Villain Critique Thread (Because Its About Damn Time!)

As long as she serves an antagonistic role and isn’t a Hero Antagonist than she counts.

@The Apparition

I concur with The Living Drawing. As it stands, the Apparition has an interesting power set and playbook. Unfortunately, you simply haven't given out enough to work with to give a greater critique. I understand if you want to keep the Apparition's true goals enigmatic, but consequently we can't critique said goals. I know I don't mind spoilers: if you add more on the guy for me to talk about, I'll be happy to do so.

In the vein of Bankwell's rework, I reworked Hel and Heimdall as well. Hopefully they're a bit more interesting now that they're not just empty, broken shells mindlessly doing his bidding. Again, sorry if I'm cheating with a two-in-one profile, but they basically operate as a single unit in the story.

• Name: Hel and Heimdall Bankwell
• Age: 21 (Heimdall) 23 (Hel)
• Personality: Heimdall is quiet, serious and down-to-earth. Hel is a superficially bubbly Stepford Smiler who obsessively searches for the silver lining in every cloud, to the point logic goes completely out the window.
• Abilities: 'Hybrid' Infected like Lady J and Rain Hasumi or the denizens of Bhikkhuni: Heimdall's drive is twin revolvers, Hel is a huge sniper rifle. Gen 2 SOLDIERs like Mirei: elevated strength, speed, durability and endurance.
• Weaknesses: Their aforementioned physical abilities have their limits: enough damage will kill them.
• Goals: To serve Ensifer
• Motivation: To serve Ensifer
• Role in the story: Whatever Bankwell orders them to do.
• Backstory: Difficult to suss out, but their status as Hybrids hints at a past on Bhikkhuni before they were scooped up by The Organization and made into SOLDIERs.
• Relevant Tropes:
  • A Lighter Shade of Black: Heimdall may not be as outright deranged as Hel, and she shows herself to be reasonable and caring to the people of Ensifer, but she genuinely believes in her father's cause and hates non-Ensifer individuals as much as he does: this is shown in no uncertain terms when she and Hel are knocked off the top of a tall building by Lady Lady, Heimdall surviving because she was in Arm form when she hit the ground. Her response to concerned citizens surrounding her and asking if they need to call an ambulance is to Enhance, slaughter everyone in arms length, then scale the building without a backwards glance to have another go at Lady J and Rain.
  • Ax-Crazy: Hel...oh boy. She may very well be crazier than Momoka.
  • Boobs Of Steel: Hel is bustier than Heimdall, and fights with close-range Gun Kata, while Heimdall's specialty is sniping from a distance.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Or cylinders: like basically all firearm-type Arms, Heimdall's twin revolvers form never seems to run out of ammo.
  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Completely subverted with Heimdall: the most Hel will ever listen to is general advice on how to complete their mission, and Heimdall has by this point basically given up on anything more than that. The last time Heimdall pushed too hard in trying to bring Hel back to earth, Hel's mask slipped and she very nearly killed her partner. Now Heimdall basically just carefully nudges Hel in the general direction of their goals and hopes for the best.
  • Cold Sniper: Heimdall: her partner Hel becomes a sniper rifle as an Arm, and Heimdall wields her with deadly precision.
  • Dark Action Girl: A duo of them: between Heimdall's ability to headshot people from a country away and Hel's lethal Gun Kata, they are two of Ensifer's most effective agents.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite him not being her biological father, Heimdall truly loves Bankwell, as he gave her a home, showed her kindness, and gave the means and opportunity to burn the world that wronged her. Hel can't really be said to fit this trope conversely: she's barely operating on a human level at this point.
  • Evil Counterpart: To Lady J and Rain: they too are hybrids and freely swap between Arm and human form mid battle depending on the situation, and Hel's Arm is a huge sniper rifle similar to Rain's Disarmament Buster. But whereas Lady Lady deeply love each other and prioritize their personal freedom over anything else, Hel and Heimdall found purpose in serving Ensifer and hold no romantic feelings toward each other at all.
    • They also serve as this to Mamori and Mirei: Mamori is a sweet-natured, emotional young woman paired with the more stoic Mirei, whose apparently taciturn nature is largely the result of shyness and she has a gentle heart. Hel, meanwhile, is disgustingly, falsely cute and Faux Affably Evil at best and utterly divorced from human thought processes at worst, while Heimdall is genuinely cold and hateful to the vast majority of people around her, while having a few individuals in her life that she loves deeply.
  • Expy: One is a flat, long-haired brunette with a colossal rifle, and the other is a busty, short-haired blonde with dual handguns: their personalities are somewhat similar to Ryoubi and Ryouna as well, with Hel a bubbly disgustingly-cutesy lunatic and Heimdall more grounded and serious.
    • As Heimdall becomes her own character and more and more is revealed about her, she becomes an expy of Lucy of all people: from her hair color to her Combat Tentacles in her Enhanced form (she can't vibrate them into blades, but she can strike with enough force to rip people apart regardless), to her utmost dedication to a single person and cold hatred of basically the rest of humanity.
  • Gender-Blender Name: Heimdall is the name of a male Norse god, but Bankwell named his daughter as such after seeing how accurate she is with her sniper rifle: in myth, Heimdall's eyesight was the best in the nine realms.
  • Glurge: In-Universe: many of Hel's attempts to 'look on the bright side' are prime examples of this, if not straight-up Nightmare Fuel to anyone marginally saner than her.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Hel has an hideous burn scar that covers the left side of her face and body. Fitting, considering her codename.
  • Guns Akimbo: Heimdall's Arm form is twin revolvers.
  • The Gunslinger: Hel, who wields Heimdall's Arm with fluidity and grace as she leaps and darts around the battlefield blasting away at her opponents.
  • Happily Adopted: By Bankwell. While Hel, again, is too disturbed to really have a genuine opinion either way about the man, Heimdall loves him as she would her own father, and he likewise considers her and her 'sister' the daughters he never had.
  • I Am a Monster: Heimdall whiplashes between accepting and defying this to a shocking extent: one moment, she's coldly muttering that she is only good for killing and she's made peace with such a notion, the next, she has relaxed and is cooking her latest dish for her father.
  • Irony: Despite the World Government's creation of SOLDIERs being a major part of Bankwell's hatred for them and adopting the two girls as his daughters, he still makes use of Hel and Heimdall's abilities by having them assassinate high-value targets for him. Heimdall at least is aware of this.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Heimdall manages to kill the French Prime Minister by sniping him from a helicopter over 6000 miles away.
  • One-Winged Angel: Unlike Mirei, Heimdall has full control over her Enhanced form, allowing herself to transform almost all of her body rather than just her extremities and a single eye. The result is quite a sight: she's clad in a biomechanical Chainmail Bikini, her legs and one of her arms become clawed, her other arm becomes an Arm Cannon, and her back is lined with Combat Tentacles. To make matters worse, she's accustomed to the form to such an extent that she can stay in it for upwards of fifteen minutes, rather than a minute tops like Mirei.
  • No-Sell: Hel manages to keep Heimdall in her Arm form despite being hit by Rain Hasumi's Disarmament Buster through sheer force of will.
  • Never Bareheaded: Heimdall only ever loses her beanie when she Enhances: by then, all she's 'wearing' is her Enhancement-generated 'armor'.
  • Pinball Projectile: Both Hel's sniper rifle form and Heimdall's revolvers form do this to almost ludicrous extents: they seem to home as much as ricochet, bouncing around the arena off of anything and everything and unerringly redirecting themselves at their target no matter how many times they're dodged. Justified in that there's nothing normal about Arm-based weaponry.
  • Power Dyes Your Hair: Inverted: Heimdall Enhancing purges the brown dye from her hair, revealing her 'natural' pink color...which in itself is bleached from her original brown before she was turned into a SOLDIER. Even after turning back to normal, she must go out of her way to have her hair dyed to return it to brown.
  • Rebellious Princess: Downplayed. While there is absolutely no possible way Bankwell would permit Hel anywhere near the throne, Heimdall shows no interest in becoming queen should the time come either. As far as she's concerned, her calling is slaughtering the enemies of the kingdom, not ruling over it. After all, she was remade into a being who can only kill.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Hel is the deranged, hyperactive red, Heimdall is the calm grounded blue.
  • Starter Villain: They're originally set up as this: Hel meets her end relatively early in the plot and Heimdall is quickly driven off when she realizes she's outmatched against Lady Lady without an Extar. However...
    • Starter Villain Stays: She rallies later in the story, going so far as to become The Dragon to Bankwell after Tsuneo turns on Ensifer.
  • Stepford Smiler: Hel's 'positive' outlook on life is far less Mamori's sort, and more the cheerful, Nurgle-esque nihilism of a religious person who's given up on the world and is dreaming of the Rapture, where she'll be happy in heaven forever watching everyone she hates burning in hell. "Everything sucks and will never get any better, but luckily, we'll all DIE SOON and we won't have to worry about anything anymore."
  • Suddenly Shouting: One of the few times we see the seething cauldron of madness beneath Hel's Genki Girl mask is when Heimdall finally pushes too far and Hel rounds on her screaming with a hellish look on her face. A moment later, she's right back to her bubbly personality, cheerily pointing out that if she had some kind of Arm on her she would have killed Heimdall on the spot.
  • Supreme Chef: Heimdall is an incredibly good cook, having been in charge of food for herself and Hel while the two were on the run, and she became very good at making the scraps they could scavenge edible or even tasty. More than once, she expresses interest in opening a restaurant, before shaking herself and coldly muttering that she'll only ever be good for killing.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Hel's too out to lunch to really have a genuine opinion on anyone, but it's clear Heimdall can barely stand her. To say this is a rarity among Liberator/Extar duos is an understatement, and speaks to how powerful they are when they can cause as much damage as they do despite their incompatibility.
  • Token Super: The only ones in Ensifer's inner circle with Arm virus powers: the fact they're probably the weakest of the inner circle should give you an idea of how freaking insane Ensifer is compared to Mamori and Mirei's other enemies.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Despite keeping up her giggly personality, Hel gets visibly, progressively angrier as Lady Lady manages to keep pace with her, especially when Lady J blasts her with Disarmament Buster. Her attacks become wilder, she starts mixing in grunts of exertion, baring her teeth and glaring viciously: for Hel, that's blind, shrieking, slobbering fury. Then when she's launched out the window by a second Disarmament Buster, she gets a look of horror and screams all the way down.
    • Heimdall gets in on the action when she climbs back up the building she was knocked out of by Lady Lady: she reappears in her enhanced mode and mad as a hornet.
  Heimdall: Still alive, bitch.
  • Warrior Princess: As the adopted daughters of Allfather Bankwell, the duo are essentially royalty, and they spend most of the story assassinating enemies of Ensifer. They double as Villainous Princesses.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: Along with her claws and Combat Tentacles Heimdall's Enhanced form comes with an Arm Cannon that fires a destructive beam of rainbow energy: it packs enough of a wallop to shear a skyscraper in half. she calls it the Bifrost Cannon.
  • Weak, but Skilled: Both are this in the sense that they are outdated by SOLDIER standards, but between the two Heimdall takes this approach in contrast to her sister: wielding Hel as an Arm demands precision and discipline, as opposed to Hel using her natural agility to bound around the arena and drown her foes in gunfire.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: Hel. As mentioned above, she can find the silver lining in every cloud, no matter how completely tortured the logic is. It's heavily implied it's a result of the SOLDIER experiments: she endured by hanging onto the vague hope that things would get better, and when her mind finally broke it became her dogma.
  • You Are Number 6: Before Bankwell gave the two true names, Hel was K2, and Heimdall was M7.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Like other SOLDIERs, Heimdall's hair was bleached a different color: her hair is actually hot pink, and she dyes it brown. She is incredibly ashamed of it, not simply because she thinks it looks hideous but it's a constant reminder of her dark past.

Edited by krimzonflygon2 on Jan 22nd 2022 at 3:28:16 AM

I think I remember these two being submitted before - and I'm glad to say that they've come quite a long way. Unless you were not the same person. In which case, I can say that they are certainly memorable. There's a sense of distinction between the bubbly insanity Hel displays, versus the cold, calculated cruelty of Heimdall.

They sure seem like they'll be a memorable set of foes.

• Name: Baron Anson Lou

• Age: looks like a mid-forties man, is actually about 240 years old.

• Personality: Baron Anson Lou is an aristocratic gentleman and Wolfang Richler's gofer and personal bodyguard / butler. In everything, whereas Wolfang cannot directly act without stimulus from someone else, he simply has Lou do the dirty work. And while he covers it in a veneer of professionalism and dutiful attendance, Anson Lou is every bit a despicable, sadistic and cruel person himself. If there's one thing he enjoys doing, it's breaking the beliefs and ethics of his enemies via his plans. Lou's subservience to Wolfang should not be mistaken for mindless drudgery - he's every bit capable of adding to the plans his boss manufactures, and very frequently adds bits to maximize human suffering, purely because he knows Wolfang likes that. He views Wolfang's family, the Richler / Kyonori Family, as more or less his masters - and harming them or causing so much as an inconvenience is viewed by him as unforgivable, to such an extent he's willing to put himself through quite a bit of pain in the effort to "avenge such an insult".

• Abilities: Anson Lou is an illusionist and a diabolist, the former of a particular expertise, wherein the illusions he creates can absolutely harm people...if they believe in what they're seeing. If someone doesn't believe in what they're seeing, the spell has less and less effect. The latter however is a sort of magic which sees Lou able to manipulate demons, unclean spirits of many religious origins, and ghosts. In addition, Lou has 277 human souls anchored inside of his body, enslaved to his will. He can either summon them to use as servants, or burn through them in the case someone manages to fatally wound him. Lou demonstrates the ability to move through shadows, and create grotesque shadowy hands from his shadow, among other things - with a number of mystically inclined characters stating he is definitely not wholly human any more.

• Weaknesses: His illusions are only as real as you let them be. His unclean spirits often have weaknesses known in story, which all absolutely work. Sacred or holy spells do quite a bit of work on him.

• Goals: Service to the Richler Family, and Wolfang in particular.

• Motivation: Wolfang was the one who granted him the mystical archives that let him transcend humanity - and achieve his perverse pseudo-immortality. He has an unending sense of gratitude and loyalty for that.

