Villain Critique Thread (Because Its About Damn Time!)

Now then, more villains from my story The Golden Sword. This is another "faction post" of sorts; one of the villains is the leader of this group, so I thought posting them as a whole would add some context.

• Name: The Red Knights Brigade

• Age: The unit itself has been operating for three years. Individually their ages are all over the place. The oldest member is 53 years old and the youngest is 20.

• Appearance: The Red Knights are composed of 57 male and female dwarven warriors, hand-picked by Hrothgar Farthul. Like all dwarves they possess stocky, muscular builds and are around 4'10 in height. The Red Knights take their name from their uniforms; they wear matching suits of heavy plate armor of the finest steel, and durable iron-shod boots. The armor itself is a deep crimson color that shines brightly in any light like blood. Despite this protective armor, they do not wear helmets, leaving their faces exposed. Heavy leather bandoliers filled with Essence darts encircle their waists, as do holsters for their guns. Beneath the armor, each dwarf has an oval shaped glass container implanted into the flesh of their chests, surrounded by a mass of scar tissue. This glass container is filled with Dragon’s Blood and flexible tubes feed the substance directly into their hearts, where it is pumped into their circulatory system. Due to the constant infusions of Dragon's Blood they all have severe Draconic Blood-Poisoning—their bodies are covered with random gray scaly patches, their eyes are yellow and many have long claw-like nails beneath their metal gauntlets. All of them have a single rune tattooed on their foreheads in jet black ink.

• Personality: The men and women of the Red Knights Brigade all lost loved ones and property when the Crusader Order ravaged the dwarven kingdom of Tenug-Beneath-The-Sun and maligned their race as Deep God supporters. Because of this, they bitterly resent the Order and Marlene Landry for destroying all they held dear, and their willingness or ability to hide this hatred varies between individuals. Despite this animosity, they will carry out the orders of the Guardian-Knight or the Minister's Assembly without hesitation, no matter what their personal feelings on the matter at hand. They are coldly professional and utterly without mercy in battle, tracking their target with unwavering tenacity and using any weakness to strike. They have a passionate dedication to Hrothgar and his dream of restoration and revenge for the dwarven race, and they view him as the savior of their kind. To that end, they will follow his orders without question or hesitation and are loath to let him fall into danger, even if it means risking their own lives. Due to their Dragon's Blood contamination, they view themselves as mostly dead anyway, and see their situation as a sacrifice so that the rest of the dwarves can live without persecution and fear.

• Abilities: Their armor is more durable than average, having been forged by the best blacksmiths in the Order, and each suit personally made for its wearer. This allows them to shrug off blows from swords and fists while being light enough that they can move quickly and efficiently while wearing it. The constant infusions of Dragon’s Blood into their hearts from the devices in their chests have boosted their physical prowess until it far exceeds that of an ordinary mortal. Their incredible strength allows them to tear doors from their hinges and lift objects and people twice their height without effort. They can jump sixteen feet in the air if necessary and are fast enough to overtake sprinting horses. The Red Knights can perform feats of agility such as flips, and rolls around vehicles and leaps from rooftop to rooftop. All of them are experienced and hardened soldiers, having served years in the White and Black Knight branches of the Order before being recruited to Hrothgar’s personal squad. As such they have nearly flawless team cohesion and excel at working together to hunt and trap their prey. They have virtually unrestricted access to mission reports from other branches and top secrets usually known only by the ruling elite.
  • Their true power lies in their weapons, however. The Red Knights are all equipped with two long-barreled pistols that hang in holsters on their sides. The guns are spring-loaded rather than dependent on gunpowder and possess two triggers, one for winding the spring and another for firing. The guns fire specialized hypodermic darts filled with liquefied Essence harvested from condemned prisoners. If the dart stabs an enemy, the liquid Essence is injected into the victim’s bloodstream, causing a catastrophic reaction as the victim’s own Essence fights the foreign life-force. This causes terrible pain and the eventual destruction of the target’s entire body within seconds. The heavy metal gauntlets that cover their hands and arms are equipped with retractable serrated blades that can be released at a moment’s notice for close-range fighting.

• Weaknesses: They are completely dependent on the Dragon's Blood being pumped into their veins. Should their supply cut off, they would suffer organ failure and death within hours. Thus they must constantly have their containers refilled, tying them to the Crusader Order and the Assembly by a chemical leash. Destroying the containers in their chests is a death sentence, since they will succumb long before another one can be installed. Though they hate Marlene, the rune on their foreheads inflicts a Geas that prevents them from causing any harm to the Guardian-Knight. Their dart-guns can only fire one shot each before they must reload, during which time they are vulnerable to a counterattack. The Essence darts they wield are utterly useless against Pariahs, restricting them to killing mortals alone. The combination of their state-of-the-art weaponry and armor as well as their physical abilities has lent them a sense of invulnerability and arrogance that makes them underestimate the opposition.

• Goals: They serve Marlene and the Assembly as a way for the dwarven race to "redeem itself" after supposedly falling into Deep God worship. Their service will supposedly grant the dwarves the right to once again have a homeland beneath the domes rather than be homeless drifters through the mortal lands. Their actual goal is to ensure a Hero is once again brought into the world, so that they may persuade him to judge the dwarves innocent of all wrongdoing and have him punish Marlene for her paranoia-induced atrocities against both the dwarven race and all the people of the domes.

• Motivation: Their homes, loved ones and even their national identity was stripped from them when the Guardian-Knight declared the dwarves of Tenug-Beneath-The-Sun Deep God worshipers on a national scale. Their kingdom was destroyed and their people were scattered as homeless drifters and maligned. Hrothgar later worked out a deal under which they could earn back the lost homeland and status for their people if they rooted out and killed hidden Deep God supporters and dissenters against the Order and Assembly's reign and policies. They have all seen how fair and just a Hero’s judgments are, as well as how they are automatically considered binding law. They wish to benefit from this when Hope becomes a Hero.

• Role in the Story: The Red Knights function as a Praetorian Guard for Marlene and the Minister's Assembly, and have been quietly eliminating people Marlene and the Assembly view as threats for over three years since the Second Fall of the dwarven kingdom. With Kajack and Vania and their Children of the Outer World minions either destroyed or driven away, the Red Knights emerge as the new antagonists who abduct Hope and Marian to transport them to the Interior Dome and Six Towers estate. They later become Team 24's personal nemesis when ordered to hunt and kill them all, and they ultimately provide the final obstacle to rescuing Marian from Marlene and the conflicted Hope.

• Backstory:

For 232 years since the Pariahs invaded Mareaubia and drove the terrified mortal races to shelter under the domes, the dwarves had always enjoyed a rather protected and special status. It was the dwarves who built the domes in the first place at Samuel Landry’s behest, choosing a vast area of habitable land, planning out the construction and finally building the massive structures. Even after the races migrated from their homelands, the dwarves continued their vital role by continued maintenance of the domes and constant repairs from the Incursions. Tenug-Beneath-The-Sun, the homeland that replaced Tenug-Beneath-The-Earth, was given preferential treatment by the ruling Landry family and the Crusader Order it controlled. All of that changed fifteen years before the start of The Golden Sword.

Drukon Farthul, the Magister of Tenug-Beneath-The-Sun, attempted an expedition to uncover the mysteries of the Pariahs and why they had first appeared in the old dwarven kingdom before spreading out into the world. He and his lone apprentice Anna Listar attempted the mission but it was commandeered by Marlene Landry, who used her authority as Guardian-Knight to compel Drukon and Anna to lead her to the ancient kingdom with an army at her back to kill the Deep God herself. The expedition resulted in the Deep God absorbing Anna and creating a physical replica of her as an infant. When it was demanded that Drukon hand it over, he fled and disappeared into the Underground beneath the domes, a place nearly impossible to search even for the far-reaching and powerful Order. The failed attempts filled Marlene with terror as great as her wrath. Her paranoia that Deep God worshipers were within the domed society and eating away at it from within was only worsened by Drukon’s refusal to let her kill the “infant” fragment of mortal-kind’s enemy. If he was preventing her from realizing a plan to destroy the Deep God, he must be a supporter.

Worse, the idea that a piece of the Deep God was living beneath the domes was intolerable. Through the lenses of her fear and hate she blamed all of the dwarves, since Drukon had been the magical adviser to their council. They had to have known what he was planning. In her mind this showed a deeper conspiracy within the race itself.

Twelve years after the incident, Marlene finally declared war, her decision backed by the Minister’s Assembly, as usual. The Crusaders turned first on the dwarves in their ranks, imprisoning them and later executing them. Soldiers who had served alongside one another for years were forced to battle to the death. Both the citizens and the Crusaders were told that it was to cleanse a rot that had settled in the domed society and must be destroyed for the sake of everyone. Tenug-Beneath-The-Sun fell quickly and the Crusaders relaxed their attack, leaving the dwarves homeless as their land was occupied.

However pockets of rebellion existed. A man named Hrothgar Farthul, brother to Drukon Farthul, and a former member of the Black Knights created a rebel band that sought to kill as many Crusaders as possible. His group of dwarven soldiers fought within Tenug-Beneath-The-Sun’s remains and killed over a 104 White Knights before being put down and captured. Brought before Marlene, Hrothgar cursed and insulted her, but she was impressed by his fighting ability and the way he commanded his men. Looking at his flawless record in the service of the Black Knights, she asked him if he would consider a deal with her. If he would be the hidden dagger to strike Deep God supporters that still lurked within the domes, she would consider giving the remnants of dwarven-kind their homeland back. Bitter but intrigued, Hrothgar agreed to the deal, only if he could choose his own people. Marlene agreed and made a counter-deal—that he and those he chose would submit to any…alterations she saw fit to give them for their new jobs…

• Relevant Tropes:

• Achilles' Heel: They have several inherent flaws in the design of their weapons and physiology that leave them vulnerable. Their Dragon's Blood injectors give the Red Knights vast physical prowess, but the constant exposure makes them dependent on it to the point that they will die if cut off from their supply. After Kiera has vivisected one of their members to confirm this, Team 24 begins targeting their chests in hopes of smashing their Dragon's Blood injectors in the final clash. Their dart guns can only shoot one Essence dart at a time, forcing them to reload and become vulnerable to attack. Finally the retractable blades in their gauntlets are incredibly sharp, but are thin and can snap if used with too much force.

• Affably Evil: When not actively murdering people, they are genuinely polite and well-mannered for the most part, if a little grim and resentful of the other races with their assured rights and non-persecuted status. Despite Hope being the son of the woman who brought ruin and suffering into their lives, they treat him with politeness and professionalism when escorting him to the Interior to be reunited with his mother.

• Alas, Poor Villain: They are almost entirely wiped out during the battle against Marlene's Pariah, with the few who are left alive dying soon afterwards from lack of Dragon's Blood. By this point, their goals and history are explicitly revealed and it is hard not to feel at least a little sorry for them.

• Anti-Villain: Perhaps the most sympathetic versions of this trope in the story. Everything the Red Knights have done is to ensure that the thousands of dwarven survivors wandering homeless and hated in the domed lands will be granted a homeland to once again call their own and recover from the war. Many of them personally object to assassinating people the Minister's Assembly or Marlene view as threats or just plain don't like but they do it because they have no choice. That said, they are utterly without mercy when dealing with their targets, and all pity will do is get you killed.

• Badass: They manage to dispatch a squad of trained Black Knights and hardened criminals within seconds when abducting Hope and Marian. They were this even before undergoing the surgeries that augmented their physical abilities and obtaining their armor and weapon; all of them served time in the White and Black Knights which gives them a leg up over most other combatants.

• Band of Brothers: Due to having lost so many of their loved ones, and being kept alive only by Dragon's Blood, the Red Knights view each other as members of a dedicated and tight-knit family. They express concern over one another's physical and mental states and keep each other's spirits up with humor or stories from a mission. When Team 24 manages to actually kill some of them, they are enraged and horrified.

• Blade Below the Shoulder: The thin blades that come out of their gauntlets above the wrist, used for close-range fighting.

• Body Horror: They have ten inch long glass containers embedded in their chests, not to mention the network of tubes that pump Dragon's Blood directly into their hearts to mingle in their bloodstreams. The scarring around the containers indicates that the surgery to install them was both complicated and grisly. One could also view their various deformities due to the contamination from the Blood as this.
  • They inflict this with their weapons; anyone hit by an Essence dart will have their flesh swell grotesquely while developing glowing veins all over their bodies before they essentially explode into a shower of blood and chunks of flesh.

• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: They—though it was mostly Hrothgar— immediately see through Kiera's plan to use a tracking spell she placed on Marian's Slave Collar to locate and rescue her and Hope. They allow Team 24 to trace the signal to the train carrying the two captives, but then ambush them while they are at Nintair city's train station, interrupting their attempt to waylay the train and almost killing them all.

• Dual Wielding: They are equipped with two dart-guns and often fight with both drawn at once.

• Dwindling Party: The Red Knights are slowly whittled down as the story goes on. First they lost four members against Kiera when trying to ambush the team in Nintair, then they lost eighteen during the final clash against the team when underneath Six Towers. They finally band together to fight against Marlene's Pariah, two of them having been crushed in the cave in triggered by the monster's appearance, and the battle against it costs all but three member's lives.

