Your Favorite Villains

[kerakus]

I've had a couple...

In a basic D&D campaign, one of the players only ever showed up for the first session, so her character, a human thief, was NPCized for quite some time. The PCs still treated her as a fully developed character, so they took it pretty hard when...

The party were escorting their wizardess mentor to "The Temple of All Faiths," a ruined temple that was dedicated to all the world's deities. The wizardess was pregnant with the reincarnation of the world's creator deity and needed to reach the pinnacle of the temple to give birth so the deity could reclaim his position and power. Near the top of the tower, the PCs find a fancy gemstone...a magic jar left over from a war centuries ago with the sould of an evil sorceress trapped within. The sorceress takes over the NPC thief's body and flees. Azilyk was her name and she proceeded to be a thorn in the party's side for months, going so far as to make a demonic pact to become a serpent-like vampire.

In third edition we have Zegrah and Vim, in the same campaign. Zegrah was a cleric of Hextor whom the party fought and allied with alternately and hated the whole time. The alliances were to deal with Vim, a great wyrm red dragon who sought immortality and godhood.

Also in third edition, Idalla from The Forge of Fury. I was running the entire adventure path series but added some extra plot elements, including Idalla's continued involvement after she conned the party paladin into freeing her.

Current campaign, 3.5, we have Zephia/Devera/Ebony/The Ebon Mask...an elven assassin who is a mistress of disguise. She's worked both with and against the party and has earned their trust in that they know she won't breaka contract once it's made. She's actually working for one of the PCs at the moment. Same campaign, an organization...The Arcane Academy, a school for wizards secretly run by my world's equivalent of the Red Wizards. The Academy alumni, magic shops, etc, work on commission only and thus close their doors and put up their magic defenses when the community they're in is under threat, unless the community pays them to act. The PCs were direct witness to the slaughter of their home town by an orcish horde, whilst the Arcane Academy branch calmly sat in their magically defended building and did nothing. The party sorcerer has vowed nothing less than the destruction of the entire Academy, going so far as working on founding a "sorcerous monastery" dedicated to the instruction and guidance of inborn magical talent.

Sorry, a little long.

Q

 

[was]

One of our most infamous villians was a paladin. Well, used to be..but we didn't know that. We were in a large city-based campaign trying to track down a psychopathic killer who was randomly murdering the citizenry at night. The 'paladin' was an npc guiding us around the city, appointed by the duke to help us catch the killer. We spent three evenings of real time hunting down clues that led us to the killers lair. We got really close and chummy with the paladin. While we were in the lair searching for clues, the 'paladin' was guarding the entrance. He was 'covering our backs' and held the only torch. We get all the way to the other side of the lair and hear cries of pain and moaning coming from the entrance. We turn around to see our 'friend' the paladin finish his transformation into a werewolf. He then douses the torch and chaos ensues. We lost four out of six player characters that night.

 

[Ishmayl]

In a campaign I had about 6 years ago, I had a wizard/fighter named Horgol (pronounced OR'gool) who was a thorn in my players' sides for countless adventures. They met him when they went to a neighboring city-state and found out that hidden deep below the city, Horgol was keeping halfling and gnomish slaves to and searching for something. He was as evil as evil gets; in one adventure, when the PCs were prisoners, to make them talk, he started killing gnome slaves one-by-one. He killed nine of them before a weak-willed PC spilled his guts. After the PC told him everything, he brought ten more gnomes into the room and allowed his ogre servants to "Do with them as you please," just to spite them. Man, I loved him. I'll have to bring him back sometime.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

.

I don't know about villains, but..

We did a D20 Anime game once, and it was the funniest we ever had.

First villain was M. Bison who was the nemesis (max points) of Ken. Ken was a Martial Artist. M. Bison was a Magical Girl.

And he kept coming back!

the cry of 'Keeeeennnn... I will defeat you!' would haunt poor Liam (the player) for the six hours or so we played. M. Bison.. whomped in a tavern brawl, kicked off the same cliff twice, beaten up in Ken's backyard, beaten up on the road to the tavern Ken regularly got pissed at..
It went on. Luckily, it was amusing. The despairing 'Oh,god, just GO AWAY!' when Ken kicked him off a ship in the middle of a storming ocean after M. Bison was both burned alive, his legs cut off and the final decapitating swing of a ninja..only to have the head appear on the mast chattering.. 'Keeeeennnn!!!..'

 

[painandgreed]

also the Lich from D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth

Ya, that lich ended up being a major character in one of my campains. When encoutered, the players rushed in and almost destroyed him in the first round. He used his limited wish to teleport away. They forgot about him but I didn't as I tracked his progress through the D series trying to catch up to the characters as they had all his possesions. As it happened, the party ended up getting trounced and split up on the way for the final battle in D3 by a random encounter they could have ignored. As a drow patrol had arrested one of the lone PCs in the city and was marching him through the city to his doom, the street crowd parted to reveal the lich standing in their way addressing the character as to the location of his stuff. After the lich killed the drow guard for interupting his interogation of the PC, the PC offered to not only return his stuff but work for him as a servant as it was seeming that working for a deranged lich was favorable to the way the party was going. From there, a few more PCs joined them and the campain became one of helping the lich regain his lands and power.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Khargal the Defiler, which I posted for the Cooperative Dungeon #1, was based on a villain I had used previously. The previous Khargal wasn’t a half-fiend like he is in CD1, he was just a pure-blooded orc barbarian warlord.

He and his half-orc brother Drenik led one of those standard orcish hordes. However, Khargal was more cunning than his orcish brethren, and his half-brother wasn’t lacking any brains either. Together they had enough intellect to command their army into one of those epic, earth-shattering wars.

While Drenik fell in battle, and the orc army finally crumbled, Khargal managed to escape the final battle, and he spent quite a few years trying to enact vengeance on those that killed his brother and crushed what he thought was his destiny. One of those villains that just didn't know when to quit.

Thats odd. I had the idea for a high-level wizard, Khagen the Twisted who did all kinds of disturbing experiments and escaped the death that the do-gooders had planned for him, and made it to another region of the world, with the good guys following him.

 

[TroyXavier]

The favorite villian of my campaigns wasn't my invention. he was a Drow thief(later Rogue) named Thrincold Store. He was the kind of guy who would help a group defeat the villain, th en make away with their treasure. He was really fun. No matter how often he was beaten, no group ever managed to kill him. He always managed to escape. It was definitely great fun.

 

[rounser]

We turn around to see our 'friend' the paladin finish his transformation into a werewolf. He then douses the torch and chaos ensues. We lost four out of six player characters that night.

That's a nifty image.