Most Terrible Act of Villainy?

[takyris]

Mind-altering enchantment specialist bard-type monsters:

Used Modify Memory to get townsfolk to think that the Duke was raping and killing people. The party had to quell a rebellion that included paladins. They were REALLY unhappy about having to kill paladins.

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I had an evil bad guy put out a hit on the party. The method to be used against them was a famously horrible means of execution known as "Love's Gasp".

No one in the party knows what the means of execution is -- only that it's so traumatic a means of death that no soul has ever been raised from it. The souls fear to return to the world, even with resurrections.

I've brought Love's Gasp back as an occasional possibility, hinting a bit as to what it might be, but the party has NEVER EVER wanted to find out. It's so much more scary as an offstage deal.

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My Lawful Evil mastermind came to the party's house one night, alone and undefended.

The party dragged him inside, threw him down, and drew swords.

The Mastermind said, "Kill me if you will, but hear me out first..." He then proceeded to tell the tale of his childhood as a paladin who fell after his church "allowed" his wife to die and then refused to raise her. That betrayal, as he saw it, caused him to switch allegiance to the Lawful Evil god of merciless order.

He finished by saying, "I tell you this because I want you to understand how much I loathe bringing innocents into a fight between two equals. However, I MUST have you listen to me, so I MUST make this statement. Around my neck, I wear a simple necklace attuned to my body. At midnight tonight, the head of the Assassin's Guild will look at a stone attuned to this necklace and see if I am still alive. If I am still alive, he will do nothing and receive a small amount of money. If I am dead, he will carry out the assassination, by torture of..." The Mastermind proceeded to list someone of great importance to each of the PCs.

The PCs, fists clenched in absolute pissed-off hatred, told him to talk, then, and the Mastermind declared that he and the party had a mutual enemy, a power from beyond the boundaries of the world, that would kill every living thing in the land unless it were stopped. It was time, he said, to put aside petty differences and fight this monstrosity as a united team. The enemy, he said, was called the Ta'bar'pur, and...

...And then, as soon as he said the name, he began to choke.

A moment later he fell down, spasmed, and died.

A moment after that his body exploded as a 10d6 fireball, leaving nothing but ashes.

What followed was a frantic adventure in Real Time, as the party called in favors and roughed-up contacts galore to find the location of the local Assassin's Guild, ready every ounce of muscle they could, and charged that place, desperate to get there before midnight -- when the instructions to kill their friends would be magically delivered to associate guilds all over the country. They fought their way through traps and tricks, slaughtered thieves galore, and finally pinned the Head of the Assassin's Guild against the wall with about five different weapons at 11:58 PM.

The assassin then declared, under a Detect Lies spell, that he had no idea about any contract of that sort.

The evil mastermind had just wanted to get rid of the local Assassin's Guild, but he didn't want to bother to do it himself. So he set the PCs up.

Oh, how the party laughed...

Well, maybe "laughed" is the wrong word.

-Tacky

 

[s/LaSH]

Takyris - I love it. There's no such thing as 'too devious'.

Personally? The single biggest act of villainy in my campaign so far would be the invasion of the goblins. Nobody knows who sent them, just that they appeared around 700AD and, five hundred years later, nobody thinks they're pests anymore. Understandably, history's slightly different now - rapascious rapscallions roaming rural real estate and speaking a language nobody knows? Not good for the local economy. They haven't actually eradicated any kingdoms yet, but that's about to change. As a worldwide phenomenon, however, they've caused more damage in total than any single villain.

And although you would not believe who commands them, and why, I'll keep silent about that, for it's a big surprise in my webcomic. Which, incidentally, features a few bad guys doing bad things (particular highlights include the frail sorceress and the nine-foot ogre, both encounters the players will remember). I just haven't got around to the really good stuff yet. Darn, I wish I could tell y'all, but there's some stuff the players don't know yet. It does result in the extinction of all life on Earth, but that's really just par for the course.

 

[demiurge1138]

Do we have to resort to the villain's evil acts? I have so many more from my players.

