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The Archmage

Y Es to Gray the Archmage and Horn (also echoing 43 on his placement)

Also gotta say, Analand is probably the worst serious non-parody fantasy kingdom name I've ever heard. I have no idea what they were thinking there.

Archmage

King Horn

Archmage

Archmage.

Here's another potential Alex Rider candidate that I've been wondering about, and I'm not quite sure which way this will go.

What's the work?

Eagle Strike is the fourth book in the series. When the father of Alex's girlfriend Sabina is injured in a bombing, Alex investigates and begins to suspect that pop star Damien Cray is behind it. When Alan Blunt won't listen to him, Alex goes rogue and goes after Cray on his own.

Who is Damien Cray and what has he done?

Cray is the son of a rich businessman. He showed a talent for singing at an early age, so his parents sent him to a prestigious classical academy. This didn't sit well with Cray, who wanted to become a pop singer, but his parents wouldn't let him leave the academy. One day, they died in a bizarre accident where a car fell on top of them. As a result, Cray inherited their money, and he believed that God had caused the accident so that he could be a success. He soon formed a hit band and achieved platinum status, often holding charity events and being knighted by the queen.

He began to feel concerned about the state of the world, and began campaigning against groups he felt were harming the planet, such as poachers, war profiteers, and companies that experimented on animals. When these people refused to stop their unethical activities, Cray hired people to kill them, which he claimed solved the problem. Cray especially hates drugs, donating a lot of money to drug rehabilitation and building his own treatment centers.

Cray plans to eliminate drugs by taking control of America's nuclear missiles and bombing all sites where drugs are manufactured, regardless of the casualties. He works with an NSA turncoat, Charlie Roper, who is willing to turn traitor to support his gambling habits. Roper supplies Cray with a flash-drive containing the nuclear codes, in exchange for two and a half million dollars. Cray also sends assassin Yassen Gregorovitch to eliminate Sabina's father, who is investigating him. Yassen bombs the man's house, but he survives and is sent to the hospital. Roper's activities are discovered by a French journalist and his aide, so Cray has them assassinated as well.

Cray is also about to release a new videogame console, which is said to contain an advanced emotion system. This is because he forces live volunteers into a real-life simulation of the game, which will end in their death, with the "volunteer" having to throw themselves into a pit of fire. Their emotional reactions are recorded and replicated on the face of the game's avatar. Alex meets Cray at the launch of the new console and is invited to test out the game, but gets much farther than Cray had hoped, so Cray distracts him and makes him lose the game. Cray plans to kill Alex later for embarrassing him, then stages an accident to kill a journalist who had challenged him by asking questions about violence in video games.

Alex finds Cray at a meeting with Roper, who has already been paid half a million dollars and now demands two million more. Cray agrees to pay him his "blood money", having Roper locked in a chamber, before dumping two million dollars into the room, one quarter at a time, crushing Roper to death under the weight of the coins. Cray's only reaction to this is, "That was fun!"

Cray then captures Alex and decides to send him to his death by putting him in the video game simulation, believing Alex will either be killed by the obstacles or, if he makes it to the end, will have to throw himself into the fire. However, Alex fakes his death and escapes, stealing the flash drive. A number of hitmen are sent after him, causing considerable destruction in Amsterdam, but they all fail. When Yassen informs Cray that Sabina is Alex's girlfriend, Cray agrees to have her kidnapped. He sends Alex a message telling him to return with the flash drive or he will kill Sabina. Alex tries to bluff him, but Cray threatens to torture Sabina, and Alex is forced to hand it over.

Cray then stages an emergency, having a plane fly over an airport where Air Force One is currently located. The pilot claims there is a leak of hazardous chemicals, and Cray then makes it "a real emergency" by remotely blowing the plane up (which the pilot wasn't aware he would do). Cray uses the distraction to hijack Air Force One, killing any guards in their way. Having obtained the fingerprints of the American president, Cray uses the flash drive to activate the nuclear launch button, firing twenty-five missiles at drug sites all around the globe, stating that millions will die but millions more will be saved from drugs. He then orders Yassen to kill Alex and Sabina, but Yassen refuses, saying he doesn't kill children. Cray then fatally shoots Yassen, before Alex attacks him and shoves him out of the plane to his death, before using the launch button to detonate the missiles before they can reach their targets.

Heinousness?

He plans to bomb half the planet in order to wipe out drugs, he has people murdered just for questioning him, and forces live volunteers into a gaming simulation that ends with a Cruel and Unusual Death, which is incredibly sadistic, and done just to boost sales for his gaming console. I think he passes on this count.

Redeeming qualities?

This is where it gets problematic. For most of the book, Cray comes off as a psychopath who enjoys killing people and was only using his charity activism to look good to the public. However, once he explains his motives, he appears to be sincere that he's trying to make the world better, claiming that he has always wanted to help people and that he's sacrificing a million lives to save billions more from drugs. He also seems genuinely concerned about the issues he campaigns on, and states that he killed people involved in this because they wouldn't listen to reason and were too powerful to be stopped any other way.

