Your Best Villain

[Dagger75]

Mine would have to be Lyriel. Drow priestess of a house that specialized in Surface missions. She was disguised as a normal elf throew some magic. The party rescued her when she got captured by lizardman. She then hired the party to get the items she needed rather than using her own resources. They finally gathered all the parts only to discover it was an evil artifact they gave her. She then burned down the tavern they lived in, broke the bards lute over his head, threw the wizards famaliar into the fireplace and sell them into slavery.

Ahh they still want to kill her.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Mine would be Qual Pachim. Evil Psionic elven warrior. He was evil through and through, and trapped in a prison for all eternity by his people, until the PC's came along. They were there to restore the heart of the elven kingdom which required them to enter the prison and destroy it. they were forced to team up with him and cleanse the heart.

At the end the party paladin throught he'd be cute and start a fight with Qual by telling him he was free per their deal, but his magic sword had to stay as it wasn't. He stood back and waited for Qual to attack and the party to gut him. Instead he calmly told the paladin he had no honor, he was nothing more than a lawyer holding to the letter of their deal instead of the spirit of it. He had upheld his end of the deal completely. If the paladin was such a base coward he had no choice but to challenge him to single combat on the field of battle.

Paladin's player looked at his hp total after the last big battle, saw Qual was barely scratched, and backed down. The rest of the party sat back and told him this was his show and they would only interfere if Qual attacked them. Put him on the paladin's list right at the very top.

Later he returned and goaded them by telling them that he was now the leader of the kingdoms northern armies, appointed by the King whom they were fairly sure was the BBEG. He had taken it as his personal goal to dispatch a regiment to "gaurd" their holdings in the north from "brigands". He hinted that they should tread carefully, and do as they were told by the Emperor for the regiment was there to gaurd against invaders, brigands, and traitors. He also reminded the paladin that he still needed to set a time for thier meeting on the field of honor.

That put him on the whole parties list! They hated his guts and he never even drew his sword on them!

-Ashrum

 

[Chaldfont]

The Hermit of Ogo was a mystic theurge who was the last survivor of a long dead cabal of evil spellcasters who ruled the land with an iron fist before being defeated by an army of elves. He was blind but made use of dozens of magical jars filled with preserved monster eyes to see.

He started out as the owner of a magic shop in the remote fishing village of Ogo, but we liked the character so much I made him the villain. At various times the PCs worked for him (after he raised them from the dead at the cost of their servitude), executed an elaborate heist of his wizard tower, and even ended up capturing him only to learn that the only way to continue their quest was to work with him.

In the end he took over their estate while they were away on a quest. When they returned, he convinced them to undertake a ritual that would make them masters of a group of doppleganger assassins used by their enemies. The ritual was actually a disguised rite that would make the Hermit into a lich. Once the party sorcerer realized this, he shoved the Hermit into the Void (a portal the Negative Energy Plane) and completed the ritual himself. Now he's slowly becoming a lich.

They are pretty sure that the Hermit of Ogo perished when he was sucked into the Void...

 

[Mighty Halfling]

Mine was a Yuan-ti monk with an amulet of teleportation. She would jump in on the characters, take what she wanted, wallop who she wanted and be gone a turn later.
She was able to monitor the PCs activities thanks to another NPC who let the monk watch their activities with his scrying ability.

 

[JesterPoet]

the mother of one of the characters.

Hmmmm... that gives me an idea...

Except mine would be the mother of one of the players.

 

[lukelightning]

I'm running a Star Wars campaign, and have made several cool villains (one of whom met an ignoble end by being cut down by two lightsaber crits before he could do anything cool...the players never even knew he was a special villain!).

There is "The Doc" a mad-scientist type who is mostly cyborg...instead of legs he has a repulsor lift unit, he's got an "Edward Scissorhands" thing going on, but with medical tools. He does all sorts of crazy brain-implant and cloning experiments, which has resulted in the creation of another villain (the Twins). His secret? He was the Imperial physician responsible for the creation of Darth Vaders armor and life-support system, who was nearly killed by Vader, managing to escape and vow vengeance.

"The Twins." They are conjoined twins joined at the back, cloned from none other than Darth Vader himself! Not much in the way of physical power, they are both potent mentalists with the power to dominate minds and see the future, and seek to either control or destroy Vader and replace the Emperor.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Hmmmm... that gives me an idea...

Except mine would be the mother of one of the players.

If you mean as in did not like his friends, felt he was wasting his life, was meant for great things: wife, land, riches...and uses her power to force it on the character.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Khubiakt

Khubiakt was an effort at creating the most evil goblin ever. The concept behind him was pretty decent as well.

Thousands of years in the past there was a goblin warlord called Bokobok, who had manage3d to lead a massive goblin army, being a tactical genius. His predations were brought to a halt when he offended pretty much all of the gods at once by trying to lead his armies into an assualt on the outer plains, and being such a tactical genius that he nearly succeeded. His crimes were such that the gods forbade him entry into the afterlife, to prevent him from leading armies of the dead and taking over the afterlife.

