Villain Critique Thread (Because Its About Damn Time!)

Yeah, sorry, I got my thread mixed up with something from another forum, of a similar subject.

And I was mostly asleep at the time. My apologies.

edited 24th Jan '14 2:33:20 PM by NickTheSwing

Hm. Fascinating take on a Blood Knight, someone who takes the belief that War Is Glorious to its logical extreme. He doesn't actually seem Ax-Crazy to me, just with completely different values of what is right and wrong.

@399: So I see Bane, Darth Vader, Anton Chigurh, and Johan Liebert rolled into a pretty nightmarish package. Not bad. Seriously, sometimes I feel as if these threads should require that we write a small scene involving our characters so we can see them in action and actually critique each other's writing. But perhaps that is for another thread.

This for an Arc Villain of my RWBY fanfic.

• Name: The Patriarch Kaifuku Higai (Read like Lie Ren)

• Inspired By: Mister Freeze, Hugo Strange/Ra's Al Ghul Hiroshi Sato and Amon

• Age: Unknown In his 50s.

• Personality:

• Abilities: The Patriarch is a compelling speaker, having converted many to his cause by the time Team PIGS has entered Beacon Academy.

• Weaknesses:

• Goals: Eliminate all Faunus from the world, and Take Over the World to make it a better place, without strife or danger.

• Motivation:

• Role in the story: Arc Villain, Big Bad of another story, Evil Counterpart to Pius Ashen (He's also going to get an edit, too. I've overhauled the story from its original conception a bit.)

• Backstory:

• Relevant Tropes:
  • Alas, Poor Villain: How Pius feels after concluding their conflict.
  • Arc Villain
  • Badass: When you can strike fear into the heart of White Fang members with the mention of your name, you've done something (terrible) to earn it.
    • Badass Bookworm: His Disciples claim that he is stronger than all of his Apostles and Chosen put together. This isn't true until about the end.
    • Badass Boast: "I will end all Faunus life and racial strife with my own hands." Note how similar this sounds compared to Pius' "I will hunt down every last one of the Grimm with my own hands."
  • Berserk Button: Promote Faunus rights or coexistence with them to his face. Go ahead. Bring up his family, or how they'd be horrified at what he's doing, the immorality of his methods, and he will send the Chosen after you.
  • Big Bad Friend: He inspired Pius to become a mechanic in order to achieve his dream of fighting Grimm head-on.
    • Broken Pedestal: And Pius could not be more heartbroken by this.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Offered Pius friendly advice and aid whenever he asked in his younger days.
  • The Chessmaster: He'd prepared for his plan's success years ahead, keeping tabs on his targets and their potential defenders.
  • Cool Old Guy: As a front.
  • Create Your Own Villain: He claims to have been made by the White Fang as a result of their efforts to gain Faunus rights. And it's true. In trying to stop Schnee Dust Company's R&D division from making new weapons against them, the White Fang gave Kaifuku Higai a reason to utterly despise all Faunus when they killed his family.
  • Creepy Monotone
  • Dangerously Genre-Savvy: He is aware of how Pius functions and thinks as his Good Counterpart, and takes advantage of his moments of weakness.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Claims that his life was ruined by the White Fang. It's pretty damn true.
  • Dark Messiah: He calls himself "the savior of mankind" from the "savage Faunus."
  • The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: As Pius points out, his family would never approve of how far he's gone to avenge their deaths.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: His response to losing his family to the White Fang is to exterminate all Faunus.
  • The Dreaded: To all Faunus in general, the White Fang in particular.
  • Driven to Villainy: When both the White Fang and Schnee Dust have kicked you down, where else is a man to ply his trade?
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: All those experiments, on both himself and others, took their toll on his sanity.
  • The Emperor: What he ultimately wants to become. This would make him an Emperor Scientist by extension.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He can't understand why anyone would want to coexist with the Faunus. This is how blinded by revenge he's become towards losing his family at the hands of the White Fang.
  • Evil Counterpart: To Pius. Both have an irrational hatred of a different species, born from the loss of loved ones by the actions of those species, and both are intelligent men with little in terms of social skill, but have a lot in terms of the skills they've gathered in pursuit of their goal: the total extermination of their enemy and the creation of a world where no one else will suffer what they did. They both have enigmatic secret identities used to frighten their enemies and channel their anger.
  • Evil Genius
    • Gadgeteer Genius: He made all the gear that his minions use.
  • Evil Mentor: Tried this with Pius, and when it didn't take he tried to have him killed.
  • Evil Old Folks: The stress of losing his family and leading his crusade have taken a toll on his image.
  • Evilutionary Biologist: If the truth behind the Chosen implies anything, it's that Higai believes that metal can replace the "defect" of not being human, or even a human that doesn't hate Faunus. Then he tries injecting or fusing Dust to his underlings to make them more powerful. The results...vary.
  • Family-Values Villain: Given that he was a family man, and that the whole reason he's going on his crusade is to build a world where families are safe, he counts. Just ignore the fusing/injecting of Dust/cybernetic parts and the racism.
  • Fantastic Racism: His agenda includes the extermination of all Faunus from Remnant.
  • Faux Affably Evil: His veneer of civility is just nothing more than a mask hiding his utter fury against Faunus.
  • Freudian Excuse: Though Pius is quick to call him out on it - "An excuse is an excuse. Nothing could have ever allowed you to do this."
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: From disgraced and broken Schnee Dust researcher, Kaifuku Higai turned the White Fang's recent terrorist actions against them by gathering survivors of their attacks and turning them into his loyal followers. In the years after the White Fang changed leadership, the Patriarch was one of the most feared and hated enemies of Faunus everywhere.
  • Glorious Leader: Of the Crusade.
  • Hero Killer: Well, not really killer, but he captures Pyrrha and transforms her into the next Chosen of Metal, which has got to count for something.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: From Pius- "You're as savage as the White Fang, Higai."
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Done in by the effects of his experiments with cybernetics and Dust on his own body.
  • Hypocrite:
  • Ignored Epiphany: When he realizes exactly how monstrous he's become in pursuit of his goals, he decides that he's gone too far to stop now. He dies because of this, as neutralizing the Dust coursing through his cyborg body would have spared his life.
  • Karmic Death: Dies from overworking his body after experimenting on it with Dust and cyborg parts.
  • Knight of Cerebus: The mention of his title to any Faunus kills the conversation, and things get worse whenever he gets involved, up to and including turning Pyrrha into the newest Chosen of Metal.
  • Knight Templar: He even calls his Evil Plan a crusade.
  • The Leader: Of the Crusade.
  • The Lost Lenore: The loss of his wife and children hit him especially hard.
  • Love Makes You Evil: If you've been reading the spoilers, you should know this already.
  • Mad Scientist: As the former lead scientist of Schnee Dust's R&D department, he has a lot of ideas and knowledge to use for his revenge.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: A lot of his atrocities have occurred before the arc begins, and his underlings do most of the dirty work. This goes away once he seemingly perfects the fusion of metal, flesh, and Dust in himself.
  • Revenge Before Reason: A subtle example, but prioritizing Blake as a target since she's a Faunus gets him caught off guard by her more powerful friends.
  • Sensei for Scoundrels: He acts as this for people who have been victimized by the White Fang, raising them up to be his Mooks and Elite Mooks in his crusade.
  • Start of Darkness: The murder of his family by the White Fang. Not just his own family, but his parents, his siblings, his nieces and nephews, and his aunts and uncles too.
  • Tragic Bigot: Though Pius refuses to see him as one.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means
  • Villainous Breakdown: When Pius really gets his chance to open his mouth at him, telling him without reservations that he and his crusade are utterly worthless, and his family would never approve of what he's done in the name of revenge.
  • Visionary Villain: For a world without Faunus, "where no man will ever lose his family because of hatred."
  • Walking Spoiler: The Reveal of his Secret Identity makes it difficult to discuss his character without giving the game away.
  • We Can Rule Together: Sincerely makes this offer to Pius.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: He sincerely believes the world would be better without Faunus and with him in charge.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Averted, despite everything he's been through. Pius and the others can find little sympathy for him when they take into account everything he's done.
  • You Killed My Family: Why he targets the White Fang first and foremost.

edited 26th May '14 5:37:36 PM by Insano

Hm. Looks pretty interesting from the trope page, even when it comes down to it he's just a racist. That may have been intentional.

Anyway, here's someting new:

You know Worm? You know Annette, Taylor's Missing Mom by way of car crash?

Well, I'm also thinking on an Alternate Universe fic where she wasn't as pure as the driven snow. Not that she was a particularly bad person, she was just an, as she put it, "parahuman of the not-entirely-legal-persuasion."

Ahem:

Name: Miasma, aka Annette Rose Hebert

Age: She's dead by the time of the story, but 19-28 during the flashbacks.

Personality: Sweet, witty, romantic, narcissistic, easily angered, and cheerfully proud of her criminal nature, Miasma is a Nerd in Evil's Helmet (or gas mask, as the case may be) who fully embraces the supervillain image (and helped create it in the Worm universe, being an early parahuman). She deliberately lives up to the image of The Baroness and Mad Scientist while making big, sweeping speeches about the superiority of academics and the strength of women, along with demands for cash and policy changes on pain of her Playing with Syringes.

Of course, this is a Worm fic, so we also see things from her perspective, and it's a hell of a lot more complex than what she presents in her night job. In reality, she's the loving, supportive wife of her Badass Normal lieutenant and bodyguard, Sodium (also known as Danny Hebert). She doesn't actually think she's evil (hence her Insistent Terminology about being called a Preternaturally Skilled And Intelligent Activist For Social Equality) and is actually motivated by her desire to avoid the hell of her trigger event, or worse, from happening to other people. She's actually a pretty good leader of her gang, the Elements, and in fact part of the reason the PRT hasn't ousted her from Cambridge and Boston (besides the fact that she's effectively Evil Overlord of both) is that she's actually well-liked by the "oppressed" due to her tendency to pick on Asshole Victims and bad laws when she's not, say, robbing banks or dealing in her chemicals (not drugs, these are acids and various biochemical bases for her creations).

(Of course, this is all in the past, mind you-she and Danny retired after Taylor's immanent existence comes to light, and decide that being the daughter of a pair of famous supervillains is no life for a child, especially after second-gen capes come to light; Taylor always had a very high chance of becoming parahuman, and that meant making the family even more of a target, not to mention Danny really didn't want his daughter to follow her mother's path. If you've read Worm, yeah that didn't work. Indeed, the fic is about him coming out of retirement to protect and guide her now that she's officially Generation Xerox.)

Abilities: A Tinker focusing on chemistry, Miasma also has a minor Thinker ability allowing her a form of Nerves of Steel, causing her logical mind to be dissociated from her emotions whenever she's scared or nervous, allowing her to think clearly and logically at all times. She's also an excellent strategist and Manipulative Bastard, being able to suss out personal weaknesses of her opponents and ways to Troll them into making mistakes. Her greatest ability, however, is her stability; part of her motivation is that she honestly thinks her trigger event (which is always very traumatic and emotionally damaging, to non-Worm fans) could have been much worse, and she unconsciously associates her powers with saving her life and escaping from the social prison she was in (specifically, being a woman in the very misogynistic scientific and medical culture of the The Eightes), meaning she's honestly a lot more rational and happy than the vast majority of parahumans.

Weaknesses: That's a pretty low bar to clear, and she tends to have a Villainous Breakdown when reminded of the helplessness and fear for her life she felt during her trigger. Thankfully, Sodium is there to shake her out of it and provide a mental crutch when she's freaking out. Also, her "logic" mindset has No Social Skills, which isn't generally a problem when she's figuring out how to get out of a bad situation, but terrible when she gets nervous during a social crisis (indeed, in the one-shot that led to this idea, she nearly ruined her relationship with Danny because of said logic mode).

(and will continue. If you want, I can link that one-shot)

edited 25th Jan '14 7:36:16 AM by Leliel

Because it was mentioned that an excerpt involving the submitted character would be good, here is a tasty little bit from Rise of The Heretic.

@Swordofknowledge

EVAN's effort to stop the Dissonance includes tearing down the Endeil Kingdom to bits and killing every last one of its citizen. Since the current Queen of the Eagle Throne is an Angel in disguise who's put there by Larane to make sure that things go as the Goddess of Mercy wishes, and it being one of the very few to see through the disguise, others being the disciples of the Order of Glass, like Reinhardt, EVAN's ultimate goal is killing the Queen. While the Queen's not actively malevolent or anything, she's still not one of the 'good guys', so I think EVAN is just a villain because it happens to be opposite of people like Faris, and could actually be on the 'good guys' side if it is willing to cooperate a bit in achieving the same goal of making the world safe.

edited 25th Jan '14 7:09:13 AM by arreimil

@Nick The Swing: That was great! You're right, posting excerpts with the characters in them is a good way to know the villain posted.

@ arreimil: Ah, I understand now. EVAN definitely has the power to be a serious threat to the Kingdom. From what you've explained, and what I know of your other characters like Faris, it seems unlikely that there won't be some sort of bloodbath before a peaceful solution is reached with this being. (Though you mentioned that Faris was undergoing a conflict of loyalty after finding out a dark secret—is it about the Queen's inhuman nature?).

Yet another villain from Archmage Reborn. He's one of the Red Cloaks—though I don't even know if that title fits him by the end.