• Role in the Story: The Dragon (to Wolfang), Evil Sorcerer

• Backstory: Baron Anson Lou was a lesser lord from North Ireland of Irish and British descent - holding one little castle and a surrounding village, Anson Lou grew to become curious of alchemy and various magical professions. He amateurishly started doing experiments on the town and its water supply, incurring quite a lot of anger from his subjects. He was however unperturbed by this, and viewed the subjects solely as "unruly pieces in my game". Wolfang, a vicious immortal creature taking the form of a handsome human young man, appeared there and offered Lou a taste of true power and spoiled the fact the villagers planned to revolt...followed by giving Lou an idea. When the revolt happened, the villagers stepped on to Lou's first real spell circle, and had their souls ripped from their bodies en masse. Lou then went into the village again, to take any remaining souls. He then swore allegiance to Wolfang, aiming to learn ever more dark spells from his new master.

• Tropes:

• The Butler Did It: Albeit on his master's orders.
• Badass Long Coat: His usual apparel over his tux, which pairs nicely with his sunglasses.
• Circling Monologue: As he walks among his Preta-possessed underlings; "All 125 living things here could have in all likelihood gone on with their lives as normal if it wasn't for you. In your unfettered arrogance and brutish pursuit of catharsis, assaulting Lord Richler...you incited this battle, whereupon I utilized them. This began with you, and with your corpse torn to pieces, so shall it end. As you sink into the furthest corner of whatever Hell you will call home, reflect upon that reality."
• Classy Cane: Carries one around with a black gem at the end, which he uses for Cane Fu and to assist in his evil spells.
• The Comically Serious: Anson Lou has utterly no reaction no matter what either Wolfang or whatever wicked child of Wolfang requests of him. "Master Taiyo, I regret to inform you that I cannot "go fuck myself". As it is in fact a temporal and spatial impossibility. Is there aught that has you so surly...?"
• Creepy Monotone: During the below incident, he just sits there and explains it to Caleb flatly; "You say you do not want to kill...? I do not have that compunction. I have killed everyone in this park, and let the Pretas possess their bodies. I believe that comes to...one hundred and twenty-five human bodies present here. And now they exist to pry you to pieces for your offences." In general, Lugh doesn't get really angry - in fact, he's completely emotionally understated in nearly every circumstance.
• The Dark Arts: A practitioner of them. In general, if it's gross, horrible, and involves mutilating peoples' minds, bodies and or souls, chances are Anson Lou at least dabbled in it. He does prefer diabolism, illusions and spirit manipulation though.
• Death Is Cheap: Ten souls of his old subjects. That's what it takes to reconstitute Anson Lou.
• Evil Is Petty: Anson Lou did promise Caleb "the utter pinnacle of human misery" for his "crimes" against the Richler Family. So what does he do? He has a huge, fat, horrifying gluttony demon attempt to eat Caleb's sister, who is not involved at all.
• Hyper Competent Underling: His relationship with Malcolm Richler. Whereas Malcolm wanted revenge posthaste for Caleb "interfering" in his relationships, and making Malcolm call on "dad" for the first time ever, Anson is completely stoic, came up with a plan and a back up plan, and maximized the amount of pain he could inflict even if he lost.
• Just You and Me and My GUARDS!: He claims he's going to fight Caleb one on one in a fight at the park...only to then have his Pretas mass possess everyone there for an ambush. Lou doesn't even try to justify his lie, just saying it outright. "Well, I lied. It's a thing I do."
• Master of Illusion: Anson Lou's magic works by convincing someone of what they're seeing - the more belief they give it, the worse the damage it deals. With enough people targeted, even if one person doesn't believe what they're seeing, they'll end up ripped apart anyway if everyone else is panicking.
• Moral Myopia: Caleb assaulting Malcolm Richler is deserving of vengeance. Malcolm being abusive to his girlfriend? "Just the boy acting on the way the world is: the abusable are abused, without end in sight."
• Necromancer: Capable of reanimating the dead by way of shoving an evil spirit in the body.
• Psychotic Smirk: The strongest reaction you'll get out of him.
• Sadist: "I've seen that kind of look on a face before. The look of a man who started on cats before moving his way up to humans. Just like with Wolfang, Anson Lou finds pain to be greatly amusing."
• Sadistic Choice: Oh, Caleb doesn't like killing people? Anson decides to force him to deal with the Preta Possessed masses in the park. And then later on, he has a Yomotsu-Shikome possess Caleb's girlfriend to try and kill him - sealing it in there well enough that unsealing it might kill her.
• Shadow Walker: The Baron can teleport by moving through shadows, a fact he uses to his advantage against Caleb, who can only really reinforce himself, move faster and tank hits. "Paltry good your immense strength does for you when you cannot even hit me." It takes a number of other heroes joining in to equalize the playing field.
• Suicide Attack: Lou's final attack on Caleb at the park. When things turn against him, he lets Caleb beat him up a bit...and then creates a massive spell circle around himself that produces meathooks that latch on to Caleb's arms and legs. "If I cannot kill you, I'll kill both of us...and then reconstitute later."
• Summon Magic: His shadow seems to be a portal to Hell(s), and spits out whatever evil spirits he needs at any moment.
• This Is Unforgivable!: When he hears that Caleb beat six shades of tar out of Malcolm Richler. It doesn't matter that Malcolm is a piece of work who was abusing his girlfriend. The fact is, Caleb hurt a Richler. Which in Lou's book is enough of an offense to merit dismemberment.
• Undying Loyalty: No matter how ridiculous, weird or childish Wolfang can be, Anson serves him. To a degree that despite their mutually heinous natures, it can come off as The Comically Serious.
• We Have Reserves: Caleb, The Hero, punches right through one of the Preta-possessed bodies Lou brings to their confrontation at the park. Lou then reveals he has no worries - the Pretas don't die when the bodies they inhabit do, and he went ahead and mass possessed every living thing presently at the park with the Pretas.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: The rule behind his illusions. Though it depends on the belief of everyone his illusion stands to effect.

Edited by NickTheSwing on Dec 9th 2021 at 6:35:58 AM

For what it's worth, I got an image of what Heimdall looks like...that is, I made her in Code Vein. Top is her dyed hair, bottom is her true hair color.

Going in, I wanted to make someone who would not in any capacity look like she belongs in a Panty Fighter like Valkyrie Drive, in keeping with Ensifer's whole Outside-Genre Foe deal, but I'm still painfully aware that there's probably some aspect of her that's someone's fetish...

Edited by krimzonflygon2 on Dec 28th 2021 at 2:39:27 AM

@Baron

Oh...WOW, the guy sounds like a scumbag. Definite Complete Monster material: even with his Undying Loyalty to the Richler family, I don't see anything even remotely close to a redeeming factor. Hell, I'm tempted to write it off as the two simply giving each other the means and resources to indulge in their cruelty, not anything close to truly caring about each other. My suggestion: keep it that way. At this point, throwing in a half-baked 'redeeming factor' would simply detract from the Baron's gleefully, heinously sadistic charm. Depending on how he's written in the story proper, you've created a villain with genuine Love to Hate potential.

Now, on the other side of the spectrum, a villain who I hope to take the opposite track with: a repost/expansion of Tsuneo Hiiragi, Theodore Bankwell's right-hand man.

• Name: Tsuneo Hiragi
• Age: 51
• Personality: The Stoic. A Noble Demon. He's still ultimately on Ensifer's side, though, and as long as he sees the logic in his orders he will follow them, even if it means doing truly heinous things. Genuinely loves his wife and his teenage daughter Akira. Yeah, Akira. As in Akira Hiragi, the former Governeur of Mermaid.
• Abilities: Genius inventor of all manner of weapons, vehicles and other instruments of destruction. Wears the Type-7 Járnglófar Power Armor: it's constantly charged with electricity that he can use to defend himself by deflecting projectiles by creating a Deflector Shield, or project it as devastating lighting blasts. Wields Mjolnir, a high-tech warhammer that likewise is charged with electricity: he can shoot it as blasts, manipulate electromagnetism and throw cars and such, or just smack people with the thing.
• Weaknesses: Non-projectile attacks (explosions, cave-ins, flamethrowers and the like) can bypass his shield. The armor takes a lot of energy, and depending on how hard he's fighting it can run out rather quickly.
• Goals: To serve Ensifer's cause and secure the throne for his Lord/best friend Bankwell...later, try to stop Bankwell's plan to release the Ragnarok Virus when he realizes the Allfather has snapped and is a danger to both Ensifer and the world at large.
• Motivation: Loyalty to Bankwell's cause.
• Role in the story: The Dragon
• Backstory: An arms dealer and weapon engineer recruited by Ensifer soon after their conception. Has worked for multiple nations and causes before settling down full time with Ensifer after his daughter was kidnapped and quarantined on Mermaid, intending to bring his technological genius and unparalleled fighting skills to the Rising Empire.
• Relevant Tropes:
• Abusive Parents: A tragic version of this: he genuinely has no idea he's being abusive, and is doing all in his power to keep his daughter Akira safe and happy. Unfortunately, he believes following Ensifer's cause will end with Akira safe and happy. As she continues to resist, however, he slowly becomes more and more frustrated with her until he's entirely okay with beating her down and bringing her to Asgard in traction if needed.
• Anti-Villain: By being probably the only major Ensifer member with a hint of standards. Joking aside, he sees grim necessity in his nation's actions, and believes that once the World Government falls, eventually the world at large will have atoned for their sins in abetting their cruelties and Ensifer's own atrocities will no longer be needed.
• Badass Normal: Like Bankwell, he's a normal human being. With the help of his Power Armor and warhammer, he can devastate almost any Liberator in front of him.
• Basso Profundo: That's not voice manipulation in his helmet or anything: this guy has got a deep freaking voice. Like, think Ralph Ineson.
• Darth Vader Clone: Black Power Armor? Check. Big Bad's right-hand man? Check. Akira's father? Check. Magic Knight? Well, it's an electromagnetic warhammer, but it gets the point across. Anti-Villain? Check. Deep, booming voice? You better believe it. The main part of his character arc even boils down to having his daughter join Ensifer, and he ends up turning on his former master (though in this case, it's inspired by love of country rather than family. For the cherry on top, he even has a tight bond with a young female apprentice in the form of Heimdall.
• The Dragon: Bankwell's right-hand man.
• Drop The Hammer: Mjolnir, his electromagnetic warhammer.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite all the evil he does, personally or otherwise, Tsuneo never indulges in pointless sadism: every atrocity he performs or oversees has practical purpose behind it.
• Fantastic Racism: To a far lesser extent than his master, but it's there: Tsuneo is quick to lump in the vast majority of non-Ensifer people as cowardly and weak for letting the World Government come into power. Unlike Bankwell, however, Tsuneo genuinely believes that eventually they can redeem themselves.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Has spearheaded the invention of every single weapon, mech, drone, Cool Plane and anti-Arm countermeasure Ensifer uses.
• Genius Bruiser: A genius inventor and mountain of muscle: he's an imposing sight even out of his Power Armor.
• Honest Advisor: Tries to play this to Bankwell, convincing him to make alliances and rein in his passions for the sake of the kingdom at large. Again, tries: Bankwell listens at first, less so as the war drags on and Bankwell's misanthropy continues to fester.
• Honorary Uncle: To Hel and Heimdall: Bankwell actually named Tsuneo their godfather, and the princesses are quite fond of him.
• Horny Vikings: His armor can be described as 'high tech Viking raider', with a horned helm and bear-fur cape.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Is capable of as much great cruelty as any self-respecting member of Ensifer, but only if he sees the logic behind it.
• Just Following Orders: Will follow any orders Bankwell gives him...as long as he understands how it serves the cause. Slavery, for instance, is necessary in his eyes to keep the war machine going. As soon as he finds out how over-the-line Bankwell's actions truly are (again, he sees slavery to the service of Ensifer's as a-ok: omnicide via zombie apocalypse, on the other hand is a bridge too far), he turns on Bankwell in a heartbeat, intending to depose him and continue Ensifer as he sees it as meant to be.
• Magnetism Manipulation: Electromagnetism through use of the electricity in his warhammer.
• Mood-Swinger: Akira likens her father's anger to a thunderclap. He's normally calm and controlled, shrugging off any number of things with great patience but then something inexplicably gets under his skin and he explodes: unleashing his fury in a single unstoppable moment before immediately calming down again.
• One-Man Army: Can take on multiple Liberators at once and beat them easily. It takes Mirei fighting with everything she has to even get him breathing hard the first time they encounter each other.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: While he doesn't take it as far as his master and doesn't see the world at large as irredeemable as Bankwell does, Tsuneo does believe that humanity committed a grave sin in allowing the World Government to take over and sees the atrocities Ensifer brings upon them as justice.
• Renaissance Man: A genius inventor, a peerless warrior, a strategist and a politician.
• Shock and Awe: His weapon and armor are both charged with electricity.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Combined with Stealthy Colossus: it's frankly incredible how Tsuneo can consistently sneak up on people in broad daylight with how massive he is, but a good number of his appearances start by him interjecting himself in a conversation, and everyone else jumping because they didn't even notice him until he spoke up.
• The Starscream: Though Tsuneo would argue that in creating the Ragnarok Virus and moving to unleash it on the outside world, Bankwell was the traitor, not him. Either way, Tsuneo realizing just how far Bankwell was willing to go in his pursuit of vengeance was enough for him to turn on his former friend, aiming to overthrow him and put someone on Ensifer's throne who could lead the kingdom properly in his eyes.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Genuinely believes in Ensifer's cause, though he doesn't quite seem to want to accept that Bankwell isn't interested in eventually reconciling with the outside world...
• We Used to Be Friends: Having to stand against Bankwell tears Tsuneo apart: the two were practically brothers. Tsuneo places all the blame on himself for not doing more to rein in Bankwell's excesses before he went off the deep end.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Was the one who drilled this philosophy into Akira, though by the time of the story his own interpretation of the maxim is seen through a twisted funhouse mirror. Like his daughter, Tsuneo believes those with power must use that power correctly, and misuse of power must be punished: Akira herself was guided by such teachings during her tenure as Governeur of Mermaid, imposing law and order and cracking down on the infected who had abused their powers on those weaker than themselves. It was her hope that in showing the World Government that they would not abuse their powers, they would be welcomed back into society. Tsuneo meanwhile believes that Ensifer's power gives them the obligation to destroy the World Government and impose their own rule, as the World Government had been exploiting their charges, and he holds out hope that once the world at large has been properly punished for rolling over for the World Government, they could be forgiven, freed from bondage and welcomed into Ensifer's rule.

Edited by krimzonflygon2 on Feb 26th 2022 at 11:09:22 AM

Name: The Nemean Society Goals: Uplift humanity into a galactic superpower by any means (they consider) necessary, which tends to include human experimentation, arms dealing, assassination, bribery, blackmail, theft, unethical experimentation on any aliens they get their hands on, and any number of other things that put them in conflict with superheroes and conventional authorities. Apart from that all I really know is they were founded in the aftermath of a massive alien invasion and named themselves after the Nemean Lion.

