Locked Pages: Lock, UnLock and Edit requests

The Conan the Barbarian franchise had no shortage of evil sorcerers, cruel tyrants, or bloodthirsty brutes. However, some have managed to stand out even among this bad lot as the most heinous villains possible.

Literature

• Constantius The Falcon and his queen Salome. Constantius was selected for his "utter lack of characteristics men call good" by Salome the Witch to overthrow her good hearted twin sister Taramis, queen of Shem. After Salome frees Constantius from the dungeons, the two quickly replace Taramis, with Constantius raping and brutalizing the queen for his amusement. Salome's only response is to gleefully tell Constantius to "tame her as he will." Under the ruling hand of the duo, Taramis's kingdom becomes depraved and dissolute. Constantius's soldiers abuse and violate the people at will with any who resist facing death or slavery. When only Conan realizes that "Taramis" is an imposter, Constantius captures him and crucifies him in the desert, leaving him in agony and to be devoured by the vultures while still alive. Salome takes every chance to abuse her captive sister, presenting her with the head of her faithful friend and councilor, and allowing the guards to violate her multiple times. Salome also has a demonic being named Thaug that she uses as a guard dog that she and Constantius round up people as food for. At the end, they even try to feed Taramis to it before unleashing Thaug on the populace when all is lost.

The Hour of the Dragon

• Valerius, after usurping Conan's throne via the help of an evil wizard, realizes that once his allies have no more use for him, he'll be disposed of and replaced by a different king. He then decides to ruin the kingdom out of spite. He heavily taxes his subjects, and those who cannot pay are sold into slavery. He allows his soldiers to brutalize the common people and spends all of the kingdom's money on debauchery and he sentences the Countess Albiona to death by beheading when she refuses to become his lover.

Conan the Liberator, by L. Sprague de Camp & Lin Carter

• King Numedides was a madman who bathed in the blood of virgins to gain immortality (at the advice of the equally evil sorcerer, Thulandra Thuu.) Conan only came to oppose the king when Numedides had him tossed in prison for being a bit too popular. He also had a dancer who Conan fancied skinned and had his men toss a scrap of her flesh into Conan's cell to taunt him.

Comic Books

• Savage Sword of Conan: Oshmaan, the Executioner, from the February 1979 issue, is a Hyrkanian mercenary in the service of Turan. Betraying Turan and massacring their garrison, Oshmaan leads an attack on the city of Djebal, massacring everyone there except the young and attractive women who are taken to be used as breeding stock for Oshmaan's new empire, with Oshmaan personally claiming the former garrison commander's wife Alondra for himself. When she refuses to submit to him, Oshmaan attempts to beat and rape her before she is saved by Conan. When Conan leads his allies against Oshmaan, Oshmaan attempts to enrage Conan's forces into attacking him by bringing out his captive women and butchering them in open view of the army. Even after the battle is lost, Oshmaan attempts to murder Alondra out of spite and gloats to Conan that after he delivers the Turanian King his head, he can rejoin the nation he betrayed, abandoning his own followers without batting an eye, showing that for all his rhetoric, all he cares about is power.

Dark Horse Comics

• The Bone Woman is an ancient queen from races that existed before the dawn of humanity. Once known as Hek-La the Hate Witch, the Bone Woman wiped out the entire tribe of the Atlantean Kull and attempted to inspire him to destroy all of humanity as a tyrant. In Conan's time, the Bone Woman once recruited a girl named Janissa as an assassin by having her violated by demons night after night until she was strong enough to fight back. Later faking her own death at Janissa's hands, the Bone Woman manipulated her into massacring a group of monks so the Bone Woman could take control of a monstrous Great Old One to devastate the world. In her final appearance, the Bone Woman manipulates Conan into questing for the powerful Blood of the World so she can achieve greater power, plotting to rule the world as a living nightmare.
• Conan: Book of Thoth: While Thoth-Amon, High Priest of Set, is sometimes portrayed as a Noble Demon or given redeeming qualities, here he's portrayed as a selfish monster. Though his actions in Conan's time are sadistic enough, it is the events in his backstory that truly demonstrate his heartlessness. Starting as an ambitious street urchin, Thoth murders his friend Amon and takes his name to steal Amon's new place in the Ibis Temple. When Thoth's mentor discovers Thoth has been worshiping the Serpent God Set and murdering his fellow acolytes, Thoth overpowers him and frames him for the murders, resulting in the court magically lobotomizing him. After advancing up the Ibis hierarchy by murdering his superiors, Thoth has every member of the royal family in front of his chosen puppet killed to place him on the throne to facilitate the conversion of all of Stygia to Set's worship, turning the country into a hellhole in the process. Thoth proceeds to have his mentor's son crucified, lobotomizing his puppet when he tries to show mercy, with Kalanthes only surviving thanks to the intervention of allies. Even after Kalanthes tries to help him stop the forces of Acheron, he's so far gone that he considers having him crucified again. When he discovers that his sister died in a plague he himself unleashed, he expresses only annoyance and indifference and proceeds to set about making new plans, any conscience he once had long gone. In a series full of depraved warlords, sorcerers, and other monsters, Thoth stood out for his cruelty and selfishness.
• Conan and the Midnight God: Ra Sidh, despite seeming to be little more than a pompous Smug Snake, is soon revealed to be something far more evil. Years ago, Ra Sidh abandoned worship of Set in favor of the Midnight God, an entity so terrifying and evil that even hardened devotees of other dark gods were horrified by it. In order to facilitate his lord's rebirth, Ra Sidh gathers an army and commits mass genocide against his own people to stain the land with their blood, with the rumors of his actions appalling even the normally amoral Hyborian kings. Deciding to both use Conan as a host and "reawaken his inner Barbarian", Ra Sidh travels to Aquilonia and murders Conan's unborn child via sorcery to goad Conan into a confrontation. When Conan finally confronts Ra Sidh alongside a small boy he had come to befriend, Ra Sidh cruelly decides to use the boy as his god's host in order to twist the knife in further, mocking Conan all the while. A sorcerer so evil that even other dark sorcerers were disgusted with him, Ra Sidh intended to create a horrible tyranny where mankind would be all but crushed while he and his God reigned supreme.