• Name: Warrick de Marsten/Arrogance

• Age: 26

• Personality: Unlike many of his fellow Red Cloaks Warrick is neither outwardly cruel nor even particularly murderous—when he doesn't have to be. He views his leadership position in Legenada as both a job and a responsibility and takes the duties that come with it very seriously, running Legenada's vast prostitution and smuggling empire within the city-state of Deptwel and its outlying territories. Fitting his view on leadership, Warrick is protective those under him who cannot easily defend themselves, such as several of his sex-workers, especially those who are children. That said, Warrick will not hesitate to maim or kill should the situation call for it and is absolutely merciless when pushed. He has no tolerance for disloyalty of any kind and should a subordinate betray him, he sees nothing wrong with using torture, rape, or mutilation to teach them the "error of their ways", regardless of the circumstances of that betrayal or the age or gender of the offender. Unknown to any member of Legenada, Warrick is a devout member of the Purist Movement, and believes that he is one of the few chosen to live in the paradise that will arrive when their goddess, Thana Krelios returns to The Haven. Warrick takes immense pride in the fact that he comes from a family of Empowered who have never intermarried with Muggles. Warrick does not 'hate the "impure"—essentially everyone who is not Purist Movement—but he does view them as inherently inferior for being descended from Empowered who married normal humans or simply Muggles who were granted magic due to the Archmage’s Keys, and accepts that they are doomed to destruction in the Pure World because of their polluted blood. Because of this, Warrick radiates an inner smugness that seeps into his interactions with others, no matter how innocuous, and thus has earned him the moniker “Arrogance” when he cast aside his real name in favor of the Red Cloak code-name. After Nadia reveals her true nature to him, Warrick is awed and humbled and becomes subservient to her, becoming fanatical about following her orders and eliminating anyone in his way. Still, his hubris skyrockets as he becomes overwhelmed at being given a mission directly from his religion's goddess.

• Abilities: What makes Warrick truly dangerous is his inherent ability to absorb anima from other people. Warrick can control just how much anima he draws from his victims, draining them into Magician's Fatigue or worse with a simple touch. The process of being drained is excruciatingly painful, compared to having "your heart pulled out of your chest, an inch at a time", no matter how little is being drained. Because the ability is a talent Warrick was born with and not a learned spell, it cannot be countered by any means other than staying away from him. This absorption bolsters Warrick's own stamina, preventing him from tiring. He is an extremely agile opponent, having tremendous acrobatic prowess and dexterity. Warrick can nimbly dodge point-blank strikes from fists and bladed weapons while skillfully wielding his longer-than-average katana. He is also very skilled in swordsmanship; Warrick uses his katana as both a short and long range weapon. The katana is attached to Warrick's sleeve by a thin but strong metal cable that he uses to swing the sword around after throwing it, surprising opponents who think they have escaped his range. The sword's blade itself is made of iron, which prevents wizards or witches from using their powers when touching the metal.

• Weaknesses:: Warrick's ability to absorb anima only works at close range, and most of the time requires him to physically touch his victim. The draining ability prevents him from tiring but it does not dispel his physiological need for sleep, meaning that he often suffers the symptoms of sleep deprivation due to staying awake for days on end. Despite this power to take other people's anima, Warrick is unable to spells from any of the Four Paths of Magic. Though he is a master swordsman with a wide range, Warrick is still no match for an opponent wielding a gun, especially one of high caliber and fire-rate.

• Goals: Rise high enough in Legenada to be able to capture the First and Second Vessels and take them to the Purist Movement holy city so the Keys can be extracted and the Source summoned in order to entice their goddess Thana Krelios to return. During the Second Enchanter's War Warrick's objective is to spy on the Conclave and Iron Legion alliance to find out where they plan to hide the Second Vessel during the war.

• Motivation: He was raised by a devoutly Purist Movement family descended from Thana Krelios's followers during the First Enchanter's War 4,000 years ago. He believes strongly in the religion's promise that one day their "goddess" will return to The Haven and bring about a perfected world where only those born with the innate gift of magic will be allowed to live, free of pain and strife. Now that Nadia is moving forward with her plans, he intends to do what any faithful believer would—try his hardest to ensure the Pure World becomes reality.

• Role in the story: Warrick first appeared as just another member of the Red Cloaks working for Bartholomew Harper and had a rather small role. After Bartholomew's death Warrick is revealed to be The Mole for the Purist Movement, infiltrating Legenada for the sect's interests. When Nadia reveals that she is the one that his religion worships and tells him that he will now work for her directly, he becomes her loyal servant. Though he dies before the Second Enchanter's War really takes off, he is still the last Red Cloak to be killed, meaning he lived fairly late into the story.

• Backstory: Warrick was born to Pamela and Evarst de Marsten, in the unforgiving and icy wastes of the Far Reaches, an all but inhospitable wasteland used by the city-state of Morcoran to send its dissenters and criminals. Pamela and Evarst were cousins and devout followers of the Purist Movement religion and had married one another in order to avoid corrupting their bloodline. Despite their willingness to be banished from the city for their beliefs, the harsh conditions and the depraved conditions of the sparse settlement they lived in quickly turned them into mere breeding partners with no love for one another. Warrick's birth ended their tense situation, killing Pamela as he came into the world, seeming to weaken his mother into death even as the infant himself grew stronger. Warrick grew up under the tutelage of his father Evarst, who as a Speaker wasted no time in indoctrinating the boy in the beliefs of the Purist Movement as well as the legends and stories of their goddess Thana Krelios who had been struck down by the wicked Archmage on the edge of her victory over the murderous Muggles. From an early age Warrick strove to live up to those ideals. As he grew up Warrick's father tried in vain to teach him magic, but all attempts failed. This resulted in extreme disappointment and anger as Evarst cursed his son as being worse than the "tainted" for not having any magical power of his own when his bloodline was complete and pure. However Warrick did have a special power, and that was to drain the anima from any living thing he touched. Rather than inspire awe for its never-before-seen nature, the ability revolted his father and Warrick was punished often for using it, beaten mercilessly and at one point left out in the snow. Evarst cursed it as the power of a "monster" and as a priest was ashamed at seeing his child use it. Eventually the relationship between the two of them grew strained and finally broken entirely. Unable to abide having the wielder of such a vile ability under his roof and yet understanding that Warrick was still both his son and a fellow believer and chosen one, he cast the young man out of his house and into the edge of the Far Reaches while providing him with enough food and supplies to reach the nearest outlying town. Warrick did not begrudge his father this banishment, though his feelings were hurt. He resolved to return one day, bringing back something with him that would cancel out any resentment Evarst felt for him.

• Relevant Tropes:

• Affably Evil: Played with. Apart from Sorrow, Warrick is the only one of the Red Cloaks who is not openly cruel or violent. He is respectful even to enemies and has no problem commending an opponent on a well-executed move. That aside, he won't hesitate to torture or kill men women and children should the job call for it or if a subordinate betrays him. He doesn't show any malice while doing any of these things, which somehow makes it even scarier; he just sees his activities as a job and one that he has to complete to the best of his abilities. He is also incredibly arrogant even on the most mundane things, though it is difficult for those interacting with him to pin down exactly where this irritating sense of condescension comes from.

• Agony Beam: Warrick's ability to drain anima causes excruciating pain, no matter how little is being siphoned off, as well as an overwhelming feeling of being violated.

• Antagonist Abilities: You know those fancy, and just plain cool Battle Auras and overwhelmingly powerful Familiars? Yeah, they act like metaphysical "handholds" for him to use his Energy Absorption powers to suck your body and soul dry of anima.

• Alas, Poor Villain: In a meta sort of way. Even though no one mourns his death and considers him just another Legenada menace (or Purist Movement fruitcake for those who bothered to notice he was one of them), it is clear that he never knew any better as he was raised in the Movement his entire life.
  • Conversations between Nadia and Sebastian Gears take this trope and apply it to EVERYONE in the Purist Movement. The Movement is the result of Sebastian tracking down the surviving descendants of Nadia's original followers and making himself out to be a prophet of some kind, elevating Thana Krelios—Nadia's alias—to a goddess-like figure. The reason he did this? It was a "gift" to Nadia so that when she was able to return to the physical world 4,000 years later and was ready to continue her plans to create the Pure World, she would have a ready and willing supply of unquestioning cannon fodder willing to do her bidding at a moment's notice.

  • Not to mention that Nadia barely recognizes his villainous version of a Heroic Sacrifice; merely regarding Warrick's death with mild irritation as it deprives her of a competent and powerful fighter in the war.

• Anti-Villain: Warrick was raised to believe in the hateful and frankly insane teachings of the Purist Movement by his Sinister Minister father and his objective was originally to bring back both Vessels to Evarst so that his father and the others could extract the Keys, hoping that it would prove himself worthy enough to be Evarst's son and a member of the Purist Movement. When Nadia reveals herself as Thana Krelios and declares him her subordinate it's basically a massive religious experience and he doesn't even think not to obey.

• An Arm and a Leg: Warrick's arm is literally shredded by Veil's Atlantica spell (a horizontal cyclone of water moving at insane speeds), however this was the result of him purposely shoving his arm into the spell so he could use the anima-infused water as a "port" to drain Veil of his supply in order to stop him from using the spell to its full deadly effect, so it doubles as a Life-or-Limb Decision.

• Arc Villain: Like all the Red Cloaks before him, Warrick only lasts through a single arc of his own. He is the Big Bad of the "Precious Cargo" arc, though his actions have massive ramifications throughout the rest of the story and certainly affect the war.

• Badass: Pretty much a requirement for being a Red Cloak, but his endurance is amazing even for a fighter of their caliber. Warrick survives having his left arm peeled apart, having a massive icicle shoved through his torso, being shot at least three times, and being body-pressed by an enormous frog Familiar—all in the same battle. In the end the heroes don't even kill him; he kills HIMSELF rather than risk being tortured for information and betraying "Lady Thana".

• Four-Star Badass: Warrick's assignment after obtaining information on where the Vessel was to be hidden was to then return to where the Purist Movement forces were gathering in the West and assume command of them in preparation for the war. However his death caused Nadia to instead appoint Ara as their commander.

• Bad Powers, Bad People: He's a member of a Religion of Evil and can painfully suck out the energy that powers magic and keeps people's souls bound to their bodies in order to replenish his own stamina.

• Berserk Button: Disloyalty of any sort, having no tolerance for it. Warrick at one point sentenced a twelve year old boy to being Flayed Alive and then healed for a period of three weeks for informing upon Legenada's activities near the dockyards of Deptwel. Why did the boy do it? Because his mother was starving and sick and a rather...crusade-minded member of the Peace Officers was paying street-children for any tidbits of information he could get. Warrick didn't particularly care either way.
  • Later averted; during Warrick's battle against Veil, Angelica, and Daniel onboard the Garden Daniel figures out he's one of "those Purist Movement crazies" and decides to drive Warrick into a fury by insulting Nadia, hoping to make him careless. Instead of reacting with anger, Warrick merely sighs and tells him that the blasphemy of the tainted is upsetting, but in the end means nothing to the chosen.

• BFS: Warrick's massive katana is very much an Expy of Auron's, so no surprise there. How the man manages to wield the weapon with his slight build, even with his two-handed grip is anyone's guess.

• Black Cloak: Well, red cloak, but it functions in the same manner as the black version of this trope.

• The Bad Guy Wins: After Nadia declared the Second Enchanter's War, Warrick was able to sneak aboard the Garden and hide there for months, gathering intelligence on where the Conclave and Iron Legion planned to transport the pregnant Mia to give birth to her and Veil's daughter, the next Second Vessel. By the time he was caught and killed, he had already relayed their latest decision to go with tradition and take her to her homeland of Erzaria, allowing Nadia to know this and send Ara and Elena there.

• Cold-Blooded Torture: Benevolent Boss he may be, but he has an entire warehouse devoted to the "discipline" of rebellious subordinates who have "strayed". There are employees of his who are recruited specifically for this task and he mentions these people live in the torture house so that they are always close to their subjects and as a constant reminder of what will happen to them if they themselves think to betray him.

• Confusion Fu: He lunges, leaps around, lashes out and then jumps over his opponents to land behind them and then jump away again before striking with his blade, making it extremely hard to predict when and where he will actually strike and when it's just another feint or a doge. Making it even worse is that his throwing the over-sized katana and swinging it from its metal cord causes it to fly around unpredictably, making it tougher to block.

• Co-Dragons: With Sebastian and Ara, though his role in the arrangement is unclear. At the time, Ara hadn't completely gone over to Nadia's side, despite being extremely disillusioned with the Conclave after learning the Awful Truth and Warrick never met Ara, though he heard of him and knew his significance as Nadia's back-up human sacrifice to bind the Source to her will. Still he certainly fulfills the role of one of the few people in Legenada who knew of its true objective and Nadia's existence, especially after Bartholomew's Heroic Sacrifice and his apprentice Rand's resultant Heel–Face Turn.

• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Warrick wandered as a Street Urchin in Deptwel for over a year until he was taken in by a street gang that specialized in petty theft. This was in direct opposition to Legenada which kept a firm stranglehold on all crime within the territories. Because he wanted to get into Legenada, Warrick wasted no time in making friends with the gang members who viewed him as a simple and naive kid due to his inexperience with the city's ways and then led them into a Legenada trap, killing them all and allowing him a way into the lower rungs of The Syndicate. Of course, he then planned to betray Legenada by taking the Vessels and bringing them back to his father. Later averted when he realizes that Legenada is technically on the same side as the Purist Movement even if they don't know it.
  • Which is all quite ironic as he himself abhors betrayal and treachery. However he considers himself on a higher level than "Common traitors" and his mission a righteous one, therefore any treachery he commits is Dirty Business but acceptable in the end.

• Dark Is Evil: Warrick wears an extremely tight suit of black leather armor beneath his crimson cloak.

• Death by Irony: After being cut off from the Garden's Dash Capsule chamber, gravely injured and knowing that there are those in the Conclave and Iron Legion who will eventually break him via torture, Warrick simply uses his own anima absorption technique in reverse, spilling out his own anima into the ship's on-board garden, draining himself to death and causing the airship's garden to grow out of control.
  • Also doubles as just plain Irony as this required him to take a realistic and rather humble look at himself and realize that he wasn't impervious to torture, as opposed to his usual prideful boasting of his abilities and devotion to Nadia and her plans.

• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Warrick being cast out of his house for having a power he was ashamed of, but couldn't control by an extremely religious father is somewhat reminiscent of several real life issues...

• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Warrick can't cast any spells and relies on his swordsmanship to defeat his enemies. His only supernatural ability is his power to siphon the anima from other people—which is a good thing since, if he could cast magic, he would be theoretically unstoppable due to never having a never-ending supply of anima he could drain from others.

• Energy Absorption: Warrick can absorb the anima of others by simply touching exposed skin with his own; however if an enemy has a particularly powerful Battle Aura or is casting a spell at him, he can make contact with the spell and use it as a means to pull anima out of their bodies.