• Earn Your Happy Ending: Hope immediately reverses the occupation of Tenug-Beneath-The-Sun and has the Order help them resettle their ravaged land. He does soften his mother's part in it by calling it a "mistake" and blaming the Assembly for deceiving Marlene, but he makes sure that the dwarven race is able to pick up the pieces.

• Evil Counterpart: To Team 24 and the Black Knights in general. Both are tightly-knit bands of soldiers who use Dragon's Blood to improve their performance against enemies, and both are considered the best at their specialized fields. However the Red Knights use Dragon's Blood to dangerous levels, their field is hunting mortals rather than Pariahs, and they operate in the shadows while the Black Knights operate—for the most part—with the support and praise of the populace.

• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Though many lost theirs, there are a few with families and friends out there somewhere or at least those who hope they may be alive. They consider themselves the last hope for those loved ones and act accordingly.

• Fighting for a Homeland: Their goal is ostensibly to earn back the dwarves "right" to be sheltered beneath the domes they built through killing people that are detrimental to peace and survival within the haven.

• Gilded Cage: Their home base is within the Interior Dome and is a tastefully appointed mansion with well-kept lawns, servants, fine food and drink, training grounds, and several libraries full of books. It doesn’t even have any guards to keep them within its walls…because it doesn’t need them. They are dependent on Dragon’s Blood, and thus they cannot go rogue or they will die within a few hours if cut off from access to a refill station.

• Government Conspiracy: The existence of the Red Knights Brigade itself is one, and they have acted to silence those who threaten to expose all sorts of nasty little power-plays and intrigue among the Minister's Assembly as well as carry out an open death-campaign against potential Deep God supporters. They are well aware of Marian's true origins and connection to the Deep God, which is why she is one target they have no problem carrying out action against.

• Gun Fu: The Red Knights combine supernatural speed, strength and agility with specially designed pistols for terrifyingly lethal effects.

• Hired Guns: Not in the strictest sense, but they function as this in a way. The Red Knights are “passed around” between members of the Ministers Assembly when Marlene isn’t using them for something, and they are often utilized to kill whoever that Minister wants. These targets can range from people the current user thinks is destabilizing the realm, to political opponents or those important to political opponents.

• Hell Is That Noise: Their spring-loaded dart guns make a ba-ba-boing! sound like a children's toy of some kind. Team 24 learns to shudder at that sound during their period of being hunted by the Red Knights. Later on, one of Team 24's members, Hale, draws his blade on his young son when he activates a toy that makes a similar sound, only to realize what he almost did.

• Heel–Face Turn: Played with. Their dream of persuading a Hero to restore their homeland is ruined, the biggest and most powerful Pariah ever recorded is rampaging across the countryside, and their Dragon’s Blood supplies are running fatally low. Thus they and Hrothgar generally decide to go out in a final blaze of glory, using their powers and skills to help take down Marlene once and for all. They are by no means sorry for what they’ve done, but they don’t see any point in fighting against the heroes any longer.

• Hoist by His Own Petard: During the first battle with them in the city of Nintair, Kiera uses the Invitation spell to pull one of them into her grasp and use him as a shield. He is hit by the Essence darts and dies, causing her to muse that they "aren't immune to their own toys".

• The Last Dance: The collapse of Six Towers destroys the Dragon’s Blood stations that were there, and the castle is far away from any other refill locations in the Interior…and they’ve used up most of their supply battling Team 24. Knowing they are Living on Borrowed Time, the Red Knights collectively decided to use their last hours of life to fight Marlene’s Pariah, since taking her down, even in that form is immensely gratifying.

• Loophole Abuse: Their Geas prevents them from "inflicting harm upon the Guardian-Knight’s body". However since Marlene’s Pariah is her disembodied soul corrupted and twisted into a horrible monster by the Golden Sword’s power, they are free to attack and fight it to their heart’s content.

• Mauve Shirt: Several of their members are introduced and given distinct personalities of their own. Freyda, Hrothgar's second-in-command is the most developed one of these.

• One-Hit Kill: Don't get hit by an Essence dart. It only takes one injection of foreign Essence into your bloodstream and you will die a quick but painful and grisly death.

• Poor Communication Kills: This is ironically one of the reasons the Ministers Assembly was dethroned by Glenn Waldron. The Red Knights are not obligated to speak to anyone not authorized by the person who is currently using their services—in fact it is encouraged that they not do so. So when Marlene recalled all of them to the Interior Dome at once to act as personal guards for herself and Hope in addition to the numerous White Knights who staff Six Towers, the Assembly had no idea. When things went sour, they tried to call the Red Knights in to annihilate the rebellious White and Black Knights…but to no avail.

• Professional Killer

• Roof Hopping: Their increased strength combined with their agility lets them leap from rooftop to rooftop with barely any effort. This is their preferred method of movement when hunting their targets in an urban setting, and during their first brutal clash with Team 24, they use the rooftops and spires of buildings in the city of Nintair to surround and attack them.

• Rousing Speech: Freyda gives one to the remaining Red Knights just before Team 24 bursts in onto the underground Hero’s Walk beneath Six Towers on the way to the Chamber of Empowerment. She urges the Red Knights to not despair in the face of the enemy and instead "Believe in Hrothgar, the way he believes in us" in order to stay strong and boost morale.

• State Sec: Despite their squad bearing the name "knight", they are not technically affiliated with the Crusader Order proper. Rather they are merely used by those who hold the reigns of power within the domes to eliminate anyone they see as problematic.

• Super-Soldier: The Red Knights were ordinary—if skilled—dwarven soldiers before being altered by constant Dragon's Blood contamination and equipped with the best mortal-killing weapons that the Mages Guild and engineering departments could develop and then unleashed on the populace.

• You Shall Not Pass!: They attempt to hold Team 24 back—and ideally kill them all—after Six Towers has fallen to the rebel army of Black and White Knights, and the team is making its way to the Hero’s Walk, the underground tunnel beneath Six Towers that leads to the Chamber of Empowerment. They are well aware that they will lose a great deal of their number, but are also determined to buy enough time for the Golden Sword’s ritual to be carried out and Hope to be transformed so that Hrothgar can bring the plight of their people to the newly born Hero.
  • In a way they succeed in this—they delayed Team 24 so severely that they were unable to reach Hope and Marian in time. It was Hope's refusal to become a Hero or kill his best friend that saved the day.

edited 27th Feb '16 9:19:54 PM by Swordofknowledge

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

The Red Knights looks like a scary and honestly dangerous foe, being competent and with an edge over the heroes, so I say they're a good pack of Elite Mooks, though not wearing helmets sounds kind of not very smart, especially if they're basically hitmen. Their backstory does make them pretty sympathetic, as is the way you describe they treat Hope, although I'm not quite certain about this unquestionable obedience to Marlene, if she's the one who authorized outlawing dwarves. I understand they resent her, but have to work for her for the sake of their species and for Dragon's Blood, but wouldn't they rather attempt to abuse all the loopholes to help Hope, hoping (no pun intended, I swear...) that he'd be a better and more amicable boss?

All in all, though, save for that part about their motivations, they look really good all around.

On another note, this description made me like Hope and loathe his mother even more.

Rejoice!

The Golden Sword villain again I thought about posting Hrothgar the leader of the Red Knights but I think I'll do him later. As usual I apologize for the long backstory; it’s a VERY condensed version of the events that happened.

• Name: The Strongest Pariah

• Age: It existed for just under two days. However it was born from Marlene Landry, who was fifty years old.

• Appearance: The Strongest was an oddly humanoid Pariah—two arms, two legs and a single head. It was the largest Pariah ever recorded; on all fours it was multiple stories tall and when "standing" on its knees, it was tall enough that its head scraped the Northern Dome's underside. Its body was horribly disproportionate since its torso was massive and bloated while its limbs were thin and dwarfed by the rest of the body. It was also quite skeletal; bones were clearly defined beneath the surface of its red, armored skin and in some cases actually visible. Its hands ended in clawed double-jointed fingers and it lacked feet, instead having clumps of tentacles attached to its ankles. Because of this lack of feet, the Strongest was only able to move by hooking its fingers into the ground and pulling its body forward with its arms. Its head was also small for its body and possessed multiple eyes that twitched and jerked in numerous directions. Its only facial feature besides its eyes was a gaping lipless mouth filled with white flames. The white fire was slowly destroying it from the inside out; flames poured out of cracks in its skin and in some places the flesh was missing entirely, allowing burning bones to be seen. Chunks of charred flesh often fell from its body and were left behind it whenever it moved. A huge cloud of foul-smelling smoke and glowing embers hung above it, allowing it to be seen for miles. A piece of the Golden Sword was embedded in its upper chest. The Strongest’s vast size caused it to move extremely slowly to the point that it could be easily outrun by horses and vehicles.

• Personality: The Strongest's behavior was highly abnormal for a Pariah. Similar to ordinary specimens, it was hostile and nearly mindless, however its aggression was solely focused on a single individual, Marian the Maid of the Underground. Despite the presence of thousands of mortals in its path, the Strongest ignored them completely, going as far as to plow through whole towns without intentionally killing a single person while in pursuit of Team 24 who had just rescued Hope and the traumatized young woman. It showed no recognition of anyone or anything it had known in life; even Hope's tearfully shouted threats, apologies and warnings failed to cause even the slightest reaction. Not all of Marlene's cognitive abilities were impaired by the transformation. When in battle the Strongest seemed to understand basic strategy; after seeing Marian weakened by consuming its right arm, it altered its approach by trying blast her with the Golden's Sword's fire. Later when it realized it was being heavily injured by artillery shells, it tried to belly flop onto its opposition.

• Abilities: The Strongest Pariah's skin was heavily armored; bullets were utterly useless and even low-grade artillery failed to do more than dent its hide. Only high-grade bombs and the swords used by the Black Knights were effective. Because of its incredible size, it had a massive reach and more brute strength than any Pariah previously encountered by mortal-kind. Due to the Golden Sword's white flames blazing from its body, the monster radiated immense heat and light, making it near impossible to go near it except with heavy armor or spells that resisted damage. These white flames spread out around it, turning the land around the Strongest into a sea of fire if it stayed in any location for too long. Because of its many eyes, it could see in multiple directions at once, making it hard to surprise with attacks. Like the Heroes created by the Golden Sword, it had an uncanny ability to detect the presence of Deep God related entities and pursued Marian relentlessly, even when it logically should have been unable to tell where she was. While vulnerable to Marian's ability to consume Pariahs via touch, the Golden Sword's power that infused its body caused her terrible pain when she attempted it.

• Weaknesses: Because of its size and lack of feet the Strongest could not move well, and its slow advance allowed ample time to prepare a proper strategy to defeat it. The Golden Sword's flames were slowly destroying its body, weakening its armor and its limbs and would have eventually destroyed it completely. Because of its single-minded nature, the Strongest mostly ignored its enemies, which let them inflict great damage before it bothered to fight back. Regardless of its oddities, it was still a Pariah and craved mortal Essence. While it could ignore mortals in favor of trying to kill Marian, containers of pure Essence such as the darts used by the Red Knights served to distract it temporarily from its goal. Its most crippling weakness was the piece of the Golden Sword stuck in its chest. Destroying or removing this piece resulted in its instant death.

• Goals: Kill Marian. Or more specifically destroy the fragment of the Deep God that took the physical form of the mage Anna Listar after it absorbed her.

• Motivation: It has a vague understanding that it ‘’must’’ destroy the Deep God’s fragment no matter what the cost. Everything else is just fear, hatred and pain.

• Role in the Story: It is the result of Marlene's desperate attempt to become a Hero and kill Marian with the Golden Sword after Hope soundly refuses his part in the plan to permanently kill the Deep God and shatters the Sword. The appearance of the abomination beneath the domes abruptly ends the civil war within the Crusader Order as everyone remembers their oaths to protect moral-kind from the Pariahs. It is the "final boss" of the civil war arc of The Golden Sword. Its very existence and the method of how it appeared give a horrible revelation about what the Pariahs actually are.

• Backstory:

After successfully having Hope and Marian captured by the Red Knights, Marlene had the two of them transported to the ancestral Landry family estate of Six Towers within the Interior Dome. There, she had Hope attended by servants, dressed in fine clothes and given his favorite meals. Marian was transported beneath the great castle and chained in the Chamber of Empowerment, a vast room made from the crystal produced when Heroes complete their purpose and die. The presence of the substance weakened her and prevented her from manifesting her Razor Wings while her hands were impaled to the floor with spikes to avoid escape attempts.

As the civil war between the loyalists to House Landry and the Minister’s Assembly and Glenn Waldron’s rebels spread through the domes, Marlene had Hope brought to the Chamber where he was horrified to see what had been done to Marian. While Marlene spoke to the leader of the Red Knights Hrothgar Farthul about protecting the Chamber from any assault, Hope assured Marian that he would persuade his mother to make them stop hurting her. When he approached Marlene to tell her to have Marian freed, she told him to be silent, and that she would take over. When Hope and Marian both insisted that she was not a threat and had actually ‘’saved’’ many lives, Marlene retorted that Marian was the biggest threat to the domes they had ever faced, but that the salvation of the world would be brought about using her.

