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I think I'd have to reiterate that the closest characters who come to qualifying in Skyrim are Ancano and Alduin, both of whom are omnicidal. Ancano doesn't qualify because he shares his omnicidal goal with literally every other member of the Thalmor and has a whopping two bodies on his hand, and Alduin fails because for as nasty as he is while doing it, he's still doing exactly what he's meant to do. There are some hints that he's doing it a lot earlier than he's meant to, but enough doubt is cast in-universe as to the nature of Alduin's ultimate goal by the word of Paarthurnax that I think he fails to qualify regardless. Even some of the nastiest bandits and bosses either run into problems with offscreen villainy or just outright fail to pass Elder Scrolls' heinous standard.

EDIT: Backing up on what I said there... I've still got major, major doubts on this character, but has Alduin actually received much discussion before? I'm looking him up on the thread - and I've done so numerous times - but I'm not finding much.

edited 16th Feb '17 6:37:00 PM by Scraggle

Last I checked, Alduin was considered a Generic Doomsday Villain on the character sheet. Isn't that a disqualifier? But from what I recall, I believe he actually wanted to do worse than "simply" destroy Nirn.

edited 16th Feb '17 6:44:58 PM by Stellarvore

Oh, joy, more misuse. Alduin's not a Generic Doomsday Villain. He displays enough in the way of pride and sheer arrogance that he's sufficiently characterized to avoid the trope. It's just those weird little bits about Alduin's divine role that, when I look at them, even those are sort of questionable.

I'd be happy to offer an EP because I do think Alduin is heinous enough for the trope, but I'd like some second opinions first.

edited 16th Feb '17 6:47:08 PM by Scraggle

This thread has no control over what other tropers add to character sheets, so it means very little to us.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. From what I've seen, I know that even the slightest amount of personality (be it sheer sadism, arrogance, or otherwise) can still qualify a character as a CM. Personally, I say go for it. Killing a father in front of his son? Now that's heinous by itself.

I wasn't intending to come off as disrespectful, by the way. Just explaining what I read.

edited 16th Feb '17 6:57:27 PM by Stellarvore

I'm fine with discussing Alduin and someone making an effort post.

EDIT: Actually, never mind. I kinda think that effortposting him would be a waste of time.

edited 16th Feb '17 7:07:57 PM by FriedWarthog

Excusing the absence of any second opinions - and I'll welcome those - I'll have Alduin's EP up sometime in the near future. I've got one other villain I'd like to get up, first, however.

edited 16th Feb '17 7:01:25 PM by Scraggle

Discussing Alduin can't hurt anything.

I've traditionally been uncomfortable discussing non-mortal characters from The Elder Scrolls because the setting's metaphysics are so (intentionally) ambiguous and Mind Screw-y that agency can be more trouble figuring out than it's worth.

Speaking of The Elder Scrolls any change of Molag Bal counting?

edited 16th Feb '17 9:15:44 PM by G-Editor

No. Daedric Princes act under Blue-and-Orange Morality.

That. I do believe at least one Daedric Prince was brought here and cut under that concern. I'm still sort of concerned with the same issues about Alduin myself but the reason I think I'll be going ahead with the effortpost is that there seems to be as much evidence Alduin is just an arrogant sadist who destroys and conquers at his own leisure rather than the celestial being doing what he's supposed to be doing. Albeit... as was said, the agency of deities in the Elder Scrolls universe is complicated.

Btw, if Master Ghandalf is too busy, I'm happy to writeup Calidus and Lykos

I tried to propose Molag Bal a while ago when Elder Scrolls Online came out, but the extremely confusing and often contradictory nature of the Daedra Lords, both in universe and out, make it impossible to consider them by human standards of morality. To put it in perspective, Azura, widely considered to be the most benevolent of the Daedra Lords, masterminded the entire plot of the third game by leading the player character to fulfill an ancient prophecy that ultimately resulted in the downfall of the Dark Elf pantheon and the destruction of much of Morrowind, all so that the Dark Elf people would resume worship of her and the other daedra lords.

I sent him a PM a few days ago, but got no response.

edited 16th Feb '17 11:38:22 PM by ACW

Oh, ACW? Put Slasherman and Richie on my to-do on the writeups, please... as a change of pace, I'd like to actually knock off all the outstanding EPs I've been meaning to do before I get to writing anyone up.

Alright, time for my next post. This one comes from the comic book Fatale.

What's the setting?