• Evil Costume Switch: Played with in several ways; he was already one of six leaders in a relatively evil organization and when he started working directly for Nadia, nothing about his outer appearance changed much. However he did take his Purist Movement medallion out from under his cloak, clearly wearing it around his neck while doing her bidding.

• Green Thumb: When he drains all the anima out of his body and into the ground of the airship's garden, the sudden influx of energy causes the plants to grow out of control; the grass rises to chest level while the trees actually grow to a dangerous level, threatening to shatter the glass dome that covers the garden.

• Loners Are Freaks: Warrick often shunned the company of other children growing up due to both his own bias against "tainted" people instilled by his father Evarst and his own fears on what his father would do to him if he gave into the occasional temptation to just forget the teachings and just associate with other children as if nothing separated them. Later, though he learned to disguise this attitude, Warrick is still very much a solitary person and he is the only Red Cloak without a partner to manage his affairs beneath him. Though this isn't so much because of the love of a solitary life as it is from his belief that anyone besides him would hopelessly fail at the job.

• Religion of Evil: Played straight and yet explored at the same time, as seen above. Warrick—and by extension his fellow members of the Purist Movement—are all Unwitting Pawns of a powerful witch who is using lost and forbidden magic to extend her life long enough to fuse with an Eldritch Abomination and become a goddess. However she has no problem deceiving the ignorant descendants of her followers into thinking she is a deity instead of a very powerful, old and knowledgeable magic-user, thus making the Purist Movement evil and yet strangely sympathetic.

• Worf Had the Flu: Warrick survived for the four months he was on the Garden by occasionally disguising as a crew member and snatching scraps of food from the trashcans around the cafeteria as well as constantly moving to stay out of the public eye, so to speak. He also got by on only hours of sleep for months at a time, using his anima-siphoning ability to draw it from people in such a manner that no one knew what the source of the painful sensation was. Thus when he was finally discovered and attacked, he was malnourished and very sleep-deprived. Still, he put up quite a fight before going down.

edited 27th Jan '14 8:00:53 PM by Swordofknowledge

He's definitely interesting. You may have added a few too many abilities, and the back story is a bit overcomplicated, but all in all I think that you might have an interesting villain.

• Name: Sylvia Blaze.

• Age: Unknown, but likely in the hundreds.

• Personality: Friendly, if rather brief. She's open to ideas, but will not be afraid to let you know if you're being annoying. She has nobody in particular she dislikes, but she usually keeps an air of indifference about her. Likes to pretend she's helping people, but whether she actually is varies. Loves her job.

• Abilities: Can alter her appearance and voice. Unusually powerful for her size. Can ignite things with her fingers or tongue. Can brew potions that alter personality and emotions. Can create portals between hell and earth in certain spots.

• Weaknesses: Relatively lightweight. Can't do much if her offer is refused. Can't enter most churches. Angels can see through her disguises.

• Goals: Mostly to do her job. Her job consists of finding love struck mortals and making them an offer. This is usually selling them a love potion. These love potions, of course, offer many of the drawbacks that love potions usually have. They also have a slight chance of making the receiver loathe the giver. Sometimes, she'll take a more hands-on role, using her disguises and other methods to get the person to fall in love with her client. These too often come with various drawbacks.

• Motivation: It's implied she receives some form of payment for her job, but it's not directly stated. On a few occasions, she comes across a couple she genuinely thinks should be together. She's more likely to take a hands-on role for these.

• Role in the Story: The devil half of a Deal with the Devil with an expanded role. Sometimes borders on Villain Protagonist.

• Backstory: A succubus who works in the Lust department of Hell. Not much else is known about her. Sometimes references previous experiences with humans.

• Relevant Tropes:
  • Affably Evil

  • Ate the Spoon: Her cigar melts an ashtray.

  • Big Eater: Can eat a cake half her size in a single gulp.

  • Cigar Chomper: Almost always seen with a huge, red cigar.

  • Couldn't Find a Lighter: Her preferred method of lighting her cigar. At one point, she lights it by licking the tip.

  • Horny Devils

  • Love Potion: Enjoys brewing these.

  • Megaton Punch: She can give these, but also mentions that she likes receiving them.

  • Noodle Incident: Mentions once drinking one of her own love potions, but refuses to go into any more detail.

  • Older Than They Look: Looks about twenty-seven, but is stated to be much older than that.

  • Rapunzel Hair

  • Villain Protagonist: Borderline at times.

  • Voluntary Shapeshifting

  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Green with black streaks.

edited 29th Jan '14 12:23:12 PM by BiggerBen

Seems rather brief, but has all the essentials I need to evaluate her. She seems to remind one of older demon stories, with less of the additions my own stories or those of others add on. The mention of department makes me curious, and whether other(s) are explored. She seems more like a Manipulative Bastard villain than someone who fights on the front lines, so I wonder what is going to happen during the finale. Will she simply be rebuffed or easily vanquished...?

Now for someone rather...different.

• Name: Justin Henderson / "Cyber-Matthew" (do not call him the latter if you value your life)

• Age: 20

• Personality: He started out well enough, as a member of one of the numerous superhero wannabe groups that cropped up during New Dawn II, at first appearing to be an expy of Matthew down to being a football player in college rather than high school. He seemed courageous, kind, decent and the type that wanted to protect his friends. A pity what happened when Gavin Shayde attacked and killed all his friends and gave a badly wounded Justin a sanity destroying reason you suck speech highlighting the fact he consciously tried to copy Matthew, including dying his previously darker hair lighter at the front. This plus damage to his body resulted in him being thrown further and further down the slippery slope as Amanda Wallace rebuilt him using Majitek, superpowerful Viseilian science, and Neostasis for blood. He knows damn well now that he is extremely unnatural, and he now has programming that makes him immediately hostile to anyone bearing him ill intent. Now a very nihilistic Death Seeker, he desperately quests after something that can give him the permanent death he desires. As he does, he decided to try to make it so that people would need to kill him to remove him - he built up forces loyal to him larger and larger, knowing well if he became enough of a threat, people would be willing to immediately use lethal force on him. Insofar, nothing has worked - he's always came back. He is very frustrated and alternates between murderously angry and completely depressed. As he is fond of ranting, he cannot even drink himself into oblivion any more. He dislikes to be around people who are fully human largely because he thinks they all either gawk at him and regard him as a freak, and because he thinks their happy, mundane and worry-free lives are "cheap lies, built on the backs of many corpses". He also dislikes the more machine than man Viseilians because they've "completely discarded everything". Even though he does extremely bad things for the purpose of making someone decide to kill him, its evident he regrets it, he doesn't enjoy any of it, and he often laments; "If only I were dead". Even though his girlfriend actually survived the attack of Gavin too, he cannot see her - he only sees a rotting corpse, courtesy of his own madness. Despite common perceptions of guys like him, he's actually one of the smarter villains - he put together who Gavin really was, and for the sake of Revenge decided to return the favor to him. It is also outright stated he burned Gavin's body "just to be sure". Among the New Dawn antagonists, it seems he gets along best with the younger ones, and ironically the supervillain wannabes who came up during II - they at least respect him, though not for the reasons he'd have preferred. About the worst part of him is that he knows he is mentally ill, sometimes striking out in violence without even remembering it, suffering from alternating episodes of rage and depression, delusions, hallucinations of dead people, and uncontrollable rage toward Matthew and his group, who he thinks left his friends and him to die, and even he doesn't know if that's what happened, nor does he think he can get better. He's mostly just resigned to the fact he's a rage-imbued abomination against nature, suited only to partnership with people he knows are bad, until the day comes when he can finally just die.

• Abilities: He did not start out with very much, just enhanced strength, speed, stamina and a sterner body than the usual person. Then the things started happening to him - his body, reconstructed, became extremely powerful physically and outfitted with the latest Majitek that gave him the ability to siphon off most forms of energy to power himself, while also ensuring that damaging him permanently is next to impossible. The Neostasis in his blood resulted in him becoming a Technopath as well, being able to control machines, as well as twist and merge them together into more killing machines. He even learns how to take over the Anti-Magical Faction's Killer Robots this way. His body is outfitted with Majitek Las-Cannons, which fire either bolts or blasts of Viseilian Mana. It is also easily able to be seen he has a lot of other weaponry on his person, including an eye beam he can fire from the cybernetic eye on the left side of his face. He can fly around using jets at first, then using a levitation device built into his back. He also commands a legion of nanites that can turn other people into cyborgs he can control to some degree, or which can infiltrate machinery and hijack it, or even just rip people apart. He is also capable of "energy projection", which basically just means he can create Hard Light weaponry, structures, and other such things. Any failed attempt to kill him is adapted to without his consent. Any machine he influences, likewise, if he should temporarily die, would immediately go and find a way to bring him back. And due to his highly amorphous soul mana, there is always a way to bring him back.

• Weaknesses: While his adaptive ability makes him hard to kill or even damage permanently, its adaptation only works against the method's precise settings at the time it was used on him. It appears a massive, concerted force exerted over his entire frame would be good enough to put a technical end to him.

• Goals:
  • Goal Number 1 is Die.
  • He wants revenge on Elijah's faction, Gibbs himself, and anyone who sided with him or abetted him. He also desires revenge against "the monster", even being willing to fight harder for this. Who this is, exactly, is left ambiguous.
  • Otherwise, in order to force people's hands, he takes on a number of false goals, which at one point included trying to hurl a nuke at six major American cities, and using his nanites to create a flesh-to-metal plague, as well as more generic "take over the world" and "ransom the populace of City X" schemes, purely to draw violence toward himself.

• Motivation: Gavin's speech, the loss of all of his friends, and all the trauma of his faulty memories coming back full force after that.

• Role in the story: His role changes a lot between stories. He's The Cameo in Book I, a heroic wannabe in the first act of II and a Tragic Monster in the last act upon his resurrection, in III he is Hector's Dragon on the condition he gets wished to death it doesn't work, and in IV, he becomes part of the Enemy Mine group.

• Backstory: In hindsight, it is pretty amazing he did not break sooner. He came from a largely abusive family, his mother had married his father by simply mind controlling the poor bastard, wanting him only for his looks, and thinking he'd love her back if she made it known she could at any time simply control him again. That alone says what kind of person his mother was. He often described her as his motivation to become a hero, if only to eventually defeat her. His father viewed him more as a disgusting "it" than as a son, even referring to him as "that thing". He was enrolled in a religious school, presided over by our old friend Elijah Gibbs. There, a lot of really bad stuff happened, including bullying that lead to him almost falling off a building, being beaten so badly that he got a compound fracture at one point, and an attempted molestation of Justin by one of the priests, while people walked on and did not even look at him or pay him any mind. When he tried to tell people, he was accused of lying and slandering a man of God, and that he should "accept everything God gives him". And when he tried to take the story to police, Elijah covered everything up. However, thankfully, after he managed to graduate, he moved in with some friends, took a ride away from town, and has since never spoken to his parents again. Those friends turned out to be the very group of heroic wannabes we see him with in II. They discovered magic at some point, though the Masquerade was never in place for Justin due to his circumstances. Even though Justin's school was not well acknowledged, they all managed to get into a good college together to study while doing their heroics. Things were looking up for them...