When Marian demanded to know what Marlene was talking about, insulting and cursing her, the Guardian-Knight remained triumphant and mildly amused at her antics. She produced audio logs of Drukon and Anna Listar’s ill-fated journey to Tenug-Beneath-The-Earth and began to play them one after another. Hearing what appeared to be her own voice coming from the recordings caused Marian to be hit with a patchwork of memories from Anna's perspective, ending with Anna being consumed by the Deep God and Marian being born. With this revelation Marian began to scream uncontrollably and Marlene asked her if she now “remembered her place in the world”.

Marlene explained to the confused and dismayed Hope that Marian was a fragment of the Deep God’s body that had devoured a mage named Anna and taken her form fifteen years previous. When Hope refused to believe it, Marlene gently walked him through the basics. She then revealed Marian’s need to consume the bodies of mortals and that she had been providing Team 24 with condemned prisoners for her to devour as part of the deal that allowed the team to use Marian as a “weapon” against the Pariahs. Hope demanded to know if this was true, and a traumatized Marian confirmed that it was. Disgusted and filled with loathing and anger, Hope verbally lashed out at his friend, viewing the revelations as a betrayal.

Marlene agreed and repeated the teachings of the Deep God’s overpowering evil and comforted Hope by telling him he was yet another victim of its deceitfulness. Marian tried to defend herself and told Hope she had never lied to him, and was just as horrified at her true nature as he was. But Hope was beyond listening and called her a “Monster wearing a dead woman’s skin” among other things. This angered and hurt Marian and the two of them began to argue back and forth while Marlene brought the Golden Sword and removed it from its protective case. She handed it to Hope and told him that this was what she meant when she said he would be the final Hero, the one to end mortal-kind’s oppression. He would kill the Deep God’s fragment and the damage would travel along the connection, killing the creature at long last.

Realizing that he would have to end Marian’s life shook Hope even through his anger and he began to ask if there was some way to use Marian to communicate with the Deep God rather than simple violence. Marlene, growing ever more impatient, told him that the question was disrespectful of the sacrifices made by the previous Heroes and unnecessary. As the sound of Team 24 battling the Red Knights reached them, Marlene repeated that the Heroes were the chosen of the High God and that to kill the Deep God would save everyone and banish the Pariahs.

When Hope still hesitated, she grew visibly angry but mentioned that disasters like the destruction of Murok’s Underground in the 23rd Incursion would never happen again. She gently began to press the Sword into Hope’s chest, and he warned her to be careful since she might accidentally be hurt by the miniature explosion that accompanied the transformation into a Hero.

Marlene assured Hope that Landry family members were never harmed by the Golden Sword; the Heroes never turned on them in any way shape or form. This caused Hrothgar to burst into the room and demand to know if this meant that Heroes never even judged Landry family members as guilty of any sort of wrongdoing…to which Marlene agreed that they never did. Broken and enraged, Hrothgar ranted against Marlene and listed her atrocities to Hope and yelled at him about his willingness to murder his best friend for the sake of his mother’s petty revenge against the Deep God for stealing away her father and brother. He then tore one of the spikes out of Marian’s hands and tore Hope’s shirt to “even the playing field”, giving her a chance to consume him if he came close.

Marlene screamed at Hope to hurry and use the Sword. Hope stood in front of Marian and was about to plunge it into his chest, when he looked at her tear-stained and broken face and recalled all the good times they had experienced. He asked Marian if she trusted him and declared that he would never kill his best friend while smashing the Sword above her head and shattering it.

Marlene punched Hope in the face and started to strangle him while screaming that he had allowed a Deep God spawn to twist his mind and turn him against mortal-kind and her. Marian tried to use her free hand to free herself and help Hope, but Hope threw his mother backwards with the ‘’Expulsion’’ spell and screamed that she had turned him against her with her callousness and cruelty and that she had never cared about him as anything other than a tool.

Hope began to pull on the spike in Marian’s other hand while telling her that she was not a monster. Marlene saw with horror at the pieces of the Golden Sword were now disintegrating. Praying fervently to Godric and Joel to stand by her side, and that she would save the world, Marlene plunged the largest piece of the Sword she could find into her chest. Her soul was immediately torn from her body and transformed into a monstrous Pariah that caused a cave-in and the destruction of Six Towers.

Team 24 quickly arrived and shot the chains off of Marian and tried to escape, but there was no way out due to the collapsing Chamber and the aura of white fire that filled the room. This ultimately led to Marian assuming her true form for the first time and throwing Marlene’s Pariah away from the castle while using her tendrils to prevent the structure from collapsing…however the monster was not dead, and pursued them in hopes of finishing what it started.

• Relevant Tropes

• Almighty Idiot:The Strongest is the largest Pariah ever seen, it possess the power of the Golden Sword and its flesh is armored to the point that anything other than high-grade artillery and Black Knight swords are useless against it. However there is no one in control of that immense power. The Strongest is merely acting on some twisted combination of Marlene's final set goal and the Golden Sword's compulsion to kill things pertaining to the Deep God.

• Attack Its Weak Point: This is the key to its defeat. The piece of the Golden Sword Marlene stuck in the chest of her physical body remains embedded in the Strongest Pariah's upper chest in the exact same place. Hrothgar removing this piece is what finally resulted in its destruction after Glenn's first plan ended in failure.

• Awful Truth: Marlene's transformation into a Pariah raises the horrifying realization that all of the Pariahs the Crusader Order have been fighting and killing for over two centuries are similar—mortals who have had their souls torn out and transformed into hideous bloodthirsty abominations. The fact that they first appeared in Tenug-Beneath-The-Earth also presents the possibility that many citizens of the dwarven empire were mass-transformed, perhaps due to the war that was raging on at the time.

• Awesome, but Impractical: Literally everything about the Strongest comes to this. A massive flaming aura that means nearly nothing can get close to it and live? Well that's nice, but since it's made from the same holy flame that destroys Pariahs it affects the Strongest as well, so by the time it reaches the Forest of Sevlel, much of its skin has been burned away. It is the largest Pariah, yet its size and mass means it can't move properly and it's close to collapsing under its own weight.

• Ax-Crazy: It's a Pariah, so being a murderous monster is pretty standard. It is entirely focused on Marian though, and the odd battalion of Crusaders that get in its way.

• Black Eyes of Crazy: The sclera of its multiple eyes are heavily tinted black with the same cold blue irises that Marlene had as a mortal.

• Blatant Lies: Under Glenn’s orders, Team 24 tells the rest of the Order that the Strongest is a Union Project that has somehow breached the domes and is headed for the homeland of the Wood Elves. The reason for this deceit is because it would be too difficult to explain what it really is, and Glenn did not want valuable time wasted on the snarl of red tape, ethical debates and religious implications the reality of the situation would pose. Instead he simply chose to reveal the truth ‘’after’’ the monster had been destroyed.

• Body Horror: It has a grotesquely enlarged torso, bones can be seen within its body burning like firewood, its fingers are double-jointed, and it has masses of tentacles rather than feet. Plus it is slowly being roasted alive from within by the Golden Sword's flames, causing it to leave large chunks of its own charring flesh behind whenever it moves.

• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Glenn Waldron’s strategy to defeat the Strongest Pariah was to lure it to the edge of the Forest of Sevlel and trick the Strongest Pariah into assaulting Kisalna’s Walls, living barriers of plants and trees that encircled the outer edges of the Wood Elves’ lands. He then planned and use the ‘’eret sering’’—elven mages who can naturally commune with plants and control their growth—to manipulate the outer Wall into growing vines and anchoring the Strongest’s arms in place and then have Marian make physical contact with the monster and consume it. While the first half of the plan worked, Marian’s attempts to consume the Strongest merely caused physical suffering, and while she was able to absorb its right arm, she couldn’t even get off the ground or flee, much less devour the whole creature.
  • Hrothgar manages to pull the piece of the Golden Sword out of its chest due to the toughness of his armor and his Dragon's Blood enhancements protecting him from its flames and heat. However he is horribly burned and is caught at point-blank range for the resulting explosion that comes when it dies. While he survives for a while afterwards, he dies from his wounds.

• Collapsing Ceiling Boss: The sudden appearance of a Pariah the Strongest’s size within a room like the Chamber of Empowerment destroyed the Chamber’s ceiling within minutes and then proceeded to destroy the entire castle of Six Towers with its rapid growth, tearing through floors as it manifested. If not for Marian assuming her true form, Marlene’s transformation would have indirectly killed everyone in Six Towers, Hope and Team 24 included.

• Dem Bones: It burst forth from Marlene's disembodied soul as a massive, burning skeleton that filled the Chamber of Empowerment and just kept on growing...

• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Hrothgar spends his time jumping around its reach and laughing like a maniac while assisting the defenders on Kisalna’s Walls in shooting artillery fire, and lobbing insults at everything from the Landry family's ancestry to Marlene's taste in clothes. He only becomes serious when it almost kills Marian, because the idea of having his brother's "daughter" killed by the woman who destroyed their kingdom and took so much from them is intolerable.

• Enemy Mine: The White and Black Knights who either supported House Landry and the Assembly or threw in their lot with Glenn and Commander Exter in the civil war immediately stop fighting without complaint when they realize that a monstrous Pariah unlike anything they've seen before is wandering around beneath the domes...and that it is headed for a vastly populated area. That said, the war's intensity had faded with the Assembly's humiliation and defeat, so there wasn't much enmity to be conquered.
  • It is played far more straight with the Red Knights, who show up to lend their aid after Glenn's plan to have Marian consume the Strongest doesn't work. If it had not been for them, the battle might have ended with many more people dead.

• Eye Scream: Many of its multiple eyes have burst and melted from the heat within its body, leaving bubbling jelly dribbling down its face and smoke shooting out of its eye-sockets.

• Facial Horror: When Marian collapses in pain after failing to completely consume its body, the Strongest Pariah uses the claws on its remaining hand to tear open its own mouth and throat to let the flames burning its body from the inside to spill out and cover her, burning her alive in the Golden Sword's power.

• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Purposely averted by Glenn. He swears all of Team 24 to secrecy in order to prevent the citizens and the Crusader Order from trying to reason with the transformed Guardian-Knight or attempt to spare the Pariah out of some sense of respect and/or misguided attempt to save her. They had already concluded that attempts to speak with it were useless and calculated that restraining it was completely out of the question. It is played straight on the cart-ride to Sevlel with Hope shouting at it in tears trying to get the monster to at least acknowledge him.

• "Instant Death" Radius: Its fiery "aura" turned anywhere it stayed for too long into a sea of flames.

• It's All My Fault: Hope believes this about the entire situation and it just adds an extra layer of horror and sorrow to things. Even if he doesn't regret saving Marian's life, he is heartbroken at his mother's fate and blames himself for her decision.

• Hale: *"This is crazy. If we get this wrong, the Wood Elves are going to be burned out of their homes by that Pariah. If Her Excellency hadn't been so damn stupid this never would have happened!"*
  • Hope: "I know, and I'm so sorry. This is all my fault.''
  • Hale: "No, kid, I didn't mean—"
  • Hope: "But it is my fault, and I have to live with that. My actions drove Mother into a corner, and this was the only way out that she could see. All of her hopes and plans...I destroyed them."

• The Juggernaut: It wants to kill Marian. She is ahead of it. That there are towns, hundreds of miles of land, and many battalions of White Knights with artillery cannons and guns between the two of them means little. The mortals of the domes are only able to defeat it because it moves so slowly that it took two days for it to get to the Forests of Sevlel and they'd already formed a plan well beforehand.

• Kaiju: Most Pariahs fit this, but the Strongest takes the cake. When "kneeling" in order to hoist itself over the first of Kisalna’s Walls, its head literally scrapes against the underside of the Northern Dome. For all intents and purposes, it just smashed its head against the sky. Of course, raising up like this gives everyone in the Forest a full view of the monster in all its horrific glory.

• Living on Borrowed Time: Whether or not it killed Marian or failed, it would have been taken care of one way or another. It was a Pariah and thus had a need for Essence to keep moving. It had no interest in mortals to hunt and even if it did, its heat would have burned potential victims to ash before it could drain them. Thus it would have gone dormant sooner or later. If that hadn't happened, the Golden Sword's fire would have destroyed its body completely.

• Tragic Monster: Marlene Landry, for all her faults, was devoted to protecting the people of the domes from the Deep God's forces and anyone she viewed as a supporter of the entity's goal of destroying mortals. While stubborn, arrogant and objectively cruel, she truly wanted the citizens to live and saw them as her responsibility. Being turned into a monster that endangers thousands of innocent lives in her domain is truly a cruel irony.

edited 5th Mar '16 5:18:55 AM by Swordofknowledge

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

Hello there; I have a quick question about this thread's conduct before I post anything. Has anyone posted Fan-fiction villains here, or have they all been original?

