Time for another CM candidate from Dragalia Lost.

What is it this time?

Once again, we're diving into a side event from the game; this time it's "Forgotten Truths", a raid event which sends us back 1000 prior to the main story. To adhere to the two-week rule, the raid event ended October 12.

The event's story follows Zethia, who was magically projected to the past where she meets Ilia, an alchemist who would eventually become a deity of the game's Ilian religion. They encounter two antagonizing forces: this post is about one of them, as the other would fail due to being Made of Evil.

Who is Augus? What has he done?

Augus is the human general in the war between humans and dragons. He's cold and commanding, and is not above using threats and hostages to make others do his bidding. He even pulls off a gambit to decimate the dragons: Augus destroys the dragon's habitats, goading them to attack the capital city laced with mana bombs. The citizens are left unaware of the scheme as he does not inform them, leaving a casualty count in the millions once the bombs go off. When the demon Morsayati emerges and wrecks havoc on his own, Augus responded with glee, showing how little he cares about life.

Redeeming qualities/Mitigating Factors?

None.

Heinousness Standard?

Augus has a substantial kill count that eclipses other villains from the game, even the main story antagonists. As for the side event's other villain, Morsayati, there's no established casualty count, but some were shown to be corrupted by his black mana, and Augus himself died to Morsayati when trying to bring him to submission.

Final verdict?

Augus looks like a keeper, but I'll let you all decide if he earns the title of CM.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Augus seems like a yes.

CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts

As discussed with Bootle, I am leaning yes towards Madeline.

I'll give a yes to Augus too, given he seems to have comparatively jack squat for resources and is nasty in his own right.

Feels good, don't it?

Madeline and Augus

What is the work?

The Great Gaias is an RPG Maker MV game based on the developers' D&D campaign. The Valdian Empire seeks to unseal their immortal emperor, Grindelwald Maultor, from his prison so that he can revive their god, Malviticus. The Children of Light, the reincarnations of the heroes who sealed Maultor a millenia ago, must gather the keystone fragments and prevent the Validians from obtaining them.

Who is Malviticus?

Malviticus is the God of Darkness, whose job is to manage the demonic Abyss and maintain order in it. He's also the creator of both the immortal First Men and mortal humans, since he calls himself the Father of Man. Unfortunately, he eventually started to resent his fellow deities for placing rules on him and focusing more on the life they created than on him, so he starts scheming against them out of spite.

What has he done?

Malviticus notices that the Goddess of Wind, Auroria, created an elven body so she could live among her creation. He then summons a demon that possesses Auroria, driving her mad and causing her to slaughter her own children. The other gods cast him out from the Celestial Realm for his crimes, causing him to fall to Tenat and lose most of his divine powers, reducing him to being an immortal human, his avatar Grindelwald Maultor.

Maultor schemes to corrupt the First Men and starts by enacting the Blight, which turns the northwest part of the world map into a barren wasteland. When he's found by a First Man, Azcol, Maultor injects false and horrifying visions into Azcol's mind to make the latter fanatically devoted to him. Maultor then finds the main camp of the First Men and feeds them the lie that the elves started the Blight and that they need to side with him and that Malviticus is a light bringer who will save their human citizens. He takes them to the Tower of Illyrium, where he performs a ritual to brainwash them and bring out their worst emotions, turning them into ruthless warlords so he can create a human supremacist, Malviticus-worshiping empire. The Validian Empire tries to present Maultor as a benevolent dictator, but anyone who questions his propaganda is persecuted or silently gotten rid of.

Emperor Maultor and the First Men, now known as the Gauf, wage a genocidal war against the elves under a pretense of saving humanity, but really to claim a magical artifact and hurt the other gods by proxy. His sister, Tantalasia strikes back by revealing to one of his best generals, Arthur Greyhem, that the emperor is full of shit and that the elves are innocent. Greyhem and his allies, forming the Warriors of Light, manage to take Maultor's powerful keystone and seal the tyrant and the Gauf into the Tower of Illyrium. Unfortunately, one of Maultor's generals, Eldromus, was sent to the Abyss by one of the warriors, only to escape even stronger and kill all the Warriors of Light.

A thousand years later, the Gauf manage to escape from the tower, albeit without Maultor. Eldromus and the Gauf eventually succeed in their scheme to release Maultor, who resumes his rule of Validus. When the Children of Light are captured, Maultor reveals his true identity as Malviticus and states his plan to use the time-traveling artifact, the Hourgem of Valnyr, to rewrite the past so that he wins his battle with the other gods while also promising to ensure that the Children of Light are Ret-Gone. Fortunately, a group of Validian generals and soldiers save the heroes after realizing that Maultor is evil.

In the bad ending where the player loses in Maultor's boss battle, his traitorous servant, Virgil Mythos, attempts to steal his powers by forcing him into a Fusion Dance. This fails and Maultor takes over Virgil's body from the inside while adding the traitor's power to his own.