You'll probably want to do more fleshing out before getting your characters critiqued, since we can't discuss them in a pure vaccuum.

Tsuneo sounds interesting. Strong, and certainly a threat, but also seems pretty human and complex. I like 'im.

Alright, here's one of my main villains from my in-progress Warrior Cats fanfic.

• Name: Blizzardpool

• Age: I'd say about 4-5 years old, which makes him a relatively senior warrior in Clan terms. But in general, just think a middle aged man.

• Personality: Aggressive, cold, and manipulative. He's known for being a bit of a jerk, but his clanmates don't think of him as being much more than an annoying, arrogant furball.

• Abilities: He's smart and determined, and able to manipulate events around him to try and achieve his desired goal. As a mentor to one of the protagonists, he's strict but capable of teaching her genuinely good skills, and is good at making her push herself harder and harder just to please him.

• Weaknesses: As said before, a lot of the Clan don't really like him all that much, so he's hampered by having to compensate for his bad reputation- a reason he's never just made deputy. He's also focused on his plans to the exclusion of much else, and gets angry when things don't work out for him.

• Goals: He wants leadership over BeachClan-], and he wants cats that are subservient and loyal to him. * Motivation: Mostly just a selfish desire for power and a feeling of entitlement. He thinks of himself as being a lot smarter and more capable than the rest of his Clanmates, so in his mind, why ''shouldn't'' he be in charge? * Role in the story: He's a senior [=BeachClan warrior who becomes Lightningpaw's mentor, despite openly disliking her father and the Clan's deputy, Rabbitfur. He tries to manipulate things early on to goad two Clans into fighting so he and another villain can see their plans come to fruition, but when it backfires, he starts to focus his efforts inward and turn Lightningpaw against her father in the hopes that she'll become loyal to his cause and help him sway the rest of the Clan, with the eventual goal of forming a coup. Of course, he's only one of the four villains (one for each Clan), and eventually the four of them start working together.

• Relevant Tropes:
  • The Mentor: To Lightningpaw. As discussed, though he hates her father and trains her very strictly, she's also made to think that he's turning her into a great warrior and doesn't want to let him down. Of course, he also puts her into a lot of situations that will either kill her or force her to adapt, so he's a bit of a stealth Sink or Swim Mentor as well.
  • The Rival: Has been rivals with another warrior, Scaletail, since kithood. Even as an adult, he can't resist taking shots at him, and it's part of his Establishing Character Moment.
  • Ambition Is Evil: His ambition and overall sense of entitlement leads to him attempting to get his leaders murdered, in an effort to secure the position for himself.
  • Evil Is Petty: He's not above being a petty bully at times. His over-inflated sense of importance, combined with his utter hatred for Rabbitfur and his kin, means that he's just as willing to make his apprentice sit in a rotting, broken wooden shipwreck all day as he is to manipulate his clanmates into a battle and manipulate Lightningpaw into supporting him.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Instead of relying on brute strength, he tries to trick others into doing exactly what he needs them to do. He's also fond of making up stories about himself to sound better, such as claiming that he fought off an entire enemy patrol on his own, or stealing credit from other apprentices to get his name.
  • Parental Neglect: Doesn't pay much attention to his only kit, Featherfur, as he and her mother stopped being mates soon after and she lacks his same ambition and skill. For her part, she finds him annoying and overbearing.
  • It's All About Me: Concerned primarily with his own plans and desires, and while he pretends to care about others, he definitely doesn't.
  • Pride: Possibly his fatal flaw; he's so entitled because he just believes it's what he deserves and he's blind to his own flaws and unworthiness.

Not familiar with Warrior Cats, but here's my take on things.

Your villain seems like a tyrant wannabe, which is both a good and bad thing. But how often could you get him going beyond Evil Is Petty into more frightening things, depending on where you're going with the Fan Fic and tone of it?

Is he likely to try and kill Scaletail, if things really get worse for him.

How far does he go for Even Evil Has Standards?

Anyway, here's a villain from my work in progress:

Name Carla Izuchukwu

Age 26

Personality She's got a very Sugar-and-Ice Personality; abrasive to people who are bad or (literally) Kick the Dog or responds in kind to a Jerkass that way; really kind to her friends and family, and she's The Prima Donna at times. Has a moral compass.

Abilities Carla comes from a rich family in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and they're a Screw the Rules, I Have Money! family. Carla is great with technology and computers, and also has a knack for knowing about fashion as well, she's quite The Fashionista. Knows a lot about vehicles and is up-to-date on cookery and food trends. Good at cookery.

Weaknesses Has a need to eat and drink a lot; can be The Scrooge at times; claustrophobic, so hates small showers and bathrooms; Getting High on Their Own Supply (of sugary foods, since the work's kept G-rated); not liked by some people due to being from rich, controversial family locally.

Goals Wants to be liked by people, doesn't really have a best friend outside of her two older sisters (34 and 37) since her true best friend moved to London, England when she was 8 and not seen again since. Wants to be recognized on her own merits, not because of her family's surname or money.

Motivation Wants to be liked by people, feels no-one really likes her for who she is (even though the main protagonist does feel sorry for her).

Role in the story The Rival to Janey, one of the main characters

Backstory Born to a wealthy Igbo-American family from Parkersburg, she lived in Texas from ages 8 to 15, then moved back to Parkersburg aged 24 where members of the family live outside the city limits, after she established her own freelance business. She's also a glamor model, but her moral code and moral compass tries to stop Acquired Situational Narcissism. But other than that, not much else is known than what's mentioned above.

Relevant Tropes:

• Accents Aren't Hereditary: Has a Appalachian/Texan accent.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The original character was more of a Jerkass and spiteful, and went beyond Hate Sink.
• Ambiguous Disorder: Possibly has Asperger's Syndrome but not stated outright.
• Ambiguously Bi: Seems more interested in women, especially girly-girl types, canonically has shown little interest in men, for now.
• American Accents: Speaks with Appalachian accent mixed with Texan, creating a What the Hell Is That Accent?
• Anti-Villain: Not malicious, just misguided, and only hated due to being from a wealthy family who are controversial. When she does try and help people, it's genuine, but some people assume she's got ulterior motives and only doing it due to wealth. She's got no true friends outside of her sisters, and her only true friend was never seen again, and never contacted her again.
• Bare Your Midriff: Her default outfits are often sports bra or sports bra-style crop top and leggings. But she does this because it's what she likes wearing most, not for fanservice.
• Berserk Button: Quite a few, really:
  • Being called a tomboy or mistaken for one.
  • People who literally Kick the Dog by being cruel to animals.
  • People who assume the rich are one homogenous group of people.
  • Politicians who assume women are delicate
  • Feminists. She hates the feminists who claim the streets are unsafe for women and that catcalling should be banned, claiming "it's OK, I don't mind it, it shouldn't be a crime."
  • Being called Asexual. She hasn't found the right partner yet.
• Braids of Action: Although not that much of an Action Girl, she has it due to who she's based on.
• Cool Car: Owns three, but then again is from a wealthy family. Of note:
  • A 1993 Dodge Spirit 2.5 ES sedan, registered in WV
  • A 1987 Chrysler Daytona, Canadian-specification.
  • A 2008 Hyundai Sonata 3.3 V6 Limited in Dark Cherry Red, her daily driver.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She won't tolerate people who pick on disabled people and won't join in on this, and refuses to get involved in corruption that's not really suitable to describe for a Lighter and Softer setting. She has a moral compass, of sorts.
• Expy: In a way, to Kara Danvers of Supergirl (2015), as she has some similar characteristics, like:
  • Doesn't get drunk easily (although human).
  • A bit of a Cuddle Bug.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal (perhaps due to her slight eccentricities and not having many friends).
  • Nerd Glasses, like Kara.
• The Fashionista: But she's very choosy on things; also has an affinity for Fiorucci clothing like crop-tops etc.
• Girly Girl: Well, as girly as can be in terms of aesthetic and her interests in make up and fashion. Although her interests in technology and vehicles suggest she's a tomboy, she isn't.
• Harmless Villain: Hardly threatening as a villain, but she's only villainous out of misunderstanding not malice.
• Heel–Face Turn: She was never really evil anyway, but never quite villainous, yet went good anyway after making friends with the protagonists. Christmas was the Inciting Incident for this.
• Hidden Depths: Knows a fair bit about Slavic cookery and recipes, also an expert on certain things in Texan culture. Speaks some Bosnian she learnt from mom's wealthy Bosnian-American friend in Chicago, knows Bosnian recipes and makes an excellent tikvenjaca, a variant of burek, a Bosnian pastry.
• Hime Cut: In flashbacks, she's depicted as having this two years ago.
• The Juggernaut: Despite being 5"1, she's fairly tough and seems to not get hurt as much as you'd think; can withstand pain well.
• Lipstick Lesbian: In terms of women she's attracted to, always the feminine or "feminine but sporty" types.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Although it takes a long time to get there.
• Mixed Ancestry: She's a Nigerian-Japanese-Swedish-American from West Virginia. Born to a Nigerian-Swedish-American mom from Florida and a Japanese-American dad from Parkersburg, West Virginia who looks more white than Japanese, a la Dean Cain.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed / Textual Celebrity Resemblance: A younger version of Kecia Lewis physically, and without her Big Beautiful Woman features.
• Power Hair: She experimented with this, but it didn't quite work.
• Sexy Secretary: Another way she's seen dressed, but it's toned-down.
• The Scrooge: Miserly, but not 100% Scrooge-ish.

Edited by Merseyuser1 on Feb 28th 2022 at 11:40:19 AM

Here’s a retooling of a villain I had posted earlier. Is it any better or does it still suck?

Name: James Clark, The Astray Messiah.

Age: Mid 20s

Bio: The older brother of the main character, Alex. A fellow Hunter of Nightmares he ends up going insane halfway through the second game and gains the power to rewrite human cognition. He plans to become an all powerful dictator over mankind in order to erase the evils of free will and make people happy by forcing them to be happy.

Personality: He is a generally nice person but deep down is a broken and melancholic shell of a man with a nihilistic world view. His greatest desire is to make people happy which conflicts greatly with his belief that attaining happiness in life is impossible.

Abilities: Aside from his Halberd, which he can use as a bow, after becoming all powerful he adds power over the cognitive world to his arsenal.

Weaknesses: His conscious. He could kill or brainwash every hunter, including his brother, with little effort but he can’t bring himself to do that to his friends and family and only resorts to fighting when he has no choice.

Goals: He wants to end all pain and suffering and eliminate humanity’s capacity for evil and doesn’t care that doing so would mean becoming a dictator who eliminates all free will (which he believes is the source of all of humanity’s evil anyways)

Motivation: He lost his fiance tragically and was forced to witness to deaths of several of his comrades in a massacre of hunters a year prior to the series, implanting the idea that life is unhappiness. He also lost his sanity (later revealed to have been subject to Mind Rape and wasn’t truly in control of his actions) halfway through the plot.

Role in the story: He is the Big Bad of the second half of the plot and his actions are what drive it.

Backstory: He awoke to being a Hunter of Nightmares sometime before his brother did, and was a kindhearted person as well. However various traumatic events, concluding with the death of his fiance, led him to severe depression and nihilism (which he tries to hide as well as possible).

Relevant Tropes:

• Affably Evil: His niceness is completely genuine.
• A God I Am: He is themed around holy imagery, even prior to going insane.
• Anti-Villain: He wishes to make the world a happy place and is a genuinely nice guy, but firmly believes that humanity cannot be trusted with free will free will and is planning on removing it by force.
• Being Evil Sucks: Continuing with the series Central Theme, his turn to Anti-Villainy ruins what little happiness he had left and ultimately results in his death.
• Big Bad: Of the second half of the second game.
• Big Bad Slippage: He starts off as a determined and idealistic ally but slowly lost his idealism and lost himself to his depression before final losing his sanity.
• The Evils of Free Will: He firmly believes that humanity is incapable of handling free will without abusing it.
• Foreshadowing: There are many subtle hints towards his Face–Heel Turn.
  • His hunter attire is themed after holy imagery, the second game has a holy motif.
  • He’s noticeably more depressed than he was in the first game and lets some of his nihilism slip through.
  • Right before the Disc-One Final Dungeon there’s a scene of our main characters having a fortune reading from a Hunter themed around Tarot Motifs. He visibly tries to hide his result and sheepishly says it’s nothing before tossing it away. The camera pans over to show that it is either a “Death” or “The Tower” card (and the characters in this setting know what a Death card means).
• Hobbes Was Right: He wishes to become what amounts to a godly dictator because he believes that that’s the only way to make the world a happier place.
• Humans Are Bastards: Downplayed. He doesn’t think humans are inherently evil but believes that they cannot be trusted with free will and that it is the root of human suffering.
• Mind Rape: It’s later revealed that his idea of becoming a dictator was implanted in by the Greater-Scope Villain of the series, who used him as a front man for their goal of eliminating free will.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Downplayed. He’s quite to the levels of other villains in the series, but he has a dim view of humanity.
• Psychological Projection: He is so unhappy that he cannot comprehend the idea of other people being happy.
• Puppet King: If he had succeeded he would’ve been little more than a puppet of the Greater-Scope Villain’s will.
• Straw Nihilist: He cannot comprehend the idea of it being possible to be happy in life because he is unhappy and sees other people miserable constantly.
• The Lost Lenore: His fiancé’s death was one of the biggest contributing factors to his depression.
• Tragic Villain: In the end its implied that, deep down, he knows what he’s doing is wrong but can’t bring himself to give up the chance to create a perfect world. In the end he regains his sanity and commits what is implied to be a Suicide by Cop by attacking Alex after he loses his power.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He wants to eliminate unhappiness by forcing people to be happy and controlling their every action.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Ultimately he is a broken individual who is driven by the horrible trauma he has gone through to make a world where people cannot experience what he went through, not matter the cost.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Mar 16th 2022 at 1:45:32 PM

@The Living Drawing I honestly quite enjoy what you have here. There’s something incredibly tragic about someone striving to spread something that which they cannot obtain themselves (in this case, happiness). It’s also interesting that their veritable Heel–Face Turn occurs relatively late in the story. That’d be good to make it feel not shoehorned in as long as the foreshadowing is in place.

I guess it’s my turn now. * gulp *

Name: Jonathan “Cherry Boy” Capaldi

Age: 24(?)