"If you think like a child, you will do a child's work."

I haven't checked all the pages, but for as long as I've been lurking and posting here, only original fiction. I guess it'd be okay to post a villain if it's an OC, though I suppose someone else may want to give their opinion.

0.0 That's quite some kaiju you've got here, and a very respectable "final boss" for the story. While I wouldn't agree with the Tragic Monster - I don't feel the least bit of empathy for Marlene, frankly - it's certainly a terrifying one, and the Body Horror design is fantastic. It's also good to see that you've noticed the problems with all its "awesome" characteristics. The only thing I would hesitate about is how long it takes it to reach the heroes. The not-so-fast speed could really slow down the climax of the story.

---

I've posted a character for a short story in Hero CT a while back, so now it's time for the villain. The story, for the record, is about our world which one night goes through a Mass Empowering Event.

• Name: Anders Holloway
• Age: 35
• Appearance: He doesn't actually have a body, jumping from one to another. The only element that carries over them all is a nasty smile and all-black eyes, although the latter take some time to appear.
• Personality: Holloway is one of the people who love to watch the world burn, and often does something only for his own amusement. He has very little empathy or conscience regarding his fellow human beings, and doesn't treat death as much of a serious business, considering himself to be above humanity. He's condescending, boastful and convinced of his own superiority, and treats other nightwavers as narrow-minded in their approach to un-powered humans and the world post-Nightwave.
• Abilities: Holloway can "puppet" people, essentially hijacking their bodies and pushing the resident mind out of the driver's seat, replacing it with his own. He can have up to ten fully independent puppets, and the more he spreads out, the less autonomous they are - his maximum is two hundred, and they all act exactly the same and do only the simplest actions. He possesses the skills of a person he's puppeting at any given moment, but not their memories, and has, like all nightwavers, eidetic memory, with all the puppets knowing what one of them knows. Unconnected to his powers, he's also an excellent manipulator.
• Weaknesses: His powers have only about five kilometres' radius, and don't work on nightwavers; he doesn't access memories or personality of the puppeted person. One of his puppets is always the "main" body, and if any other puppet moves out of its radius, it's freed from Holloway's control. He's also way too overconfident and self-absorbed, so any person he puppets is easy to recognize as such by his behaviour and boasting.
• Goals: To eliminate any organized group of nightwavers, and preferably set the public against all of them.
• Motivation: He wants to have the entire world as his playground and be able to do whatever he wishes, so he can't have anyone who could stop him. Also, he finds the possibility of a civil war between nightwavers and humans to have the potential of being absolutely amusing and fun to watch.
• Role in the story: The main villain and the first threat against general Hauser's (main characters) newly formed Nightwaver Division. He's also the one to set a nightwaver madman on the White House, leading to Hauser openly revealing his own nightwaver powers.
• Backstory: Holloway comes from Chicago's lower middle class and was the only child. He's always had very little empathy and a lot of propensity for bullying for fun, and, not caring to get to any decent university, he ended up as a construction worker. When the Nightwave came, he was staying late with his co-worker on the orders of their boss, and the nausea accompanying becoming a nightwaver made him fall off the scaffolding, his body dying on spot. To his surprise, he found himself in the body of the man who has been there with him, controlling it completely. After a few days of experimenting taught him about his power, he started to have a superiority complex and realized that pretty much the entire world is now his plaything and as long as there are people, he's effectively immortal, so he decided to put his abilities to good use and have some fun.
• Relevant Tropes:
  • Achilles' Heel: His reliance on primary body and his five kilometres' radius of control. Hauser beats him by teleporting himself and the primary body to Earth's orbit and then shooting him.
  • A God Am I: Starts to feel like it by the end, proclaiming this as he's sending what looks like zombie apocalypse at Hauser's men.
  • Appropriated Appelation: Before his true name is found out, Hauser's assistant calls him the Puppeteer, and the name sticks. Turns out Holloway likes it as well, and adopts it as his moniker.
  • Asshole Victim: His boss, whom he puppets to destroy his life, was a bastard who threatened him and his co-workers with firing them if they don't continue working at night, in awful weather.
  • Big Bad: He's behind a lot of seemingly unconnected acts of nightwaver vs. human violence, and is the first big enemy the fledgling Nightwaver Division must face.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: If he puppets somebody for more than a few hours, their eyes turn black.
  • Body Surf: He rarely stays in the same primary body for long, jumping from one to another to cover his tracks.
  • Complete Immortality: He thinks he has it. He's proven wrong.
  • Faux Affably Evil: He often speaks this way to people to rub his superiority in their faces.
  • Human Shield: Uses a ton of those when Hauser's nightwavers are hunting him down.
  • It Amused Me: He likes to have fun.
  • It's All About Me: He has no empathy for humans and no concern for human lives, and pretty much all he does is for himself.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: When he puppets somebody, their minds are temporarily "shut off", so when he leaves their bodies, they have no memory of what happened and don't realize the missing time.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Underplayed, but he often goes to nightwavers who he knows are unstable and manipulates them to act out against humans.
  • Missing Time: How to recognize you've been puppeted by him.
  • Paranoia Fuel: In-universe, the US military command has a collective freak out when they realize what he can do, and it takes a while before they realize that for one, nightwavers aren't affected, and for other, it's actually fairly easy to recognize a puppeted person.
  • People Puppets: His main power.
  • Pet the Dog: He tries not to harm the body of a co-worker he possessed first, and leaves him after figuring out how to do this. This is pretty much the only time he's nice to his puppets.
  • Psychopathic Man Child: He's willing to start a superpowered civil war just for his own amusement, and treats people as his toys.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: He thinks himself above the law.
  • Shout-Out: Loves to make his power look like Demonic Possession, Zombie Apocalypse or making people act like actual puppets.
  • Smug Super: He generally considers people to be beneath him and treats them condescendingly.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: At one point, he's puppetting Hauser's aide and has the general dead to rights, but choses to brag and mock him instead, which gives Hauser time to take them both^note He only wanted to take himself, but it didn't quite work out to Texas, accidentally breaking Holloway's control over the aide.

Rejoice!

I'm actually not sure if any fan-fiction characters have ever shown up on this thread. I've been here for a while but I can't really remember. I do know that there isn't any rule not posting them, so I guess have at it.

Another good character. While I wouldn't go as far as to call Holloway/The Puppeteer an absolute evil, I enjoy the way you outlined his backstory as being someone who is essentially a sociopath and a bully who never really got better and has only worsened through the years in his progression to adulthood and superpowered status. Most villains these days seem to have some sort of tormented childhood that acted as an impetus, but instead Puppeteer is just a bad person who isn't going to get any better.

His powers are pretty cool too and I like how you set up his Body Surf ability by not having his real body even in the picture anymore. I'd actually go as far as to say you've given a great example of the Personality Powers trope—Holloway is a socipath with a god complex who thinks of people as pawns and puppets...and so he can manipulate their bodies and invade their minds as he pleases. Good job on the radius/distance part; from my experience writing it, body-snatching is a hard power to not make godlike.

About the Strongest Pariah: I didn't intend to give the impression it was the absolute Final Boss of the story . No it's just the sort of "closing battle" of that particular "arc" of the tale, and sets the tone for a Time Skip afterwards. I'm glad it made an impression with how horrible it was in its design; I wanted to evoke the image of just how wrong its existence was on so many levels. You're right it is sort of a drag for it to take two days to reach the heroes, but I wanted to give some believable amount of time for the tensions from the war to die down and for strategies to be set up and I thought that was just barely reaching the time it would take. But I might speed it up.

edited 5th Mar '16 3:57:47 PM by Swordofknowledge

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

I'd like to also praise the Strongest Pariah. The description alone...Seriously, I was really impressed with how you came up with something that obviously just should not exist. Something that is so plain wrong that it's falling apart as it goes, because its own abilities are killing it.

I don't actually have a problem with how slow it moves, myself. Considering how it moves it's easy for me to see why it's that slow, and it would be hard to imagine something like that moving much faster. Also, the idea of something that isn't exactly fast, but simply will not stop really appeals to me.

---

As for my character...this guy is from an idea that I had a few years ago, and am now sort of toying with. He's not from the same story as Oya, who I posted a page or two ago. And where Oya was quite sympathetic, this guy is...not. Long post is long, sorry.

For some explanation of the story, the basic idea is that people are stuck in the world of a virtual-reality online game. However, you're only stuck in there if you actually want to be, and non-"members" have no idea of this feature. However, recently various "members" have been vanishing, never to be seen again. What the man in charge isn't telling anybody is that they're not vanishing, they're dying, and he has no idea why.

Name: Paul Parker. Goes by Parker.

Age: 37

Appearance: Shortish and skinny, with short brown hair, grey eyes, and a crooked nose. He’s almost sickly pale, has constantly scruffy hair, and only rarely shaves. All this means that people tend to avoid him.

As fair as clothes are concerned, he has one basic ensemble (joggers, jeans, t-shirt, jacket) which he pretty much always sticks to. The jacket is always the same one, a brown jacket with orange shoulders. His appearance in-game varies a bit more, but the jacket always stays.

Personality: Parker is, for the most part, a recluse. He’s impatient and easily irritated by others, so to him actually going out and doing things in the outside world is just a pain. Because the world is just full of pointless, stupid people, and if there’s one thing Parker hates, it’s stupid people.

In fact, Parker hates pretty much everybody. He thinks of other people as aggravating and pointless, as if they all exist purely to get in his way. He expresses this mostly by simply ignoring people altogether, but if he’s forced to actually interact with others he’ll almost always lash out in some way or another, as his own petty revenge. There are a few exceptions to this rule (Most notably David, his nephew and Anya, his “pet rabbit”), but it’s not like having him actually care about your existence is much better. Sure, he’s no longer actively antagonistic, but now you have to put up with him constantly demanding your attention and projecting his own personality on you, and he still won’t actually listen to a word you say.

It should be noted that Parker’s low opinion of people doesn’t extend to himself. He’s a smart, talented man with a lot of money to throw around, and he is well aware of it.

Abilities: In the real world, he’s not actually that dangerous. He’ll attack viciously if caught up in a fight, but he’s not the biggest guy in the world, so once the shock wears off most people could probably take him. The game world, however, is a different story. He’s your run-of-the-mill fighter class, so he basically fights mostly by hitting things with other things, with a few special techniques thrown in. Certainly nothing fancy. However, he’s been a “member” the longest, and so has had time to get to the best level, explore the area thoroughly, etc. He knows all the best places to attack from, to stage an ambush, etc, and he will use them. His “pet rabbit” Anya (actually a large, nightmarish rabbit creature with grey skin, glowing yellow eyes and tattered fur) is an extremely rare beast, and is also at an extremely high level herself. Parker also has some of the best gear in the entire game world.

He didn’t actually acquire all this stuff fairly, though. A good deal of his better equipment, and even Anya herself, were actually gifts from “Leo-Tama”, the creator of the game. (Yes, Leo-Tama is aware that his screenname is stupid, but he likes it, so that’s that.) He also allows Parker to call on him whenever he likes for help. This was at first done out of pity for what Leo-Tama saw as a deeply troubled man, but unfortunately this pity has turned into a complete inability to see how much worse Parker has gotten.

Weaknesses: His attachment to Anya and David is absolutely genuine, which makes them his main weaknesses.

Anya was given to him not long after his entry into the game world. At first he was indifferent to her, but after his first attempt at fighting a creature went bad Anya was the one who picked him up and got him to safety. Since then, she’s been pretty much his security blanket. He relies heavily on Anya for support and to watch his back, both in and out of battle. She’s also his escape route for the rare times that things get too rough for them. So, the best way to rattle him is to incapacitate her or at least separate them. Even though stat-wise he’s perfectly capable of fighting on his own, he’ll start to panic and focus all his energy into getting Anya back into the fight. This is a wonderful time to attack him.

His love for his nephew David is genuine, if selfish and probably quite unhealthy. He really does want the best for David, he just cannot comprehend that David might want different things than he does. Like, you know, friends. And living among civilisation. And also people not being murdered. David’s concern (increasingly mixed with fear and disgust) for his uncle grows throughout the story, and eventually he seeks out the protagonists and begins secretly trying to nudge them towards identifying Parker as the killer. Just as Parker can’t understand David wanting different things from him, he cannot imagine his nephew betraying him this way, so he never suspects it until it’s too late.

Goals: To remove every other “member” from the game in the most permanent way possible: killing them.

Motivation: He wants to live a happy life with Daniel and Anya in his game world until he dies. A happily life with only Daniel and Anya, that is.

Role in the story: He’s the main antagonist, though it doesn’t become obvious right away that he’s the one responsible for the “disappearances”. In fact, at first the protagonists are sent by Leo-Tama to check up on him and David while Leo-Tama himself tries to look into the deaths.

