How MYTHIC are your bad guys?

The thread about biggest baddest WHATS got me to thinking about the importance of mythic types to one's bad guys. I've studied a good deal of literature and myth and have noticed that my current campaign, which features a pretty diverse crop of bad guys, includes a variety of mythic types, sometimes combined, sometimes in contrast with each other. I'm wondering about other DMs and their bad guys. What are your bad guys and how are they mythically significant?

A couple of examples from Barsoom:

Yuek Man Chong
Madame Yuek is an ultra-powerful lesbian vampire sorceress. I know, I know, it sounds incredibly cheesy, but she's turned out to be one of my favourite NPCs of all time. She's super-creepy (partly because she's obviously in love with one of the PCs) and I just love having her show up and making my players' skins crawl.

Mythically, she's got the vampire thing going on, which makes her a perversion of the natural female power -- which is generative. She is not generative, she is purely destructive, which is one thing that makes her scary. Women, mythically, shouldn't be like that. The vampire thing and the lesbian thing complement each other in that both make her essentially self-contained -- she has no use for men at all. Another creep factor.

She's also really really smart and is super-rational -- she has everything thought out ten steps ahead and has actually won the party over because she's so clear in her thinking and dispassionate -- again working AGAINST the mythic nature of the female and making her a perverse creature. Her rationality has come at the price of sacrificing her essential female nature.

Matai Shang
Shang is another super-powerful sorcerer (I use the word sorcerer simply to mean someone who does magic, not in the 3E sense), who's increased his power by grafting his body to machines. He's sort of a magical cyborg.

His creepiness doesn't come from the violation of types the way Madame Yuek's does -- instead, he's sort of a super-type. He's the ultimate masculine development -- hard and anti-natural, holding the natural world at bay through mechanical means. However, he's quite irrational and very emotional, suggesting the price he's paid for his mechanical nature has robbed him of one of the essences of being human -- the combination of rational and irrational. In him, the rational is externalised to the extreme so the internal has now become irrational.

The Tyrant's Shade
One of the largest and most powerful nations on Barsoom is ruled by the Tyrant's Shade, the reanimated corpse of a long-dead emperor. He's also a super-male like Shang, but instead of externalising the rational, the Tyrant's Shade embodies the notion of raw will, which mythically is very male. He exists truly because he has willed it to be so, and he is a single-minded conqueror without mercy or emotion.

He appears to be a large and muscular man with his face concealed beneath a threatening helm -- the power of the body and the mind without a face that interacts with society, representing the required isolation of the conquering male -- he can't be a part of that which he controls or he risks losing control.

Ky'in
Ky'in, the ancient ruler of the Calegrian empire, slowly coming back to life through blood sacrifices on a massive scale. She represents the consuming nature of the female -- the male fear of castration and even more potently, of being devoured.

Ky'in may indeed be all-powerful. She simply consumes, devours entire nations without thought. To her, all of civilization is meaningless. She is nature unleashed and uncontrolled by any rationality. She is also of course beautiful, because the devouring female is always attractive to the male self-destructive urge, suicide being a purely rational response to the innate powerlessness of the male in the face of female nature.

So how about your campaigns? I didn't plan any of these things, but my wife (another literary type) and I were talking about them (and Camille Paglia) and it occurred to me that it was kind of an interesting way to look at one's NPCs.

As a note, PLEASE understand that when I talk about "the female" or "the male" I am talking about their mythic significance, not the way in which men and women actually are. There's plenty of rational women and generative men, but those symbols still have meaning.

(sorry, formatting mistake)

Not sure if this is the kind of mythic association to which you refer, but I once pitted some characters against the Wendigo, imagining it as the malevolent spirit of winter incarnate. It was a massive entity that fought the party on a snow-buried plateau. Its claws and teeth were icicles, its voice was a howling wind, and its body was a blizzard. Wounds suffered at its hands instantly froze over in horrid red scars like steak left in the freezer too long. When the characters struck it, their magic weapons blasted large chunks of snow and sleet onto the frozen plateau. They eventually defeated it, thus ending the long cycle of abnormal winter that had gripped the land.

Warrior Poet

I don't get too much more mythic in my bad guys than the corruption that comes with "too much learning." Those who wish to know ALL secrets, including the secrets of unlife. Knowledge is fine and dandy, but some knowledge in a Lovecraftian sense, was not meant for human conumption, or only for comsumption by the strongest minds.

The first villain in my campaigns, a Suel Lich, could not die, and had come to the campaign world to seek out a treasure of a black gem that could give sorcerous powers. He sought it to the point of his own ruination at the hands of the Player characters, who did not care for the trinket they carried; they only knew it was bad BECAUSE the lich wanted it, and so kep it with them as a means of safety.

The second villain was a dark god, long fallen out of worship, but who was brought back by dedicated cultists who desired power that even gods were not willing to give. In the end, their sacrifces of themselves brought about the dark god's resurrection, and they gained nothing for their troubles.