Personality: Capaldi, for all his surface-level manic geniality and coarse witticisms, is basically a hyperviolent toddler in a man’s body. A Sadist thrill-killer who learned young that he really enjoyed killing, so much in fact he decided he would become as good at it as he could. He also showcases several mild vices beyond his sadism such as gaming addictions and a chronic need for highway speed. Absolutely shameless, Capaldia feels no need to gloat in others’ faces or prove his superiority through violence because for him violence is its own dopamine fix. Prone to hyper-aggressive temper tantrums when things don’t go his way.

Abilities: Capaldi is a terror of a stealth agent. He’s nearly perfected the art of cat-like stalking of his assigned targets (or conveniently unsupervised children) for either murder or kidnapping. In the former case, his honing of his “hobby” for violence means he can kill someone both as brutally yet quickly as possible.

Weaknesses: Capaldi’s reputation for his Mood-Swinger tantrums, wanton sadism and general mad dog nature is perhaps his greatest Achilles’ heel. Prior to his current mafia employment, no hitman agency or mob would hire him out of fear he’d turn against them like a rabid animal. Even then he’s only currently employed because his mafiosa nicknamed Venus believed such an unstable man would be easy to control and manipulate as well as needing an attack dog to make particular examples of people who cross her. His penchant for angry meltdowns when things don’t go according to plan also mean he can make critical mistakes in the heat of a moment.

Goals: One of the greatest joys in Capaldi’s life is snuffing the lives of others. His goal is to ensure he remains in the position he is in where he can freely indulge in his heinous hobby free from police interference.

Motivations: The driving force behind most of Capaldi’s behavior and a key part of his character is his chronic need for stimulation. He says that as a child he struggled with constant boredom since nothing felt enjoyable or exciting to him before he discovered the joy of murder. This is easily showcased by his antsy and tense behavior “off the job” in contrast to his usual maniacally bubbly self when he’s indulging himself in his life of mayhem or after riding a particularly good high.

Role in the Story: In-Universe Capaldi is the mafiosa Big Bad’s personal attack dog, meant to take out particularly high profile targets or to make examples out of people who try to leave the mob group. Narratively, he’s intended as one of the main sources of Nightmare Fuel and a showcase of how reprehensible the BBEG is for leaving him in her employment.

Backstory: Not much is known by others of Capaldi’s personal history. The only things he’s confirmed are his name, age and Italian-American descent. Everything else is subject to his flights of fancy depending on what he finds funniest at that moment (he considers claiming he killed his parents in their sleep the funniest of these interpretations).

Tropes:

• Ax-Crazy: And fucking how. A thrill-killer by nature who picked up his unsavory habits at a young age. He’s personally responsible for 16 reported missing persons cases across the US, 5 of which were young children.

• Because I’m Good at It : Capaldi originally took up sadism as a hobby, but jumped at the first chance he could to get hired when he learned he could be paid for wanton violence.

• Evil Feels Good: His primary motivation. He engages in such heinous activities simply because he finds it so difficult to find entertainment in tamer activities.

• Evil Is Petty: Capaldi is prone to exploding in anger when things don’t go his way the same way a child would. He also considers people interrupting his job unforgivable because he believes they seek to “keep him from having fun”.

• Lack of Empathy: The ability to empathize with others is a feature very notably absent from Capaldi’s psyche. He flat out admits that he views targets of his boredom as toys to break, or as presents for him to violently tear open. Perhaps most disturbingly, he genuinely can’t figure out why people would be so opposed to him killing others since he’s doing it for personal enjoyment the same way someone might take up painting or bird-watching.

• No-Nonsense Nemesis: A rather strange example of the trope. Capaldi is very much a quick and straightforward kind of hitman, but it’s less to do with professionalism and moreso because he simply finds Evil Gloating and Cold-Blooded Torture less fun than straight homicide (though he’s still quite fond of them).

• Psycho for Hire: Reconstructed in that while his Psycho status made it difficult for him to find work, it’s actually because of his frothing urge to maim that the Big Bad hired him for her nastiest assignments.

• Psycho Supporter: Ironically enough Capaldi is perhaps his boss’s most loyal underling. He takes great pleasure in fulfilling his boss’s hits and kill orders, and shows almost boundless initiative suggesting plans when they could potentially involve killing. He’s even aware that his boss is simply using him but admits he’d happily be her lap dog as long as she let him continue indulging his violent urges.

• Psychopathic Manchild: The main crux of Capaldi’s character. Not only is he a violent remorseless thrill-killer, he has the temperament of a spoiled toddler. He literally goes into kicking screaming tantrums when things don’t go his way and has a very selfish view of entertaining himself. More mildly, he also exhibits some stereotypically juvenile behavior. Capaldi detests the taste of alcohol and coffee, is repulsed by romantic intimacy the way a grade schooler would be scared of cooties and has a fondness for childish meals like dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.

He sounds like an excellent and unnerving villain. Especially the reconstruction of the psycho hitman.

Hm. Doesn't look like I have a previous profile to critique, so... here goes nothing.

Edited by DubhKafkaesque on Apr 24th 2022 at 3:49:03 PM

EDIT: Honestly seems pretty decent for his role. Though I think Hate Sink should be written to be more perspective (as in to clearly convey that is the intended audience reaction)

If crossover characters are allowed, than I do have something of an idea for a Madoka crossover.

Ahem, the following will describe a Witch from a Magia Record/Arknights/Generator Rex crossover I had, for context, it is an Original Generation Witch for a part of the story that is partly an adaptation of Arknights' Mansfield Break event, and as such is partly set in the eponymous prison. More of an obstacle than the actual villains, but still an antagonist.

• Name: K
• Age: Unknown
• Species: Witch
• Personality: I'm going for Law-obsessed jailer with Black-and-White Insanity, hellbent on punishing (what she perceives as) the wicked.
• Abilities and Appearance:
  • The body of the Witch would be a lighthouse esque tower with a single large eye on the top. (This is to reference the Panoption) with the tower's walls housing various blades, namely scalpels and pen-like swords. Her minions take the form of screens that surround the tower and give an illusion of an outer wall. The Labyrinth also has an environment evocative of the surface of the moon.
  • As for the abilities. Her unique powers entail carving the trade mark witch runes onto the flesh of her victims, carving their sins into them. These would slowly change the altered flesh into salt. As more and more crimes are inscribed, more of the victim's body would transform into salt. It initially affects only the skin (which would still leave nasty scars), but if the entire body if covered with her inscriptions, than it entirely transforms into salt outright, leaving behind only that and Empty Piles of Clothing. The minions in turn seek out such sinners and bring them to the core of the witch. Its labyrinth can envelop a wide range (including be able to envelop the entire prison), and it can distort distances resulting in those lucky enough to escape to wind up further or nearer than they had actually moved.
• Weaknesses: Puella Magi for starters. That aside due to her unique circumstances (located in a Hellhole Prison, a moving one at that, where magical girls have little* reason to even enter. Meaning that she is able to amass power and growth for who knows how long), as such she is formidable, but she can be tricked. She ignores people that are unconscious for a while and illusion magic and arts can fool her into going after the wrong target. The way her abilities work means that if she tries to inscribes the sins onto someone that isn't truly the target than it has no effect. And because the full effect requires the inscriptions to cover the entire body, suddenly gaining more mass (like say via a Doppel, or more likely, a victim suddenly going EVO) makes it more difficult for her to carve the inscriptions in. She also relies on her minions to bring their victims to her, and they are as easily tricked. She herself only "hangs out" in a certain location. Also, she is slow when it comes to the inscribing, so the victims have a chance of being saved from turning into salt.
• Goals: Her raison d'etre is again to bring the wicked to "justice". About as complex as the soul of a young girl metamorphosed into an embodiment of her despair needs to be.
• Motivation: General lashing out, really. Again, soul of a young girl metamorphosed into an embodiment of her despair here.
• Backstory: I'm keeping it simple and ambiguous. Kid meets an incubator, makes a wish, ends up framed for a crime heinous enough to warren incarceration in a mobile Hellhole Prison cut off from civilization most of the time and ends up in despair over the experiences she has in said prison.
• Relevant Tropes: The obvious ones are Tragic Monster, Eldritch Abomination, Cyclops, Our Liches Are Different and those already mentioned/potholed (Knight Templar, Black-and-White Insanity, Empty Piles of Clothing) but as for others I can think of...
  • All Crimes Are Equal: She will write people's crimes and sins on your back regardless of if they're Arson, Murder or Jaywalking.
  • Asshole Victim: Most of her victims. Due to being in a Hellhole Prison they include both criminals and crooked jailers.
  • Body Horror: Best case scenario from encountering her or her mooks? You get painful symbol shaped salted wounds. Worse case? Now you get to see how Lot's wife feels.
  • Flat Character: I bring this up because I intended her as a side antagonist, someone that must be dealt with, but not a driver of the plot, and also ebcuase I interpret Witches as a reduction of the puella magi into vessels of their despair and rage, and that any depth can only be derived from their former selves (that is to say the only "rounded" witches are those tied to an existing meguka) and their tragedies
  • Mechanical Abomination: As she is supposed to be a living prison tower.
  • Outside-Context Problem: For the prison, natch. They are aware of the salt piles and disappearances but they don't know why (and most do not care to find an answer). They aren't this to the meguka infiltrators or certain people they are helping escape. Conversely the nanites, and by extension EVOs of Generator Rex are a blind spot for her because the whole "suddenly gaining body mass" that comes with transforming into an EVO.
  • No Body Left Behind: The ultimate result for those unlucky enough to be covered in her scrawls.
  • One-Letter Name: Part of the Kafka reference ofc, but also done to further avoid confusion with an Arknights character nicknamed Kay.
  • Shout-Out Theme Naming: I have a Kafkaesque bent with this one, ans as such she has a counterpart (will prolly detail her later). Josephine. Both witches reference different Kafka stories separately, but together they are a feminized form of the name of The Trial protagonist Josepf K.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The general feel of her labyrinth should be execution chamber on the moon. The last bit is due to the name of a story that involves a guy transforming into a tiger and is called "The Moon over the Mountains". (plus it goes well with the salt)
    • The method of her punishments however, is supposed to evoke both the White Chlorination Syndrome and the Black Scrawl
    • Continuing the Kafka theme, she is supposed to be as much the execution machine from In The Penal Colony as she is a lunar cyclops panopticon.
  • Stealthy Colossus: Comes with being part of a "species" with Pocket Dimension as a standard ability, and being a decently sized tower.

* I say little, because well there obviously is a reason why meguka would want to enter a prison, but explaining that is outside the thread's scope for now.

I also have an actual (OC) villain concept related to this crossover that I will prolly share later, and who has a small role in the part of the concept where which witch appears.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 25th 2022 at 8:13:33 AM

Read the rules of the thread - the idea is, you critique the person above you as well as giving your own profile. Though, given the subject matter of my profile, if you said you really didn't want to I'd be understanding.

Sorry about that. I'm adding the critique now

EDIT: done. Again, I suggest more prescriptive language for the Hate Sink entry.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 25th 2022 at 8:11:20 AM

x3 @Morningstar1337

I have no knowledge of the source material you're referring to, so. She and her backstory remind me of an SCP, but not in a bad way. The salt power sounds creepy and unique.

New version of The Lightbearer's profile for Red Revenge because i've expanded on his characterization and figured out how exactly his backstory should go.

Real Name: Trevor Gesse

Code Name: The Lightbearer

Also Known As: Der Böse Sonne, Der Teufel, Lucifer (by people who don't like him, behind his back)

Age: 20-25 through the story (1940-1945), born in 1920.

Nationality: American, then German

Occupation: Artist, nazi supervillain, Reichsführer

Appearance: 6'0" and muscular, handsome and blond-haired with a prominent square chin, staight and narrow nose, and light blue eyes. He has burn scars on his back and shoulder from the lab explosion. His hair is straight and parted in the middle[1]◊. Generally looks like the nazi ideal.

His costume is a red enlisted infantryman's uniform M36◊ with hidden buttons and removed chest pockets, and a white horizontal chest line from collar to belt that has a nine-rayed black sun symbol. Tall pre-war marschtiefel boots, black SS belt with shoulder-strapped pouches seen on the Wikipedia photo of the uniform, black gloves, red M36 trousers, and a black schallernhelm/stahlhelm hybrid◊. Underneath the uniform, he wears semi-heavy armoring a normal person couldn't wear comfortably. The sword's black scabbard is on his back, like this video, attached to the pouches' shoulder straps.

• [2][3]

Equipment:

• Sword forged from halogium, which makes it almost all-cutting and indestructible.
• Assorted weapons like different handguns, knives, and rifles. He prefers a Browning Hi-Power as his sidearm.
• Utility belt in case of any emergencies and to put stuff in. It contains first aid materials, antidotes, and stuff like lock picks and grenades.
• The armor under his costume is made of light weight titanium and whatever the Axis had back then, which makes it capable of withstanding bullets. (Did they have those in 1930s?)
• His main mode of ground transportation is a FN M12 motorcycle captured from Belgium.

Goals: "Saving" the world by conquering it, making it adopt nazism, and killing everybody the nazis consider traitorous or genetically inferior. He also starts off wanting to prove his loyalty to the German nazis who suspect him because of his foreign background.

Motivation: Apparently genuine desire to "help" and "protect" people (or at least those people who matter), "bettering" and "saving" the world out of the "goodness" of his heart, desire to prove his loyalty to the nazis.

Role In The Story: The Heavy, Arch-Enemy, Big Bad

Edited by Nukeli on Dec 26th 2023 at 8:41:58 PM

It is interesting seeing the warped psychology going on in a Nazi Supervillain who isn't just all about chaos and destruction. He legitimately sees himself as "saving the world", and that's honestly terrifying. As far as he's concerned, he's the hero of the story, and the world would be better off under his authoritarian heel. He fits as a villain who thinks he's a well intentioned extremist at worst, when in reality he's probably regarded as the worst of the worst - in no small part because he can't recognize any wrongdoing in himself. Everything is excused by dint of his concept of saving the world.

And that is in my opinion something very interesting to explore.

• Name: Thagzuzael "The Thorned Augur" "Bone-Gnasher" "Hunter of the Light-Footed"

• Age: Born 1565 BC as a human. Ascended to Fiend status 1545 BC.