• Relevant Tropes:
• Adaptive Ability
• And I Must Scream / Human Resources: Oh, you thought that the Iron Armada wasn't scary enough yet? Wait until he starts plugging dead or dying Magic God Potentials into them, bringing them back to life only to serve as living power batteries. When they run out, a haggard, 100 year old looking corpse is dumped out and some other unfortunate is placed in.
  • And then he figures out how to do this to normal people, and drain their very potent Soul Mana. Yeesh.
• Antagonist Abilities: His robotic helpers do everything from drain local Mana to give to him, to shooting Beam Spam at foes, to outright laser shanking people if they're too weakened.
• Ax-Crazy: At one point, he rips a random grave open, hallucinates that the dead are trying to drag him down, and he has an episode of rage resulting in him ripping the corpse in the ground to pieces, and causing Scenery Gorn. This is hardly the craziest he's gone.
• Back from the Dead: Enough energy pumped in will give his systems the impetus to revive him. He's always extremely displeased.
• Badass in Charge: Of a large number of robotic or cybernetic minions, at last count they included the Eradicators, the Slayers, The Silver Crusade, The Iron Armada, and the Gray Sentries.
• The Berserker: He fights with utterly no regard for his own continued health, as he does want to die.
• Berserker Tears: When he sees his mother and his once again brainwashed father acting like a loving couple, he abandons his plan and goes ahead to try to kill them while screaming and crying.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: His nanites can do this to people, and they actually have, resulting in the Gray Sentries, a group of maniacally murderous cyborgs who try to kill as many people as possible before they themselves die.
• Break the Cutie: He was pretty thoroughly broken before, and now he's well past the Despair Event Horizon.
• Bullying the Dragon: It was really, really not smart for Corrupt Corporate Executive Mr. Lindsey to expect that Justin - a former Ephas enforcer who believed in the Eat the Rich philosophy Gibbs spoke of - would keep to his word and only attack certain areas of the Los Angeles. It was even less smart to repeatedly make fun of his cybernetic appearance and resemblance to Matthew. Predictably, it ended poorly.
• Create Your Own Villain: He thinks this is what happened between him and Matthew. In reality, Matthew had nothing to do with the circumstances that turned him into a cyborg, having been held off from intervening. If he had been able to, he would've interfered.
• Creepy Monotone: A lot of the time. While he sounds human a lot, when he's ready to be someone's Nightmare Fuel, he talks in a manner like this, rather like Hal-9000.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He does this a lot, either to Sharon's Fake Heroes, or Hector's group's elite guard before he was accepted as The Dragon. The latter was more of a test, though. One scene sure to make people cheer was his encounter with Gavin - even though his Glass Cannon status was still on, he beat the crap out of Gavin, who had seemed like some sort of evil Batman up until then. Granted, he got away, but it was impressive.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Much to his displeasure, they don't - his soul is perfectly intact, and can be used to revive him again and again.
• Cyborg: As a product of We Can Rebuild Him, he is a Nigh-Invulnerable Cyborg with Killer Robot "programming".
• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Having once been a hero, he knows the ins and the outs. Particularly, he gets exasperated with Ephas mooks when they declare someone dead after they shoot his plane down. "If you cannot show me his body, he is not dead. Get to it!" He also prefers to not hold anything back during a fight.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Oh so much, just read his motivation and backstory.
• Death Seeker: He lists the sheer number of things people tried on him, and its just mind-boggling;
  • "I have been ripped to pieces, disemboweled, my head has been torn off, my brain has been crushed, I have been thrown into a trash compacter, I have been melted, shattered, frozen, broken and flayed. None of that worked. I've even been thrown through a black hole, used as a human missile through a gas giant, and most recently teleported into the heart of a Supernova. As you can see, none of that worked either. I want to die. I will keep killing - kill me if you can."
• Demonic Possession: Explicitly likened to this is his most terrifying power - he can use his nanites to create a biotechnological chip in a person's brain, and then seize control of them, imposing his own personality over theirs.
• Despair Event Horizon: The event that convinced him that there was utterly no meaning in the world was the aforementioned incident wherein Gavin murdered all of his friends before giving him a nasty reason you suck speech, and including making him think his girlfriend was "dead as a doornail" when her Spell Core allowed her to survive. Compounding it was everyone's reaction to his new form as "The Cyber-Matthew".
• The Dragon: To Hector. As well as being the only person it seems Hector really respects.
  • He has a Dragon as well, in his immediate lieutenant, another cyborg called Grant who relays his orders to his various groups.
• The Dreaded: To just about everyone past a certain point. With the Masquerade gone and knowledge of his actions widespread, mentioning he is coming is a good way to incite a Mass "Oh, Crap!". Makes sense, given the number of times he's tried to use nukes.
• Eat the Rich: He really got into Hector's Eat / Kill The Rich idea. As in, he created a group of terrifying cyborgs called the Eradication Corps, who were basically a death squad. He even targets Los Angeles due to the large number of affluent neighborhoods, using an airship filled with firebombs, missiles and the most Eradicators seen since their formation.
  • Tellingly as to how well he took to this, even after Hector's defeat and Heel–Face Turn, he kept pursuing this sort of ideal amidst his other goals. Including setting a Hate Plague loose on a vacation spot in Brazil.
• Energy Absorption: Not on the same level as Aaron Shayde, but its definitely substantial and makes taking him down even more of a chore. While it is possible to overload it to do more damage, that'd take a lot of energy.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When he discovered his science was being used by the Anti-Magical Faction to turn people into abominable, emotionless, similarly powered monsters called The Highmasters, even Justin was revolted, and decided to put an end to that. He is aware how hypocritical it is, its mostly the removal of emotion that bothered him.
• Evil Genius / Mad Scientist: Mad and Ax-Crazy, sure. Stupid? Not a chance. He creates all the machines and weapons his officers and units use, as well as being, most often, the guy in the Villain Team-Up who builds the base and any utility robots.
• Fallen Hero
• Genius Bruiser: Hits really, really hard, but don't think for a moment he's stupid. He is very capable of combining capable scheming with deadly brute force.
• Glass Cannon: At first; he can deal a lot of damage in his first appearance post-Rebuilding, but since he hadn't adapted much, his cybernetic limbs, while insanely strong, fell apart quickly and needed his technopathic abilities to rebuild them again. As he adapts, he becomes a much more powerful Lightning Bruiser.
• Green Lantern Ring: The gist of his Hard Light ability.
• Hand Blast
• The Heavy: In Book III; As Hector's Dragon and immediate lieutenant, he is the most dangerous person on the villainous team, and has the most credentials when it comes to actually fighting. He also kills the most people, and is regarded as the biggest threat.
• Hero Killer: Not like he likes being this way, but its pretty evident in how people react to news he has showed up. He has tried to nuke numerous cities, he's unleashed a flesh-destroying plague, and he's dreaded as would make sense for such a villain.
• Immune to Bullets: Best exemplified in this quote;
  • The person Damien thought was just someone barely younger than himself gripped Damien's police issued hand gun suddenly, and no amount of prying would get that hand off. It was like trying to pry off a mechanical vice. The young man drew the weapon, aimed it at his own head and emptied the chambers into himself. Each bullet fell down to the ground, flattened. Justin Henderson stated in a dead, dry as bone tone, "Shoot me with something better."
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: he has tried a few times, including eating his Viseilian Mana Blaster. And it never works.
• It's Personal: With Elijah, for the cover ups, and helping Sharon, among other legitimate grievances. A lot of the heroic cast also feels he is a deeply personal villain due to the sheer number of things he's done, and how many times he's come back from the dead.
• Killer Robot: He possesses a whole Terminator style army of them.
• Knight of Cerebus: Want a New Dawn story to be dark? This guy's very appearance brings the Nightmare Fuel, let alone what he does once he shows up.
• Laser Blade: He can create ones out of his palms.
• The Man Behind the Man and The Man Behind the Monsters: To next to any robotic or cybernetic looking villains.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": A previously light hearted adventure about vacation and such was put to an end so to speak when his airship showed up. Literally everyone in the room freaked out.
• The Mentally Ill: He hallucinates, he cannot remember things in the order and fashion in which they happened, he reacts very violently to even remotely antagonistic stimuli, his mood swings wildly. All that, and he sees his girlfriend as a walking, talking rotting corpse.
• Mook Maker: His role in most villainous team ups. He creates the main forces, and usually leads them in battle.
• Moral Event Horizon: He keeps trying for this, but it never quite sticks, namely, to get someone to finally deem him so irredeemable that they'd have no choice but to kill him and kill him fast.
  • First Attempt: Infecting San Francisco's drinking water with his nanites, with explicit instruction to deconstruct organic matter they come into contact with. Foiled before anyone died.
  • Second Attempt: Attempting to firebomb Palm Beach and surrounding areas. he succeeded, but most people were evacuated.
  • Third Attempt: Using his Technopathy to instigate a robotic uprising, combining primitive robots with weaponry to create an army he intended to use in order to blaze a trail of omnicide from one corner of the States to the other. Stopped before he could really get going.
• Nuke 'em: He has employed and attempted to use smuggled nuclear weapons a number of times, including attempting in Book III to hit affluent neighbourhoods with suitcase nukes.
• Odd Friendship: With Graverobber, Master and Lance. And also with the young Miranda Roman, who he rescued from captivity at the hands of her own family.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Several of his schemes ring of this, including the Flesh-Hate Plague and the whole Killer Robot Army thing. That cross country trip was a test drive.
• Perpetual Frowner
• Person of Mass Destruction: Given how much of the world is technology, and his incredible abilities besides, he's easily in this category. Interestingly, he also creates lower level People of Mass Destruction, The Eradicators, via a specific nanite configuration.
• Pet the Dog: During the time Matthew is thought dead, he just feels empty of purpose - not even his own death-seeking methods could free him of that feeling. So he decides to fill in for Matthew, disguising himself as him in order to make sure other enemies don't get wise ideas. He was legitimately confused by this, as he thought he'd be happy his hated Arch-Enemy was dead.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His cybernetic side has a glowing red eye that when it really glows brightly, that is a sign he's going to use his almost uniformly One-Hit Kill "spread-effect destructor beam".
• Red Right Hand: Easy way to tell this guy is a bad guy? Look at his right hand, and how it is consistently described as if its made of cords covered with red armor, with the digits on his hand ending in small scythe blades.
• Revenge Before Reason: He did not necessarily care that the forces he was arrayed against included the government among others, and that there were already people trying to take Sharon down. For revenge, he was willing to slaughter anyone who got in his way, no matter who they are.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Eradicators look as human as you or me...until they need a weapon. Then you're treated to arms sliding in half to shoot a laser beam at you from a barrel. They're basically They Look Just Like Everyone Else!, until the time for battle starts. Then, Evil Makes You Monstrous. Easily ranking among his scariest creations, even given the flesh-warping nanites.
• Robeast: The Iron Armada; built on the basis of existing animals, the Iron Armada creatures are usually around six meters tall, and armed to the teeth.
• Serial Escalation: Over time, his plans get more drastic, involve more death and destruction as he becomes frustrated with his continued existence. Eventually, they include brainwashing nanites, nuclear weapons and armies of robots.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: He can create any sort of weapon, including something reminiscent of a Warhammer 40K Bolter.
• Straw Nihilist: He has suffered so much, been killed so many times, and has came back so many times, he seems to have given up on any idea of peaceful coexistance, instead speaking at length about the "lies" and "illusions" people live under, and how the world is full of "fake things and unpunished crime." One of those crimes? Allowing him to continue to exist.
• Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: A few times, most notably when he tried to build a machine that would detonate the internal portions of the Earth outward with greater force. He did not care that it would kill him - he relished it.
• Technopath: He can make any technology try to kill you, up to Paranoia Fuel levels. Ever thought of your phone's wires flying up and strangling you to death in a few, brutal seconds? It also helps with his Evil Genius work.
• Took a Level in Badass: He can cause this; The Silver Crusade was at first just loyalists from the Knights of Prayer that refused to follow their new, sane leadership. When Justin took control, he outfitted them with new weapons, new bodies, gave them a modicum of his immortality (though not to the same degree, as he views that as a curse), and turned their dinky old blimp into his new airship.
  • Past a certain point, he discovered his full abilities. Hence, he became a lot more dangerous and destructive.
• Tragic Monster: He did absolutely nothing to deserve being turned into a Majitek monster by Amanda, and he makes it plenty clear numerous times he would've preferred a normal life.
• Translator Microbes: One of his stranger schemes involves inverting this - using nanites to make people perceive hostile words and intentions from everyone else around them as something like a Hate Plague.
• Two-Faced: Half his face has Matthew's handsome countenance. The other half resembles a mercury silver mask with a red eye, which changes, and matches his expressions. It looks really creepy, especially up close.
• Unstoppable Rage: When he gets mad, he gets mad.
• Unwanted Revival: When six of his Eradicators bring him back, he just sobs and asks them why they brought him back.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: His Slayers group claims to defend humanity. This just means that they go around basically murdering anything that could victimize a human, and even have a similar mantra to a well known racist creed - "Pro-Cryptid is a Code Word for Anti-Human!" While he himself is not a racist, he uses them nonetheless.
• Villain Cred: He has done so much in pursuit of his death that most other New Dawn villains think extremely highly of his competence and threat level.
  • Hector, normally very silly, even has this to say about him; "Heh, its pretty much over now that Henderson's found his target. I think that guy's got murder written into his programming - I've got mad respect for him, and I gotta say, nobody else quite gets things done like him."
• Villainous Breakdown: Most spectacularly when he found out in Tri-Age Cataclysm that the guy he had allied with was lying about being able to kill him.
• Villain Team-Up: A large number of times, but in the crossover Tri-Age Cataclysm, he mostly allies with Omnicidal Maniac's, in hopes the end of the world will mean the end of him.
  • Another one in canon occurred involving Lord Eclipse, Ares, Cyber-Matt, Parallaxus, and Siuldar.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Amanda did not think letting Justin die would be good, so she rebuilt him using Neostasis, Viseilian Technology and Majitek. Also counts as Came Back Wrong.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: He certainly does not.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: His life pre-rebuilding was horrible, it was only starting to get better, but was dashed. Post-Rebuilding? He is easily one of the most dangerous of Matthew's enemies, a foe who wears his countenance twisted with cybernetics and misguided, maddened rage, alternating between motives of revenge and seeking death. And he has a very good reason to want some revenge on some of the people he wants revenge on.
• Worf Had the Flu: His first fight with Matthew was actually rather easy on Matt, largely because Cyber-Matt hadn't figured out his powers yet, he was consumed in Unstoppable Rage, and had already fought six of Sharon's officers.
• You Killed My Family: His real family was always that circle of friends he made - so when Gavin killed them, he became hellbent on revenge on Sharon's forces and those affiliated with Gavin, and due to their status as her successors, the Anti-Magical Faction. He is uniquely dangerous to them because of his Technopathy.
• Zero Percent Approval Gambit: He wants to become so hated by people at large that they find a way to kill him.

edited 30th Jan '14 2:09:53 PM by NickTheSwing

Haven't quite worked out the ending yet, but rebuffed is most likely. As for the other departments, I'm going to go into a bit of detail on them. You're right about the Manipulative Bastard part.

Play up that guy for terror when not being sympathetic, and you're cool. This is someone whose entire motive is to get people to hate him enough to kill him, he's not human in personality anymore.

Hm, no comment. Oh well. Next part of Miasma.

Goals: Besides have fun hamming it up? Use fear to create a fairer environment for everyone, especially the academics and women of the world, namely via blackmail and big, showy schemes that, if they fail, will result in uncomfortable questions for the targets. She also wants to safeguard other parahumans and build her own political clout.

She's wildly successful by the time the full story of Worm takes place, if only because she drills it into the minds of the powerful that victims have a strange tendency to trigger, and they are far from incapable of using that power to make the elite very, very unhappy (and let's be frank, she wasn't the only Preternaturally Skilled Activist out there).

Backstory: Already in my story on Fanfiction Dot Net, but to recap: She was The Lad-ette growing up in a more nerdy way than most, being completely uninterested in "girly things" and instead wanting to play Dungeons And Dragons and be a scientist. Unfortunately, this was during The '70s, and she was a social exile from both normal culture for her open dislike of "feminine things" and geek culture due to her "intruding" on "their thing." Which was better than those fellow geeks who felt they were Entitled to Have You on the basis of being "their fantasy, and growing upset when I wasn't a product of their own minds," as she puts it.

This also put a dent in her career-she wanted to be a doctor, like her father, but social stigma got her again, as female doctors (rather than nurses) just didn't happen, and eventually she went for a pharmacology degree.

And in college, she ended up encountering a genuine sociopath who fancied himself her boyfriend. When shut down too many times and during a period in which he was high, he decided that since Annette was so lacking in feminine qualities, she...didn't need them.

She triggered while desperately trying to keep her innards where they were supposed to be, giving her the knowledge and clearness of mind needed to quickly concoct a medicine to give her a temporary Healing Factor. She still has the scar, and bringing it up is a Berserk Button for her.