In the normal ending where the player beats Maultor but fails to complete the final sidequest, Maultor is too weak to fight off Virgil and the latter gains the power of the God of Darkness.

In the true ending, the party's healer, Laeni, is possessed by Tantalasia and prevents Virgil from absorbing Maultor, since that would result in an unstoppable enemy with their combined powers. Unfortunately, Maultor manages to regain his original form as Malviticus and kills Virgil. Malviticus then returns to the Celestial Realm and kills all the gods there, including his father Vogul. After a long final boss fight with Malviticus, Laeni allows Tantalasia to fully take over her body in a last ditch attempt to defeat him. Tantalasia calls out Malviticus for his crimes, but Malviticus claims she and the other gods are at fault for ignoring his need for attention. The two clash weapons and turn to stone, resulting in Tenat being saved from the dark god, at least for now.

Mitigating Factors

He claims that he's the victim of the other gods ignoring him in favor of their mortals, but this comes off as narcissism and petty jealousy. He also claims that he loves Tantalasia as a sister and that she betrayed him by spending more time interacting with her followers, but considering all that lives he ruined to spite her and the other gods, it's clear he cares more about gaining her attention than about her well-being.

When he takes over the Celestial Realm, he claims he's freeing the lower gods from the rules of the elder gods, but he killed all the other gods, which means he'll be the only one to enjoy this freedom.

While he may have created the First Men and humans, he only sees them as a means to attack the creations of other gods and forces famine and a totalitarian regime on them. He was meant to guide his creations like everyone else, but abandons that duty due to his ego.

Heinousness

As the Big Bad, he sets it by driving another deity to insanity, creating a racist and oppressive empire, waging war against the elves, and killing the other gods.

The next worst are the Gauf, Eldromus, and Virgil, since they infiltrated other nations to sow conflict and sacrificed many soldiers in a ritual to unseal Maultor. However, the Gauf are brainwashed, Eldromus seems to sincerely buy into Maultor's propaganda about the Blight, and Virgil has a genuine Pet the Dog moment in saving Laeni.

Verdict

I think so, since the writers seem to be going for a classic Satanic Archetype.

to Cletus Kasady, Aarbilar, Fleshlumpeater, Ambrose Starke, Dr. Emilia, Billy-Ray Carrigan, Madeline Templeton, Augus and Malviticus.

Madeline Templeton, Augus and Malviticus.

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Madeline, Augus and Malviticus.

to Madeline, Augus and Malvictus

Eh, sure to Malviticus/Maultor.

CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts

Yes to Madeline, Augus and Malviticus.

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Madeline's EP is too Wall of Text-y for my liking.

CM Dates; CM Pending; CM Drafts

Yes to Madeline, Augus, and Malviticus.

Edited by Critica7 on Oct 26th 2020 at 2:21:39 AM

Check out my current fanfiction project.

to Aarbilar, Fleshlumpeater, Ambrose Starke, Dr. Emilia, Billy-Ray Carrigan, Madeline Templeton, Augus and Malviticus.

Malvictus.

Yes to Madeline, Augus and Malviticus.

I would like to bring something up.

Deus ex Machina: Leonard Phillips is a sociopathic scientist who seeks to develop a suit of power armor for his boss. To this end, he turns a Covenant elite into a killing machine, and then commits robberies to fund himself, having his assistant kill any witnesses. When he learns about Deus Ex Machina's exploits, he has a civilian killed as a warning and threatens to kill more.

This seems a little bare-bones. I don’t doubt that Phillips earned his CM label, but could someone who has read/watched the piece of media add some detail?

Check out my current fanfiction project.

Regarding Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, I am kinda questioning if Emilia is sufficiently heinous by the show's setting. While her actions are vile, the previous season had Scarlemagne boil three frogs alive in gold and threaten to do the same to all the other Mutes. Even if Emilia is the more evil one, I don't think any of her actions were as depraved as that.

Anyway, I may have found another EC Comics story with a potential candidate, albeit a lot more "Slasher Movie" style than the usual offering. The story is The Haunt Of Fear issue 27's Swamped.

The Shack-Dweller

Who Is He?

This story is fairly simple, but told in a relatively unusual format:as in, it's from the POV of a house. A Shack standing on wooden poles, cobbled together from driftwood to form a surprisingly stable little fortress within the so called "Okefenokee Swamp." The Hut goes on to describe it's sole inhabitant, the one who built it: "A creature in human form, and yet of such indescribable revulsion and loathsomeness that even the flies avoid him and the ever thirsty swamp mosquitoes refuse to light upon his sickening flesh and suck his contaminated blood." This is the one who built the hut, a lonesome, repulsive, and mentally-wayward ghoul of a man who the hut still caresses and cherishes; after all he was it's creator.

The man sits there in silence, itching with feverish anticipation, and as he climbs down to his boat, the hut tells us he's gone to see if he can sate his hunger. The shack then describes how the hermit built it from all manner of cast aside junk, from stove-casings to logs, to rusty nails, and how the man even put a trapdoor in it's floor, for which it still doesn't understand the purpose. By day, he just sits there drooling idiotically, until hunger overcomes him and he goes to get food.