I guess I was more looking for answers to the question of WHY your bad guys are scary. I believe that what scares us is usually stuff that works on a mythic level -- symbols that are twisted or broken apart in ways we recognize as perversions, against the natural order of things.

Just noted that my bad guys seemed to fit that sort of pattern and wondered if anyone else's did.

Barsoomcore,

I think you are correct when you say ...

I believe that what scares us is ... symbols that are twisted or broken apart in ways we recognize as perversions, against the natural order of things.

Click to expand...

... but I also think things that scare us can be mythic, and still be a working component of the natural order of things, which is one reason why I submitted the Wendigo for consideration.

Nature (either as symbol or as actual "force") can undergo its normal processes, yet still be terrifying: the shark eating, the volcano erupting, the earthquake shattering, the storm wrecking - not perversions, but frightening nonetheless.

Perhaps in the human mind we superimpose the idea of the unnatural upon processes that may be natural after all, because even the natural may elude our penchant for classifying, and subconsciously attempting to control, that which is greater (in scope) than ourselves, or that of which we are but a small part.

Most interesting. Thanks for your thoughts.

Warrior Poet

Barsoomcore - I might not be able to contribute a nifty villain, but I can tell you that... WOW. Those villains of yours sound like they're wonderful... will you be my DM? One a side note, did you take psychology classes, or is all the psych stuff just things you picked up?

Warrior Poet said:

I also think things that scare us can be mythic, and still be a working component of the natural order of things, which is one reason why I submitted the Wendigo for consideration.

Nature (either as symbol or as actual "force") can undergo its normal processes, yet still be terrifying: the shark eating, the volcano erupting, the earthquake shattering, the storm wrecking - not perversions, but frightening nonetheless.

Click to expand...

Yeah, exactly. And THAT's what I'm more interested in talking about -- WHY is the Wendigo scary? I definitely agree that the merciless nature of, er, Nature is one of the most terrifying things we ever experience. Thing is, though, it doesn't, by its very nature, lend itself to characterization, so you can't really have NPCs who exemplify it.

Perhaps in the human mind we superimpose the idea of the unnatural upon processes that may be natural after all, because even the natural may elude our penchant for classifying, and subconsciously attempting to control, that which is greater (in scope) than ourselves, or that of which we are but a small part.

Click to expand...

So maybe THAT's where we get an NPC from. The character represents a classification or a personification of a natural force. It strikes me that a powerful figure might be one who at first seems like a person who is emblematic of some natural force -- but because of their nature, they burst out of any attempts to control, even by their own personality. It can be very scary when someone you think you know turns out to be something much more dangerous and uncontrollable.

You seem to be taking a "sexual symbolism", perhaps even freudian angle on villainy here. Although I appreciate that such subconcious themes may be present when they confront players, I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the idea of using them as a concious design decision.

I think that's purely an oddity of taste on my part - I'm not so hesitant to draw on themes of violence in presenting villains, although I think a villain that appeals to the emotions is the highest form of villainy (e.g. betrayal, arrogance, loss etc.). Other paths you could draw upon for villainy could focus on the villain's actions rather than what they are - after all, the actions define the character in many cases, and could enhance the themes you are presenting.

Although I agree that symbols embodied by a villain are useful, I think their role and what they do is more important. A good example of convergence of these two approaches is Lord Soth. He symbolises the fallen knight and the curses that follow the fall from grace. Additionally though, he has the dimension of the story of how he gave in to lust and selfishness when given the chance to prevent the Cataclysm. Without this detail, he would be just another Death Knight archetype - but because of what he is done, he becomes a tragic, fully defined villain.

Excellent, fascinating!

but because of their nature, they burst out of any attempts to control, even by their own personality. It can be very scary when someone you think you know turns out to be something much more dangerous and uncontrollable.

Click to expand...

Indeed, consider the course of myth were Thor to decide he no longer wished to play the role of thunder god, or (perhaps more appropriately), subconsciously moved away from the role of thunder god without conscious impetus. What are the implications for those (anthropologically, psychologically) who "conceive" of the mythic figure as classification or personification, only to learn that figure abandons, alters, or obscures that classification or personification?

What if powerful NPC villains were powerful because they had shrugged off the (innate/imposed/random/unconscious/other) classification/personification? Might the PCs find a way to confront and defeat an NPC villain with the knowledge of what had been, what personification had existed? What kind of quest might gaining that knowledge require?

Most intriguing. Thanks.

Warrior Poet

rounser said:

You seem to be taking a "sexual symbolism", perhaps even freudian angle on villainy here. Although I appreciate that such subconcious themes may be present when they confront players, I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the idea of using them as a concious design decision.

Click to expand...

Oh, yeah. I didn't use them as concious design decisions, either. I'm just noticing it now. Which is what got me thinking. But there's lots of other themes that one can draw from.

Although I agree that symbols embodied by a villain are useful, I think their role and what they do is more important.

Click to expand...

Sure. A character only exists in terms of what they do -- that's what presents the character in the story. Actions are symbolic, and a good character is one whose actions reflect who and what they are.