Fatale revolves around the life of Josephine, or Jo, a seemingly ageless woman who was cursed long ago with the supernatural power to seduce men with a glance. This story, by nature, serves as a brutal deconstruction of the femme fatale archetype... instead of a wily, ice-cold sociopath of a woman who uses and disposes of men at her own leisure, Jo is severely remorseful of the fact she ruins men's lives over and over throughout her life. Unable to age – or even die – Jo longs for one day to be normal again. However, as the story progresses and chronicles Jo's life throughout several decades of life, we see she's not the only immortal in this story. Her main adversary in this story?

The monstrous Mr. Bishop.

Who is the Bishop/Mr. Bishop? What has he done?

The Bishop is a ageless, vaguely eldritch entity in service to horrific, extradimensional old gods. Pledging his entire existence to serving them as their bishop, Bishop has been alive on the face of the Earth for centuries in various forms, organizing a series of evil cults, perverting men and driving them insane, amassing a trove of followers who give up their own humanity to serve him, and regularly performing ritual sacrifice to offer those he kills to his gods, where they are implied to meet an agonizing And I Must Scream fate knowing the “eternal, painful truth of his masters.” We see one instance of these sacrifices involve tying dozens of infants to a tree and marking them with arcane symbols. When Bishop returns decades later, we see all these infants have died, their corpses desiccated and rotten.

Bishop initially considered Earth's tastes to be enthralling and wonderful to his senses (in one instance, Bishop arises from the ruins of the 1906 earthquake in San Fransisco and finds an old man trapped in rubble, begging for help... Bishop bludgeons the man to death, hears the screaming of “a thousand slaves” and sets about to see how many he can kill before sunset) but through all the death and madness he's sewed, Bishop soon finds he's grown bored. So Bishop decides to thrill himself by participating in the first World War as one of Hitler's “mystic priests,” seeing the true nature of humanity as brutal and violent. Basking in the carnage, gathering supernatural knowledge for the Nazis, and killing at his merriment, Jo eventually comes across Bishop and his followers in the middle of a ritual. Jo's knocked out and brought before Bishop, who prepares her as a sacrifice to his elder gods during an event known as the Convergence, where his elder gods will accept sacrifice. Thankfully, a soldier known as Walter Booker intervenes, shooting Bishop and gunning down his minions. Bishop vows to eat his lungs and takes him by the neck, but Jo gets him from behind with a stone dagger he meant to sacrifice her with, before booking it with Walt. After the war's end, Bishop retreats and languishes for five years in secrecy, murdering any person who tried to help him during that period.

Cut to the 1950s – 1956 San Francisco, to be correct. As Walt – now an aged, crooked cop dying of cancer, with Jo as his lover – suffers in the department, Bishop converges on the town in the form of a jovial looking fat man, and his followers confront Walt with the message of Bishop offering a deal to him. Walt arrives at Bishop sitting at a bench alongside one of his followers – who's throat he's cut to “bring them together” – and proposes he'll cure Walt's cancer if he brings Jo to him. Walt agrees, and Bishop bides the time attacking the pregnant wife of detective Dominic “Hank” Raines, tearing her unborn baby out of her womb and hacking her to pieces. Bishop then moves on to local gangster Luccarelli, who's causing Walt some trouble, and brutally murders him and a score of other mobsters in his house as well. Walt eventually does manage to bring Jo to an eager Bishop – who's also kidnapped and marked Hank – but double-crosses him, using blood magic to save Jo and utilizing the same stone dagger he'd stabbed Bishop with long before to cut the bastard's eyes out just as Bishop reveals his eldritch true face, just before his underground lair comes collapsing on him. Hank is saved and Jo makes it out, but Walter isn't so lucky. Bishop is killed, but it's revealed the unborn baby he took out of the wife of Hank's wife isn't quite dead... using the baby, Bishop possesses it, mutates its form, and comes back to life. Unfortunately, he's now blind – and Bishop's eyes are now in possession of Jo, something he'll be hunting for for the rest of the comic.

We go next to 1978 Los Angelos, where Bishop has taken the form of a Jesus-looking fellow named Hansel who now leads a supposed method church, who's followers continue to engage in depraved rituals. A film reel is taken from the church by a woman named Suzy Scream, enraging Bishop. Bishop orders his followers to pursue her and take the film back no matter the case. After some shenanigans – in which Bishop is informed Jo has been seen – Bishop's followers kidnap Suzy (and it's also revealed around this time Bishop was selling Suzy to other people to be regularly raped) but end up murdering her as she tries to run. Bishop furiously beats his follower to death with a wrench, before placing Suzy's body in his cult's compound and marching his cult to Jo's house (where one of his followers murders a bystander for... being there). Bishop arrives at Jo's house, has his follower blow the brains of Jo's elderly caretaker all across the wall, and tries to take Jo himself, which ends up burning the house down. Once again, Bishop is forced to flee, but this time, he murders Jo's most recently lover, Miles, as he runs, killing him and plunging his body into Jo's pool.

