YMMV / The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga

• Complete Monster: Thrane, aka Hemlock—"like the poison"—is a vicious vampire warlord whose body count exceeds the other villains. One of the oldest of his kind in the world, Thrane was a barbarian warrior in life and never outgrew that attitude in undeath; he believes that vampires, being stronger than humans, have the right to rule over them, and that Thrane himself should rule the vampires. In a setting where many vampires try to live in some degree of harmony with the living, Thrane openly flouts such ideas by keeping pens of human slaves he feeds on like livestock, and even "favored" mortal minions get treated like dirt at his whim. Vampires who disagree with him are treated no better; at one point Thrane casually decapitates a potentially ally for daring to ask what benefit he might get from their alliance. Adding to his crimes, many characters believe that Thrane was responsible for the Great Fire, a catastrophe near the beginning of the series that destroyed most magic and caused the near-total collapse of civilization on at least three continents, and in the aftermath he further provoked the chaos by backing various brutal warlords; all in the name of tearing down human rule to place vampires on top, and himself as ruler of vampires. In the end, the other vampire elders and human heroes unearth a forbidden weapon capable of slaying a vampire elder and all his brood for the sole purpose of putting Thrane down for good.