Soon enough, the hermit does return with a large bag in his boat. He gleefully climbs into his shack and unloads his catch...a corpse. The body of a hunter, who the hermit had caught and killed. The Shack realizes who it's master truly is now, as it describes how it sees him "slash and snarl and munch like an idiot child...stripping the bones clean...devouring the cold raw flesh". Then it hears a voice, the voice of an angry hunter coming to the edge of the bog.

The shack realizes at once that this is the dead hunter's friend, desperate to find his companion. As the man foolishly runs into the swamp, he realizes too late the bog is quicksand. Screaming all the way as he sinks below the surface, his screams become muffled chokes. The Shack shudders as it "watches" the gruesome sight, and realizes it's true purpose: it was built to conceal the crimes of a cannibalistic maniac as he searches for prey in the swamp and disposes of the bones with the trapdoor. The hermit, meanwhile watches the poor hunter sink in the bog and gives a little chuckle, before shovelling the remains of his gruesome meal into the bog through the trapdoor.

And that's how things go for a while. The ghoulish hermit sets off into the swamp every-night, finding some new hunter or camper or traveller, brutally murders them, and rows their bodies back to the Shack to feed on the flesh. The poor shack describes how it can only stand motionless as the killer's victims continue to fill the quicksand bog. Worse still, said victims' companions come looking for their friends, only to be trapped by quicksand and sucked under, leaving the Hermit safe in his gruesome hideaway.

The shack tells how it feels the bodies of the dead beneath it in the primordial slime, the same slime from which life emerged eons ago, and how tonight, that slime is now coalescing...fusing together the jellied remains beneath it into one "avenging bog" that is tugging and clawing at it's support legs. Meanwhile, the hermit sits staring blankly on the porch, waiting for the sun to go down again.

The shack feels a sense of relief as it's legs start to give way from the strain by the mass of bodies, finally about to be free from it's hideous purpose. Then it collapses along with it's crazed cannibal owner, welcoming both their destruction, as "the pulsating pool that had once been his protector and the concealer of his crimes now devours him...stripping the flesh from his bones as he had once done to others...to those who were now part of this avenging bog..."

Heinousness?

The Hermit in question is a Serial Killer and cannibal, a fairly extreme combination for this series, and he's established as having left dozens of bodies beneath that shack. He's also very clearly played for serious horror rather than campy dark humor, which tend to pop up now and then in these titles.

Mitigating Factors?

His ragged looks, lack of speech, and somewhat childish behavior implies he suffers from some form of mental illness. But nonetheless he's evidently intelligent enough to build a stable, sturdy shack in the middle of a pool of quicksand, complete with a trapdoor to dispose of his meal's remains. He also clearly enjoys what he does, as he demonstrates sadistic glee killing innocent people and watching their friends drown in the quicksand surrounding his house. The house itself views him with nothing but contempt and horror witnessing his crimes.

Conclusion?

While he might not be much different from Leatherface or Jason Voorhees, this ghoul has none of their more tragic qualities and shows himself to be much more cruel and twisted than your average EC murderer. Whether him being "criminally insane" disqualifies him is another story.

"I am the lord of Purity, who tolerates no deviation." My first online story

Considering that one of her actions is attempted GENOCIDE on both humans and mutes, I say Emilia's DEFINITELY heinous enough.

Edited by Michealthehero21 on Oct 26th 2020 at 3:46:05 AM

to The Shack-Dweller.

yeah, outright genocide, and later omnicide when she becomes a mutant definently makes her stand out. Scarlemagne doesn’t even come close to the crimes she commits.

Carrigan, Maddy, Augus, Malvictus, & Shack-Dweller

Edited by nwotyzal on Oct 26th 2020 at 4:16:23 AM

Not really sure on the Shack-Dweller. Seems pretty in-line with EC Comics' usual fare and I know we've turned down other "slasher-type" villains from the comic despite having decent body counts.

Scarlemagne isn't an issue. His mass murder attempt in the second season finale is exactly as bad as it sounds, but Emilia attempts his body count and more in the climax, wants to commit genocide and played a very large part in why Scarlemagne turned out as deranged as he did.

the Shack-Dweller.

Is the shack dweller bad enough for ec which has a shit ton of serial killers.....

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Am I the only one who's really not feeling it Spider? Yes, he's a piece of shit of the lowest order, but really, I don't feel like he does enough to be considered a CM. Raping your cousin is bad, so's routinely bullying your other cousin and burning him with cigarette, and shooting an old man to death most DEFINITELY is bad, but I don't feel he's heinous ENOUGH. Especially when you have a protagonist like Walt, who admitted to hacking 17-year-olds to death with shovels without even being ordered to. Granted, that's offscreen and he feels guilty, but that just seems like another disqualifier to me.

Isn’t Spider pretty much a no-name street thug? I feel like he’s bad enough given his standing.