Backstory: Parker was the young genius of a prestigious family, constantly showered with praise. This, naturally, led to him building up a very high opinion of himself, and a very low opinion of anybody less intelligent than him. He breezed through school, but then he got to the adult world and discovered that his natural smarts weren’t going to magically grant him the high-paying, high-status job that his parents had steered him towards since birth. He watched those he considered beneath him get good jobs and more status, and his general disdain for the human race (which had been present in some form since childhood) grew. His father managed to get him a job working for a friend’s company, but that only made Parker more resentful, as now not only were stupid people outperforming him, he was having to rely on his lying father’s pity-money. He moved out and became a recluse, only going out to work or buy necessities. As he withdrew from society, he gradually became more and more convinced that other people were just shit, and they had to go.

About this time, his older sister and his brother-in-law were killed in a car crash, leaving their teenage son David in Parker’s care. Parker and David had always mostly gotten along, so the transition wasn’t too difficult. Parker enjoyed the company of one of the few people he actually liked, and David latched onto Parker as the only family he had left. However, he became increasingly worried about his uncle as Parker’s personality worsened, and vented about this online. He was contacted by a mysterious man calling himself “Leo-Tama”, who claimed he could help, and offered to take David and Parker to a place where they could escape the world and live how they wanted. Out of desperation, David took the deal. At first, things seemed to actually work out. Parker loved having a place all his own, untouched by other people. But then Leo-Tama started offering the same service to others, and other “members” started appearing, cluttering up Parker’s perfect world with their stupidity all over again. It had to stop. And after a while, Parker figured out how to do it.

Relevant Tropes:

Berserk Button: Do not call Parker "Junior". This is a reminder that he is named after the father he grew to despise and it will set him off.

Do Not Call Me "Paul": Parker detests being called by his first name, and will not answer to it.

Embarrassing Nickname: Has a few of these for David: D.D, Deeds, Words and Deeds, etc. David hates it, but Parker never listens to anybody, so he doesn’t really notice

For the Evulz: Parker likes to say intentionally shocking or inappropriate things while talking to those who annoy him, purely because he gets a stupid kick out of upsetting people.

It's All About Me: Parker is an extremely selfish individual

Last-Name Basis: Insists on it, at least in regards to his own name

Misanthrope Supreme: By the time of the story, Parker simply cannot stand humanity and wishes it would leave him and his family alone. Preferably by just dying.

Morality Pet: David and Anya. David tries his best to talk Parker out of doing morally-objectionable things. Sometimes it even works.

Nice to the Waiter: Perhaps surprisingly, given his personality, Parker is almost always friendly to any non-members he comes across and never goes out of his way to antagonise them. This is because when Leo-Tama broke the news about them to him, he pointed out that letting people play the game for free means people spending vast wadges of cash to get the best stuff, and people spending money on the game means Leo-Tama has money to keep funding Parker and David’s “membership”. Also, Parker can go into members only areas at any time he likes, meaning they can’t bother him if he wants to be alone.

Pet the Dog: The way he treats non-members.

Poisonous Friend: To David

Right-Hand Attack Dog: Well, rabbit, anyway.

edited 7th Mar '16 4:58:03 AM by Murataku

The last thing you hear before an unstoppable juggernaut bisects you with a minigun.

Could you expand on the Nice to the Waiter bit a little more? I don't feel like I'm quite following why he's so nice to non-members if he hates everyone.

Tidesson Son of the staves of time

Because Leo-Tama knew he'd take the concept badly, he broke it to Parker gently. So he sees them as the people who keep his little world running. It's also very easy for him to avoid them, so he only has to interact with them in his own time and on his own terms.

The last thing you hear before an unstoppable juggernaut bisects you with a minigun.

@Murutaku: Thank you very much for the critique. I have to admit that I was inspired heavily by Attack on Titan in how some of the Body Horror for the Strongest was set up, but I'm glad I got the message across. In her desperation, the villain who became the Strongest broke the "rules" for the magic weapon the story is named after, so I wanted to show that there was a justified reason for those restrictions.

As for Paul, er, Parker...good job. You have created a thoroughly wretched human being in almost every sense of the word. Parker is every stereotype about shut-ins who spend all their time in virtual space, spliced with the traits of arrogance and a disconnect from the rest of the world. In fact, I would argue that his murders of the members in the game is actually the logical conclusion someone could draw from how withdrawn and strangely "tribal" he is—I use the word, because he only seems to care about his one relative and everyone else is either the enemy or unimportant.

His appearance only gives even more credence to that, and I can see him being someone that people would either avoid on the street, or who would be approached by well-meaning but misunderstanding folks who would want to give him spare change.

edited 13th Mar '16 7:02:37 AM by Swordofknowledge

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

You've done a very good job of showing why those rules of magic are in place!

As for what you said about Parker, thanks! That's pretty much what I was trying to portray. Parker is a thoroughly nasty man...and also kind of just a wretch, really. The "being mistaken for begging" thing...I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

I'm glad that his murders make sense. The way he thinks about it is pretty much what you said, yeah.

edited 13th Mar '16 1:42:32 PM by Murataku

The last thing you hear before an unstoppable juggernaut bisects you with a minigun.

From a fanfic version of an RP me and some friends are working on. The R1.5 story involves some very nasty historical domain characters, including this fellow.

• Name: Reiner Eugene Albrecht

• Age: 21

• Personality: On the surface he is a polite, suave and charming young man with a liking for academics and athletics. Underneath the surface, he is a total psychopath who, lamentably, is incredibly skilled in just about everything he puts his mind to. Be that swimming, boxing, fencing, wrestling, the violin, singing, cooking...or planning / committing horrific crimes against humanity. He doesn't really care much for his superiors' views on what is "inferior" and what is the mark of a superior except in terms of what heightens his enjoyment. To him, nothing really matters except in terms of how he can best engage himself to the best of his abilities. He is in that way a self-centered, power hungry sociopath who has no reason for his seeking of power except for the fact he finds it tremendously rewarding to be powerful. And it doesn't matter who he needs to kill or organize the killing of if it means he can 1) advance or 2) experience a challenge. He's willing to kill his friends for the sake of 1) or 2), and won't even act as if he did anything wrong. In one case, he kept on smiling and waving even when holding a gun to commence "summary execution".

• Abilities: an extremely capable Knightmare pilot, close quarters fighter, and a Manipulative Bastard - he brags that he's "lived a life where nobody's ever given me a challenge", and for the most (and disturbing) part is that he's not exactly wrong. He is a total Evil Genius, and his poker face rarely if ever slips due to his lack of affect and the fact even extreme violence doesn't trouble him.

• Weaknesses: he tends to make mistakes when he's really in a haughty mood, and messes with his foes when it'd be better to just finish them off. He is also such a toxic individual such that - even in Britannia - he knows if he got any large scale power in the open, he wouldn't last long due to his tendencies.

• Goals: Accrue more and more power and challenges. Live recklessly.

• Motivation: He claims he's motiveless. The sheer extent of his malevolence can be traced to one incident in his childhood where one boy managed to "take the joy I felt in triumph", and Reiner absolutely hates that.

• Role in the story: The Heavy in R1.5.

• Backstory: Son of a family of German Immigrants, Reiner basically lived a totally affluent life style and never had to struggle for anything. As such he always pushed himself despite this, as he hated living without struggle. He joined a military academy, and during his days there terrorists seized it, and Reiner got involved in a group trying to strike back at them. He was the sole member of his team who survived, but he had absolutely no reaction to his friends' deaths and only remarked he was bored again once the last terrorist was dead. He then joined the Navy and became an officer...but his career there ended due to his...tendencies. Specifically, a noble girl got pregnant by him and he refused to be the father, saying; "The idiot didn't use protection...why should I be forced to be husband to some loutish harlot who forgot we weren't a couple?" He was then put on leave, with the implication he would never be off of Leave from the Navy. Then some glasses wearing fascist from Area 11 put him in charge of a group of spies and all of a sudden we have an Outside-Context Villain...

• Relevant Tropes:

• 0% Approval Rating: Zero, shall we say, had an easy time recruiting older Japanese people in Edo. Might have something to do with taking people's children and indoctrinating them into a hateful Master Race ideology simply for the sake of being a spiteful prick...
• The Ace: A disturbed example; Reiner excels at everything. Including murder, torture, organizing purge campaigns, and false flag operations to get a war started.
• Ace Custom: His Sutherland IV "Schwarz". Red and Black and Evil All Over, even if his regular appearance heavily involves Light Is Not Good, his Knightmare makes it radiantly clear what kind of person Reiner is.
• Ace Pilot: More or less for the hell of it. His job is Intelligence gathering and handling internal affairs and strategy. Himmler often had to remind him he had a job besides running around in the Schwarz killing people.
• Arranged Marriage: Emperor Charles floated the idea of marrying Marrybel to Reiner. Even she finds the idea frightening, and who could blame her given what we know of Reiner?
• Backstab Backfire: Its the middle of a battle and Yukito Katamasa - who'd previously been tormented into becoming one of Ernst Welker's experiments, finally breaks through and charges at Reiner...and gets blasted to shreds by Reiner for all his trouble.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Lord Haldordt, a corrupt noble, tries to organize Japanese Resistance activity so as to kill members of the Lesser Japanese Clans, eliminating rivals. Haldordt was also antagonistic to the heroes...which admittedly made Reiner suddenly assassinating him very welcome.
• Berserk Button: Do not point out Reiner's voice problems. Also, calling him one specific nickname is a good way to get hoisted up by the collar.
• Blond Guys Are Evil: Also, Hot Guys Are Bastards - Reiner himself admits he's morally insane but "take a look for a moment at how asinine and trite everything is in Area 11, how nobody really gets what they deserve...and tell me, again, what good empathy does you."
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He doesn't have ethical standards. He has strange aesthetic standards and beliefs in how a fight should be conducted. He also reveres a challenge to such a degree that he averts the classic villainous breakdown entirely.
• Breaking Speech: He gives one to a noble girl who remained sympathetic to La Résistance but never really put in much effort to help them; "I take it back, you don't even have attractiveness as a saving grace. I find lack of commitment and loutish activities a major, ah, turn off. You're lazy, you're without ability, and now I'm fully within my ability to have you executed. But I won't. Because I know you're so pathetic, so utterly insignificant, that if I leave here, right now, you won't achieve a single damn thing even if you were given fifty years to come up with something. So good day, My Lady. Good. Fucking. Day."
• Brutal Honesty: When he's honest, he's frank, with no subtlety or kindness to him.
• The Butcher: Known as "The Butcher of Edo" due to how literally and totally he carried out Himmler's orders in Edo and the surrounding areas. He actually laughed when fear of him had escalated to such a degree people believed he could tell a "deviant" by a blood test. "Hahaha! The funny part is, its bullshit and I know it!"
• Challenge Seeker: He's always out for a challenge, and he takes it to Blood Knight levels and beyond. Reiner utterly despises taking it easy or relaxing, enjoying tough battles and surviving against huge odds. As such, he inverts Villainous Breakdown and actually gets happier and fights harder when his opponents do better against him.
• Chessmaster Sidekick: A disturbing example. Henry Himmler is a dangerous bureaucrat and Evil Chancellor himself, but his lieutenant, Reiner, is The Heavy and The Chessmaster, engaging in a number of troubling schemes, including planning to assassinate Kaguya. Who, if you don't remember, is a young child.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Any time Reiner gets involved himself. 10 Burais vs. the Schwarz? No contest. Schwarz vs. the Edge Dragoon? Reiner takes Jason Amver down pretty hard. Its pretty telling that whenever he takes the field, an Oh, Crap! moment is none too far behind.
• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Reiner's extremely intelligent, that need not be said. He sees right through all five of the plans made to try to raid the station of Welker's latest Wonder Weapon, and pins Kenta's Gekka Plus to a tree on a thrown sword. All in five minutes.
• Death Glare: A weird, Nightmare Fuel fake out; he inspects a number of Lesser Clan Japanese Soldiers, with a Black Knight named Kenta hiding himself among them. Reiner is smiling...but his eyes just glare right through Kenta, and Kenta is barely keeping control of his expression (poor Kenta almost shits himself in fear as the glare goes on and on)...and then Reiner just clasps the poor boy's shoulder and says "Ease up, soldier, you're too high strung." Its implied Reiner recognized him and decided to let him through just to intercept him later, because it'd be more exciting.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Reiner's plan for getting a war with Australia going has vibes of Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland.
• Dragon with an Agenda: he always has an agenda he's working towards. Henry Himmler shows he's aware of it and even says "Reiner it seems cannot keep his hands out of any pies I leave out..."
• Even Evil Has Loves Ones: A weird play on the trope - Reiner cannot love anyone. But his brother Herrick is responsible for sneaking people out of Japan and letting people go. Reiner's reaction? "Ah, its my soft-hearted little brother. Let him go. The people he's releasing are not capable of harming us further." He certainly likes his little brother a lot, being he keeps up with Reiner (mostly) in his academics and athletics, but love doesn't play a part in it.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even Viceroy Calares found Reiner completely terrifying. It was implied Calares had a young son whose "deviance" (the young man was gay) was used by Reiner as convenient blackmail.
• Faux Affably Evil: Reiner will flirt with you, offer to make fresh squeezed orange juice, joke with you and smile...while standing across from your tormented form on a torture device he invented.
• From Bad to Worse: The general way things happened. Canon Code Geass was bad enough...then an expy of one of the most brutal of Hitler's Nazi Generals gets involved. And then Himmler puts in a call for a friend...
• The Heavy: He's the guy mostly in charge of operations in the field. Henry is too busy and Robert is a blowhard who tends to throw everything into one attack.
• Heteronormative Crusader: An attitude Reiner exploits to exert power.
• Historical Domain Character: Considering other characters involved, its none too difficult to see who he is in this context.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Reiner tends to pal around with people with high intelligence and similar likings for fitness, regardless how they view Specialized Security or him. One Britannian Admiral even says in his diary; "Emperor help me, I think the Hangman wants to be my friend. I cannot tell him no at this point but I cannot stomach the overwhelming sensation he only just cleaned blood off of his hands..."
• Hot-Blooded: Incredibly so. This is a man who does ten sports purely because he feels he needs to just to be able to fall asleep at night.
• It's All About Me: A conceited man, he puts his own want for challenge and power first and foremost.
• Kick the Dog: To lure out a certain fighter from the Black Knights, he publicly said he intended to throw something precious to the old Japanese Royalty into a metal melting pool, knowing this fighter had a relationship with Kaguya.
  • There's also his utterly petty decision to Reason You Suck Speech someone into a breakdown for the crime of interrupting one of his sports.
• Knight of Cerebus: Let alone what he's known for, whenever Reiner shows up, he's going to darken the tone.
• Light Is Not Good: An utterly handsome man, pretty blond hair, shining bright blue eyes, and commonly identified with "a shining brightness" or "radiance". He's also the evilest bastard in a whole faction based on The Schutzstaffel. Even Henry Himmler is wary around him.
• Manipulative Bastard: When Ceres started purging enemies of China from his Manchurian State, Reiner started slipping him names. Names Specialized Security didn't like. "Let no tragedy go to waste..."
• Master Swordsman: an ace fencer, so natch - he even translates his fencing over to his moves with his Knightmare's swords.
• Mr. Fanservice: Reiner manages to look like a smirking, muscular Pretty Boy with a penchant for losing his shirt. His historical counterpart makes it difficult / impossible to find him desirable, so a possible subversion.
• One-Hit Kill: Getting hit by the Hadron Cannon slung over its shoulder is not a good idea. In one case it liquefies a character's Knightmare and the character himself too.
• One-Man Army: A reprehensible character, but one extremely capable of making his presence on a given battlefield felt. While he needs a wingman for whole squads of enemies, its made clear he's incredibly formidable.
• Psycho Supporter: he has one in Walter Kraft. Kraft has a heavily implied crush on Reiner...and is a total lunatic who even the regular goons of Spec Sec find "too insane to be viable on the frontlines". Reiner keeps him around because he likes the ego fluffing Kraft dispenses.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them! / Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: A mixture of these two. Him just announcing himself and his name is usually enough after his Establishing Character Moment. He generally plays fast and loose with any notion of law or order. Such as wheeling on his feet and randomly shooting someone through the skull rather than give them a lawful trial "I'm the executioner. I set the time and the date and they die. I just so happened to pick that moment."
• Shirtless Scene: He's introduced shirtless, sweaty, and just done with his Decathletics. This seems to be a common thing with him.
• Slasher Smile: His smiles, all of them. If Reiner is smiling at you, either you helped him in a way you do not know yet, or he's about to hurt you / make someone else hurt you.
• The Social Darwinist: According to Reiner, your survival is your own impetus, and nobody is obliged to care about you. He despises everything else that amounts to ideology in Britannia, but this is the one thing he likes.
• The Sociopath: Totally, entirely. Reiner is said by a number of people to either have "a heart composed of unfeeling iron" or "no heart". There is nothing too severe or too horrible for Reiner to do for the sake of a challenge or for attaining power.
• State Sec: Part and parcel of an expy of the most infamous one of recent time, Die Schutzstaffel, the worst of the worst.
• Undying Loyalty: Reiner will never stop serving and helping Henry Himmler, because he respects his superior's intelligence and because he knows if Henry's gone, then he has to be in charge. Something he knows would not be conducive to his search for a challenge or enjoyment.
• The Unfettered: Nothing matters enough to Reiner to stop him from claiming greater acclaim and overcoming more challenges. Nothing.
• Vocal Dissonance: He usually has an impressive voice...unless he has to speak for too long, then he tends to get a weird higher note going. Telling him about this is a good way to get a Boom Head Shot threatened to be inflicted on you. Talking about Reiner's off-and-on Un Evil Laugh is also a good way to get some horrible threats.

Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.

Reiner seems to be a rotten person right down to the core, so I believe nobody would be sad to see him gone. While I don't really know about your story, he seems to make an effective villain, but his tendency to be outright rude shows immaturity in his personality, showing despite hating his affluent lifestyle, it still molded him into a spoilt, self-centered individual. This lack of subtlety in showing off he is as evil as it can get shows how despite his supposed ability and intelligence, he is still way too arrogant. Note that his rudeness can make him seem more annoying to your audience, since most are used to more sophisticated psychopaths, like Hannibal Lecter, who is more loved and memorable.

Name: Annabelle "Annie" Mccain.

Age: 25

Appearance: 5'6, with fair skin and blonde hair. In all honesty, I usually imagine Marilyn Monroe whenever I write her.

Personalty: A huge Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who will not hesitate to stab you in the back if it suits her plans. She's obsessed with her physical appearance, always trying to buy the best make up and clothing, but won't resort to plastic surgery. She's a horrific Serial Killer, and only targets other women whom she feels has wronged her in someway. Prides herself on being "Pure", and how she'll save herself for her "one true love", but will still use her sex appeal to her advantage. In her youth, she was a huge Reluctant Psycho, but a head injury caused her to throw almost all of her moral qualms out the window.

Abilities:

• Is a Manipulative Bastard to the extreme, as well as a Consummate Liar.

• Is a huge Combat Pragmatist, and is completely willing to use lethal force, even when it's unessacry.

• Has a small handgun which she uses to commit her murders.

• High I.Q.

Weaknesses:

• Prides herself on her beauty, and can be distracted when being bothered by even the smallest blemish or imperfection.

• Suffers from occasional headaches, which are agonizingly painful.

• Panics whenever her plans goes south.

Goal: She's just making this up she goes along.

Role in the story: One of the protagonists, one of the narrators, and Big Bad.

Backstory: Comes from a loving family, with a twin sister, a younger sister, and a mother and father. While not amazingly socially awkward, she spoke without thinking, lashed out, and had moments of emotionally unstable outbursts. From a young age, Annie started having disturbing sexual fantasies involving death, which she often tried to suppress with drugs and alcohol. She had amazing grades in school, and while not fairly popular, had a loyal circle of friends. One of them was a troubled boy named Felix, whom she developed a crush on. (He has his own post on the Hero Critique thread, page 33.) However, they would often clash due to his seeming inability to gain any real accomplishments, his status as The Casonova, and his Jerkass tendencies. As she got older, her unhealthy desires became more and more powerful, and she would occasionally sneak out late at night, and pick fights with other girls, (mainly sexworkers) on the street, as she was excited by the violence. In her senior year, many girls began to go missing, including Chloe, her twin sister, and one of Felix's many ex girlfriends. It was soon revealed that the girls were kidnapped and tortured to death by Daniel, Felix's Hetero Sexual Life Partner. This horrfic revelation, along with the realization that their time as children was coming to an end, caused her and all of her friends to go their separate ways. She and Felix were affected the most by this ordeal. He blamed himself for Chloe's death, and Annie was disturbed by how similar her own thoughts and feelings were to Daniel's. Annie began to lash out at her family and friends, and would often cry herself to sleep. One day, following an argument with her father, she ran away from home. While away, she slipped and fell, banging her head on a curb. After this injury, Annie changed completely. She now felt little to no remorse for anything she did wrong. She began to manipulate and trick people, and hid her nature from others. After convincing her family that she has turned over a new leaf, she graduated a valedictorian. Years later, she discovered that her younger sister Natalie had become a stripper. Filled with rage that her sister has become a "whore", she guns her down in an alley. Natalie would be her first victim of many.

Related tropes:

• Alpha Bitch: Her true nature.

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing

• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Felix. It's so damn clear, that you could cut it with a knife.

• Blondes Are Evil

• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Does Not Like Men for the most part, but spends hours making herselves look pretty for them. Murder and Black Mail is fine, but being a hooker is filthy, and having casual sex is wrong.

• Combat Pragmatist: Always fights dirty.

• Consummate Liar.

• Dark Action Girl

• Does Not Like Men: With the occasional exception, she believes that men are inferior in every way, and doesn't kill them because she believes that they simply don't know any better. That doesn't keep her from ruining their lives as much as she can just for shits and giggles.

• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Truly loved Chloe, and was destroyed emotionally by her death.
  • Her love for Felix is genuine.

• Even Evil Has Standards: Technically played straight, but it's wonky because of her Blue-and-Orange Morality. She'll murder whomever she pleases, but won't be a "whore", and she thinks that plastic surgery is "pathetic". Anyone who partakes in either of these activies are completely irredemable in her eyes, as long as they're women. Men can do whatever they want, but Annie holds women to a higher standard.

• Evil Counter Part: To Felix. Both were socially awkward in school, thought to themselves "I Just Want to Be Special" on a daily basis, are a Combat Pragmatist, and a Consummate Liar, have severe moments of pure Jerkass, and both lack any real Freudian Excuse for their behavior. Suitably enough, Felix is a insecure Hard Boiled Detective, while Annie is a depraved Femme Fatale.

• Face–Heel Turn.

• Femme Fatale. Uses her looks to get what she wants.

• Foil: To Felix. He had shit grades in school and dropped out, while she was a valedictorian. Both are Prideful asshats, but Felix is one because of his insecurities of all the other things he can never get right, and he's just holding on to whatever he can. Annie legitimately feels that she's better than everyone else.

• Freudian Excuse: Averted. She had a kind and loving home life, and had great grades in school. Her acknowledgement of this, however, caused her to feel even more guilt over her thoughts.

• Functional Addict: Easily hides her alchohal and drug use from her family.

• Hypo Crite.

• I Just Want to Be Normal: Before her head injury.
  • I Just Want to Be Special: Has aspirations of being an actress.

• It's All About Me.

• Manipulative Bastard.

• My God, What Have I Done?: After having her first wet dream, she screams in horror, and vomits.

• Politically Incorrect Villain.

• Reluctant Psycho: Was this before her injury.

• Serial Killer.

• Squick: Her desires are...unconventional.

• Stress Vomit: After her first wet dream
  • After an exercpt of Daniel's journal is read on the news, she does this after realizing how similar his thoughts were to hers.

edited 15th Mar '16 7:24:01 PM by n341100

Shoo her in, Effie darling, shoo her in.

An interesting villain, but there's one problem I have with her: how the hell does a head injury make someone lose all sense of morality? Not only does it not make sense, but it gets uncomfortable close to the Unfortunate Implications of the villain being evil solely because they have a mental disorder.

So maybe instead of a magic head injury, perhaps change it so perhaps there was an event in her life that caused her to snap, or maybe even convinced her to let go of common morality of her own free will.

You raise a decent point. I didn't consider any Unfortunate Implications while writing her character. My apologies.

And as for the head injury bit, the implication was meant to be that the damage to her brain made whatever condition she had worse, and messed up her brain a bit as well. I suppose I could've handled it a lot better.

Anything else you could address?

edited 15th Mar '16 8:16:51 PM by n341100

Shoo her in, Effie darling, shoo her in.

Now I will add in another member of the prodigious denary.

Name: William Anwir Corvid

Age:28

Appearance: Has short, neat blond hair and blue eyes. William looks like a gentle and kindhearted gentleman who would probably help you with anything if you asked. Most of the time, he has a small, gentle, approving smile. He has been noted to look pretty effeminate. and could probably be mistaken for a woman at first glance.

Personality: To most people he meets, he acts like a well-mannered, charismatic and kindhearted young man, with many talents and traits that endear himself to people, allowing him to make allies easily and manipulate them. He has a natural poker face, and nobody seems to be able to read what he is actually feeling. The most perceptive of people can tell that there is something unusual about him that give them a sense of unease, but can't actually put their finger on what. Depending on the individual, he can switch his demeanor on a fly into one that best suits his needs. He enjoys instilling paranoia in his enemies and allies, the former for enjoyment and the latter as teasing. He always talk politely, even to people who hates him. Nobody understands what his true agenda, as he often give hints that suggest or deny what his motivations are, not even knowing that those actions are but another way of manipulating them. The ease of which he changes his personality and his unknown agenda causes many to think that he is just doing things for his own enjoyment, and that his true self is a hollow shell. He has no loyalty to anyone but himself, something which he freely admits. Despite this, he hates people who put up facades and lies.

Abilities: He is the best actor, liar and manipulator in my story. Talk with him for five minutes and he can figure out how to use you and how you would react. He has a motive behind everything he do and speaks. If you found out he was acting, that was possibly on purpose so that you would fall into his trap. He can lie about anything without batting an eye, and can think of an explanation on the spot to convince you about anything he wants, and if you don't buy it, it probably means he has different plans.