• Personality: Thagzuzael is a prickly and egotistic creature preoccupied with his hurt ego, revenge, and establishing his cult. He has a pronounced disdain for anything effeminate (perhaps psychological overcompensation?), he despises infants and children - and devours them whenever he can. He's quite openly predatory, and outright blames anyone he eats or kills for their own fate. Out of all the creatures associated with augury and prophecy, Thagzuzael is the most blatant about slanting the information in the direction of bad news for anyone he deems too weak to be worth it, delighting in the fear of their uncertainty. He has a habit of trying to bring people into his cult - and is surprisingly savvy about it even in the modern day despite being sealed in a rock for several thousand years. He's certainly adaptive, and skilled at finding a wedge issue. His cult most often venerates him as a symbol of the "divine masculine" - with the usual suspects of internet hate groups falling in with him whether they know it or not. For his part, he doesn't actually care about his new "friends", most often seeing them as pitiful wastes of skin who he hopes "learn something" from his example "though my hopes aren't high".

• Abilities: Thagzuzael is skilled in numerous rather ghastly forms of precognition - including the reading of fresh bones, entrails (human preferable to him), brains, and blood. In fact, this is the origin of his moniker "The Thorned Augur" - in that one had best bring a long, sharp "thorn" to meet with him. He makes extensive use in combat of the demonic ability to warp between the human mortal world, and the ethereal "Realm of the Gods" beyond, teleporting back and forth to achieve an effect like Teleport Spam. His claws are exceptionally sharp, and made for scraping down to the bone on anything, and his limbs can be extended pretty far. Like many demons, he can manipulate Mana directly, though he seems to prefer simple Beam Spam utilization rather than anything specialized. One particular skill he gained was "Shadow-Walking", letting him slip into someone's shadow and drain their life force passively - from which state he can emerge whenever he pleases. Demonic Possession is an option open to him to enrich himself, and it's mentioned out of all creatures of the Dark, Thagzuzael is particularly cruel to his hosts.

• Weaknesses: Due to the weapons used against him in Knossos, he's weak to a very specific kind of bronze - Greek-Fashioned Bronze weapons. His shadow-walking can be dispelled by any sufficiently bright light that gets rid of shadows. While he's a powerful Fiend, he's pretty challenge averse - should a person pose too much threat to him - largely via wielding his weaknesses against him, he's fond of retreating unless that option is off the table. Note that pushing him too far erases this weakness.

• Goals: In ancient times, he menaced the Mycenaean period with a pair of fellow monsters out of vengeance for the downfall of the Minoan Civilization, which he regarded as his home - and a fine gravy train that "kept me well fed. Nobody - nobody - takes my food from me." In more modern times, he wants to re-establish his cult, and make his home somewhere.

• Motivation: He used to be an impoverished, poor child who often went hungry, hence his aversion to going without food. There's a certain entitlement in him after years of experiencing the good life as a powerful Fiend involved in Minoan sacrifices to keep living that good life.

• Role in the story: Big Bad Duumvirate in the ancient times - leading an Umbral Horde Warband consisting of himself, Verthur the Unbound, and Malaghed the Builder. Interestingly, their differing goals and ideas drove a splintering that led to the team up dissolving. In the modern day, Thag is usually the religious figurehead of some cult or organization, pretending to simply provide inspiration to them when in reality he's exerting his influence in more subtle fashions while "hunting" during the night.

• Backstory: Thagzuzael used to be a human Minoan boy who - in the course of his hunger - feasted on an unusual thing he found in the countryside, thinking himself about to die of his need. This "thing" turned out to be the corpse of a Great Fiend, one of the native creatures to the darker end of the "Realm of the Gods" where the warring 8 Umbral Gods and 8 Light Gods dwelt. Getting little attention from them, Thagzuzael returned to the mortal realm to a priestess. She interpreted him as a gift of the gods, and he was given an auspicious role - disposing of human sacrificial tissue. The worthy bits gifted to the Gods, the rest "consigned to Thagzuzael". The Greek civilizations however did not take kindly to being used as sacrifices for their Cretan overlords, and ultimately Thagzuzael only escaped vengeance by Theseus through leaping into the Realm of the Gods. He stayed there long enough and returned to begin his plans for revenge. He met up with the Demons Verthur the Unbound and Malaghed the Builder, forming a tripartite alliance called the Devilboon Compact, devoted to destroying all Greek cities in the entire peninsula. However, the team up dissolved due to mutual differences - with only Thagzuzael-aligned forces remaining in Greece. This let several shamans seal him in a stele after several more incidents. Which is where he remained until he was able to influence a group of "Male Supremacists" into freeing him in the more modern day. He more or less instantly asserted his authority and became a recurring villain.

• Relevant Tropes:

• Asshole Victim: It's pretty difficult to feel bad for his underlings who end up on the receiving end of his Bad Boss tendencies. They did choose to release him, venerated him before his release, and openly talked him up as a path toward realizing their ideas.
• Bad Boss: Thagzuzael is not a kind leader;
  • When one of his new lieutenants questions him on why they're "slumming it up in a cave" (in reality Thagzuzael's "Garden of Waste"), Thagzuzael instantly disembowels him with his claws, lets him languish with "his innards as his outtards" for ten minutes, and only when he's at the brink of death does Thagzuzael heal him.
  • He's quite fond of throwing minions into harm's way to distract the heroes from his real objectives. When that same lieutenant asks why he's not concerned, he just flashes his claws as a Call-Back...and then blithely responds, "It's 2022, and I have thousands more of you celibates I can force into service. You're a resource I can't easily run out of."
  • Even giving them a blessing is him more or less pushing his superiority on his underlings. He creates a concoction for them to drink for a power boost through patronage. When Reiji asks what's in the concoction, he giggles, states it's partly bull urine, and admits it's a fitting display of his authority that he makes his underlings literally drink overheated piss to gain anything from their link to him, a link he gains a lot more from due to setting rules about devotion.
  • And finally, when he's asked why he seems to hate his own mooks so much, he states he doesn't. He does what he does not out of hate, but out of pure amusement. "If they leave, I'll kill them. If they stay, they suffer and learn to accept pain to gain what they want."
• Badass Boast: "I am ancient, child. I walked the Earth with Demigods and Heroes, struck blows upon divine armor, and you diminutive shits are about as potent by contrast as a sacrificial goat."
  • "When I'm done with you, I'm going to beat your little friend to death with your carcass, and then you both end up as my dinner and desserts, respectively."
• Berserk Button: Greeks. "As soon as this war is done, I fully intend to acquire an army, and raze the entirety of Greece to the ground. End to end. My utter indignity must be avenged."
• Blasphemous Boast: When No Selling an exorcism; "You'll need more than a self important, squealing son of a bitch and his insipid book of fables to force me out of here!"
• Bling of War: Fond of his golden embroidered robe and armor. However, all that time in the stele heavily degraded it, pissing him off even more.
• Cold Ham: Fond of grandiose language and over the top actions...while being restrained, monotone, and barely betraying the utter hate beneath the surface.
• Child Eater: He prefers his meat veal, let's put it that way. Historically, he even got so caught up in his depraved actions while literally slurping up intestines, the enraged citizens of Argos beat ten shades of tar out of him before he could escape back to the Realm of the Gods.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: He makes a lot of noise about evading his weaknesses...usually. But when he's pushed into a corner, he stops giving a shit and fights furiously.
• The Dreaded: He's actually an urban legend around the areas he used to terrorize, though changed a bit. He's known as "Mr. Fangface", who supposedly eats runaways and naughty children - with an arbitrary time when he comes out and goes away, and that saying the Orthodox prayers can banish him. The time thing and the prayer weakness were added later and are utter inaccuracies. Prayer can't save you from Thagzuzael.
• Fangs Are Evil: He has a mouth full of fangs, sharp enough to break a mana-reinforced sword with light pressure.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Averted. He's completely lucid though tranquilly furious after being locked in that stele for so long.
• Heaven's Devils: Despite the antipathy between the Gods of pagan religion and the Light and Dark Pantheons, Zeus / Jupiter still reaches out and acquires Thagzuzael for use against Argos in vengeance for Apollo's son. Thagzuzael himself doesn't care about the son, just that he gets some food.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Despises anything feminine, and is in fact treated as a deity by several different reactionary groups in different guises. He can even appear to them in a way that would appeal to them.
• Irony: When he was a human, he had Pretty Boy features before his Fiend days, and it's implied he was a lover to an older man. He didn't seem unhappy with this, and it seems he only came by his reactionary beliefs later.
  • Interestingly, he has utterly no problem allying with Dragoness Rajka as one of the Ten Pointed Star group members. He addresses it, saying he finds nothing about her feminine as far as he's concerned.
  • There is a layer of irony in how much of a Bad Boss he is, and the way he treats his mooks in relation to how his mooks want to treat women and those they look down on. More or less, they're being treated the same way by Thagzuzael that they want to treat other people simply by dint of the same justification they use: he's more powerful than they are.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Thagzuzael is a human-eater, and is very open about what he prefers in the same way a person might discuss his favorite kind of burger or what kind of cooked meat he prefers.
• Instant Expert: Downplayed, but he figures out modern day conveniences and concepts remarkably quickly. He even innovated a demon summoning malware that would let him get into any place it infected.
• No Cure for Evil: Averted. Thagzuzael knows how to heal people - and himself. Largely so his obscene punishments don't end up as lethal ones.
• Our Monsters Are Different: He's a Fiend, not a Demon. Fiends are Dark Aligned Abyssal Creatures without a single patron Dark God, and are distinct from and immune to standard Anti-Demon Measures. "Ahh, an exorcism. How quaint. I just don't find the power of your Christ all that compelling." He resembles a red, black and gray skinned gargoyle-like creature with a natural crown-like formation of horns, gash-like glowing red eyes, and a mouth full of fangs.
• Pet the Dog: He knew where the food was coming from, and tried to preserve the Minoans as best he could. When he got a prophecy about the Minoan Eruption, he tried to warn them to evacuate. His bosses ignored his warning out of hubris.
  • Thagzuzael had no reason to be half as nice as he was in guaranteeing Reiji's escape during the last part of the War in Sandfield by covering the rear guard.
• Picky People Eater: He won't just eat anybody - in a way, he's like a human with preferences about their meat. He won't eat prostitutes, druggies, or old people. The meat "tastes funny" in the former two, and the elderly are too "stringy".
• Politically Incorrect Villain: A self appointed overseer of masculinity and presentation - he goes after people who deviate primarily as a matter of opportunity. He views any degree of femininity in men as a fault that needs ironing out, and it could be said he embodies toxic, literally predatory masculinity.
• Sophisticated as Hell: He takes on a cold, though grandiose speaking pattern...and rather than flowery speech, he is incredibly profane. "For eons I have rested within that stele, watching the world go by, seeing each one of you pathetic motherfuckers flounce on by until I found someone receptive to my mental communication. And now that I am free, I am in the mood to feast."
  • "Let this be an object lesson. Fuck up again, Alexander, and I will carve out your gods-damned intestines inch by inch." (pathetic whimpering by Alexander) "You pitiful cunt. Pick yourself up off the floor, you're embarrassing me."
• Spikes of Villainy: He's called The Thorned Augur for more than one reason. He has a lot of spikes all over his body, on his shoulders, growing out of his head as a makeshift crown, and one on each elbow.
• The Starscream: The purpose of the "Ten Pointed Star" group he formed with 9 other Demonic Creatures and transmogrified humans. As he sees it, Caine Dekeren - the Big Bad of New Dawn IV - is obviously insane and ill-suited for the role he got. He can't do what he wants openly, but they can engineer a challenge if they get enough support.
• Super-Empowering: He can bestow his boon upon someone via a rather grotesque, bubbling mix of his own blood and...other things. It's completely horrid, but it absolutely does work. Doing so also gives him a benefit in turn.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His reactionary cult doesn't terribly impress him with their mental abilities. "...How long, perchance, did any of you stay in school? Any college graduates?"
• Tranquil Fury: Upon being freed, he simply murmurs "At...long...last. Freedom from that miserable stone." When the Magical Museum Curator tries to stop him, the violence he inflicts is shocking and vicious, speaking to his anger at being imprisoned even if he isn't screaming and ranting.
• Villain Team-Up: In antiquity, Thagzuzael, Verthur, and Malaghed. Interestingly, rather than betraying each other, they split due to disagreements on what they wanted to do with their conquest after they're done. Thagzuzael wanted to raze everything in revenge. Verthur wanted to ensure some Greeks escaped off to the coastal areas to make for even more wars in time. And Malaghed wanted to force the Mycenaeans into being part of his theoretical city-state of Malakhia. When the differences proved too much, they agreed to split the war force. Thagzuzael stayed - but got overwhelmed in time. Malaghed briefly sieged Troy before continuing off toward Arabia. And Verthur went north and ultimately was vanquished for good fighting the ancestors of modern day Russians.
  • In the modern day, the Ten Pointed Star alliance, with explicit The Starscream intentions.
• Villainous Glutton: One of his less shown weaknesses in the modern day is that he gets kind of carried away when he's too hungry, and fails to notice his surroundings.
• Villainous Valor: Vile piece of shit he may be, but when faced with a reborn Theseus wielding all his Kryptonite Factors, rather than slink away he fights back as best he could. While he's sent sprawling back to the abyss, left to lick his wounds, Theseus can't contribute as much to the next fight.

Edited by NickTheSwing on Jul 8th 2022 at 1:39:39 AM

I have an idea about making the chosen one of my setting one of my main bad guys, ending up corrupted because his status as the one destined to save the world convinced him that he could do no wrong and that every action, no matter how horrible, would help to accomplish a perfect world.

Seems like one of those over-the-top Love to Hate Creepy Awesome villains, he has potential.

An interesting concept, though somebody probably already tried it.

Welcome, fine young sinner-to-be, to Endroad Academy! The finest Academy of Evil in The Multiverse! Here you will learn all the tricks of the trade when it comes to being a villain, whether it be launching your Evil Plan, managing your empire, or defense against the defense against the dark arts. Everybody has a little evil inside of them, which means that everyone is welcome in our dark halls!

Yes, I am doing this entire thing in-character as an old-timey enrollment video.

Age: The academy has been around for much longer than any other school in The Multiverse . We have guided villainy towards its inevitable victory long before the dawn of mankind, teaching the worst of the worst their tools of the trade! However, for security reasons, we cannot tell you their names or anything like that, so please Take Our Word for It.

Personality: While campus ground may look foreboding, students will find that it's quite friendly once you get past the surface. Endroad prioritizes the idea that Evil Is One Big, Happy Family, and as such disfunction amongst our student body will not be tolerated. There is to be no bullying, crime, or hatred on school property, but it’s perfectly fine to do those things off-campus.