After gathering her thoughts (and entrails) together, Annette thought over her life and newfound power. She could be a superhero, a beloved icon and applauded wherever she went...and likely face constant social stigma, snide comments, and misogynist anger, because her powers were science and medically based, and her life experience taught her that made her a minority, ergo an enemy of the establishment. So why not embrace that fact? If the establishment was despised enough, and she was nice enough in being an enemy, people would embrace her as an icon anyway behind closed doors, and she would likely get rich and powerful in the process.

Commence Evil Laugh, followed by her first scheme-dragging the sociopath through a Humiliation Conga in which his masculine parts would be lost, and in such a way people would laugh at him-a smashing success. So began the reign of Miasma, Dark Dona of Biochemistry!

(The fic I mentioned covers a chapter in her life after she meets Danny, falls head over heels in love with him and vice versa, with the actual fic being what happens after he learns of her...other job. It doesn't go over well, but they make up quickly and she lets her guard down and reveals her trauma. And then drags him into becoming Sodium.)

(Again, though, she's a Posthumous Character, as in AU as it is in canon, amen. She ends up being quite the terror in her prime, but after Leviathan shows up and kills several of her Quirky Miniboss Squad and friends, she goes through a major Villainous BSoD and ends up having Sex for Solace with Danny, who admittedly is her secret husband...during her period. Faced with the prospect of a daughter long before she wanted one and realizing her heart wasn't in her role any more, she and Danny decided to retire and raise Taylor in peace.)

(And if you've read Worm, you also know she got killed by a random drunk driver when said daughter was ten, giving rise to about 60% of her issues. Danny is still around, and again, the actual plot of the fic I may grow it into involves him joining the Undersiders as their token Badass Normal-and Living Emotional Crutch-when he realizes Taylor has inherited her mother's predilection for supervillainy.)

Other Tropes:

• Anti-Villain: Like mother, like daughter, though she began on the shady side of the law.
• Battle Couple: With Sodium/Danny.
• Beneath the Mask: As Miasma: Hammy Noble Demon with a penchant for humiliating her enemies and using terror tactics. As Annette: Somewhat damaged but otherwise Plucky Girl who wants the best for the world and values her friends and spouse.
• Berserk Button: Misogyny and anti-intellectualism are the big ones, but all prejudice gets in her craw.
• Big Bad: To Cambridge and Boston during her career.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Before she proposed to Danny, due to her issues about her gender. Eventually worked it out.
• Cry Cute: What unintentionally saved her relationship with Danny; he was really, really upset that his future wife was lying to him about her secret identity, but he accidentally reminded her of her trigger and causing her to have a breakdown. Since Danny is a Nice Guy, this snapped him out of his rage immediately and comfort her.
• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Hammy speeches aside, she's seen those movies too and knows how to avoid common mistakes.
• Deaf Composer: Her knowledge flows from her shard, she doesn't know how she knows what ingredients and catalysts will give her what she wants. Think of it like working from a textbook that is slightly above you.
• Mad Doctor: Her specialty, from a pharmaceutical standpoint.
• Noble Demon: Loves the supervillain image, hates being actually sadistic and evil.
• O.C. Stand-in: Basic premise of the fic-the canon Annette wasn't given much characterization other than "Was a good mom, is now dead."
• Pet the Dog: Openly runs charities and shelters for women and minorities.
• Plucky Girl: She doesn't allow the tragedies of her life to define her, except in ways that make her happy.
• Straw Feminist: Deconstructed and subverted. The patriarchy genuinely was the reason why she was a fairly miserable person before her trigger, and besides her hatred of misogyny, she doesn't actually hate the male gender or view it as inferior in any way.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The end result of her picking on Asshole Victims and Pet the Dog. People know she's a bad guy, but she makes things better for them, so she can't be that bad...
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Why she's a supervillain and not trying to lead by example by being a superhero (besides the fact that she'd rather be the woman people secretly want to be rather than the icon people ignore); she thinks the whole damn system needed a kick in the ass to start treating the downtrodden and ignored better.

edited 30th Jan '14 12:24:33 PM by Leliel

I do not know the work you are writing in, so my analysis is flawed, but it seems she was quite an Anti-Villain and went for redemption before things went into Diabolus ex Machina, and I do have a soft spot for the story we never heard.

Now for one of the villains in an upcoming RP on this site.

• Name: Marcus Recht

• Age: 17

• Personality: Marcus starts out as a rather simple villain for the fact that, as the RP starts in high school, he is the Jerk Jock Big Brother Bully to his younger brother Galen. Marcus was always peering over his little brother's shoulder, picking on him and his friends, and often gloated about his superior popularity with ladies. The two never really got along - Marcus feels his little brother got special treatment due to being a fraternal twin to their sister, and a lot of appreciation from their parents. Despite his sports achievements, Marcus feels his little brother is treated specially, and is never called out for any of his misdeeds, while Marcus gets told to apologize. This all gets worse once the superpowers enter the equation - Marcus and Galen quickly began antagonizing each other more violently, and they injured Galen's twin sister during a crossfire. Both brothers blamed one another for that. Marcus, feeling that Galen's little "superhero club" was the very height of hypocrisy formed an opposing group of people related to people in Galen's club, mostly people who, similar to him, were bullies before their relatives became powerful. That alone speaks of how Marcus and his allies feel they've been left behind, that they feel alone, vengeful, and forsaken. While Galen's heroism got him a medal, Marcus' importance and relevance in the eyes of his parents and community dwindled, to such an extent he was told "why can't you be more like your brother" by the girl he liked and his parents, both in one day. These people, Marcus decided, are going through what I am - we can get through this together. Due to their high social standing in the school, they decide to take on names that reflect this, purely because Galen's group started using codenames. It did not take long at all for them to start becoming much more conventionally and dangerously villainous. Even though Marcus himself is pretty bad now - he has killed - he still feels very concerned that the group he created is out of control - even he was horrified when Solar King flash fried a police officer for no reason other than "I could, therefore, I did." Even though Marcus is an arrogant individual, it is clear through his actions that this is a defense mechanism designed to protect an uneven self image, and this ties into the above in that even though he acts as one of the leaders, due to being among the Founding Trio, he's not really that sure he's got this whole thing under control.

• Abilities: His power, like that of his brother, is Shock and Awe, and while his brother is more pin point and precise, Marcus is destructive, powerful and raging. Its hard for him to use an attack that isn't going to cause a lot of damage. He can even create a humongous shield using his powers that functions like an electromagnetic shield. He can even use an EM Pulse to take out technology, or a similar attack to shut down a human brain.

• Weaknesses: He has utterly poor impulse control, and at one point when trying to stun someone and stop them from shooting an ally, he instead reduced them to a charred, smouldering corpse. His temper and issues tend to take control, and reason leaves the building the moment his sister is brought up. His own minor It's All About Me complex also gets him into trouble, as his first concern is his rivalry with little brother.

• Goals: Galen, you hurt my little sister, prepare to be beaten up like old school / die / see your group destroyed.

• Motivation: He feels he was never appreciated, and that despite being very talented in a lot of sports, he was appreciated for that alone, and not for his personality. He feels Lonely at the Top, and the superpower thing and the dire injury inflicted on their sister has exacerbated his issues. He feels that heroes are given carte blanche to do as they please, and its the job of "a villain" such as himself to drag them back down to Earth.

• Role in the story: Anti-Villain / Anti-Hero. He fluctuated between these with alarming regularity.

• Backstory: Marcus' backstory heavily involves his relationship with his siblings, particularly his brother. Even though he was involved in sports, his parents disliked his loner nature, and preferred the more social younger brother. As retribution for this, Marcus bullied Galen whenever he was able. The two have as such never really gotten along, exacerbated by the bad parenting and this new superpower business.

• Relevant Tropes:
• Anti-Villain: For a self admitted "bad guy", his motivation rings of What the Hell, Hero?, and while he does villainous things, he tries to stop himself from going too far...
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Most of his club make use of aristocratic titles, due to Galen's group saying they stood against "bullies who act like nobles here". Precise reasoning? "You want nobility? We'll give you nobility!" Even after more people than just bullies started joining their group, the naming convention stayed - Solar King was a member of the chess club before his power Actualized. And Depth Monarch was a drifter.
• Ax-Crazy: A rare sympathetic case - he knows he is unstable and mentally unbalanced by years of being The Un-Favourite, and tries to resist his internal urges to do worse than he already does.
• Bastard Boyfriend: Subverted - admit it, you'd expect the Jerk Jock to be a jerk to his girlfriend too, to facilitate The Hero rescuing her and getting her love. And that is what Galen thought was going on. However, it turned out to be a plan by the girlfriend to make Galen think that, and trap him in his own mind using her powers.
• Berserk Button: Usually punctuated by a crackle of electricity on him, its generally not smart to push his buttons. They include being his little brother on a bad day, reminding him of the sister incident, mistreating your little sister, and making fun of the fact a section of his hair at the front has turned silvery (though this is more of an irritation button).
  • Beating on his girlfriend is likewise a bad idea. He's very willing to use his powers for bad things, so he's less inclined in a rage to leave you in one piece.
• Big Brother Bully: Though he has some sort of comprehensible reason for disliking his brother that much. See The Un-Favourite.
• Blood Knight: As he discovers, he loves a good brawl every once in a while.
• The Bully: An infamous school wide bully, though only one of numerous. He even knew the other bullies well enough to make a whole group with them.
• Cain and Abel: Marcus and Galen form this dynamic.
• Card-Carrying Villain: A part of his personal ideals - to him, "heroes" like his brother are unrestrained idealists who do as they please for the sake of personal justice that may not even be right. "Villains" fight the heroes and enforce cynicism and realism.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Picking on his brother just after he gained his powers did not end well for Marcus - except it then reversed itself when he developed his own Shock and Awe powers just a little late, and went back and forth from there.
• Deadpan Snarker: Oh, another way the brothers are alike. Their exchanges, when civil, can be entertaining to watch.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His little sister and his girlfriend are both very dear to him. In fact, his little sister being hurt was the catalyst for his behavior.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Bully? Yes. Vengeful crazy guy? Yes. Horrified when his lightning turns someone he was meaning to merely stun into a nightmarish looking corpse? Also yes.
  • He also has this reaction when Solar King murdered someone for no reason at all, realizing this was going pretty far.
• Evil Counterpart: To little brother Galen. Though it may be Anti-Hero counterpart on occasion.
• Five Bad Band
  • Big Bad: Marcus, easily, due to his power and clout as one of the Original Trio.
  • Co-Dragons: Sasha Adrick and Galaxy Liege. Both for having the strongest powers and the closest friendship to Marcus.
  • Evil Genius: Lothar (real name unavailable), due to his surveillance based powers and Puzzle Boss nature.
  • The Brute: Solar King and Depth Monarch, for being the most brutal fighters, and having the largest body counts.
  • The Dark Chick: Lily, the cheerleader whose power is...to power up her allies. Also has a hilarious personality rather like a well meaning ditzy idiot who didn't understand why her teasing wasn't appreciated.
  • Sixth Ranger: Glory, though her true role is much darker.
• Hidden Depths: Rather more intelligent than he seems.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Despite being the meanest of the bullies who gained powers, he shows abundant hints of this, including giving people on his team pep talks, and made sure his girlfriend was safe.
• It's All About Me: He seems to think solely in terms of resolving his differences with his brother, and getting revenge otherwise, and never really thinks about larger circumstances. Subverted to some degree by the fact he obviously does care for his allies.
• Jerk Jock
• Loners Are Freaks: The attitude his parents take, what with his insistence that he's a "one man game", and "a solo player."
• Motor Mouth: When he gets too excited in a fight, he says perhaps too much.
• Mr. Fanservice: One way both brothers are alike.
• Power Incontinence: He cannot control his powers very well, being how strong and naturally uncontrollable they are. As covered under Even Evil Has Standards, this has presented a problem before.
• Psycho Electro: How psycho varies, though pushing his Berserk Button is a really bad idea.
• Revenge Before Reason: He and his brother were equally at fault. Even their sister says so. You would not know this going by Marcus' ranting.
• Shock and Awe: very powerful, destructive lightning, though he is also capable of creating a strong shield as well.
• Shout-Out: Before Marcus chose his group's name, Galen simply called them "The Legion of Supervillains."
• The Un-Favourite: Marcus, due to his parents recognizing his bullying behavior, and his brother having brains and brawn.
• Took a Level in Badass: He got a pretty harsh Curb-Stomp Battle when he first tried to pick on his empowered little brother. The battle that happened after this awoke Marcus' own powers showed him as being incredibly powerful, and capable of using his abilities to devastating effect.
• Unstoppable Rage: Deconstructed, in that it might be at fault for his problems at the start, and when he's really getting mad, his brother can usually sneak in an attack while he's just throwing lightning around.
• Villains Out Shopping: Marcus is often shown out with the people closest to him in his group.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Eric Sayles / Galaxy Liege; they poke fun at one another, they constantly bicker...but as is shown, they're incredibly loyal to one another.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He does this fairly often. The best example is when his brother started acting like a Jerk Jock as well, and mocking a powered young woman for being overweight.
  • "What the hell was that? You're the big damn hero, go apologize. Now." This said after a punch to the face, after Galen had stalked out after Galen's girlfriend also called him on this.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: He could destroy the entire school the RP takes place in at the start. He's also trying really hard to not be an Ax Crazy monster.

edited 4th Feb '14 8:32:17 PM by NickTheSwing

Another great character. I'm not sure if this is helpful or not, but for some reason I just personally can't see Marcus as a villain. In many ways he just seems like a Darker and Edgier hero; violent, ruthless and cruel yet his points and observations cannot be ignored in good conscience. I like his powers, but more so, I like how you didn't give Marcus a handicap by limiting his abilities but instead simply making them uncontrollable, which is crippling on its own. I'd be interested to see his brother Galen, if you have time.

• Oh, and their sister being injured in the cross-fire between them reminds me strangely of Dumbledore's fight with Gridelwald, except the consequences are less severe.

Now for something a little different; instead of an Archmage Reborn character, I think I'll post the background antagonists from Snatched Away, an old, old story. Huh, it's the second time I've posted a group of beings rather than a single character.

• Name: Shades

• Inspired by: Strangely enough, they and the monster created in a desperate attempt to fight them are both inspired by Sin.