Film

• Thulsa Doom starts by slaughtering Conan's village, decapitating Conan's mom while he stands next to her and selling the children as slaves just so that he can obtain weapons of fine steel from the barbarians. Later in the film, he orders a young woman to jump to her death to illustrate how much control he has over his followers before ordering Conan to be crucified. Shortly after that, we find out that he and his followers practice cannibalism. He proceeds to kill Valeria, probably Conan's greatest love in the movie-verse, with a snake arrow. After Rexor and his army's defeat in the Battle of the Mounds, Thulsa coldly tries to do the same thing to the Princess after deeming her no longer useful to him.

Video Games

• Graven was unwittingly released from imprisonment by Conan. Having trapped ancient gods within himself for power, Graven sought to further his strength by sacrificing his own children, with only his daughter A'Kanna escaping him. Graven crafted a Hate Plague called the Black Death, the application of which drives men into murderous frenzies, allowing Graven to harvest their souls upon their deaths. Revealing his intent to murder A'Kanna and complete the ritual he began long ago, Graven then plans to reshape the world as he sees fit, wanting to elevate himself above men and gods alike.

Western Animation

• Wrath-Amon functions as the main villain for much of the show. Once a mere reptile transformed into a Serpent Man with a human form, Wrath-Amon overthrew his maker Ram-Amon and took his place as the High Priest and chief agent of the Serpent God Set. Gathering the mineral known as Star Metal to facilitate Set's arrival, Wrath-Amon turns Conan's parents into living stone when they resist him and spends much of the series conducting multiple atrocities. Regularly attempting to destroy populated cities, Wrath-Amon's right-hand-man Windfang is a man Wrath-Amon once tortured into becoming a lizard-like creature. When he discovers Windfang keeps mementos of his human life, Wrath-Amon spitefully destroys them, and even unleashes a demon known as the Stealer of Souls on the populace to kill Conan. In the finale, Wrath-Amon attempts to summon Set and a look into a Bad Future reveals that should they win, most of humanity will be annihilated with the survivors kept as food and slaves.
• The aforementioned Set himself, the true Big Bad of the series, is a monstrous serpent god who seeks to escape the Abyss and dominate all that lives. Regularly empowering Wrath-Amon to conduct his more brutal actions and the razing of entire cities, Set arrives on earth in the finale and seeks to create his new regime on earth to reduce humanity to slaves or food. When Conan and friends resist, Set orders them bound so he may slowly devour them as a message to what happens to those who defy him.
• Baron Shato, from season 1's "Conan the Gladiator", is the ruler of a kingdom of cannibals. Known and feared for his knack of using captured prisoners as food for himself and his soldiers, the streets of Shato's city are littered with countless bones of victims over the years, while his kitchens are filled with dozens of skulls. Once he captures Conan and his friends, Zula and Jezmine, Shato forces them to fight in his Gladiator Games against starved animals and mechanical monstrosities, after which he forces them all to fight each other. Once Jezmine wins the duel, Shato claims to return Conan and Zula to their quarters, when in reality, he plans to boil them alive and then devour them, all while planning to make Jezmine his consort and become a high-ranking member of Wrath-Amon's power base.
• The Master of the Black Circle, from season 2's "In Days of Old", is a youth-obsessed sociopath who uses Black Magic to lure in unsuspecting travelers, then drain them of their youth, inevitably leading to their deaths. Storing their youth in bottles, with him possessing dozens of such bottles and victims, the Master performs the same on Conan's companion Greywolf when he comes seeking the Master's assistance, and after capturing Jezmine, the Master attempts to force her to be his love before trying to murder Conan and Greywolf one last time.