Abilities: Fear not aspiring villain, Endroad has your back! We’ll help you out with your gadget building and Nebulous Evil Organization management! You also have the option to permanently dorm at Endroad in case you want a change of scenery after your Dark and Troubled Past.

Goals: We here at Endroad have one mission, to raise the next generation of villains, sinners, crooks and other such ne'er-do-wells!

Role in the story: We are the setting for quite the novel! Its Villain Protagonist train in these very halls!

Backstory: Let's just say you have a Dark and Troubled Past, you are corruptible or are just straight-up bad, regardless of what brought you here, we thought that you would make for a great villain! We then sent you a Black Cloak messenger over to your location and brought you here! You then chose one of our SLCs (Supervillain, The Scholomance, Spatial Endroad Coalition, Spectre Sector, Scares United, The Snatcher Underworld or the Science Division) and then went on your mery way!… hey, nobody said it had to be OUR backstory, bozo!

Now that you have made it through the school introduction, we welcome you to the world of villainy! This is Endroad Announcement Guy signing off!

That commercial sounds like an introduction for RP signup thread.

It isn’t, I just thought I’d have some fun with this.

• Name: Ayul Doulcang
  • Nicknames: "The Worldbreaker", "The Dragonlord", "King of Disasters".

• Age: Born 3835 BCE. Ascended to Demonhood at 3800 BCE.

• Personality: Ayul Doulcang's personality is informed by his status - he's the first bandit leader in history, plundering, burning and destroying while hoarding belongings to himself - this draconic attitude made him the subject of the interest of Varancain - the Dark God of Dragons. Ever since his ascension, he desired to prove his power against adversaries who can challenge him - and should his foes prove lacking, he took that as invitation to burn everything of the foes, their homelands, and their belongings - as a warning to the next ones. In many cases, the mysterious fiery destruction of a city or location is actually the King of Disasters visiting his displeasure. He will however always ensure there are refugees, refusing outright to hurt those who flee his destruction - for a brutally pragmatic reason: he wants more destruction, and to induce calamity, so he of course needs people to spread the news of his deeds. However, more than 5000 years after the "glory days" of his ascension, it's become clear that the adversaries of the Dark Gods are more keen to imprison or push him away, rather than give him the all out destructive World War he desires. Ayul thus until a certain point languished on Mount Washington - casually inducing the severe weather the place is known for. He's in something of a depressive mood, and tries to get drunk often - only to find that even the strongest Magic Side brews can't get him beyond "pleasantly tipsy". Rather than blood sacrifice, he requires his Dragon Cult underlings to give him booze in exchange for learning how to approximate dragonhood. He is however very diligent in regards to the Dragon Cult. As cruel as he is to his adversaries, to utterly sadistic levels, he's surprisingly caring and diligent to his capable allies while being harsh to the lacking. He is called "Pioneer of the Dragon Cult" for a reason, being the one who facilitated ascension rather than his uncaring and all encompassingly cruel Godly Backer. There is an element of alienation in him toward Varancain, seeing the one who turned him into a Demon Dragon as "more given to hurting everything than leading the cult he inadvertently inspired". He has utterly no patience for erratic or lacking leadership, viewing it as a disservice - not even hesitating to go against even the head of the greater Umbral Horde if he feels the leadership is conducted badly.

• Abilities: He is a gigantic dragon with four wings, which itself - between his incredibly tough scales and powerful form make him a fearsome prospect on offense and defense. His claws are capable of crushing most armor like paper, and ripping through magical reinforcement similarly easily. His wings can create typhoons, tornadoes, and tsunamis - simply by undulating the muscles in the wings. He has six different breath weapons - a laser beam, a hideously deadly fire breath, a twister, an icy blizzard breath, a life-withering black gust breath, and a magic eroding gray breath. He also has the ability to coat his claws in lightning bolts, and can conjure a massive lightning bolt held in one claw - but he can escalate this further, being able to turn his lightning red for a powerful glaive, a fantastic nuke that causes massive devastation, and a scythe he can perform a sort of flying dance with around the area. He can also coat himself in the red lightning for a desperation move - basically, the giant dragon covers himself in an even bigger lightning dragon with six wings, while the weather goes absolutely ballistic.

• Weaknesses: Any attack that gets past his scales and hits his organs can stun him for...a certain amount of time. However, the amount of time he's stunned decreases each time it happens. He's also not exactly nimble - being so big, he relies on tanking more than dodging. It usually works because he's a legendary class of monster. Not many things can hurt him.

• Goals: Find a point where he can actually be pushed and challenged while he engages in destruction. He wants a devastating, all out brawl to satiate his selfish dream. He also gets the goal as things go along to work with The Pentagram to supersede Caine Dekeren - the designated leader of the Umbral Horde he's supposed to be serving in.

• Motivation: He feels a sense of dissatisfaction - destruction on this scale shouldn't be so easy. He loved being a bandit because of the sheer thrill of the contest between himself and the magistrates that sought to bring him down, and the damage he could do in the course of it. His hoard doesn't bring him quite as much joy when there's nobody trying to reclaim it. "Dragonhood should be a story of two - the vicious beast, and the knights he fights."

• Role in the story: Greater-Scope Villain of side material, eventual Big Bad.

• Backstory: Ayul Doulcang is one of the Six Paragons, legendary demons who embody the ideals of their patron Dark God as observed in early humanity. Ayul Doulcang is the first bandit lord, a destructive figure that razed fields and massacred livestock and people alike - just to lure in his adversaries for the love of the game. He was a living blight as a human - at the moment of death, Varancain introduced himself to the human, and granted him the new name "Ayul Doulcang", turning him into the King of Disasters that spread calamity across the world. Later on, he encountered people seeking him out - clad in armor emulating dragon scales and horns. They venerated his disasters, and sought to emulate his destructive power, but explained they received no answer from "Master Varancain". Ayul Doulcang - unlike his cold patron - gave them their path to Dragon Emulation, formally creating the Dragon Cult despite being regarded as little more than a living natural disaster. Over time, his enthusiasm for random destruction dipped as he realized he was getting no challenge out of this. The chase he relished in with the early magistrates was replaced with stalling till the Mages fighting him could seal him off for a time, or push him elsewhere. Eventually, he let himself settle on to what would become Mount Washington - receiving his pilgrims from the Dragon Cult, and casually inducing the severe weather conditions. He only got interest in what was to come when Caine Dekeren used his status as Umbral Grandmaster to bring him in.

• Relevant Tropes:

• Arch-Enemy: Hooboy. Start at the descendants of people whose homelands he's razed. Go around the block a few dozen times.
• Asskicking Equals Authority: The Dragon Cult was most impressed by him - mostly for the sheer scope of his destructive abilities. The way he ended up treating them came a bit later.
• Bad Boss: Played with: he's remorselessly demanding, and will fry up underperformers who aren't at least trying to get better. But at the same time, he's far more involved with the Dragon Cult than his own deity - who really should be more present. He's also flown in to rescue his underlings before, and even told them not to beat themselves up.
• Breath Weapon: He possesses six of them, though it seems either the laser beam or the fire breath are the deadliest. In story, he takes out a whole mountain in the process of killing an entire army contingent, followed by a massive skyward explosion.
• Broken Pedestal: He had high hopes for Caine, due to the sheer gall of summoning him for the Umbral Horde gathering. Nobody's done that in forever...only to discover Caine was bafflingly insane, and was leading by way of references to tabletop gaming and literature. "No. No no no. No. This isn't right. There needs to be a more concrete idea of leadership."
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Once he has his eye on you, the ensuing violence is usually painful, one-sided, and brutal.
• The Dreaded: Ayul Doulcang is widely feared in the Magic Side - and even the Mundane World unwittingly fears him due to the weather brought about in his home base. When he arrives, he brings stormclouds. When he fights it starts raining lightning bolts. Even those who regard him as their archenemy view him with a combination of begrudging fear and respect. No Umbral Grandmaster has dared call on him for hundreds of years, despite being in their right to do so. His entrance is marked by a Crack in the Sky, and anyone who knows what that means is usually panicking.
• Dark Messiah: Is viewed as something of a religious figure by the Dragon Cult, who rely more on his guidance than that of Varancain.
• Dragons Are Demonic: At least, a subset of them. The Dark God of Dragons gives rise to Demon Dragons, most often dark scaled Dragons themed after natural disasters. Ayul Doulcang however is the first one, and is white rather than black. Indeed, he's more or less a Demonic Dragon Demi-god.
• Drowning My Sorrows: A loss of challenge in this case. He misses the "good ol' days", as it were. But he can't get drunk as easily, and even the strongest liquors out there only succeed in making him feel a little bit tipsy. It can get...frustrating. Even still, he tries - to the extent that the exchange for lessons in the Dragon Cult is, rather than blood sacrifice, powerful magical booze.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Dislikes Nerkhun the Corpse King, a thanatophobe that does all sorts of vile and gross things to evade death. "There are six Paragons. Not seven. Do not group me with that coward."
  • He also has no patience for Caine, and harshly critiques Antonius for compromising with him - though from a position of respect.
  • In the middle ages, when the petty kingdom he'd set up near is revealed to be sacrificing its peasant virgin girls to him not to stall until they had a plan or a superweapon ready - but instead just to keep their capital citizens and nobility safe. He promptly kills the crown prince trying to offer him another girl with a blast of lightning. "I am not impressed."
• Fantastic Nuke: Plunging a "Lightning Disaster Stake" into the ground full on induces a nuclear cluster of explosions spreading out from the impact site.
• First Of Its Kind: The very first Demon Dragon of Varancain - white scaled, rather than black, and on top of that, a Paragon.
• Giant Flyer: So big in fact the rest of the Paragons regularly ride him to their destinations when all are called upon. It's something of a power move, showing exactly the nature of the Paragons and their scale.
• Gold and White Are Divine: He's a white scaled dragon with black highlights and golden wings...and is known as "The King of Disaster" for a very good reason. Played straight however for the Dragon Cult, who venerate him as the paragon of their uncaring deity.
• Hidden Depths: Under the destructive monster is a surprisingly capable mind. He's also not fond of letting his underlings get murdered or excessively maimed in fights.
• Hostile Weather: Part and parcel of his powers. Him just being somewhere tends to make the weather go berserk.
• Kaiju: He's easily on the scale of a giant monster, and usually dwells atop a stormy mountain.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: The giant dragon literally burning the skin and flesh of a man off, to where a gruesome skeleton is all that remains is usually horrible. But Father Ezekiel was continuously awful for a long time - and he initiated his own doom by attempting to vanquish Ayul Doulcang with prayer alone.
  • "Severely not impressed."
• Nuclear Nasty: In a way. All of the Demon Dragons are based on disasters. Such as Ancilus the Flame Typhoon, and Gieragilles the Spiteful Earthquake. Being Varancain could see what was to come, he made Ayul Doulcang to be themed around the only man-made disaster - a nuclear event.
• The Older Immortal: The second oldest of the Paragons. Only Wrathark Chaos is older than him.
• Person of Mass Destruction: It says a lot that a number of ancient disasters were in fact Ayul Doulcang going on a rampage when he defeated a group of adversaries from that location.
• Physical God: More or less. Without Varancain physically being in the picture, he's the closest thing.
• Shock and Awe: Coats his claws in electricity, induces massive thunderstorms, and can create lightning weaponry to wield. While most Demon Dragons make use of the trope, Ayul is easily the exemplar.
• Shout-Out: He's very much an "Elden Ring Dragon" - using lightning, and visually resembling an Ancient Dragon.
• Super-Toughness: A full on Marathon Boss if there ever was one.
• Villainous Friendship: He and the other Paragons, despite all serving different gods, are close. Averted with Nerkun, the "Seventh Paragon" - who Ayul contends does not deserve the designation.
• Villainous Rescue: In an Evil Versus Oblivion sort of way. Ayul Doulcang acted as Matthew and co's ride after their first ride got torn to pieces, getting them to the Blessed Tear as things got apocalyptic in Book III. He then killed off all of the "Nightmare Beasts" swarming around it.
• Villain Team-Up: Upon realizing Caine was a few pages short of a full book, Ayul Doulcang teamed up with The Pentagram, becoming their demonic patron. Later on, when the Pentagram is mostly beaten, he and the legendary Russian witch Baba Yaga form an alliance - both having the same adversaries so it didn't make sense for them to fight each other.

Edited by NickTheSwing on Jan 10th 2023 at 8:29:20 AM

@ Nick The Swing:

I saw this come up a while back but couldn't really find the time or words to really give thoughts on it. But here I am, and I definitely have things to say.

Something I love about your villains is that they are just so awesome and over-the-top. These are larger than life figures, like reading something out of a tall tale or an outright legend. Regardless of whether I recoil at their evil deeds or am slightly admiring of their overall power and command of their followers, it remains the same.

Yes, I'm glad you got out of the way that Ayul is an "Elden Ring Dragon" because that is exactly what I was thinking when I heard of his description. And hey, it's fine! I like Elden Ring's take on dragons; Fromsoft's dragon design inspired my own dragons, so you are in good company.

What I think I like most about Ayul is that, despite what he is, it is very easy to see the man he was in his mortal days. It varies by case of course, but a lot of times when a mortal man ascends to a higher plane, he loses some of what makes him the person he was before. But not in this case; if anything, it seems like he's very much joined who he was before with what he is now.

I didn't comment too much on his powers and abilities since I could go on for a long time about them, but they are good and certainly befitting of his status.

Apart from that, all I can say is that I also like that this world has such a deep lore and recognizable characters. I actually understood who some of these people were and their place, via other things you've posted over the years. Good job!

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jan 19th 2023 at 8:35:58 AM

Oh, here I go posting again after all this time. More Kishlaith stuff, although not particularly close to what I was posting before.

• Name: Type 3 Vampires

• Age: They have haunted Kishlaith for around 1,944 years. Individually their ages differ due to there being 35 of them in total (though thanks to the Guild of the Triumvirate this has been changed to 33).

• Appearance:

Their individual appearances seem to differ due to them being a collection of 35 humans, dwarves and Thasmians of all ages. On first glance they seem no different than any other mortal inhabitant of the world's Sister Continents. However, this is merely a clever guise that they can rapidly shed. In their true shape Type 3 vampires are monstrous Bat People with red flayed-looking skin, pointed ears and eyes that are deeply set in large sockets and radiate a glaring light. Their height and general shape can vary depending on what race they once were. A formerly human or Thasmian Type 3 vampire may stand fourteen feet tall and be bipedal while a dwarven Type 3 will be ten feet tall and have a more quadrupedal stance.