Take Logain, for instance. He was a half-orc barbarian who decided to earn a little spare cash by hiring himself out as a Blood War merc to the demons. The balor he had summonned, understandably annoyed, told him to retrive the head of Alastor the Grim, the exceutioner of Hell, and then returned to the Abyss.
He took up the offer.
After convincing the party (except for one accomplice) that it was a simple money-making excursion, he contacted Glaysa, the former consort of Mammon, lord of the Third. He asked her for support in the hit, primarily becasue Alastor's stronghold was located on the Third Hell. She agreed to throw in the support of her army, but asked for a large sacrifice in souls for the deal.
The party must have considered the gruesome deaths and subsequient reanimation as undead soldiers of 5,000 paladins of Helm to have been "casualties of war".

Oh yes, did I forget to mention that this party started out as chaotic good?

Demiurge out.

 

[Tauric]

Takyris: beautiful, just beautiful! I wish I could come up with something like that.

Anyway, I haven't done much that was that evil in my current campaign as a DM, but a few years ago as a player I sold the entire world out to a powerful demon (homebrew lord of chaos and death) just so I could see my dead wife again.

One of my current players told me of a ploy of his former DM:

As the party of heroes came upon the village after defeating the BBEG, the village children came running up to great the party. One of the henchmen of the BBEG cast an illusion to make the children appear as goblins. You can figure out waht happened next...

 

[gunter uxbridge]

In one game I needed to demonstrate to my PCs just how ruthless the local thieves guild could be. I had been waiting for several games when the opportunity arose. One of my players was moving out of state and would no longer be playing his gnome barbarian. I also had an NPC wizard traveling with the PCs who was no longer needed. I asked my friend on the last night that he played if he minded if his PC came to a violent demise. He gave me his blessing and my plan was set in motion.

The PCs were in Ravens Bluff investigating the local thieves guild and had just blown their cover identity. With the baddies hot on their heals, they hoofed it out of town tot he south, but the now NPC gnome and the wizard decided to cause a distraction at the north gate and draw off some heat. The PCs camped that night well away from the city, but were attacked in the night my some glowing doodads that shot up their camp and dropped a small bundle near the camp fire. Inside the bag was the gnomes head with something "small and shrivled" stuffed in his lifeless mouth (use your imagination). The wizard showed up a few weeks later missing one eye and sporting some pretty horrific tales of his captivity.

It was a pretty heavy handed way of showing how ruthless these guys were, and my PCs got the message.

 

[WayneLigon]

One of the henchmen of the BBEG cast an illusion to make the children appear as goblins. You can figure out waht happened next...

Excellent The main villainess in a Call of Cthulhu run did something similar. I was adapting the 'At Your Door' scenario book, running a modern day campaign. A minor character in the module, Madalyn Findley, became a major player when I decided that she in addition to being cultist and a cannibal, also distributed tapes of her 'cooking show' to the underground. They got hold of a few of these tapes and were stunned at the intense depravity displayed; hardened vice cops stumbled out of the viewing and lost their lunch.

Needless to say, they decided that Madelyn had to die. They tried to get her a couple times, but she managed to escape at the last moment, through sheer luck. The time came, though, that a stupid player did the wrong thing and the wrong time, and their enemies became aware that these people (the characters) knew of their activies, and began to eliminate them. They'd been doing an excellent job up until then.

Madelyn cast an illusion of herself on an innocent random woman, and the party sees 'Madelyn' cross the street just a few feet ahead of them. Madelyn had thought they'd trail the woman to a place where her tcho-tcho thugs had arranged an ambush (and a free appearance in her next underground video).

Imagine her surprise (and mine) when the characters leap from the car, draw guns on the woman in public and gun her down like a dog, emptying entire clips into her in a manner that would be the envy of any LA cop.

Two arrests later, it's Madelyn: 4, Party:0 One character is killed in his cell by magic, while the other is routed to physciatric hospital run by one of Madelyn's cultist buddies.

Imagine his surprise when they wheel him in for his first therapy session, only to find instead of the psychiatrist, there's Madelyn with a steel table draped in plastic sheeting, a bone saw, and a scalpel, motioning her cameraman to get the best angle...

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

My epic character bribed Gruumsh to allow him dominion over what started as a settlement of a few hundred orcs. He scooped them up and transferred them to his demiplane, and started recruiting other humanoid mercenaries to join his warband.

What could a mortal (especially a human) have that would convince Gruumsh to be so generous?

Arioch gave him a nice little jewel for his empty eyesocket. A 5000 gp opal...

... with the bound souls of over a thousand Elven elders from several different Prime worlds.