• Age: They have been terrorizing the world of Tella for over twenty years. Their ages are likely all over the place from the elderly to the all too young.

• Personality: Three types of Shades seem to exist. They are classified by their behavior when possessing a human body. Despite the differences in behavior, all Shades are hostile, hunting and possessing human bodies for unknown reasons; they will pursue fleeing humans until they have either been possessed or have escaped and they swarm around settlements protected with electromagnetic barriers.
  • Type Ones, the most common, are utterly mindless beings incapable of rational thought. When possessing humans, they mutilate the bodies of their hosts to the point of severe injury with whatever is available, though it is usually done with the nails and teeth of their host bodies. Type Ones cannot seem to use a human body very well and stagger around in an uncoordinated manner, often tripping and falling and sometimes just dragging themselves across the ground. They utter gibberish and contort their facial expressions into strange and disturbing grimaces. Type Ones are just as brainless in their "natural" bodiless states, slamming into the electromagnetic shields heedless of the effects and not learning from the mistake.

  • Type Twos are slightly less common though still great in number. They are somewhat more intelligent. While Type Twos do not engage in deliberate damage to their hosts, they often kill or injure them by pushing them to their limits. Type Twos are known for running from one end of a city to another without stopping or leaping off buildings, climbing tall trees or power lines or hurling themselves through windows. Some engage in crude sexually charged behavior and Attempted Rape, regardless of the gender of the host or victim. Type Twos are mostly unintelligible but they can speak in sentences. However these seem to be snatches of conversation or abstract words that, while understandable, make no sense. They have been known to become homicidally violent, though this isn't a common occurrence. When it does happen, it is suddenly and with no warning. They will use anything they can get their hands on, or simply their hands, teeth and feet, to kill or injure anything nearby. This is why when it is determined someone is possessed by a Type Two, they are immediately isolated. In their bodiless states, they behave similarly to Type Ones but show eerie signs of attempts at finding weak points in the barriers, even though none exist.

  • Type Threes are the rarest and most dangerous. They are Shades who have retained their human rationality and mind through whatever process occurs after death to create a Shade. They are the rarest of all and only one is known to exist, the Big Bad, Lola Crescent. Despite having human minds, they do go through personality changes, being hyper-focused on a single goal to the exclusion of everything else. This intense focus erodes their other traits until the goal defines them, and they slowly lose all sense of anything else other than completing it. If this goal is accomplished, their behavior will become more and more aggressive and erratic as they progress on a downward slope towards becoming one of the lesser Types. However this is only based on the behavior of Lola, the only Type Three seen in Snatched Away and it could be different for others.

• Abilities: The primary ability of Shades is to take over the bodies of humans. This is accomplished via touch; many times Shades will extend tendrils to seize their "prey", but other times they will simply "bump into" people and slip inside them. Shades are terrifyingly fast, drifting like mist and can pass through solid objects, sometimes even emerging from the ground beneath the feet of humans. Most terrifying is that there is no defense against possession; once caught by a Shade, it is the only outcome until the host dies or the spirit is driven out. Type Three Shades can exert the most control over their stolen bodies, and are able to spin powerful and realistic illusions around the consciousness of their host in order to suppress this expulsion.

• Weaknesses: Shades are extremely vulnerable to high doses of electromagnetic radiation; while it cannot "kill" them, it will cause them to dissipate, scattering their molecules and forcing them to reassemble. It is because of this that Tella has been reduced to a collection of vast, shielded metropolises with airship travel being the only viable option between the cities. A human with sufficient mental stamina can force a Shade from their body, though this is harder the higher one goes up the Shade "ladder". Children are especially successful at Shade-expulsion for some reason.

• Goals: Unknown. So far it seems to be "possess humans", though for what purpose is a mystery as is almost everything else about them.

• Motivation: Unknown, though several theories abound in-universe, one of the more popular being that they crave the sensation of being alive again, even if it is another body they are using.

• Role in the story: They are the results of a Ghost Apocalypse and the ubiquitous background threat that forced the warring noble families of the Ruskis Empire into a hasty and terrified partnership—not that this helped things.

• Backstory: Twenty years before the events of Snatched Away, the powerful Ruskis Empire that covered 50 percent of Tella's known territory was engaged in a terrible and devastating civil war, the rival factions tearing the civilization apart. Empress Anna Happsagen had died without leaving a clear successor. Yamileth Lenza, Anna's illegitimate daughter, born from a dalliance before the Empress was crowned was vying for her right to the throne due to Anna having no other children. The late Empress's brother, Vesgar Happagen fought for his own seat on the throne, though a male taking the seat of power had not happened in over five hundred years. The war between Yamileth and Vesgar grew bitter as thousands died on each side, whole cities being flattened by battle while airships rained death and destruction upon the land. Fannai users fought on each side and engaged in terrifying magical battles that could kill entire platoons. Vesgar was accused of being a scheming monster uncaring of the commoners, and Yamileth was accused of being a "contaminant" to the pure blood of the royal house due to her bastard status and because she had bargained her hand in marriage to the sons of several nobles on her side. No one is quite sure when the Shades appeared, but there was a sudden increase of death and mental illness across the world. At first the outbreaks were ignored in the fog of war, but soldiers of both sides began to notice entire cities descending into chaos, as well as their own units. Explanations from mass-hysteria to a new type of virus—bio-engineered by the respective enemies or natural was hotly debated. However it was then that vapory, luminous vaguely humanoid shapes began to materialize everywhere. Men and women fled in terror, but there was truly nowhere to go. The Ruskis empire began a hurried campaign to protect its people against the creatures, eventually named "Shades". It was discovered that areas with high concentrations of electromagnetic radiation were strangely free from Shade activity, though they crowded the edges. Cities that could be saved from the chaos were quickly turned into safe havens, provided with rings of generators that provided high levels of electromagnetic radiation outward to repel the creatures. From that time onward, the people of the Ruskis empire and indeed all of Tella lived in fear of the Shades. From various experiments and investigations over the years, it became a general consensus the Shades were the souls of the dead but it remains unclear as to why this was happening...

• Relevant Tropes

• Always Chaotic Evil: Shades seem to possess humans and do terrible things to and with their bodies simply because...well, because. They may or may not have more complex reasons for what they do, but no one has yet been able to ask one.

• An Astral Projection, Not a Ghost: Subverted. When Rico Charis arrives on Tella he hears a story about a faction of metaphysicists as well as New Age types who hotly disputed the accepted theory that the Shades were the souls of the dead come back to haunt the living and instead argued that they were merely people engaged in Astral Projection who had lost control. A group of these left their city and went out in attempt to communicate with the Shades and hopefully guide them back to their bodies. They didn't even get past the outer unshielded gate before they were swarmed in a frenzy.

• And I Must Scream: Being possessed by one of the lower-tier Shades is described as being fully aware that something has control of your body and yet unable to do anything about it or even use any of your senses, simply being "bathed" in garbled and confused sights, sounds and images from the occupying Shade's memories mingled with whatever they are currently doing with your body.

• Armor Is Useless: Taken Up To Eleven; not only is body armor worn by the military forces of the Ruskis Empire useless against the Shades, but so is anything that one would use to hide such as vehicles, buildings and underground bunkers, due to the fact that the enemies pass through matter.

• Army Of The Dead: A good many of them appear to have been soldiers from the civil war, and strangely enough a group of Shades at one point make near-successful run for Compass Rose city's temporarily powered down left gate, executing the operation with almost military precision, again providing evidence that they were former soldiers.

• Barred from the Afterlife: This is actually one of the more horrifying theories out there. Though no one has even worked out why, there are many who speculate that the reason the Shades are on Tella is because something has, for lack of a better word, "blocked" whatever means souls use to travel to the afterlife. Extrapolating from there, sooner or later everyone will eventually become a brainless, barely humanoid ghost desperate to possess a living body.

• Collision Damage: Well, collision possession; merely making contact with a Shade lets it slip into your body and it's all downhill from there.

• Combat Tentacles: Many of the Shades will extend long ghostly tendrils of whatever glowing mist-like substance that composes their ethereal bodies—though this is limited to Type Twos, as Ones will simply wander around relying on their Collision Damage effect. These have the same effect of causing possession; in fact at one point a man fleeing after an cloud-buggy crashes outside the barrier is possessed by a Shade at least four feet away when its tendrils brush his back, pulling the entity across the distance and into his body.

• Cute Ghost Girl: On his fourth mission in the Regiment of the Warden outside the electromagnetic barrier, Rico encounters a Shade that looks like a six or seven year old girl—who becomes immediately less cute when she passes through the wall behind him in an attempt to take his body.

• Demonic Possession: Their primary power and seemingly only objective.

• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Inverted. Rather than Shades interfering with technology, machines or objects that emit a high enough concentration of electromagnetic radiation interfere with them, causing their molecules to scatter. This results in Shades temporarily popping out of existence, though they will reappear later, often in the same place.

• Enemy Mine: The appearance of the Shades forced the two sides of Vesgar Happgen and Yamileth Lenza to stop fighting in order to ensure the entire world wasn't overwhelmed with restless spirits, with Vesgar becoming temporary regent and Yamileth joining the army in the field to oversee construction of anti-Shade measures. Subverted later as Vesgar used the chaos to ensure his position as Emperor and later had Yamileth turned into an Eldritch Abomination in an attempt to wipe out the Shades and his political enemy in one fell swoop.

• From Bad to Worse: In an attempt to banish the Shades from Tella, Vesgar ordered all fannai users loyal to the Empire to search for a spell effective against the souls of the dead. When they couldn't find any, they instead turned to the "next best thing", summoning a creature known as the Leviathan which ate souls. Vesgar made a deal with the nobles backing Yamileth to hand her over to him, and he used her as the foundation for the Leviathan’s summoned body, blaming her disappearance on the chaotic state of the world. The spell, when cast, caused the Leviathan to come into the world around her, making her body its core and only vulnerable spot. Unfortunately the Leviathan completely ignored the dead souls of the Shades and attacked the people of Tella, inflicting Cessation of Existence upon thousands before it was barely subdued by Marcus Steele and a band of his men—yes that’s right, not killed, subdued.

• Ghost Amnesia: Played with; from the interviews with the formerly possessed, it is clear that the memories of a Shade's former life exist in some form or other (as the host is basically bombarded with them in a constant, confused stream) but the Shades themselves show no understanding or signs of knowing who and what they were. It's doubtful they even know what the word memory means. However this is averted with Type Three Shades like Lola who knows all too well who she is, and what her goal is.

• Grand Theft Me: This could sort of apply in terms of Type Threes who retain enough humanity to know exactly what they are doing unlike the instinct-driven lower tier Shades, especially in Lola's case, as she chose Marcus Steele's young son Calvin for possession specifically because she needed someone sharing Steele's genetic code to deactivate the satellites keeping the transformed Yamileth from running amok across Tella.

• Haunted Headquarters: The failure of the left gate turns Base 8 into one of these. It's revealed later that the Lola-possessed Rico purposely shut down Base 8's generator in order to buy time to acquire the code to one of the Inner City's bunkers that control the four orbital containment satellites that keep the Leviathan imprisoned in its Deflector Shield cage. What's worse is that the building is becomes entirely uninhabitable as the "Mag Guns" carried by the military for anti-Shade combat, act like the barriers by only temporarily dissipating Shades. They will return in the same place they were before. All that's left is to simply abandon the building. Just as planned.

• I See Dead People: During the early months of the Shades' coming,some people would occasionally see white, faintly glowing shapes drifting around, sometimes hovering around people or worse slipping inside of them just before the strange behavior would start.
  • I See Them, Too: However these people were few and were discredited as either insane themselves or denounced as unscrupulous attention-seekers trying to profit off a strange phenomenon when they should be supporting the cause of their true Empress/Emperor. Later more and more people began to see the Shades, and realized that they were all around them.

• Master of Illusion: Type Three Shades are extremely adept at casting illusions on the people they are possessing, preventing their host from gathering the willpower to expel them from their body. Rico's entire experience of being Trapped in Another World when he "arrived" in Tella from his homeworld of Nis is revealed to be the product of Lola possessing him for ten years and forcing his mind into a Lotus-Eater Machine he called home, only waking him up to the real world of Tella when she felt he had grown physically and mentally enough to be useful to her plans.

• Nothing Is Scarier: We never learn why the Shades are on Tella; most of Snatched Away deals with the fallout from Emperor Vesgar's act of treachery and the results of Marcus's own actions to save the world. The Shades are simply a background threat and by the end of the story, not only has their existence not been explained but they show no signs of going away...
  • On the bright side Rico/Calvin is dedicated to following in his father Marcus's footsteps and sending them to wherever they belong so the era of shielded cities can end, allowing the living to retake the outside world and the dead to rest in peace.

• Our Ghosts Are Different: Shades have several standard ghostly traits: intangibility, ability to possess the living, and low-level levitation. However unlike many ghosts their behavior is akin to zombies. Most of them appear to be humanoid masses of luminous of white mist when moving, however when standing still they take on the detailed shape of their living self, appearing as a luminous Monochrome Apparition, complete with pale replicas of clothes they were wearing at the time of death.

• Outside-Context Problem: One day the souls of the dead showed up and started possessing people, quickly turning a Game Of Thrones-like Succession Crisis into a frantic fight for survival against wandering souls, dismantling the war and Tellan society. No one knows why they are here, how they arrived, or has any idea of how to return things to the way they were before, and the one attempt to do so almost resulted in the extinction of the human race.

• Possession Burnout: Played with; high-speed supernatural decay or deterioration is averted, but Type One and Two Shades are extremely rough on the bodies they take over, often causing severe injuries. However because they Feel No Pain, they simply keep moving, worsening the damage until the host dies.

• Whispering Ghosts: While Shades only speak while possessing humans, those facing large gatherings of them, especially when surrounded have reported hearing faint, barely coherent whispering that seem to be just beneath the level of human hearing.

edited 10th Feb '14 5:38:51 PM by Swordofknowledge

Sorry, this was an accidental double-post . The real entry is up there

edited 6th Feb '14 2:43:36 PM by Swordofknowledge

And as we discussed, Lightning Strikes Twice a passage showing the character of Marcus Recht and his interactions with heroes and villains.