• Personality:

Their personalities vary of course, but the selection process involved in creating Type 3 vampires ensures that they have several traits in common. They are incredibly selfish individuals; each Type 3 is intensely focused on the advancement of their personal goals to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. They tend to view those around them in rigidly set categories—-tools to be used to fulfill their desires or indulge their whims, faceless cattle to be ignored until they become the former category, or food and fuel for their powers.

Because of this outlook, Type 3s can commit a gamut of atrocities without remorse, even when given a front-row seat to suffering caused by their actions. Some scoff at the very idea of feeling empathy for lesser beings, while others see themselves as uniquely entitled to the ability to move forward at the expense of others. Finally, others among their ranks simply do not even think to consider anyone else's point of view but their own and will become irritated and puzzled if it the subject is broached. While they already had these personality traits prior to becoming vampires, the vast array of powers that come with Type 3 vampirism have encouraged and inflated their malignant behaviors.

Even Type 2 vampires are not immune to being targeted, used, and thrown aside by Type 3s. Many of those with the Red King’s gift see their lesser brethren as their property due to the fact that the first Type 2s were created by necromancers as an attempt to gain favor from the founding vampire. As his chosen, it is only natural that they take advantage of this gift that has been presented to them, regardless of the fact that the lesser vampires in existence now are not even related to the originals made so long ago. Other Type 3s do not even put that much thought into it—Type 2s are weaker than them, and so they can be dominated and made into servants. It does not help that many Type 2s play right into their hands—they share the common ignorance about the existence of Type 3 vampires and often react with awe and reverence when seeing these legends standing before them.

Despite the way they treat mortals and even other vampires, Type 3s do not have a particularly healthy view of one another either. Unlike the Type 2 and even the Type 1 vampires of Kishlaith, they have little to no solidarity. Each Type 3 sees the others as competition or simply wonders what way their peers will attempt to use or exploit them. They are civil to each other for the most part but are always wary and standoffish. In fact, genuinely friendly relationships between them are so rare that only a single example exists, and this bond was formed prior to the couple’s encounter with the founding vampire.

Their relationship with their master the Red King, the founding vampire is even more complicated. All Type 3s see him as the source of their power and are grateful to him for having bestowed them with seemingly limitless strength and immortality. However, as befitting the people the founding vampire chose, they chafe under their inherent lack of freedom under his reign. His effortless command over their lives and casual intrusion into their most secretive and intimate thoughts have instilled a deep resentment in them. If that wasn’t reason enough, many of them rage against the limit the King has placed on the amount of time they can be active in the world before being forced into hibernation. All of these complaints are fertile ground for thoughts of rebellion in some of the most self-assured of their kind...

• Abilities:

Type 3 vampires possess an inexhaustible stamina; unlike Type 2 vampires who must hide and sleep with the coming of the sun and even living mortals who grow tired throughout the day, a Type 3 will never know physical exhaustion. They are extremely strong and fast and can fly for miles at high speeds without needing to stop. Their strength and speed, when combined with the Absurdly Sharp Claws of their true form lets them tear apart the bodies of others like wet tissue paper, even if the target is clad in heavy body-armor.

Their strength aside, their supernatural gifts are why so many of Kishlaith's legends have cast them as an invincible deathless scourge. When a chosen person ingests the Red King's blood, their flesh and bone is eaten away and replaced with that blood—-the body of every Type 3 vampire is an amorphous collection of the Red King's blood, surrounding the disembodied soul of something that was once a living mortal. This means that they can shift and alter their physical form in many ways. Examples include hardening their skin into unyielding armor, extending their claws, exuding a storm of razor-sharp blood spikes to tear apart hordes of enemies or releasing a massive cloud of crimson mist that causes all who breathe it to suffer massive internal bleeding.

Their regenerative power is just another facet of this state of being. Type 3s are vulnerable to conventional weaponry and magic but even the most grievous wounds will be restored within seconds due to their bodies simply making or stealing more blood to act as mass. Even if their body is entirely destroyed, the soul of a Type 3 will simply assemble a new one in minutes, either from the blood of nearby victims or by drawing blood from the Red King.

Just as they can sculpt and mold their bodies for combat and regeneration, Type 3s can also use this ability to assume their former appearances before the Red King bestowed his gift upon them. Unlike Type 2 vampires these imitations of their old bodies show no signs of any abnormality, allowing them to pass undetected among the multitudes.

Type 3s have none of the weaknesses seen in Type 2 vampires. The light of the sun is harmless to them, garlic does not burn them or protect against their brand of mind-control, and being shot or stabbed with a wooden implement makes no more difference to them than any other weapon. They are not repelled by symbols of the the Corpse Hound, but such symbols do tend to make them irrationally irritated.

Although they lack the Type 2 ability to hypnotize the living via simple eye contact, their most terrifying power makes up for it. By deeply concentrating, a Type 3 vampire can unleash a horrifying scream that can rewrite the minds of all who hear it and turn them into slaves addicted to the commands of their masters for the rest of their lives. Unlike the relatively simple ways to protect against hypnosis from a Type 2, there is no protection against this except to somehow to cancel out one's own hearing.

Finally, Type 3s are immortal. They not age, allowing them to exist for centuries. Because of this, many of them have gathered vast knowledge of Kishlaith by simply living through the passage of ages. Historical facts that are lost to time, important locations forgotten by the masses, buried treasures, spells and rituals that have been pushed into obscurity by the Mage's Guild...all these things—-and more—-are theirs to know and share with whom they choose. Dangling the lure of lost wealth, secrets and power has allowed several of them to attract willing followers without the use of their mind-control scream or physical intimidation.

• Weaknesses:

Though they of themselves, and not unjustifiably, as immortal and invincible, Type 3 vampires are not without their weaknesses and drawbacks. All Type 3 vampires, regardless of how powerful and ambitious, are eternally bound to their progenitor, the Red King. Because their souls are encased in his blood, he can read their minds, witness what they see, discern their locations, and even kill them remotely with a thought.

This last fact haunts the minds of all Type 3 vampires—-that the founding vampire will grow bored of them, and strip them of his blood, leaving their soul at the mercy of the Corpse Hound so he can find a new chosen one to entertain him. Although the Red King usually allows his minions to roam free and do as they desire, any command from him must be obeyed, and all Type 3s know they exist according to his whims.

Despite their immortality Type 3s do not have indefinite time to enjoy the wonders of Kishlaith. Each Type 3 vampire can only be active for a span of twenty-five years before they are forced into hibernation for a period of thirteen years. This means that only small groups of the 35 will be active at any given point, with the others helplessly immobile and dreamlessly waiting for their turn to roam the world. The reason for this is because the Red King cannot supply his energy and "favor" to all of his followers at once, forcing them to "wait their turn for his attention".

Being made of blood comes with certain drawbacks as well. Although it is mystical blood that can expertly mimic the properties of flesh and bone, it is still blood. Magic that affects control over blood can, with a certain amount of skill, seize control of a Type 3 vampire's body and cause a number of problems, from delayed regeneration to slowness, to outright paralysis and grave injury. While it will not kill them, it can hinder them to the point of uselessness. Similarly, any force that affects the soul will hit them harder and cause far more severe affects than it would in even a mortal, since they are really nothing but a soul.

They cannot harmlessly feed on a mortal; for the meal to make a difference and add to their overall "mass" of blood, they must take the life of their victim. While they are capable of harmless feeding like Type 2s, it would be merely for cosmetic purposes rather than any real benefit. They also cannot simply feed on animals in a pinch; all their substance must come from sapient, fully thinking creatures.

Like every other vampire type, they are entirely unable to use magic. Magic requires the use of one's aura energy, which can only be supplied by the connection between a soul and living body. While they have a soul, that is all they have. Even the most learned mage will find their education useless upon becoming a Type 3.

Last but not least, Type 3 vampires are not the most powerful beings to walk Kishlaith, though they are highly placed. Should Type 3s be foolish enough to incur the wrath of these bigger fish, they will be effortlessly thrashed.

• Goals: Type 3 vampires have goals as diverse as the vampires themselves. Most involve accruing power, riches and dominating others. Two stand out in particular for their unique nature. Isaac Marsden's heroic wish is to protect the descendants of his old friend from being hunted by the Mourner cartel for the white porzite their bodies can produce. Erwist and Serumia Cavar, a married pair of Type 3s, made themselves enemies of the GOT when they attempted to trigger a devastating, potentially apocalyptic, magical disaster in hopes of forging their own Pocket Dimension where they could rule over their followers as gods free of the Red King's stranglehold.

• Motivation: Again, their motivations differ, but a broad explanation can be that they are mostly awful people without empathy or compassion for others. Being given immortality, supernatural powers, along with a desire and need to feed on living blood has worsened personalities that were already damaging to those around them.

• Role in the Story: To most of Kishlaith's people, Type 3 vampires are tall tales made to entertain and frighten children, or they are overly exaggerated accounts of particularly powerful and vicious Type 2 vampires. To organized vampire hunting groups like the Order of St. Byzas, they are all too real. They are a horror born during the dark times after the fall of the Ilesti Empire, and every hunter dreads the possibility of coming across one. The Red King and his Type 3s have been shadowy Greater Scope Villains for most of the GOT's adventures, until they encountered the heroic Isaac Marsden, guardian of the isolated Becker family. They made an alliance with him to help defeat Elizabeth Mourner and her cartel, although the horrific methods Isaac used caused the organization to bitterly part ways with him. Several years later, the GOT would go up against two Type 3s, Erwist and Serumia Cavar to halt the damage and suffering caused by the couple's act of rebellion against the Red King. The situation eventually escalated into a climactic battle, resulting in the destruction of Type 3 vampires at the hands of mortals for the first time in centuries, and more importantly the permanent lowering of their number.

• Backstory:

Mere years after the official fall of Ancient Ilesti to the Thasmian Dominion, Kishlaith was a festering mess of war, violence and horror. Piles of elven corpses lay rotting in the elements as a grotesque testament to the cost paid by the innocent victims used as fuel for the magical barrier that a kept few Ilestian nobles and their followers safe from the endless horde of Thasmians that had overrun the elven lands. Those elves who survived lived lives of sheer desperation as they fled from the horned ones' genocidal rampage against their kind, while trying to care for their weakened and sickly parents who still suffered from the nobles' ritual.

And the humans...

These slow-witted but obedient and loyal servants dedicated to their masters were put to the ultimate test of survival. Without the protection or oversight of their masters, humans were cast out to sink or thrive. The former was the fate of countless multitudes. They had been born into lives of servitude and were now stripped of any higher power to give them order and purpose, or even so much as provide basic necessities. Thousands fell and stayed down. They died as much of broken hearts and minds as they did physical degradation brought on by exposure and starvation.

But others refused to give in to the despair and terror of freedom from their rulers. They ransacked the deteriorating bastions of elven civilization—-the archives, the libraries, the homes, armories and the food storage centers. They took anything they could to help themselves survive, and it was those who led these pillaging efforts that were ultimately able to claim titles as leaders of men.

The man who would become the Red King was one such leader. The exact details of his origin and life before the fall of the Ancient Ilesti Empire are known only to the King himself, but it is known that he was born into servitude to elves, just as countless generations of his family were before him. When the elves in his city were consumed by the noble cabal's efforts to wrap a barrier around their "paradise", it triggered a deep instinctual understanding within him. A realization that this was not just one more disaster in a long line that had recently befallen the empire...it was the death of the world he had known all his life.

That understanding propelled him to move forward, to gather the ones he could, and reject anyone who would disagree. He instructed his group to raid the supplies of his city and flee from the dying civilization, intent on surviving the coming chaos. At first that was the only goal—-survival until the storm that gripped the world rained itself out. But as the years passed, as more and more of Ancient Ilesti's legacy crumbled under a tidal wave of chaos and death, it became clear that mere survival was not an option.

And so, the intrepid leader pushed his followers do more than just scrape by while other human groups grow fat and powerful off the leavings of the elves—-and through breaking their fellow humans under their heels. He ordered his raiders to bring more than just food and supplies, he demanded weapons and most importantly knowledge. Texts on magic, medicine, swordplay and strategy; all the powers of civilization their masters had once commanded.

And in time he built his small band of followers into an army. When those who were hungry came to his group, he demanded their fealty and their fighting strength in return for protection and food. When other groups attacked them out of desperation or greed, he made sure they were vanquished. And soon it was more than just self-defense or the absorption of refugees.

His army spread outward like a grasping hand, devouring anything it could find and forcing more and more humans beneath his command. Any opposition was crushed; pleas for mercy or desires for neutrality were ignored. Anyone he encountered was forced to bend the knee or lose their lives and the lives of all they cared for. Even if for no other reason than to deprive his enemies of potential recruits. Other human groups with the same ideas clashed against him, and time and time again he won. Ancient Ilesti was gone, and the world was waiting to be claimed by anyone with the power to do it. And as he grew stronger and stronger, he came to believe that he would be the one to occupy the place his elven masters once had.

When those dreams came to a halt it was so sudden that at first, he could not understand it. He would never know whether it had been a stray arrow, a thrown dagger, or perhaps even a rock launched from a sling. But something hit him while he sat atop his horse shouting orders over the screams and clash of the battlefield. There was no time for any words as he fell sideways from his saddle and crashed to the blood-muddied ground; his breath caught in his throat and bloody bubbles were all his gasps produced.

And then the Corpse Hound appeared before him. A small, inoffensive furry creature, so out of place on the battlefield, yet somehow perfectly at home. In a voice that was as soothing as its appearance, the Corpse Hound informed the man that he had died, struck a mortal blow on the battlefield. The Corpse Hound continued, telling him that his time on Kishlaith was at an end, but promised that it was there to guide him on his journey to his eternal destination as extended a small paw towards his scarred and calloused hand.

The leader vehemently protested against this; the outrage of leaving behind everything he had worked for, losing the lands he had taken by force, his riches, his followers and his material gains was unfathomable. He cursed the god of death and demanded to be allowed to return to his body and fight for what was his. Kishlaith was his. When the god merely ignored him and continued to insist, the man lashed out with his fists at the Corpse Hound, smashing against the small furry face that gazed up at him.

In that instant the Corpse Hound changed. Gone was the cute, harmless and soothing facade. What the rebellious soul now faced was a towering monstrosity, a massive wolf-beast clad in armor forged of steel and the bones of every living thing that had ever fallen. It roared at him, demanded that he submit...and although he felt fear, his desire to return to life and finish his takeover of Kishlaith was stronger.

