a magic arrow into the Myrkenstone, destroying it, blinding himself, banishing Gyphon back Beyond the Spheres, and causing Modru to spontaneously combust when exposed to sunlight. As he does, every single one of his emissaries keels worldwide keels over dead, as without his will to animate them they can no longer breathe.

Are his actions heinous by the standards of the story?

Modru sets the heinous bar within The Iron Tower. He's behind quite literally everything, and since he controls his armies directly, riding with every group of one hundred or more via emissary, there's no way to shift the blame for any of his acts to local commanders. Every crime we see a Rukh, Hlok, Ogru, Ghul, or Vulg perpetrate is done at Modru's behest and on Modru's orders. While Gyphon is theoretically in back of all this, he's trapped Beyond the Spheres, and is unable to influence events be it directly or indirectly; Modru does all the dirty work for him. In the end, he's mastermind of a world war that kills thousands upon thousands on page, as well as a torturer and killer in person, and that's without getting into whatever he did to create his emissaries.

Now, the series did, as I mentioned go on, and we actually have another villain from it already up on the CM List, in the form of Baron Bela Stoke in Eye of the Hunter, but he's a far smaller scale villain that Modru, and while more sadistic, lacks Modru's world-effecting scope. I haven't read all of the later books, but given that Modru appeared again in the Hel's Crucible prequel series to act as The Big Bad and add a whole additional world war to his rapsheet, and was the Bigger Bad of Dragondoom I rather doubt that anyone's trumped him.

Does he have any redeeming qualities?

None that we see in Iron Tower, and none that I've been able to find out about in Hel's Crucible or Dragondoom. His loyalty to Gyphon appears to stem entirely from fear, and from the belief that Gyphon will grant him power unmatched.

Any Freudian Excuse or other mitigating factors?

Not in the Iron Tower, and if Hel's Crucible or Dragondoom added any, the Internet is entirely quiet about this.

Final verdict?

Modru's a classic Evil Overlord, but one who wracks up a host of onscreen unpleasantness. He plunges all of Mithgar into a worldwide war, personally supervises the commission of war crimes (through the eyes of lobotomized slaves no less), racks a man to death, kills one of his own for backtalk, and makes it clear that if it weren't for needing her intact, he wouldn't be above beating a defenseless girl to a pulp. While I haven't read Hel's Crucible or Dragondoom I can't imagine he does anything to mitigate his crimes there; if anything I expect he makes things worse. I say he goes up.

Opinions?

edited 27th Apr '17 9:14:42 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I'll give a yea to Modru.

Easy yes

Modru

Modru

I've read the other books where Modru appears, and can confirm he does nothing to redeem himself. He's a bit of a Generic Doomsday Villain from what I recall (but it's been more than a decade since I've read Iron Tower, so my memory may be faulty) but not enough of one that I'd object to giving him a

I will note that Modru shares the Mithgar setting with a previously-approved CM, Baron Stoke, but they move in very different circles at very different levels of power (Modru's an Evil Overlord, and Stoke's essentially a Serial Killer who happens to also be an immortal necromancer) so I don't think they impact each other's heinous standards very much. IIRC, Stoke's more personally loathsome and a much more personal adversary to the heroes who oppose him, while Modru was active a lot longer and hurt the world at large much more.

EDIT: Aaand I just saw Stoke got mentioned already in the original effortpost. Whoops!

EDIT II: Having read all the Mithgar books (though it's been a while), they contain a bunch of loathsome villains (Black Mages use magic that's Powered by a Forsaken Child and have a tendency to try and one-up each other in the "grotesque sadism" department), but the only other candidate I'd consider equal to the other two is Ydral, Stoke's biological father, who weaves in and out of the story and ends up The Heavy for the Grand Finale, Silver Wolf, Black Falcon. Ydral and Modru are between them sort of a Decomposite Character of Sauron, with Modru taking on the Sorcerous Overlord role, and Ydral the shapeshifting, manipulative necromancer and priest of the evil god role. But it's been so long that I'm not sure on him, and would rather not write him up.

Gyphon, Modru's boss, Big Bad of the overall series and Greater-Scope Villain of most of the individual books, fills the basic "Morgoth" role but, because he lives on another plane and spends most of the series a Sealed Evil in a Can on top of that, hardly ever does anything and really can't count. Honestly, his appearance in Iron Tower is probably the most proactive he gets across the entire series!

edited 27th Apr '17 10:07:42 PM by MasterGhandalf

Modru, vilgax, and Omar

Modru

Say does Gyphon count? I'm just curious since he as what you said a "stand in" for Morgoth.

Here are two write ups:

• The God of Crawling Eyes: Miss Blackmore is the leader of a cult of students and faculty members. Blackmore and her cult sacrifice people to the God of Crawling Eyes in an attempt to increase his power so that he may one day cross over to Earth and bring about the apocalypse. A year before the events of the game, Blackmore and her cult murdered a student named Travis after he tried to leave the cult. In the game, Blackmore murders the school principal and four of her six students before trying to use one of the last two for her next sacrifice.

• KAIMA: Princess Ezel began cannibalizing other demons to consume their souls and steal their power. Ezel repeated this process many times and consumed numerous souls in an attempt to gain enough power to leave KAIMA and move on to other planets. Stopped by her brother, Vido, and sealed away, Ezel is freed by Searina and Illy, and eats Vido alive before deciding to leave everyone else left on KAIMA to die when the planet falls apart, offering to take Illy with her if she kills Searina, though it's revealed she would have betrayed and killed Illy anyway at some point anyway.

edited 28th Apr '17 12:43:41 AM by bobg

to Vilgax and Modru.