Weaknesses: He is the worst at warfare, due to the unpredictability of the battlefield and the lack of chances of interacting with the enemy personally. Without any information and interaction with his opponent, he can't do anything. Due to his constant manipulations, almost none of his bosses trusts him, not listening to his advice or his plans, keeping him there only because he would be more dangerous to be on the enemies' side.

Goals: Have companions and live a normal live.

Motivations: Due to spending his entire life having to put a facade, he really desires to have companions that he doesn't have to lie to and live a life with people he can treat and express love to directly, and settle down with a loving wife. He only serves anyone because they offer a decent pay and treats him well, as well as actually to his advice.

Backstory: He was born as a prince, meaning from his birth he had to compete in manipulation and backstabbing for his own survival. Even his own mother was using him as a pawn. He was tired of this lifestyle, and frequently left the palace on trips. On one of this trips, he was captured by bandits. Actually liking the development, he offered the bandits his services in exchange for freedom, using his position as a prince as a bargaining chip. He tells them the long term benefits that they can have working with a prince, instead of just selling him of as a slave or as a hostage for ransom. They on the other hand, helps kill other members of his family when they are on trips. This works for a while, until the eventual plague and rise of the cult. This left his country weak, allowing for another country to invade. While he managed to escape, he had to live on the streets. He was taken in by a kindhearted farmer who he has helped previously, and get to see for himself a simple but happy family where he can actually feel warmth and love. Later on, he found out that the bandits who worked for him was in the area, so he left the family to ensure they won't be implicated. He was eventually picked up by Alden, who saw his talents and decided to take him in.

Relevant tropes:

Agent Peacock: He is effeminate in appearance, speaks politely and will cross-dress if needed.

Attractive Bent-Gender

{{Bishōnen}}

{{Bitch in Sheep's Clothing}}: As a child, he played this straight. Later he exploits it against anyone he knows somebody is suspicious of him.

Blond Guys Are Evil: He is still a ruthless manipulator who works for a evil conqueror.

Affably Evil: His politeness is not part of an act, buts can still be used as a way to manipulate someone.

The Chessmaster

Creepy Child: He was eleven when he managed to convince bandits to work for him.

Crocodile Tears: He is pretty convincing when he cries. Even when people know of his true nature, they still want to believe that the tears he shed for them was actually real.

Cut Lex Luthor a Check: He pretty much does the things he do for a living.

The Dreaded: Again, he knows and uses this to his advantage. Just hearing he is involved makes anyone that knows his reputation become paranoid.

{{Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon}}

I Have Many Names: He has many aliases.

Manipulative Bastard: His forte.

Dissonant Serenity

Nerves of Steel

O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Again, used to his benefit.

I Warned You: So many times.

Death Glare: Uses it to unnerve people.

Wild Card: He pretty much admits he is one when he knows the other party knows he is a guy completely willing to betray anyone if he find it pointless to work for them or find that his life is danger.

Heel-Face Turn: Not really, as he just escapes to the heroes' team because the villain has become distrusting of him and tried to have him killed.

Hmmm. I can't exactly say that William is evil as much as he is a cold-blooded opportunist who sees the people around him as potential puppets to be used at any time in any way he sees fit. It might sound strange saying this, but he doesn't strike me as that bad of a person, just someone who knows what he wants and will do whatever is necessary to achieve those goals. Perhaps part of it might be my view on the nature of morality and part of it is that his overall objectives aren't truly villainous. I do like William's backstory, and it makes me sympathize with him. I know, I know, he contracted bandits into killing his family members, but they were probably just as cold-blooded as he was, and you mentioned they were a Big, Screwed-Up Family that was constantly feuding and using one another, so it's at least partially mitigated.

I also like that you keep the audience and the characters on their toes by making it clear that—again—William will do what's best for himself first, thus even a Heel–Face Turn can't really be trusted as a sign of having "seen the light" since it's probably what suits him best for the time being. .

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

Alright, I suppose I'll submit a secondary character. He's not a true villain per se; he's really on his own side. Despite this, most of his traits are villainous rather than heroic.

Name: The Mad Hatter

Age: Due to the Timey-Wimey Ball nature of everything involving him, nobody knows for certain. The only thing that IS known is that myths about similar characters have been around for a long, long time.

Personality: The Hatter is, quite frankly, more than a little off-kilter. In the modern era, he's probably be diagnosed with all of Narcissistic, Borderline, Histrionic and Schizotypal personality disorders, plus Mad Hatter's disease, of course. The particular way these disorders combine in him, plus the person hidden beneath them, create a very... special individual. The Hatter has next to no empathy, both cognitive and affective. His impulse control is a number very close to zero. He's in need of relatively constant praise and recognition not to fall into depression. Despite this, he's rather socially aloof and awkward. In addition, the Hatter is flamboyant, theatrical and dramatic. His incredibly odd manners of dress and speech are half due to Schizotypal traits (a very common symptom, due to their social blindness) and half due to Histrionic traits (he plays them up because they get him attention). Finally, the Hatter's emotions are a complete mess, being shallow but extremely strong, and with swings in them brought out at the slightest provocation. Luckily for him, and perhaps the only reason he's survived, he's rather smart.

Abilities: Through a combination of events that no one is quite sure about, the Hatter has managed to position himself as the minor god of hats, time and madness. Wherever he goes, time is essentially frozen. He and other powerful beings behave as normal, as does anything else they touch, but all other objects stand completely still. In addition, he can cast certain kinds of magic and is a decent hand with a sword. Lastly, he's rather intelligent and, despite his lack of social awareness, is decent at manipulating situations. Weaknesses: The Hatter's weaknesses revolve around his lack of impulse and emotional control, as well as his simplistic goals. If you know what yo're doing, he's easy to influence, though difficult to really control. He's also easy to anger, which people can take advantage of if they can survive his fury.

Goals: The Hatter wants to live life on a whim, be recognized and worshiped and to hold his eternal tea party while arguing with whoever comes by. Oh right. He also wants to transform the entire world into a chaotic reflection of the Wonderland he lost. But that's unlikely to ever come to fruition.

Motivation: His primary motivation is basically It Amused Me fueled by Rule of Cool. In a way, because his goals are simple, his motivations are the same. His motivation for the Wonderland reformation job, however, is his buried desire to feel like he belongs.

Role in the story: The Trickster with shades of Trickster Mentor and The Wild Card.

Backstory: Multiple-Choice Past, full stop.

Relevant Tropes:

Accquired Situational Narcissism Possibly, probably not.

Adaptational Badass In Alice In Wonderland, he was a tea-loving lunatic who may have accidentally killed a facet of reality. In my story, he's a tea-loving lunatic who became a facet of reality.

Adaptational Villainy Sort of. [[Jerkass]] to [[Narcissist]]

[[Adorkable]] At his best.

Ambiguous Disorder In-Universe, as his diagnosis is very complex and psychology is a very new field.

Anime Hair His hair looks like fire.

Author Avatar Maybe, as I did play the character in a high school production. The character, however, is nothing like me, except when he is.

Artificial Human Now, at least.

Attention Whore Oh, so very much.

Ax-Crazy Sometimes, as he's got quite the temper.

Badass Longcoat A torn up earth-red tailcoat with a burnt orange inner lining.

Batman Gambit Uses these to surprising effect. Turns out when you limit your opponent's choices so that there's only one obvious one, they'll take it.

Berserk Button Many. Basically, though, don't insult him, his friends, his hat, or his ideas. Except to call them synonyms of insane.

Black Comedy As befitting of a man without empathy.

Boring Insult Uses them, and hates them. Gets the reaction one would expect from calling him insane.

Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick Makes lists like these often.

Break the Haughty Suffers one pretty hard. The results are not pretty.

Buffy Speak Does not know what most complex words mean.

Catchphrase and Mad Libs Catch Phrase Why hello there XYZ, Why is an X like a Y? Why is a raven like a writing desk? Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat (always interrupted), Maybe I'm just screwing with you.

Chaotic Neutral A dark form of it, but not really evil.

The Chessmaster Fancies himself this. As he's from wonderland, the motif shows up sometimes.

The Clock King Gives off this vibe sometimes. Really, he's far too random.

Cloudcuckoolander Of course.

Comedic Sociopathy Comedic Narcissism.

Composite Character Maybe. Has elements of the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat and the March Hare in addition to the Hatter. Then again the Queen of Hearts, Cheshire Cat and March Hare have those elements too and more pronounced.

Confusion Fu When it comes down to it, he can use this effectively.

Crazy Awesome Hopefully.

Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass More or less.

Deadpan Snarker Occasionally.

Evil Laugh Not evil, but yes. A hysterical giggle much higher than his voice.

Excessive Evil Eyeshadow Again, not evil, but it fits.

Exotic Eye Design His eyes have miniature clock faces on them, both stuck at six o' clock forever.

Facial Horror His face looks like a mask. A mask that MOVES in the way a face would.

Genius Bruiser Smart, but also pretty tough.

Hannibal Lecture and Kirk Summation Funny how someone without a side can give both, eh?

Heterosexual Life-Partners With the March Hare.

Hollywood Psych Attempting to avert this. Some elements have stuck from the original, however. Mostly, those aren't described as part of his disorders. Just things he likes to do, sometimes to intentionally confuse people.

Humanoid Abomination Has shades of this.

Ignore The Fan Service All the time.

I Just Want To Be Liked In a narcissistic way. Not that it excuses anything, of course.

Improvised Weapon All the time. Uses scissors as swords and clocks as shields.

Insanity Immunity Claims he has this. Probably just No-Sell.

It Amused Me Why he does most things.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold to some and Jerk with a Heart of Jerk to others.

Lack of Empathy Almost complete. ALMOST.

Lampshade Hanging Does this a lot, to everyone's annoyance.

Large Ham Definitely. How couldn't he be.

Mad God An odd case of one, given that he's not omnipotent or even close.

Mad Hatter Duh. How could he not be? At his Darkest Hour, though? Not so much.

Mind Screw Everything around him.

Mood-Swinger Extremely.

My God, What Have I Done? Takes a lot to do this to him, but it does happen. He rights his wrongs, but he doesn't LEARN, per se.

[[Narcissist]] Absolutely.

Nice Hat One of the most classic in fiction.

The Nicknamer Has one for everyone.

No Name Given Even "The Mad Hatter" is a name someone else gave him, that stuck.

Not So Different He's like a mix of The Chick and the Big Bad, with extra personality disorders.

Odd Job Gods Hats, Time and Madness. Makes sense only if you're the Mad Hatter.

O.O.C. Is Serious Business Very Much so.

Physical God Implied to be one, at least.

Playing Card Motif [[Pun In spades]], contrasting the queen of hearts.

Psychopathic Manchild Really quite childish. Really quite crazy.

Red Right Hand Looks pretty freakish.

Rhymes on a Dime Does this a lot.

Slasher Smile Not as much as the Cheshire Cat, but has his moments

Terms of Endangerment Uses "my dear" to signify anger or superiority. Except with Alice, where it MAY be somewhat genuine.

Time Freeze His main power.

Timey-Wimey Ball Uses this to comedic effect.

[[Troll]] A massive one.

The Unfettered Has elements of this, to be certain.

Villainous Breakdown Courtesy of the Big Bad. Repays it later, saying Shut Up, Hannibal! with a slap to the face.

Villain Song The full song of Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat, which gets more disturbing as it goes on.

Wild Card His role in the story.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds Arguably a woobie. Implied to be a destroyer of worlds.

Xanatos Speed Chess Cheats by freezing time to strategize.

Your Little Dismissive Diminutives Sometimes.

edited 17th Mar '16 1:56:12 PM by Oudynfury

Been a while since I've posted here.

@murataku

Parker's a jackass. That's about the best word I can come up with to describe him. I'd say he's a monster, but I think that would be giving him entirely too much dignity. He's a pathetic wretch of a human being, who is making himself feel superior by making everyone else miserable. And since I think that's what you were going for, well done.

---

So, this is the villain from a story concept I'm kicking around. It's a piece of historical fiction set in WWII Germany, during the Fall of Berlin.

Name: Luigi Capreotti

Age: Late twenties

Appearance: Capreotti's on the tall side for both an Italian and a tanker. Dark haired and hawk nosed, he's got relatively pale skin that sunburns easily (and which has never quite recovered from his time in North Africa), and a fanatic stare in his eyes. Technically a Wehrmacht officer, Capreotti has never thrown out his old Royal Italian Army uniform, and dons it whenever there are no superior officers around.

Personality: Capreotti's a fanatical fascist, and true believer in the cult of Mussolini. The collapse of Italy and the death of his idol have shaken him somewhat, but not completely, and while his worldview has started to crumble, it's yet to totally collapse. As it does he becomes more and more determined to take out his suffering on those around him, and especially on the German civilians whom he sees as unworthy of his nation's sacrifice.