The human leader fled the Corpse Hound, seeking any safe haven to hide from this raging force that would drag his soul to the afterlife. In his desperation, he reached out and entered the blood of the battlefield. It was not his body, not even close, but the blood of so many people seemed to wrap around his naked soul like a comforting blanket. Yet the Corpse Hound was still on his heels, jaws open and filled with rage only a god could bring to bear.

What happened next was pure instinct and desperation. The thing that had once been leader of a large human faction ran, and when he did, so did the blood. The lifeblood of every soldier who had bled out on the battlefield mingled under his control and poured out of the ground in a crimson wave. All sides of the battle were united in their shock and terror as this horror overcame them. The possessed blood wormed its way into their bodies and tore the blood from their flesh, adding even more mass to the expanding scarlet stain overtaking the land.

With each new infusion of blood, with each life snuffed out as he grew bigger, the Corpse Hound's pursuit seemed to grow fainter until it all but ceased. And as it ceased, the desperate soul could think once again. He remembered his purpose, his goals for the world, and the blood responded. It contracted, reshaped and altered itself until he stood naked as the day he was born, but once again himself.

But the world around him was nothing like what he had left. All was death and destruction for miles upon miles around—-his soldiers and servants, his vassals and wives, even his enemies...all of them were dead. They were dead, but their life-giving blood was a part of him, making up a new and invincible body exempt from death.

Whatever shock, sorrow or weak emotions the once-human leader felt were lost as he pondered his next course of action and reveled at his triumph over the Corpse Hound. He had bested death itself, spat in the face of the gods and come out triumphant. He was exempt from petty things like death, and the cost paid by his followers and enemies was nothing compared to what he had obtained.

Much the same as before he began to gather followers, but these would be followers bound to his will in ways even his most loyal vassals had escaped in his human reign...

Relevant Tropes:

• Absurdly Sharp Claws: In their true forms Type 3 vampire claws are incredibly sharp, able to shear through flesh and bone like butter. They can cut right through most metals; even the highest quality dwarven steel can be deeply gouged by a blow from one of these monsters. Combined with their titanic strength, it is ill-advised to get into a fight with one. This even applies to their mortal guises; their shapeshifting ability allows them to grow their nails (or even their fingers) into long razor-sharp blades that can sever limbs with the flick of a wrist.

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: When interacting with the world at large, most of them adopt the guise of their former mortal appearances to avoid drawing unnecessary attention. What is interesting is that, as they grow older, some of them tend to forget the precise details of what they looked like when they were mortals, only remembering broad strokes. So these "ordinary" forms can slowly become more nondescript over the years or alternately become almost uncannily perfect and handsome/beautiful as they view their former physical form in increasingly rose-colored glasses.

• Always Chaotic Evil: Type 1 and Type 2 vampires can range from sympathetic victims struggling with their condition and just trying to survive to sadistic monsters who take pleasure in feeding on all they come across. Type 3 vampires on the other hand are almost universally calculating and ruthless predators who think nothing of harming others if it will benefit them. Justified, since unlike the Type 1s and 2s who can become vampires randomly, Type 3s are carefully chosen by the Red King due to being people with traits he finds admirable and worth rewarding with unimaginable power. These traits also happen to be ones many people find destructive and perverse.

• Army of Thieves and Whores: Not an army, as there are only 35 (now 33) of them, but the concept still applies. When selecting potential Type 3 vampires, the Red King looks for traits that he admires...traits that remind him of himself in his days as a young human, determined to seize the war-torn Kishlaith for himself. Drive to enrich yourself at all costs, disregard for what happens to others as long as you are able to come out on top, and the ability to bring others around to your way of thinking by force or otherwise. The issue is that while these traits had their uses in the chaotic dark ages the Red King was born in, they have become less and less acceptable as time has marched on. Criminals, manipulators, cruel and arrogant nobles, corrupt government officials and priests...all these and more are added to the Red King's ranks through this selection process.

• Bat People: The Shape Shifter Default Form of a Type 3 vampire resembles a massive humanoid bat that has been flayed alive with bright red exposed muscle and connective tissue visible all across its massive body. They tend to tower around fourteen feet tall and are largely bipedal if they were Thasmians or humans prior to meeting the founding vampire. Dwarves take on a shorter, ten foot tall form, with a more quadrupedal stance. It is unknown what differences elves would have if given the Red King's blood, considering he refuses to make any of them into Type 3s, as he sees them as inherently unworthy of it. It is largely unknown why this is their default physical form, but during his life as a human warlord, the Red King's armor and helmet made use of bats as its Animal Motif. Considering his vanity, it would be in character for him to redesign the bodies of his followers to fit his fondness for chiropterans.

• Big Brother Is Watching: Due to their bodies being composed of his blood, the Red King is always connected to his progeny. This means that he knows where they are at all times and can communicate with them no matter where they are on Kishlaith. On a much darker note, it also means that he can effortlessly read their minds no matter how much they try to hide potentially damning thoughts, and he can also "take back" his blood, leaving their soul completely exposed and bodiless, easy prey for the Corpse Hound. This inherent vulnerability and lack of true freedom weighs on the minds of every Type 3 vampire, although to varying degrees. Some see it as an acceptable price to pay for their ascension from mortal to something greater, while others feel that this arrangement has turned the entire world into a Gilded Cage from which there is no escape.

• Bloody Murder: Most of their powers revolve around the control and weaponization of blood, whether it is their own, the Red King's, or their unfortunate victims. Due to their body being composed of malleable blood, there is very little limit on how they can attack and defend, and the attacks listed in the Abilities section are only a small snapshot of what they can do when they have a mind to.

• Brain Washed And Crazy: The most terrifying power a Type 3 vampire has is the ability to broadcast its will with a hellish scream that can carry for miles. Anyone who hears it will instantly find their mind subject to the Type 3's influence, although this takes a number of forms depending on the particular vampire. This is how Isaac originally contained the Becker family in the Sulvey swamps to begin with; he moved all of the Beckers he could find and brainwashed them to never want to leave. This mind-controlled generation passed this fervent desire to stay within their borders to their descendants along with carefully constructed legends and myths and the culture developed from there. Granted, this is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique, since it has the side-effect of shortening the number of years the Type 3 can be active.

• Broken Masquerade: Apart from hunter organizations and a few people who had seen something they shouldn't, most people on Kishlaith didn't even believe in a third category of vampire. Isaac Marsden changed all of that when he brutally murdered Willo Lamerli, an elven senator of the Western Isles who had been assisting Elizabeth Mourner for decades and conducting his own sinister experiments with white porzite. Part of Isaac's speech in front of the horrified eyes and cameras of the world was to announce that Type 3 vampires were real, as a way to reinforce his threat of coming after anyone who aided the Becker family's ancient oppressor. This sent ripples of shock through the world and caused the Order of St. Byzas to come out with a press release that yes these things exist.

• The Chosen Many: All 35 of them were chosen by the Red King due to his admiration of their relentless drive to gather power and wealth for themselves without hesitation or care for the actions they would have to take to obtain those rewards.

• Complete Monster: Not all of them by any means but considering the people the Red King chooses and admires, it is inevitable some of these will crop up among their number—-or grow to become these through the centuries.
  • Catja Dahl, the physically youngest Type 3, was a dwarven child of eleven years old when she poisoned her entire adopted family using alchemical techniques she had been taught by her adoptive father. The horrible atrocity was spurred by childish rage that she would inherit nothing of their estate with all of it going to their biological children. After meeting the Red King she continues to act as a parasite of sorts, posing as a child and worming her way into families where she steadily turns them against each other and drains them of their resources, before finally letting them loose to slaughter one another in an inexplicable display of violence that has the airwaves and newspapers buzzing for months afterwards.

  • Tired of the Red King's control over their lives, Erwist and Serumia Cavar hatched a plan to be free of him forever. To that end, the couple and their followers invaded an ancient and prosperous city, brought many of its people under their control and pushed the rest into aiding their nefarious scheme through threats and force, effectively reigning over the nation as tyrants. Their entire plan revolved around psychologically torturing a Fae long enough to break its mind, an act that involved the physical torture and deaths of countless innocent children. If that wasn't bad enough, their goal was to cause a magical disaster that had the probability of ending the world. Throughout this endeavor the couple never once showed an ounce of hesitation or even remorse at what they were doing, instead acting like giddy young lovers about to purchase their first house.

• The Disembodied: Technically all Type 3 vampires fall under this trope. Their living physical bodies were destroyed and replaced with an "allotment" of the Red King's blood that their soul can mold and shape into a number of different forms. If the King ever decides to take back his blood, their soul will be left without an anchor and instantly snatched away to the afterlives by the Corpse Hound.

• The Dreaded: In the modern era, common civilians of Kishlaith believe that Type 3 vampires are dark fairytales or exaggerated legends. But most vampire hunters know better. Nearly everyone in the vampire hunting business fears the thought of coming across one of these horrors by accident and suffering the consequences. To put it in perspective—-the Order of St. Byzas, the largest and best trained organized vampire hunters, who believe they serve the Corpse Hound by putting down every vampire they find, order their members to run if they even suspect they are in the vicinity of a Type 3 vampire. Likewise, if there is any reason to believe that their investigation into a series of killings is linked to one of these rather than just a Type 2 or 1, then they are to abandon the case. Before Kishlaith's modern era, when Type 3s were far more prominent, they were thought of similarly to natural disasters. Once they fixed their sights upon your village, all you could do was pray to the gods they did not wipe it out and moved on after they were finished.

• Expy: The Type 3 vampires, their method of creation, and most of all their complicated and fraught relationship with their progenitor is reminiscent of Muzan Kibutsuji and his demons in Demon Slayer.

• Godzilla Threshold: There is no holding back when dealing with these monsters. That overly taxing spell you've been saving for when you "really need it?" That particular ammunition you had in reserve for a rainy day? That Dangerous Forbidden Technique you promised you would never use? Yeah, today is the day to bring it all out. It probably won't help you, but there is no doubt that you will have to throw everything at a Type 3 if you want to survive the first few minutes of your fight.

• Healing Factor: Played with. Type 3 vampires appear to have regenerative abilities well and above those of Type 2 vampires; they can instantly regrow missing limbs and even their heads, regenerate gaping holes in their bodies from magic, blades or guns. Even when they have been blown apart, they can construct a completely new and functional body within minutes. What is actually happening is that the vampire is shifting and moving the blood that makes up its body to recreate the lost parts, while occasionally pulling more blood from the Red King or from its surroundings.

• Hopeless Boss Fight: Fighting one of these is pretty hopeless, unless you have a very specific means of killing them and a strategy that lets you employ those means before you are torn apart.

• It's All About Me: All of them are like this, every last one. They prioritize their goals and desires above all else and are not particularly concerned about those around them. Isaac initially appears different, since he is dedicated to protecting the descendants of his old friend, and genuinely loves and cares for the family. But once the GOT begins to speak with him and really explore the Becker family's homestead and life, it is clear that he never once thought about how his plan to isolate them from wider Kishlaith really affected them. He looks at the incest, violence, paranoia and general squalor as an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence that he tries to alleviate as best as he can. Telling the family about the outside world and letting them make their own choices never even occurred to him because he is in charge of keeping them safe, with their input having nothing to do with it.

• No-Sell: The weaknesses most people on Kishlaith associate with vampires (destroyed by the sun, repelled and revealed by symbols of the Corpse Hound, burned and thwarted by garlic, drained and paralyzed by wood) are completely meaningless to Type 3s. Symbols of the Corpse Hound spark an irrational irritation in them, but that is all.

• Run or Die: There is a centuries old report in the Order of St. Byzas archives that details an encounter a group of hunters had with a Type 3 vampire. Within the first few minutes of engaging the monster, fifteen out of the twenty-eight hunters were dead. The survivors of the initial contact managed to hold it off by blasting it with desperately thrown bundles of dynamite to force it into continually reconstructing its body. They managed to escape, but the message had been clearly sent—-do not engage under any circumstances.

• Summon Bigger Fish: This is one of the few ways for anyone who isn't the Red King to put them down. Either invoking the power of a higher being or flat out calling upon one for tangible help will even the odds between you and a Type 3, but it is highly unlikely that this is going to actually work. When facing the Cavars, the GOT's members only survived against them due to Simon being pushed into using the darker parts of his office as The Father of the Void's Champion and Dr. Hathon Yelaros allowing a Fae to inhabit his body and use it as a vessel to combat the murderous pair.

• The Sleepless: They do not have to sleep, and indeed are unable to sleep. Type 3s have an endless wellspring of stamina and vitality and will not grow tired no matter how much they exert themselves. This is something Mary-Jo Becker noticed upon meeting "Godfather" Isaac, the Becker family's guardian for the first time, and something that generations of the family knew well. He was always available to them, always willing and able to help with some project or food gathering, and never slept.

• Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can control and manipulate the cursed blood that makes up their bodies. This means they can alter their physical form at will.

• Wound That Will Not Heal: The methods the GOT use to defeat the Cavars inflicts a metaphorical version of this on the entire Type 3 vampire breed as a whole, as well as the Red King himself, perhaps on a physical level. Due to Erwist being completely consumed by the Father of the Void and Serumia being absorbed into a Fae to suffer for all eternity, their allotment of blood is gone. The Red King cannot replace it, meaning that he cannot create any more Type 3 vampires to replace them. He can kill and replace the others, but there will always be 33 rather than the previous 35.

• Your Days Are Numbered: Type 3s can only be active for twenty-five years before they are forced into a thirteen-year period of hibernation. "Shifts" of Type 3s, usually no more than three or four will wake up and be active before switching with the others. This means that they are all acutely aware of the limits imposed upon the power, wealth and material gains they accrue in the world and, although many live lifestyles where this does not matter, or have set safeguards in place to be able to pick up where they left off, they are all quite bitter about those lost chunks of time. This is the reason behind the seemingly erratic movements and protection of "The Becker Family's Watchdog" from the perspective of Elizabeth's Mourner's cartel and why they planned their time of hunting the family when Isaac was away.

• Your Soul Is Mine!: Technically this how the Red King turns a mortal into a Type 3 vampire. His blood tears apart their physical bodies from the inside out and then replaces every lost part with itself, binding their soul to the blood so that the Corpse Hound cannot reach it...essentially a recreation of how he himself came into being. Ironically, this is also one of the few methods that is one hundred percent guaranteed to take them down. Any spell or power that damages or even destroys the soul will instantly work since they have no physical resistance to it like normal mortals do. Simon Travers is ultimately able to end Erwist Cavar by using the soul-destroying ability of Ramel's Blade.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Jan 22nd 2023 at 11:49:48 AM