Your best Villain (or Nemesis) in Campaign Adventures

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Just wanted to thank everyone who's posted so far, been a very entertaining read to see who/what were your favorite villains in your various campaigns. I wouldn't mind seeing more posts about more villains that haven't shown up in this thread yet.

Thanks,
Trav

 

[Rel]

Come to think of it, the BBEG in my last major campaign (4e) was pretty darned good. He could best be summarized by a frequent quote from Piratecat's players: "Everything is terrible and it's all our fault."

In one of their earlier adventures the PC's had to fight a bunch of undead in the entry to an abandoned dwarven fortress. I wanted some kind of magical necromantic mcguffin in there that they needed to disable to stop the undead from rising up again. So I ended up having there be a big dragon skeleton with this magical "seal" (around the size of a dinner plate) set in its skull. It had an old dwarven axe lodged in it and was kicking out this baleful greenish light. The PC's successfully fought their way in and removed it from the skull and that was the end of the session.

Afterward I thought to myself, "What the hell IS that thing anyway?" That's when I decided that it was the phylactery of a Dracolich that had been rendered inert by the undead slaying dwarven axe (which the PC's had removed in order to be able to transport the thing).

Later the PC's found themselves tangling with an old Blue Dragon who was sending waves of abominable servants against the Lizard Folk. The PC's were somewhat in over their heads but in the midst of the combat a voice whispered the Truename of the Blue Dragon into their minds, which allowed them to defeat it. No sooner had that happened than the phylactery rolled of its own volition over to the dragon corpse and affixed itself to the dragon's skull. Voila! Brand new Dracolich!

They spent the rest of the campaign trying to undo the destruction and havoc that the Dracolich was wreaking. Good times.

 

[Wik]

I remember a villain to be who never got the chance to really live up to his evil. In fact, this happened twice.

The plan was initially developed by a friend of mine in 2e, and then tried again later in a D&D/CoC d20 Cross I tried.

The guy's name was Luminaire, and at the start of the campaign, he was a paladin hero belonging to the same organization the PCs belonged to. he was modeled, at least in part, on Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, apparently. He'd start off as this guy that everyone worshipped, who was pure heroism, and who was known for his hatred of evil. Then, in his pursuit of destroying evil, he'd more or less go evil himself, and pit himself against the PCs. He was known for a magical sword (a katana in a european setting) that could create a Prismatic Wall, and some other light-themed powers.

In my friend's game, he never really caught traction because the group didn't trust him right away, simply because some of the elements of the character (such as the name of his sword, which was apparently the same name of Sephiroth's sword) were known by the rest of the group - and so destroyed the sense of betrayal the GM was building toward.

I revived the concept with a different group about five years later, in a game that was a D&D meets the X-Files sort of game that is the closest I've come to a low-magic D&D since 3E came out. Luminaire was a knightly paladin investigating the mythos on his own, and the PCs would hear snippets of information this holy knight had discovered. Of course, he went a little batty due to mythos exposure, and my plan was to have him start hunting an entity that could switch bodies.

The plan was to have the PCs investigate why Luminaire had gone rogue and follow his trail - assassinations, holy ritual murders, and other "ends justify the means" as Luminaire chased this demon. Eventually, they'd follow him to an Orphanage on the outskirts of Illiandoria, and realize that Luminaire had locked every damned window in the building so no one could escape, and then lit the thing on fire.

Unfortunately, the campaign imploded before I could get there, simply because one of my players was a newbie and really wasn't ready for an investigation-style campaign; we wound up playing an Iron Heroes campaign instead.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Sounds like Arthas the lich-king from Warcraft. He was a holy paladin that went all out to kill every evil thing out there and in the process came across a powerful artifact sword "frostmourne" the sword had an evil lich's soul imprisoned inside and it tainted Arthas and made him evil.

 

[Gilladian]

I have a villain building in my current campaign. I'm hoping he reaches archvillain status at some point...

Right now, he's just known as Enzo Blogzon, a minor reporter in the city of Ptolus (he writes for "the Courier", a local newsrag). The PCs dislike him for his tendency to write bad things about them, and to pester them. However, they THINK they've "put him in his place" by scaring him (breaking into his house, robbing him, threatening him, etc...).

What they don't know is that he's secretly working for the Vlaadam family (nobles with a demonic bloodline; very evil). He's about to show up again as a spy/messenger, carrrying info between a church spy and the Vlaadam household. And I hope will continue to recur in many scenes as the plot thickens.

 

[Opus Nosestealer]

Honestly I have very little experience making actually decent NPCs, but my favorite (probably not my best) was a Arcanaloth disguised as a Penguin named Opus.
So, the PCs start in a tavern, as always, and there's a bulletin board full of quests on the wall. One of them says "experienced fighters wanted. See Stonks Arisen at the theater guild for details. When they go there, he explains that one of his actors was kind of insane, but he wasn't fired because he was so good at acting: for each new role he got, he would go to great lengths to become that person, even during his downtime. For example, if he played a prostitute he would go out onto the streets in his costume and actually work as a prostitute, that sort of thing. It made his performances really convincing. Unfortunately, Mr. Arisen was stupid enough to give this guy the part of a wizard who summons a demon which kills him... you can guess what happens next. So Mr. Arisen asks the party to look for his lair in the forest and kill the demon and whatever else is in the there, it's inside a blood red tree. So when they get inside the tree, they're greeted by a penguin in a butler suit with a really annoying voice that constantly changes pitch. He explains that Mr. Arisen informed him of their arrival: he works as a butler at the theater guild, but he used to be an adventurer when he was younger. He's already explored the place, and says that there's no demon inside, but the party is free to see for themselves. He's right, the party finds no demon inside. When they report back to Mr. Arisen at the guild, Opus says that he has a lead. He found giant claw marks in the dirt outside a cave near the lair. When they go there with Opus, he stays in the rear: rocks fall on the entrance, sealing the party's only exit, with Opus outside.
Oh, and if they ask around at the theater guild, everyone will say that Opus has been there for a while, but observant characters notice a slight change in the sound of their voice when they say that. (Opus is taking over their mind and making them say this).
That's all I have so far, I just thought the idea of an evil penguin in a butler suit was too good to pass up.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

In an all-dwarves campaign where the PCs were all agents of The Law I had a recurring thief, Kilikki.

She started out as a small time operator who crossed the PCs but managed to escape. When next they met her she had a gathered a gang and was conducting a series of daring robberies. The heroes tracked her down to her lair, her gang was killed but, again, she managed to escape. When next they met her she'd allied herself with the nearby Duergar kingdom, was carrying out some truly scary robberies, and was willing to kill (she hadn't killed prior to this.) She was now styling herself Kilikki Abbathsdottar, in honour of her patron, the god of Greed.

At one point she managed to make off with the entire contents of a bank (one that belonged to one of the PCs families.) The PCs spent their time following her trail and never quite catching her. It wasn't until an old player returned to the game that they came up with a plan to get in front of her. She was captured and locked up for life, but even that didn't stop her from manipulating people from her cell. You see the bankers never had gotten their money back and she was able to manipulate them in return for not telling about the missing money, thereby allowing the bankers to keep operating.

A fine villain I greatly enjoyed playing. The players loved her too. Well, you know, loved to hate.