Villains Villains Everywhere, and not a way to use...

[Shallown]

Here's a million ideas for Max

Walk down a street. or look in a phone book.

Now imagine how each business/advertisement leads back to big crime boss up stairs.

Once you get a feel of the immensity of a single crime boss lording overall you get the idea.

Is that plumber you called to fix your drain owe someone money and willing to sell little things he sees to pay off his debt. Is that new children's playground a hiding place for corpses or a money laundering scheme.

Is that cop on the take or being blackmailed.

Ask yourself and you'll find all sorts of connections and then you can tailor them to the party.

Just a few ideas.

Ps I didn't mean you had to get vicious just that you could. Sometimes heros start to see villians as comically one good super powered serial killer sets them straight.

Just an experience I have had.

Later

 

[Xarlen]

Oh, I plan to. For instance, I had thought of a rapist who uses telekinesis to do the deed from afar.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I know what you need...

Max Moriarty needs to have either a pet Thug or a special SS type goon squad that he can call on when the "Need To" basis for violence happens to arise. You can consider this Thug as Max's dirty little secret. A henchmen that handles the dirty work that Max would rather not openly acknowledge. Lets call him Wrath.

Wrath is a large, athletic type, and he is a Misanthropist. He hates people. He hates all people. He has no empathy for others. Wrath is not psychotic enough to shoot people at random however. Instincts of self preservation and a measure of apathy are the reasons for this. He directs his anger at the lower elements of society. Drug dealers, tele-vangelists, people who watch Jerry Springer, Drunks, deadbeats and people who park in handicaped spaces are most likely to feel his wrath. Being rude in his presence is typically enough to set him off. Max knows this, and directs Wrath at targets that he would otherwise not be able to get to himself. He gets a great deal of satisfaction when harming others. He does work for Max because Max is unfailingly polite and honest with him, and pays him quite well. In return, Wrath happily kills people for Max.

Max tends to avoid relying too heavily on Wrath, since doing so will always result in a great deal of collateral damage and dead bystanders. However, Wrath gets results, and when Max gets angry at someone, he will set loose Wrath on him.

Wrath is something of a legend in law enforcement and criminal circles. He is recognized by his blood red eyes (no whites, just red). Wrath typically wears sun glasses, so no one notices, but when he takes them off, everyone who has heard of him will typically run.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[LostSoul]

If someone set out to cure Harvey Dent, they could sit him down, and after 2 years of intense psychotherapy, cure him.

2 years to cure that crazy nut? More like 20.

 

[Xarlen]

Re: I know what you need...

Max Moriarty needs to have either a pet Thug or a special SS type goon squad that he can call on when the "Need To" basis for violence happens to arise. You can consider this Thug as Max's dirty little secret. A henchmen that handles the dirty work that Max would rather not openly acknowledge. Lets call him Wrath.

Oh, I imagine Max has a *lot* of guys on his payroll. Wrath could be one of his personal guys, though. Another thought is (like in the X-Files), a guy with X-Ray vision who uses armor piercing bullets. He essentially shoots people through the walls. He makes a perfect hidden bodyguard for Max.

However, let me mention how I'm going to tie one of the PCs to Max. Y'see, the PC is basicly a killer, an assassin and theif. The character was hired to kill an Operative of Max's, a guy by the alias of Smoke.

Well, instead of killing the PC, since those with special powers are hard to come by, Max instead had the PC assaulted, knocked out, and implanted in him a few nasty things. One being a pair of micro-cameras attached to the character's optic nerves. These chips transmit what the character sees to a station where the images are monitored. If the PC doesn't do what he's told politely, someone flicks a switch, and these Nanotechs implanted in the character's spine starts to vibrate, to the point of shattering the PC's spine and destroying some internal organs in the process.

Note, this is in the Character's back ground, as a way of making a 'Bad guy' work for a good team. He doesn't know who has done this to him, however. He is one of Max's operatives, keeping an eye (literally) on the good guys' team, an 'insider' that he may point the good guys at some competition of his, and an overall spy, since the PC has teleportation and shadow manipulation powers.

I like Wrath, tho. Interesting.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Glad you like Wrath.

As I see it, while the classic "Evil Thinker" villian like Max can come up with all sorts of plans and plots, they arent meant for combat. Its always nice to end an adventure with a big fight, and since Max is not able to do it, he needs a lackey.

Obviously, he is not the only muscle on the pay roll. But he is the extra bit of muscle thats called in when things go poorly. In a D&D analogy, lets say that Max is the evil sorcerer commanding an Orcish legion. For everyday mayhem and murder, orcs are fine. For the more important stuff, he keeps a force of about 10 to 20 Ogres on hand (The Goon Squad). Wrath is the huge Ogre in custom black plate armor with the big axe.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Xarlen]

Bump.

 

[Moleculo]

with evil masterminds trhere is always the huge robot suit made for him to engage the heroes with.

As for the art work villian i thought immediate of this school of art:
"Fauvism (p. 485)
Matisse (p. 485)
Le fauves means "the wild beasts." An unappreciative critic left an exhibit of artists including Matisse and Andre Derain saying that the paintings looked as if they were painted by wild beasts. He meant that they lacked skill and insight. The young artists accepted the title as a sign of their power to destroy bourgeois conventions and boldly establish their own style in wild new artistic territory. In truth, no one could have been less "fauve" than Matisse, who wanted to make beautiful and restful objects of contemplation. His use of color, however, was radical. He came to the conclusion that the color of an object could be whatever the artist wanted it to be. A painting is not an apple, or a war horse or a naked god. It's just paint. Why would an artist paint a tree blue? Because he wants to. The reality of a painting is the material out of which it is made and, believed Matisse, the artist is free to shape that reality any way he or she sees fit."

 

[Xarlen]

Max isn't a fighter. He doesnt' need to fight. Persuasian is his weapon. Think of how Creepy Kevin Spacey was in Seven, the pure Mastermind, or in the Usual Suspects. He reads people, he knows them, he uses them. He doesn't NEED violence.

Those who work under him, however...

As for the other part, I'm not quite getting what you mean. I don't see how it relates...