YMMV / The Saga of the Noble Dead

• Complete Monster: The Saga of the Noble Dead is set in a borderline-Crapsack World, so it has a couple of these:
  • Warlord Darmouth is a paranoid and psychotic tyrant who runs his lands with fear and intimidation. People are killed on a routine basis if he gets the wrong idea about them. He keeps his followers in line with blackmail, emotional manipulation and fear to keep them too weak to resist. Trying to leave his service results in swift death for all involved, even their families.
  • Ubad, a Necromancer who worships the Big Bad, Il'Samar, manipulated a vampire ally of his into raping a human woman to father a dhampyr on her. The result was said ally's death as his energy was drained and Ubad gaining the dhampyr he badly wanted. The reason was so he would have a champion to lead an army of the dead to purge the world of life. Unlike Il'Samar's other followers, Ubad is simply in it to see how far he can push the bounds of his own powers as far as he can go until the world burns.
• Magnificent Bastard: Welstiel Massing was forcibly turned into a vampire by his father Lord Bryon, the rapist father of series heroine Magiere. Despising his nature as one of the Noble Dead, Welstiel schemes to become human again by manipulating Magiere into becoming a Vampire Hunter. Arranging a test by setting up a war between her and relatively peaceful vampires, Welstiel then commits several vampire murders to pull Magiere where he needs and manipulates her into stealing an artifact for him and his plans with the monster il'Samar. Later luring the heroes to face him, Welstiel stops at nothing in his attempts to become human again, no matter who he has to destroy in his way.
• Moral Event Horizon: Welstiel was always somewhat sympathetic compared to the other villains- but then he just had to attack a monastery, kill the monks, turn them into vampires, and then forcibly isolate them during their transition so that the devolved into near-mindless ferals, and then fed them their own former brethren who remained alive. Even Chane was bothered by it.
• Nightmare Fuel: Ubad in general, particularly the curse one of his minions puts on the lord who slighted him (well, technically he killed him, but that's just an inconvenience when your boss is the world's best necromancer...)
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Judging by the way the narrative and most of the characters treat him, Brot'an is supposed to be seen as a manipulative butcher who would backstab his allies at a moment's notice. While he does keep his secrets close to his chest, he's ultimately incredibly helpful to the protagonists and they likely would have died without him, and he regrets the civil war between the elves.