In the present, another goblin was born, called Khubiakt. Khubiakt was not a remarkable leader, but he was a sadist to a degree that went beyond any other goblin. Unlike other goblins, he also had a great imagination. He was different in two other ways as well. Khubiakt was able to communicate with the souls of the dead trapped on this plane of existence (ghosts), and to inflict pain on them, or to consume and destroy them. He was also born without a recognizible soul, which meant that the gods could not quite 'see' him, and that he had to consume ghosts to continue to live.

Khubiakt used his gifts to tortue the dead who told him their secrets. This is how he discovered the remains of Bokobok. He made Bokobok tell him EVERYTHING there was worth knowing about accessing the lands of the dead, Including the gate he used to go there. He realized that the gate was the same one used by any creature to depart to the realm of the dead upon their death.

Khubiakt then found the gate that Bokobok used to assault heaven and hell, and bound it to the fragments of his soul. This allowed him to see the souls of all the dead, not just the ghosts. So he started to torture them. This immediately made him known to the gods who were about to destroy him utterly. They reached for his soul, ready to crush it, and found only the gate. And then the gods knew fear. If they died while his soul was bound to the gate, they would trap all of the dead on earth. And if they let Khubiakt torture the souls they swore to protect in the afterlife, they would lose their power. And if Khubiakt was dead he would be trapped in the afterlife, consuming and destroying the dead.

They could not kill him, so instead they made sure he could never die, and blinded him to the lands of the dead, so that he could only harm the souls belonging to bodies that were near him. Being denied access to souls in the afterlife, Khubiakt used Bokobok to help raise an army goblins and created the dead bodies he needed for his power.

The players first encountered him ambushing caravans. They knew there were attacks going on, where the goblins were torturing and killing the merchants, and being way to successful at it. Some distance outside the city, they encountered a bloddy pile of bones with a bloody goat skull, a goblin territory marker. Then they encountered Khubiakt, and killed the goblins, and tried to kill Khubiakt. But Khubiakt would not die. He just kept talking. And when they stabbed him, a nearby corpse of a human would scream. Then Khubiakt started to raise the dead around him, so they stuffed his mouth with sand and buried him and ran.

They encountered him again later, this time he was amidst the remains of a farm house, with the family tied to posts and kneeling. Khubiakt was in the process of gouging out the eyes of the family's father and eating them. The players were low level, and outnumbered, but charged. Khubiakt ordered one of his goblins to set the piles of oil soaked wood at the foot of the posts ignited. They saved one of the children.

The campaign had to end for reasons beyond my control, but the story arc would have involved the players trying to figure out how to unbound Khubiakt's soul from the gate, so that the gods could destroy him.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Thunderfoot]

One of my best villians ...... was one of the players.

We were playing a Star Wars campaign and, of course, the players were struggling rebels on a fringe world. Pilots, jedi, wookies, robots and a rebel communications officer named Rel (not the one on the boards BTB). He was always taking the second watch and was a great asset in a fire fight (he had good skills and was increadibly lucky with the dice (no they weren't loaded, I made him use mine one session)).
Anyhoo, what the other characters didn''t know was that he was an Imperial spy who was using the second watch to send location reports and information to the Empire. no matter what the party did, they just couldn't seem to stay ahead of the Empire, finally they "interecepted" a bit of information about a regional governor visiting a remote outpost. They stealthfully inserted into the AO, split into groups for recon and came up with an extraction plan (to kidnap the governor). My wife was playing a brash pilot and she and Rel were to make the strike to get the BBEG. (I had to play the group in separate rooms to keep the information hidden as to what went down with the ther players)
They entered the BBEG's personal chamber and took down the guards that were there, as my wife made her move to bag BBEG, Rel drops her with a stun shot to the back. He kneeled in front of the governor and presented him with his present a rebel spy and new concubine. My wife FREAKED!!! Later the rest of the party found out that a traitor was among their midst and sensing that something had gone wrong charged the quarter's, Rel immediately shot the governor in the back and presented him to the party. Of course my wife is going ape crap at the whole deal yelling "He's a traitor, KILL HIM!!" Rel quiety turns to the party and gives a stirring speech of his secret mission to kill the governor, how he had to get into his confidence and thereby making him an easier target and then outed an NPC trooper as the spy. He even faked a couple of transmissions from HQ to verify it. The rest of the party bought it and killed the NPC, much to my wife's dismay. Later after the campaign was over and we were sitting playing another, we sat around talking about the other games we had played and they commented on the great stroy arc I had created with the spy in the midst of the group and how they were glad they finally got him. I said, "Who said you did?" They all started talking about how they had killed him, "Dan (Rel's player) even showed us the transmissions confirming it." they said.
Dan and I burst into laughter and Dan said, "Uh, guys, I was the traitor!", he then explained how he did it and my wife, who had been stewing for three months about the whole thing, jumped up and said "I knew it! I knew it! I told you all that he was the REAL traitor but did you listen to me, no! Next time maybe.... (etc, etc)
And the greatest part was the players would still have believed they got the traitor if we hadn't told them!

 

[XCorvis]

The Monkey Master. 'nuff said.