Er...sorry for bumping, but what did anyone think about my entry above?

They're scary. Really scary. They also seem to be in a good position to cause the major characters in the story a serious amount of trouble, and in general to make things worse all around. ('Cause stories with one antagonist are no fun.) All in all, good job, I am jealous of your antagonists and stories once again.

@Kesar Thanks a lot. I wanted to create a variation in the typical Zombie Apocalypse and its effects on the people of a certain setting. I'm glad you found the Shades to be terrifying; everything about them was supposed to be pure Nightmare Fuel, from their almost-invulnerability to their implications for the afterlife and the Nothing Is Scarier of their origins. I remember you wanted me to post Lola, Rico's Parental Substitute—or rather the Shade using him—at one point, so I might put her on here next.

• I enjoy your story ideas too, especially your Succession Crisis aspects; that takes a certain analytical mind to be able to write all of those gambits and political double-dealings without losing sight of the plot itself. This why I like this forum so much; you get to see the characters and plots of so many other creative people and it's amazing.

edited 18th Feb '14 5:38:06 PM by Swordofknowledge

Okay, this is the main villain of my High Fantasy novel, still in progress.

Name: Delphina

Age: Until I've decided on a strict timeline, somewhere between 20,000 and 5,000 or so. Completely ageless.

Abilities: Highly intelligent, has a flying near-indestructible flying fortress. She can use her tremendous magical powers to do nearly anything, as in my story the only rules of magic are the laws of thermodynamics. She has set up a plan millennia in the making, and nothing has slowed it down, yet. She can communicate and act through artifacts of her kingdom, and is only limited by the power stored within. She has a lot of power stored, after the millenia.

Weaknesses: The fact that she's physically very, very far away until her fortress finally arrives. Tendency to panic when too many things disrupt her plan. The hero wields the only weapon that can kill her, and it essentially neutralizes her powers. She also has the problem of managing her minions, as, again, she is very, very far away from them.

Goals: She wants stability and order in the world, essentially to take it over. She wants to be worshiped, and her laws to be obeyed, no matter what. She's actually already worshiped in some nations (Though not ones that met her) and they service her, so she's partway there.

Motivation: This is more complicated than just ego- she is a goddess, in a practical sense, and honestly believes she needs to for the world's sake. She feels that disorder leads to too much hate and despair, and so she wants to completely control the world. She also feels that she deserves to be worshipped, as a goddess.

Role in the story: She is the master power behind the villains in the early part of the story, responsible for the destruction of a race of Benevolent Precursors, and indirectly of the near-utter decimation of the hero's people. Once she arrives physically, she is The Heavy par excellence.

Backstory: Created by a race of sorcerer folk tired of backstabbing politicians, who wanted someone powerful and intelligent in charge. She actually did a pretty good job until she got into a war with the aforementioned Precursors and ended up wiping out her own people, save for her [[dragon The Dragon]], a sorcerer.

Relevant Tropes:

• Big Bad

• Affably Evil: Particularly to our hero, who she sees as an amusing opponent, being that he is the first not to more-or-less play right into her hands. Faux Affably Evil to those she considers true enemies, those too weak to be considered near-equals.

• The Chessmaster: She gets her minions to do what she wants, even when they think their fighting against her. She knows that the threat of power just isn't enough for some people.

• The Trickster: She's actually pretty good at this- her power over light and ability to appear wherever artifacts of her land are allows her to deceive many people into doing her bidding.

• Evil Overlord: What she was, and wants to be again.

• Lightis Not Good: Has a light motif and a bright shining castle that flies in the sky, and general power over the sun. She is also responsible for two genocides, and wants to eradicate freewill.

• Woman In White: Kind of like classic wizard robes, only slightly more ornate.

• God-Emperor: The Goddess-Queen of the Kingdom of Tethas.

• Animal Motif: Dolphins, to contrast the hero's ravens. Both are clever and mischievous, but where ravens are brooding loners who nevertheless would not harm without good reason, dolphins's are sociable extroverts who hide a sadistic side.

• Manipulative Bastard: Pretty good at psychologically manipulating people. She's a people person, in her own, very twisted way.

• Light 'em Up: Loves light magic, as it has many applications.

• Combo Platter Powers: Her limitless magical potential essentially allows her to do anything, so long as she has a fuel source and can mentally work through the steps involved in a physical sense.

• A God Am I: Eh, kind of.

Physical God

Definitely, with immortality and super strength to go with her magic.

• The Ageless: Still looks like a rather attractive twenty something.

• Healing Factor: Magic heals by rebuilding the damaged parts, so her immortality works a bit like this.

• Evil Sorceror

• Sorcerous Overlord

• Evilis Sexy: Deliberately averted on my part. I wanted a female villain who was memorable for her terrifying competence and personality, not for a skimpy outfit and a model's figure. She is rather attractive, but not really sexy, at least in the context of the story.

• Badass: An excellent fighter beyond her magic.

• Brought Down to Badass: When our hero uses Anti-Magic on her. She kicks the crap out of him.

• Orcus on His Throne: A justified example, as she can be easily tracked outside her fortress, and is therefore at risk of being overwhelmed by magic users. Therefore, she decided to make her fortress a mobile one. Totally subverted once she arrives, as she can use her powers at range.

• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Honestly wants to bring order.

I'd have to say that I fear that Delphina would be a "weak"(referring to characterization, not power level) character, but this is not necessarily a bad thing; look at for example, the Lord of the Rings, with it's "weak" villain Sauron(and I really like the Lord of the Rings. Also, I can see your work as kind of an inverse Lord of the Rings: the villain is coming to the heroes, the artifact must be used, not destroyed, etc.)Just remember that you need some credible lower level threats. I'd advise you to make your Dragon a more active threat, frequently harrying the heroes, etc. Basically, I feel that you need to either have a lot of smaller conflicts in the foreground(suggestion: if you don't want to deploy your villains early, We ARE Struggling Together works too), or make the whole story conflict about the suspense of the upcoming villain. Personally, I feel that the first option is better, because the second option just makes her part of the backdrop until she arrives.

In summery: She's initially feels like a part of the backdrop, and when she arrives, I feel that she'll be an excellent character and villian when she gets there, but you need some other conflict, either in characters(which can include her minions) or events, to be present before she gets there.

Hope that helps, Rotide. It sounds rather interesting if its handled right. Here's mine:

Note: There are a lot of spoilers below. It would be great if you could give me impressions both with and without the spoiler-tagged information. Also, I was debating wither to post this in this thread or the Hero Critique Thread, as he kind of fits in both.

Name: No one knows, but his allies know him as Kordin. It's a lie, as he made that name up. His true name is unknown even to himself, due to living without it for several years, but he is currently living under the aliases of Servaas Dirksen. He is also known as Aionis, see Role in Story below

Age: Unknown, but by his own statement to a Living Lie Detector: "I have lived long enough to see what living without that accursed Gaunt Veil is like." (For context: the Gaunt Veil is an ancient Eldritch Abomination-enforced Masquerade.) This is technically true, however, he achieved this through being pulled into an alternate dimension, unaffected by the veil. He's actually in his mid-thirties.

Personality: Runs the gamut between emotionlessness and exuberance, joviality and stoicism, arrogance and politeness, depending on whom he is talking to. He's actually quite reserved when not wearing a mask, though he fluctuates often between hopeful confidence and self-doubt. He also can't decide whither to be an idealist or a cynic, resulting in his weird and conflicting goals. The one thing he can't abide is unfairness or injustice: when he can't "address" this directly, he will often use his masked persona to exact retribution, claiming it as part of his "greater plan".

Abilities: -He is quite skilled at making Blood Homunculi and mist-based Hermetic illusions, which greatly reduce the need for him to be physically present in many situations.

-He has a great collection of Foci, items that a user can use to channel raw energy to produce magical effects that the user could not necessarily produce on their own.

-He is skilled at producing Tribute Marks(essentially self-contained one-off spells, similar to the effects of a Focus), and distributing them to his allies and followers. -He also has a knack for helping others awaken and develop Hogi Sigils. (Hogi Sigils are functionally identical to Foci, but are innate to the user rather than from an external source.) This is how, as Aionis, he introduces the heroes into the plot. See Role in Story below.

-He is a skilled manipulator and chessmaster. Or so he'd like those around him to think. In truth, this is due spending a decade preparing, his extensive scouting and vetting of his targets, and his control and access of information, as he's on both major sides of the conflict.

-He's adept at mixing mundane technology and magic, certainly more so then the oldest, most powerful mages, who disdain modern technology for the most part.

Weaknesses: - Physically, he's a normal human. He hasn't even obtained any of the various means of longevity employed by older mages.

- He may be in the upper tiers (say top 25%) of human mages, but he's not the strongest, much less able to crush everyone magically.

- He believes that Aionis is his personal Nemesis, crafted to beat him, and so he will retreat from the field if he thinks the latter is near. See role in story below.

- He must guard the semi-sentient magic tome Hatore Andund, which is currently in his possession. It is indestructible, but if he losses it he will no longer be able to proceed in his plan until he recovers it.

Goals: -His goal is to either gain enough power impress Hatore Andund, or ally with someone who can do so, preferably without obtaining the notice or ire of any of the major organizations of mages, as well as collect enough Patrel Keys(supposedly a locking system placed on Hatore Andund), in order to open the tome and unleash its power to destroy the Gaunt Veil. Wither this will be followed by an integration of the magic and mundane communities or world domination by him and those with him depends on his audience at the time.

Very far from the truth. For starters, he already has control of Hatore Andund and can unleash its power at anytime, even if it is not in his possession. He is simultaneously working on several competing and sometimes mutually exclusive endgames, namely:

1) Raise a hero or group of heroes to be powerful enough to overthrow and kill him, unleash Hatore Andund to destroy the Gaunt Veil, and then be killed before Vosokith(see Backstory Spoilers below) takes control of him, effectively destroying (or at least significantly weakening) the latter forever

2) Raise a villain to be just powerful enough to unleash Hatore Andund, get them to open it, and destroy the Gaunt Veil, and then kill them.

3) Collect enough Patrel Keys to release the Gaunt Veil(this has the advantage of plans 1 and 2, without killing anyone, dying, and allowing the Gaunt Veil to be reformed if need be), and lead humanity in destroying the Cosmic Horrors beyond.

4) Collect enough Patrel Keys to release the Gaunt Veil. After revealing magic to the world, perform a False Flag operation, posing as an agent of the Cosmic Horrors. The world then bans together(with some further help) to defeat him, and the threat that "sent him", or at least keep them at bay.

Motivation: He has claimed both egalitarianism and world domination as his goals. What his true motivation is known only to him. see Backstory Spoilers for his real motivation.

Role in Story: Big Bad, The Corrupter, Evil Mentor Also, in his guise as Aionis, he is the Big Good, Choser Of The One, Super Empowering Event, and The Mentor, to the heroes.

Backstory: A figurative ghost; nothing is known about him. Over a decade ago, he was transported to another world referred to locals as Aionis(presumably in a different dimension), which due to the lack of the Gaunt Veil, is filled with magic. Unfortunately, it is also periodically culled by the Eldritch Abobinations Cosmic Horrors. There he learned that his reality, the Veiled world, is sheltered by the Gaunt Veil, created by the Cosmic Horror Vosokith with help from human sorcerers in order to create a private hunting ground for Vosokith. The sorcerers then bound Vosokith, and cast him through dimensional boundries into Aionis. As result, the Veiled World is hidden from Cosmic Horrors, any other worlds have a higher rate of culling by Cosmic Horrors, and Aionis in particular is hard hit as it is culled by Cosmic Horrors as normal, but also has to deal with the leaching and corrupting influence of Vosokith. He bound Vosokith into a magical tome, Hatore Andund, and then had the chance to destroy Vosokith, but upon learning that some lesser Cosmic Horrors had found the Gaunt Veil, and were attempting to bore their way through it, he gave it up to return home, taking Hatore Andund with him. He now endevores to destroy Hatore, and thus Vosokith, as well as release the Veil, as he believes that humanity (of his home, aka Earth) can combat the Cosmic Horrors (and since their protected growth has been, in his view, bought by the suffering of others, he feels that it is humanity's responsibility to do so).

Relevant Tropes: -Chessmaster: Even though he is good at literal chess, he disdains it, saying that Backgammon is superior. He's not really a chessmaster, as his long-term plans generally hit problems and come apart.

==Xanatos Gambit How he makes people think he's a chessmaster. Also, why he likes backgammon over chess

edited 21st Sep '14 12:25:13 AM by Sharur

"Kordin" sounds like a very interesting and multifaceted character. Interestingly enough, when I read through his bio with the spoiler tags engaged, he seemed like a well-written but run of the mill bad guy; evil (or at least morally ambiguous) wizard with the power of an ancient magical book and some sort of scheme for world domination. Without the spoiler tags, things got much more interesting. In fact, with "Kordin's" whole backstory and plan revealed, I can understand what you meant about being undecided about placing him in the hero thread. I like that; it's almost like a flip-book, with one sweep of the mouse, he becomes an entirely different person. Sneaky, very sneaky.

In his "true" state, Kordin seems less like a villain and more like a very anti-heroic version of The Obi-Wan and I actually can't find a fault with what he's doing. The worlds he's lived in and knows about seem to be stuck in a terrible situation (I'm assmuming this is a sort of High Fantasy rendition of a Comsic Horror Story). It makes me hope that he is able to see his goals through to the end.

• This has nothing at all to do with your post, but I love your Avatar.

edited 23rd Feb '14 6:25:48 PM by Swordofknowledge

• Name: Lord Eclipse

• Age: Varies

• Personality: Lord Eclipse seems to vary in personality depending on the day or even on the hour. However, a common thought pattern in him is that a "New Aristocracy" needs to be established, and that the current world order is rotten and without any merit, which is a symptom of magic and power being wielded by people who do not deserve it, and that the weak should be purged in order to achieve "pure society". To this goal, he has established himself within numerous villainous groups, but rarely ever sharing his true goal, as few of them would welcome it. A Bad Boss to an extreme, he seems to enjoy "encouraging" his minions by slaughtering people who failed in particularly violent ways, as an object lesson in what not to do. Even so, he's taken several measures against betrayal, including hidden chips inside people's bodies that bodyjack them if they express a treacherous thought. This alone speaks of his paranoia and forethought - every aspect of his Social Darwinist Dystopia is intended, including the ones most people would think would be negative aspects.