Abilities: Capreotti's was a captain in the Royal Italian Army, and then the RSI puppet army in Northern Italy. He's since transferred into the Wehrmacht, where he's managed to get his hands on a Semovente da 105/25, one of the rarest, and hardest hitting Italian tank destroyers of the war. Having served throughout the North African and Italian campaigns in a succession of M13/40, M14/41, and M15/42 light tanks (the Italians would have called them medium tanks but none are actually heavy enough to be worthy of the definition), Capreotti is used to fighting superior vehicles from behind the thin, riveted armour of a badly built, undergunned, joke of a tank (the Italians called them "mobile coffins") and giving a good account of himself. Now he's behind the wheel of a tank destroyer that carries 100 mm of armour, and whose 105 mm gun will open up any Allied tank that isn't a member of the Josef Stalin (IS-2) series like a tin can (and it can still kill the IS-2, just less dramatically easily), and is really set to do some damage.

As the highest ranking officer (at least since he killed the last guy to outrank him) and most forceful personality in the area, Capreotti also has command of a mixed unit of surviving Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Croatian soldiers, all of whom are prepared to die rather than give the city up to the Soviets. He's made his sector of Berlin into a de facto concentration camp for the surviving civvies, who he has no intention of allowing to escape.

Weaknesses: Capreotti is teetering on the edge of a psychotic break, and everybody, including his own crew, know it. It's a question of if he's going to lose his mind before the Soviets finally kill him, or if he'll hold on until the very end. His fanaticism and hatred of the people he's supposed to be protecting make him a very dangerous man, but they also render him less effective at his actual job than he otherwise should be.

Goals: Capreotti knows he's going to die. His only objective now is to take as many Soviet soldiers and German civilians with him as he can. Having converted his neighourhood of Berlin into a death trap, Capreotti keeps the civilians locked inside, waiting for the moment when the Soviets finally overwhelm his defenses and then kill them all.

Motivations: Capreotti, like most blackshirts, is a rabid anti-Communist, who sees the Soviet Union as the next best thing to the Legions of Hell come to Earth. He also, however, holds Hitler's mismanagement of the war responsible for the destruction of his home country and the death of his hero, Benito Mussolini. Capreotti has kept fighting for the Nazis because it lets him kill Allied troops, but he burns for revenge against the Germans as well. Now the undisputed king of a Berlin neighbourhood, he's doing his best to take everyone trapped in it down with him when he finally dies.

Role in story: Capreotti is the Big Bad of this little story. Sure Hitler and Stalin are out there, but if Hannah and Dieter (who I'll be posting in the Hero thread shortly; see their Relation Thread post for now) want to get out of Berlin alive, they're going to have to run the blockade that Capreotti has set up. Having made himself ruler of the neighbourhood, Capreotti has had the forces under his command turn it into a virtual prison for the German civilians, refusing to let anybody escape the coming wrath of the Red Army. When Hannah and Dieter make several attempts to break out they fall afoul of Capreotti, who details men to hunt them down, lest they set an example to their fellows.

Backstory: Capreotti was a blackshirt who joined the regular army at the outbreak of the war in North Africa. Having served with distinction first under Italian command and then with Rommel, he managed to escape the fall of Libya and Tunisia and join the retreat up through Italy. Since then he's fought for Mussolini and then Hitler, before finally escaping the collapse of Italy and making his way to Berlin, growing more unhinged with every step along the way. By the time the story begins, he and his men have been cut off by the Red Army and trapped in their little section of Berlin, which Capreotti now intends to make into his grave.

Relevant tropes: Always a Bigger Fish (is unsure of his ability to take on IS series tanks), Army of Thieves and Whores (what his unit boils down to), Axe-Crazy, Bad Boss (forces his crew to join in on his war crimes), Big Bad (of the story), Bigger Stick (his Semovente 105 is this compared to anything that's not an IS series tank, at least when it comes to firepower), Colonel Kilgore (more interested in racking up the bodycount than actually doing his job), Death Seeker (Capreotti expects to die; he's just making sure everyone else he hates goes first), Establishing Character Moment (forcing his crew to fire through a German family to hit a T-34), Eviler than Thou (with the Soviets who compete with him to be the story's main threat), If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten! (tries to force Dieter to execute Hannah, the Jewish girl who'd saved his life, as a test of loyalty) Politically Incorrect Villain (misogynistic, racist towards Slavs, Jews, and Africans in particular, but honestly towards anyone who isn't Italian), Sanity Slippage (Capreotti wasn't always the madman we see here), Sociopathic Soldier (Type I & III combo, joining up out of patriotic fervor but venting his rage on the civilian populace), Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum (downplayed—Capreotti can't take the universe with him, but he's certainly going to take the few blocks of Berlin that he controls down to hell), Villainous Underdog (he used to be one, when he was commanding M-series "medium" tanks against Grants, Shermans, Cromwells, and Churchills. Now he's very much the one with the Bigger Stick).

edited 17th Mar '16 7:54:34 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

That is exactly what I was going for, yes

The last thing you hear before an unstoppable juggernaut bisects you with a minigun.

So, the basic vibe I'm getting from the Hatter is The Joker, only not quite as evil or psychopathic. (That's not a bad thing, by the way.) Sorry, I'm not very good at critiquing.

Capreotti scares me, but in the way you probably intended. I feel like he really captures the dangerous combination of fanaticism and desperation. I don't feel like we get too many villains that are motivated by having nothing left to lose.

Here's one of mine.

• Name: Krytos Eidros
• Age: 24
• Appearance: Tall and athletic, with wavy black hair and a curly black chinstrap beard. Like most Nesserian men his age, he typically dresses in a garment that blurs the line between a tunic, a toga, and a chiton, in varying shades of blue and white. He accessorizes with a dark blue half cloak over his left shoulder, and a copper circlet around his forehead.
• Personality: Friendly and outgoing to those who aren't actively hindering him from doing something he really wants to do. However, he has a bit of a temper. He tends to get frustrated when stymied, and if the same thing (or person) gets in his way repeatedly, he can fly into a violent rage.
• Abilities: Highly intelligent and able to adjust his plans on the fly. He's also no slouch with a sword. However, his biggest strength is his hydrokinesis.
• Weaknesses: The aforementioned violent rages, which tend to happen at the most inopportune times (such as when it would make more sense to simply step back and let it go).
• Goals: In order:
  • Become King of Nesseria.
  • Conquer the nation of Fulaseer to gain control of its iron mines and steel foundries.
  • Use the newfound mineral wealth to shore up Nesseria's eastern borders, particularly with Molinyani.
• Motivation: Lingering childhood resentment of his cousins, a persistent (and false) rumor that Thassilae is not the legitimate heir to the throne, and the most politically unstable nation in the world located right next door.
• Role in the Story: Part of a Big Bad Duumvirate with his wife in the first installment. In the context of the (planned) series as a whole, he serves as a Threshold Guardian, as every action he takes sets the stage for Thassilae's development over the series.
• Backstory: Long post warning!
  • Krytos was born into the Nesserian royal family. He was the son of Duke Braxios and Duchess Phialas, grandson of King Keanon III, nephew to King Ydor and Queen Cherixi, and cousin to Prince Ekrion, Prince Polos, Prince Ranti, and Princess Thassilae. Growing up, his relationship with his cousins could best be described as "cool." He resented the fact that they had so much attention and adoration from the populace simply by virtue of being the King's children. Still, they were his family, so he at least tried to be, if not friendly, at least not rude to them. He was, at best, sixth in line for the throne, and didn't see that number improving any time soon, so he didn't see the point in making a big deal out of it. All the same, that resentment never really went away. He just got better at burying it.
  • When Krytos was 20, he was tasked with overseeing a diplomatic mission to the nation of Molinyani, an unstable realm littered with warring extremist groups. He wasn't in Molinyani a week before one of those groups attacked his convoy. When the extremists realized who he was, they decided to take him hostage to force Nesseria to take their side. Unfortunately for them, while en route to their hideout to draw up the ransom note, they were attacked by an opposing extremist group. Krytos managed to escape in the chaos, but he was now injured, without support or supplies, and lost in the middle of the Molinyanian badlands, with hostile forces on all sides. By the time he managed to return to Nesseria, four years had passed since he had left.
  • Upon his return, Krytos sought out his family. Unfortunately, he learned that when his convoy was attacked, everyone had assumed he was dead. His parents had fallen into a deep depression, and were both dead less than a month later. He then sought out his next closest family, that of his uncle Ydor. Upon arriving in the capital city of Keanonopolis, however, he discovered that King Ydor, Queen Cherixi, and all three of the princes had been killed in a terrible fire shortly before his return, and that his youngest cousin, eighteen year old Thassilae, was now Queen of Nesseria.
  • At first, Krytos sympathized with Thassilae. He knew how it felt to lose one's parents, and he had always resented her the least out of his cousins (although he still resented her). But it wasn't long before he was approached by Lady Karchili Skoda, a childhood rival of Thassilae's and a fully unpleasant person. Karchili quickly picked up on Krytos' buried childhood resentment, and began telling Krytos things to bring it to the surface. Chief among them was the notion that had been circulating for a number of years that the late Queen had been unfaithful to her husband, and that Thassilae was the result of that tryst, and therefore not a legitimate heir to the throne. These rumors were completely untrue, but Krytos ate them up, and an idea began to form in his mind. Now closer to the throne than he had ever thought possible, he convinced himself that he was the rightful King of Nesseria, and that only he could protect his homeland from the dangers that lay to the east.
• Relevant Tropes:
  • Affably Evil: As long as you aren't actually in his way, he's actually quite nice and polite. Just don't try to stop him from achieving something he has his mind set on. And if you do, make sure you don't try to stop him after he beats you the first time.
  • Ambition Is Evil: Thassilae never wanted the throne. Krytos does. Guess which one of them is the villain.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: His entire appearance in the first half of the story is a brief mention in Thassilae's narration to the tune of "my cousin went to Molinyani a couple years ago, and never came back."
  • Combat Pragmatist: While he initially sticks to fighting with a sword and shield in his duel with Farrah, he quickly switches to using hydrokinetic sucker punches once he realizes she's better at swordplay than he is.
  • Death by Irony: The Trident of State is owned by the Sovereign of Nesseria and is a symbol of that person's authority. Krytos, naturally, wants it. It's also a real trident. He doesn't learn that part until Thassilae stabs him in the throat with it.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The reason it takes Thassilae a while to figure out what he's up to is because, in spite of everything, he really does care about her. Of course, as Karchili's influence grows, he comes to stop seeing her as family, but he still doesn't particularly want to hurt her.
  • The Evil Prince: Technically, under Nesserian law, he's a Duke. Otherwise, he fits the trope.
  • Making a Splash: By the time he appears in person in the story itself, he is the second most powerful hydrokinetic in the world.
  • Marriage of Convenience: Neither Krytos nor Karchili are under any delusions that theirs is a loving marriage. Karchili wants to take the throne away from Thassilae, and Krytos feels he needs a consort (and by extension, heirs) for his reign to have legitimacy.
  • Moment of Weakness: Both of his Villainous Breakdowns, as in both situations he stood to gain much more (or at least lose less) by simply not attacking. Of course, he doesn't live long enough to regret the second one.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Has two. The first comes during his duel with Farrah, when she has him disarmed and on his back. He immediately starts fighting with hydrokinesis. When she tries to yield, she gets as far as "I yi-" before he forces her face-down into the surf and attempts to drown her. He only stops when it's pointed out to him that, because his opponent yielded, continuing to attack could be considered a violation of the terms of the challenge. As for the second, see Would Hurt a Child.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: He genuinely wants what he thinks is best for Nesseria. Shame about that whole "invading and conquering Fulaseer" part. Oh, and that whole public attempted murder of an infant part.
  • Would Hurt a Child: At Thassilae's abdication, she reveals that Prince Ekrion's fiancee had been pregnant when he died, which under Nesserian law means their infant daughter is next in line for the throne. Krytos...snaps.

Tidesson Son of the staves of time

Thanks. Does his being Italian help give him a slightly different vibe from your usual WWII bad guy? I've seen the "desperate Nazi" archetype a few times, often in stories relating to the fall of Berlin, but I don't think I've ever seen it applied to a survivor from Mussolini's army, which was why I wanted to experiment with it.

I'll post a critique of your character tomorrow, when I'm not so goddamn tired. I want to make sure I give him his due.

You know, I hadn't thought about it like that, but now that you mention it, I think you're right. Nazis are so common as the go-to villains in WWII-era fiction. It's an interesting change of pace to have one who hates Germans just as much as he does the Allies.

Tidesson Son of the staves of time

Krytos is quite a good villain; his backstory and the world you've created is quite intriguing. While not exactly an Anti-Villain, he has more than a few redeeming qualities. His ruthless quest to become the King seems to have been spurred on by his wife in a Lady Macbeth sort of situation, and it is both sad and riveting to watch a man who didn't seem to be objectively antagonistic slowly manipulated by his wife for her own ends. It's a shame, since from the way you describe him, it seems like he could have become at least a grudging ally to Thassilae, since as you said he "resents her the least". Also, your world seems to have been inspired by ancient Greece, which is odd for a fantasy story and pretty unique

edited 21st Mar '16 4:14:05 PM by Swordofknowledge

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