In 1996 Los Angelos, Bishop takes the identity of a withered old man known as Mr. Sommerset, who's now a powerful executive who nevertheless laments about his current, pathetic state. Bishop strains himself looking for Jo and his eyes, and eases his tire by going into a club to gather some “fresh blood,” killing dozens of people and lounging around in their corpses (not an isolated incident, I should mention... we see Bishop overlooking yet another pile of corpses and bathing in the blood of people he's murdered – with the bodies still floating around in the tub – in issue 22 as Sommerset) before he hears ruckus from the neighboring club down the street. Bishop feels the presence of Jo, finally, and manages to secure footage of what happened in the club (people went insane and violent because of Jo – par the course for her, really). Bishop groans he'll have to devour some people who possess knowledge of Jo's influence, now – but still manages to find some happiness because this means he'll be able to finally see his masters again, now that Jo is in the area.

In 2014, still as Sommerset, Bishop awakens in a panic one night when Jo steals Bishop's eyes from a philanthropist and finally gets to pursuing her again now that he can see her. He comes across the bodies of some cult members Jo's killed – and orders the now-useless survivors gunned down by his other followers – before he visits one of Jo's previous lovers (or man-slaves... there's barely any difference); Lance, who was driven insane by a mixture of Jo and an obsessive serial killer named Wulf (who I'd also propose if it weren't for the fact he's completely out of his mind). Retrieving him from the asylum, Bishop kidnaps Nicolas (the nephew of the aforementioned Hank) after he stumbles across the cult, and he and his followers go to the house of an old man named Otto – who's been keeping after Jo – and has his follower shoot him dead, before shooting Jo as well and taking her body. Bishop finally retrieves his eyes in the process and begins the new ritual for the newest Convergence period.

Bishop, in the middle of the woods, ties Lance and Jo to trees and forces them to watch as he brutally tortures Nicolas by carving painful symbols and markings all over his body, before he eventually kills him with the knife. However, before Bishop can proceed with sacrificing the others, Jo distracts Bishop and forcefully kisses him, implanting within him all the pained memories and remorse she's felt for all the ruin and insanity her influence has inadvertently caused, stunning Bishop long enough for Nicolas' soul to be returned to his body through some greater force. Nicolas tackles and stabs Bishop before Lance snaps free of his bindings and rushes the two of them, pushing himself, Bishop, and Nicolas into the interdimensional rift the Convergence has opened. Lance is taken by the elder gods, Nicolas is forced back into the physical realm, and the immortal Bishop is finally rent apart by the energies of the very gods he worshiped, finally freeing Jo from her curse and putting an end to Bishop for good. Good show.

Any mitigating factors?

That... would be a no. Bishop's got agency, doesn't have an excuse... nothing even remotely resembling a redeeming quality.

Conclusion?

Ultimately? Bishop is a firm keep. He piles up troves of bodies in virtually every scene he's in, dabbles in infant sacrifice, murders people for his own merriment, engages in depraved rituals, sold a young woman to be repeatedly raped, kills his own followers for slights... Bishop's done basically every single thing in the book. Ironically, contrary to what I was expecting? Bishop doesn't actually go for any omnicidal goal despite being well and capable of doing so and remains content simply providing sustenance to his elder gods. Regardless, Bishop is still an easy, easy keeper.

Thoughts?

edited 17th Feb '17 11:04:20 AM by Scraggle

Bishop

Easy yea to the Bishop. I've read it

Bishop.

Bishop. I've read most of that series and was pretty sure he'd qualify.

Scraggle: Done. And Bishop.
I ask again: Shall we add this◊ picture of Kawashima when the trio goes up?

edited 17th Feb '17 6:51:22 AM by ACW

Two weeks since Santa Clarita Diet.

I don't think anyone counts. It's a highly exaggerated comedic universe in which even the things the characters take seriously are played off as funny to the audience. Anybody disagrees, feel free to suggest somebody and make a case for them.

edited 17th Feb '17 8:29:01 AM by futuremoviewriter

Bishop.

Bishop. Was reading that series too, incidentally.