• Abilities: Even his abilities seem to differ between days, though most of the time he has remained consistent - he is capable of opening portals that contain attacks and can then shoot them out whenever he pleases. He is capable of bending light to create deadly illusions that can prove very convincing copies. He has also shown the ability to condense Mana and shoot it out from his hands in powerful "arrows" of force, or keeping them inside to send out explosive shockwaves from his hands or amplify his physical force. As he is a Parallaxus Herald, he also shows abnormal abilities, including, due to the Mark he has, "Kronos", he can induce decay in anything he touches, shoot Chronal Blasts that eviscerate what they hit on the molecular level while aging surrounding areas to prevent regeneration, he has also shown proficiency with a deadly "Mana Sword" that he can form out of one of his hands. He can also input pieces of his soul into people due to this Mark of Heraldry, and use their abilities as his.

• Weaknesses: In order to use the abilities, his Soul Implant victims have to remain alive. As soon as they die, while he gains a boost in Internal Mana, that barely makes up for a loss in versatility. His fatal flaw is his own arrogance and tendency to assume that things are going well.

• Goals: Establish a pure society, regardless who gets hurt during this new society, or the transition.

• Motivation: [Redacted]

• Role in the story: Big Bad of New Dawn V: The Third Requiem, varying roles until then.

• Backstory: [Redacted]

• Relevant Tropes:
• Abusive Parents: To Hector Gibbs' Ghoul Unit, who were young boys adopted and forced into fighting unending war in simulations until they were broken enough over the years to only experience joy in killing. If that alone does not count Eclipse for it, his cold-hearted treatment of them, explicitly asking his subordinates not to refer to them like humans, and regarding them similarly to weapons of war will.
  • Despicable mention goes to how he treats Magician Raven; desperate for dear father's approval...and Eclipse treats him like shit in order to motivate him to fight better.
  • As covered under Cloning Blues, Eclipse evidently manages to be an abusive father even when he's no longer functionally alive.
• All Your Powers Combined: Future Eclipse, natch. He makes it evident what happens when someone has so many powers, and actually knows how to use them all at once.
• Apologetic Attacker: Future Lord Eclipse has nothing against his foes; he just needs to finish what his fathers started.
  • Future Eclipse: I am sorry, but this will most likely be agonizing.
• Artifact of Doom: The Mark of Heraldry is an extremely potent one - just a touch can bring to the surface a malevolent side to someone's personality.
• Ax-Crazy: The Gustavo Draga Incarnation especially. He spends his appearance in Book I giggling like a lunatic as he shoots lightning blasts at Matthew, trying to bite him, and gnashing his teeth on his own fingers, goring them until they healed up.
• Bad Boss: Lord Eclipse could not care less for his minions if he tried. Kalvin, especially, due to his whole thing being he doubts that non-aristocrats are sentient.
  • Future Eclipse mostly averts it, but he very, very harshly punishes overconfidence / smugness and any mutinous thoughts - and he can tell if you're thinking them.
• Back from the Dead: By impaling someone with a Mark of Heraldry, when that person is dead, Eclipse can revive the individual as what amounts to a Black Lantern sworn in service to Parallaxus.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: He basically tormented the Ghouls so much, they mentally broke and became insane monsters themselves.
• Big Bad: Of Book V, which sees him trying to purge the magical world of "lesser mages" like the Kade Family, and "useless" muggles.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Averted; there were sensors on the old "container filling with water", and if the container was breached or the person inside escaped, the sensors would immediately send notice to Eclipse, as well as triggering an explosion.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Tying into his status as a Hidden Agenda Villain most of the time, Eclipse has a habit of betraying his previous employer if they get too close to the truth, or even just for the fun of it.
• Cloning Blues: The Future Eclipse is made from the combined genetic code of everyone to hold the title Lord Eclipse. He feels it is his duty to wage war against his "parents'" enemies, even if that results in a Forever War wherein he suffers for a very long time. "I am nothing but a collection of genetic material. My duty is simple - I must kill those my parents tell me to kill."
• Collective Identity: The biggest spoiler about Lord Eclipse is the fact that he is an entire conspiracy that shares the Parallaxus Herald designation, a supposedly impossible occasion. Due to this, he can appear twice in one location.
• The Corrupter: Indulges in this on occasion, when he's impressed with someone enough.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The frequent end result.
• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Knows the playbooks, and plays according to them, due to being numerous people and having many, many accounts and perspectives.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Played with - his disguises all look incredibly sinister, but as people when not wearing the Eclipse identity, they all look normal. Except Kalvin, who is a bandage mummy.
• Disability Superpower: First is the Kalvin incarnation, who can drink Mana and life essence through skin contact due to a nasty disability of the skin, and later is the Future Eclipse. Blind, deaf, cannot feel anything, cannot taste anything...and substitutes Mana Sensor abilities for all of the above, resulting in senses augmented to such a degree that he is impossible to surprise, and can see 360 degrees around him.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: A lot of people in on the Eclipse Conspiracy were seemingly normal folks, including a seemingly randomly placed Corrupt Hick sheriff.
• Dissonant Serenity: The Future Lord Eclipse, so, so much.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Officially, Eclipse is nothing but The Dragon to Parallaxus. However, unofficially, Eclipse is more like the Big Bad himself, and is the one most often confronted, due to Parallaxus not really being mentally sound enough to pose an advanced threat.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: To Aracade Judas. Judas wanted to create an endless illusion world where everyone drifted through a sea of apathy. Eclipse wanted a social darwinist dystopia. I don't know why Aracade thought he could trust someone who refused to ever show his face.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Eclipse really, really hated it when someone De-power'd and currently saving lives as a paramedic refused his Deal with the Devil, precisely because he had no idea why someone would ever be content with such a "boring" and "trite" lifestyle. As far as he is concerned, there is utterly no reason to work exclusively to save lives if there's no battle involved. So he can understand people who fight for their heroic beliefs, just not people who do not.
• Fallen Hero: The Jason Druford incarnation; the sole good person, aside Knight Percival, out of the Knights of Prayer, a Fundamentalist Knight Templar group, Jason was very conflicted about what his group was doing, and helped the heroes against the leadership of the group...and then his Spell Core got destroyed and he was out of the war effort, and treated shabbily at best by his loved ones. He was then approached by Regal Kalvin, who corrupted him slowly into being a new Incarnation of Lord Eclipse.
• Finger-Lickin' Evil: Eclipse appears as he did in New Dawn I during a prison break in Tri-Age Cataclysm the crossover RP, and as he fetches a villainous-ish individual for Aracade Judas' Legion of Doom, he licks blood off of his hand.
• Five Bad Band:
  • Bigger Bad: Parallaxus Subverted, in that Parallaxus is not interested in this position, nor does he have the mental capacities for it.
  • Big Bad: Lord Eclipse
  • The Dragon: Arlen Westlau, Eclipse' bodyguard and psychotic fire slinging mercenary.
  • The others change, but these are the lasting figures within the villainous Eclipse group.
• Foil: In many ways, Lord Eclipse is the Anti-Matthew. Matthew does everything he can for others, while Lord Eclipse disdains helping other people. Matthew fights for his identity and wants to be independent of his father's designs, while Eclipse forces others into his own designs, and is a Collective Identity.
• Genius Bruiser: The Jason Druford and Kalvin Incarnations.
• God of Evil: To the Malus Cult, one of his most common sources of minions, who regard him as some sort of deity that sponsors and endorses all crime.
• Hero Killer: The Regal Kalvin Incarnation, who murdered eight characters in the span of three pages.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: His true agenda remains hidden until Book V, among other things about him.
• History Repeats: Eclipse hints that something similar to Book IV's events has happened before, with the same result, after he was defeated, and rather than pitch a fit, he calmly bows out of the fighting.
• I Know What You Fear: In Book II, he comes after Matthew and his friends with the ability to turn whatever they fear into a real thing for them to fight. However, Scott Adelfeld, this incarnation of Eclipse, had few other ways of fighting, and this overspecialization blew up in his face.
• It's Personal: For Matthew, it became personal with Eclipse when he blew up a cruise ship and tricked Matthew into fighting him instead of helping with the rescue.
• Legion of Doom: He leads one played dead serious - though the usual pitfalls apply, as intended. Eclipse intended that everyone would try to betray one another simply to ensure that nobody rusted over with relief at having allies.
• Limp and Livid: While grinning in Book I, he fights while basically running around with his arms flailing around behind him and thrashing in an extremely damaging, but inaccurate fashion.
• Living Lie Detector: Future Eclipse's senses are so strong, he can detect when someone lies by the beats of their heart and the unique shifts in bodily chemistry.
• Malevolent Masked Man: His first guise, his appearance in book I, is simply as a guy with a huge coat, a straight jacket, wrapped in scarves like bandages, and with a mask on his head that reveals only his mouth, and a scary amount of fangs.
  • Present in all his guises, really.
• Manipulative Bastard: He manipulates his minions in many ways, fear is just one of them. He forces people to compete for positions and fight for his approval to make them stay on edge. The only alternative is death. This is a creature that preys on grief in all its stages, turning individual loss into his own personal gain.
• Might Makes Right: being powerful, to Eclipse, means you can do whatever you feel like doing, whenever you want to do it.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: As with most Parallaxus Heralds, it is difficult to deal lasting damage to Lord Eclipse.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Gustavo Draga at first seems like an Unskilled, but Strong berserker who was inducted for his brute force...and then we find out he can talk, and he's a lot more intelligent than we thought (not to mention a hell of a lot creepier)
• One-Man Army: Eclipse is this regularly, but especially during Tri-Age Cataclysm's future arc, wherein the Hero Guild faced the last Lord Eclipse, who has all the powers and memories of the previous holders of the title.
• One-Winged Angel: Subverted; Eclipse forces a powerful transformation on The Rival, which results in half of Eclipse's mountain base / The Elite Station being destroyed by the guy...exposing him to Magicite that turns it right into a Clipped-Wing Angel. Not like Eclipse cared.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: A member of the Heralds of Parallaxus, who commonly assemble in a council and it also counts as his true nature.
• Outside-Context Villain: Almost as much as his "master" can be; previously, the only Parallaxus Heralds were Jake Wistinzki and Wilford.
• Person of Mass Destruction
• Physical God: A scion of a dragon of unimaginable power, Eclipse counts as a God-like entity himself.
• Pretty Boy: The true appearance of Future Lord Eclipse is a young man (about 20) of metrosexual appearance. Most of the heroes were expecting The Grotesque, given they knew by the time of the reveal of his appearance that he was a clone.
• Psycho Electro: Gustavo is completely and utterly deranged, and mention is made that he had to subsist in Siberia for many years on human remains.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: A lot of New Dawn villains engage in this, but few take such sadistic relish in it as Lord Eclipse does. Especially in the Kalvin and Gustavo guises. The former due to thinking of non-aristocrats as nonsentient and the latter due to the fact he's so damn crazy. He thought literally nothing of storming a prison to fetch a particular inmate during Tri-Age Cataclysm. As far as Eclipse is concerned, Muggles, even police, are nothing but ants.
• Slasher Smile: introduced with one in New Dawn I.
• Tell Me How You Fight: Future Eclipse can "read a man's heart like a book", meaning he can decipher fighting styles very easily.
• The Social Darwinist: As far as he is concerned, a proper world is one where, if you're not happy, you can go kill people until you're happy, and the law and morality are nonexistent / flexible to your desires. He does not particularly care how chaotic this would make things - that is only an upside. As far as he is concerned, bad things happen, but only to make you strong enough to rage against the wrongdoer and kill him.
• This Cannot Be!: He has this reaction in Tri-Age's prologue when the protagonist - a clone of Vonh - manages to keep going even when his built in limits were reached.
  • "I did not build you to be capable of this...! How on Earth are you still standing? You're no hero...who is interfering with my designs?"
• Tragic Monster: Lord Eclipse from the future was created for nothing but war, knew nothing but what his "fathers" told him, and by the time he emerged from Black Protocol, he was resigned to dying.
• Villain Decay: Subverted; Future Eclipse has one of the most rudimentary, badly designed masks of the Lord Eclipse Conspiracy, and a hobbled combination of the outfits of prior Eclipses. He is then quickly shown to be on a different level from other foes faced previously.
• Villainous Friendship: Eclipse seems to have a strong rapport with fellow Devil Deal Giver Vespasius. They certainly get along well enough to trade secrets and plan together about their dystopian ideals.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Inverted - to Lord Eclipse, normal humans are the equivalent of vermin.
• Xanatos Gambit: In the Prologue Chapter of Tri-Age, Eclipse basically wins no matter what the protagonists did - either they achieve all they could and stopped Vrisgoth The Ascendant, but in the process "earned the world's hatred" for displacing a well regarded legendary hero named Vonh and doing all he did and more, or they failed and the Pre-Tri Age World is destroyed.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Due to being who he is, Eclipse can keep up with incredibly many players on the board, and even notably outplayed Kyrio.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: And he does it so merrily, and with such relish, you get the impression he enjoys doing this to his minions.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Using the Gem of Eclipse, he can revive the dead to serve him as his advance guard. They're significantly more powerful than his normal mooks.

edited 31st Jul '15 3:55:02 AM by NickTheSwing

Thank you Swordofknowledge. My avatar's from a series called Big O. I highly recomend it, as it is completely awesome.

Also, to answer your assumption, Aionis(the land) is the High Fantasy setting. The world that "Kordin" knows and is from is Urban Fantasy, with current day technology (and yes, some Cosmic Horror, or at least Cosmic Horror tropes. The essence of Cosmic Horror seems to be that the characters are insignificant in the scene of things, which doesn't really apply here. Screwed by your foes being out of your league, or rather it being impossible to be in the same league? Yes. Being insignificant, no.).

Also, which of the four goals are you rooting for? I haven't planned that far ahead.

edited 24th Feb '14 7:54:55 PM by Sharur