However, Cray is very hypocritical on this, as he campaigns against violence but gleefully murders anyone in his way, and despite his environmental activism, the fallout of his nuclear plan would cause massive damage to the planet, but it could be that he's too insane to comprehend this, as the book points out that he doesn't connect with reality.

Another problem is that Cray's personality is rather inconsistent from scene to scene, as his overall motivation is that he sincerely wants to make the world a better place and is only sacrificing lives to save billions more, but other scenes portray him as a sadist who harms people for little reason other than the fact that he enjoys it, which doesn't seem to make sense given his overall character, and the entire video game subplot seems like it's just there to give him a major Kick the Dog moment, as it otherwise adds nothing to the story.

There's also a potential mitigating moment where Cray finds Roper genuinely disgusting for his willingness to sell out his country, despite Cray directly benefiting from that.

Conclusion?

He's definitely heinous enough, but may be enough of a Well-Intentioned Extremist that he doesn't quite make it. It seems to me that the author may have been trying to portray him as a CM, but due to the above issues I'm not sure that this comes across fully. For now I'll abstain on him.

Edited by Javertshark13 on May 23rd 2022 at 3:59:50 PM

For as awful as Damien Cray is, he doesn't count. He genuinely does think he's doing good for the world as a whole, which is a mindset that differentiates him from the actual qualifying baddies (and, honestly, most villains in the series in general—when Horowitz wants you to hate a baddie he really piles it on with them).

Cray

I'm genuinely at ends to think of anyone else who counts from the franchise. Everyone else either fails the standard (Dr. Grief) or has really in-your-face redeeming qualities (Cray and Sarov).

Like, I want to relitigate Vladimir Sharkovsky (the "redeeming quality" we shot him down under is bullshit) but I sincerely don't think the dude's heinous enough. For reference Sharkovsky keeps a kid as an abused slave for years, makes him play Russian Roulette for fun and caused the death of his entire town by fucking around with pesticides. He's still not matching up to the millions-dead doomsday plots that nearly every single Big Bad in the series gets up to.

Edited by Scraggle on May 23rd 2022 at 1:54:10 PM

No to Cray.

Yes to Archmage. No to Cray.

What was the "redeeming quality" he was shot down for?

Cray as well.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on May 23rd 2022 at 12:56:44 PM

Cray

x5 Now that is a case of Criminal Minds Syndrome if I have ever seen one.

to Cray

Likewise, a nay, but...I do have one I wanna bring back from Rockstar, under our relaxed rules. From Red Dead Redemption 1, I bring you Colm O'Driscroll.

Who is Colm O'driscroll?

The head of the O'Driscoll gang, Colm is a wicked gunslinger and the arch rival of Dutch van der Linde. Once, the two were partners in a sense, but a conflict led to Dutch killing Colm's brother. In retribution, Colm killed Dutch's lover Annabelle, a woman Dutch "loved most dear.

Unlike Dutch, who holds to a revolutionary ideal with a close array of friends, Colm favors an army of disposable gunslingers he can send into battle as cheap cannon fodder. However, Colm has become one of the most powerful criminals in the west, with a legion of murder, rape and slaughter. Homesteaders are terrorized frequenty by the O'Driscolls. This is seen when Sadie, a later recruit to the van der Lines, has her home burned, she is raped by the O'driscolls and her husband killed. This is pure routine for Colm

Through the game, Colm routinely commits his forces to the worst scum, murdering people left and right. And I do mean left and freaking right. The O'Driscolls repeatedly try to kill the van der Lindes. When Kieran, an O'Driscoll turn coat, is recaptured, Colm tortures him and murders him. Horribly. This continues through the game until....

Colm is arrested thanks to a 'disloyal woman,' whom he requests killed. Plotting a jailbreak at his own hanging with a sniper, the van der Lindes bust it open. Colm is laughing at he prospect of hanging, until being gagged...and then sees Arthur on a rooftop, having dealt with his sniper, Dutch in the crowd and begins to panic in pure terror as he realizes he's going to hang.

He does.

Mitigating issues?

Colm says it himself: "I been a bad man!" We only see Colm a couple of tiems, but we see his deeds repeatedly. The O'Driscolls slaughter and rape across the West, with Colm being the one responsible. And a practitioner as well. Colm commits his forces to corrupt causes, butchering tons of people, being wanted all over. And what he does to Kieran is beyond the pale.

and if that wasn't enough? Colm cares nothing for his gang, using them as disposable cannon fodder. So, remember I brought up Dutch killed his brother? That's brought up to Colm, who just chuckles "I never liked him anyways!" Prompting an enraged Dutch to growl "I. Liked. Annabelle."

Conclusion?

I'd say Colm fits upon this.

Sure to Colm.

to Colm, had a feeling he could count.

Edited by Powermaster201 on May 23rd 2022 at 4:13:26 AM

Yes to Colm O'driscroll

Yes to Colm and I think you mean RDR 2.

Typo

Colm

Under the relaxed rules, do think Leviticus Cornwall does enough to be worth discussing now?

Edited by LoreDeluxe on May 23rd 2022 at 1:40:57 AM

Colm

Hmmm...honestly, I'm not sure. I have one other guy to possibly discuss, namely Fussar because Cornwall has to compete with him and also with Henry Favours. And he's an associate of theirs, but...