2. After a long life of suffering and pain, and seeing the darkness in this world. A dark villain who's put you through many trials, just wanted to prove to himself there was good in this world. He just had to put it to a test. He may not have had the strength to move on, but he knows that if you succeed you will.
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5. Living a life 1000 times unthanked led this hero down a dark road. Always there for everyone else, no one there for him. He now lives his life as both a hero and a villain of legend, terrorizing those who he once protected, feeling nothing but hatred for all that work and effort and pain he felt for others. The altruism in him met an end.
6. He once felt love. He once felt many things from his goddess. The people who worshipped her, didn't give him the same feeling. He felt nothing for scorn, for being who he was. He was a different race, a different background, and eventually he felt nothing but scorn for the goddess and her church. He began to consort and deal with her enemies, and he began to plot her demise. By whatever means necessary, he would bring about the destruction of a deity, and have his revenge.
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8. We told the guy running him that he wasnt god and didnt have final say.
9. A paladin was once beloved for his intense passion in helping and healing those in distress and pain. His empathy was legendary. During a brutal war, however, he began to see too much suffering. Every time he healed his comrades, they went back into the fray, only to be injured once again. Only when they were dead were they truly restful. His psyche began to crack from seeing others in pain, and when his sister, a sorceress, was afflicted with a terrible disease he was unable to cure, she begged him to kill him. In an act of mercy, he did. However, this act revealed what seemed to him a great truth. Pain ceases only in death. From then on, he devoted his services to the god of death as an antipaladin. Now, he seeks to end everyone's pain for good.
9. Oracle that *knows* its all going to end badly. Very Badly. And decides to join the winning team.
The damn Druid in the briar before Thistletop.
Our party handled this little monkey quite quickly, He was the lucky recipient of my first 'create treasure map' spell... His knowledge of the confusing briarpatch area was quite handy.
12. He has a life debt to fulfill, a mission he will go through any means to complete. At some point in his life he felt reassured by an individual, and he needs to perform a task for that person.
13. A local vigilante saves the day more often than not, but once a month someone turns up dead. The vigilante is actually following his demonic obedience and does the work for the thrill, only targeting people who others think deserve it to hide his true intentions.
19. A fairytale classic, a witch seeks to steal the beauty and youth of all those around her, to be young and beautiful forever. In her youth she was very beautiful and seductive, and she would love to feel that again. She is still very charming, enchanting, and powerful.
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20. Indigestion
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A completely insane, unpredictable, unscrupulous man who will do anything to show those in power that they are not in power, and when all chips are down, that nobody is really a hero. He may not be physically or magically powerful, but what he lacks he covers with sheer intellect, ingenuity and the capability to manipulate anyone to do their bidding.
Someone who believes in laws as a good way to shape human behaviour. As a concerned citizen, then, he is doing his level best to limit public kissing or any other forms of non-private expressions of affection. He has gathered serious support in this by opportunistic people who see a chance to get ahead by supporting the latest whatever policy, and he is just now trying to get the country's laws to institute execution for this heinous crime. After all, don't break the law and you have nothing to worry about and so on. It is striking him that the mere claim that someone showed public affection is a good weapon against those trying to limit his influence, since the law is written so that the accused has to prove his innocence.
25. Having grown up poor and downtrodden, our villain got a taste of power early in life-- and the taste was very sweet indeed. Not aftraid of exercising what power s/he possesses in order to attain more, our villain has vowed that NO ONE will ever look down on him/her again! Thus the villain's ultimate goal of domination oover all of the Known Lands.
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26. Having lost faith in the world. He becomes the worst of villains to try to inspire a 'real hero' to defeat him.
27. A supreme narcicist who wants to destroy the kingdom because then his name will be in the history books.
28. Centuries old magical war machine built by a now dead society, who simply wants to carry out his function out of child-like love of his long-dead creators.
29. A brother/sister or husband/wife team of treasure hunters. Originally only seeking glory and gold, and their only real vice being greed, exposure to wild magic/faerie energies/planar warp/etc. granted them immense power at the cost of monstrous appearances. Empowered but scorned for their now-inhuman forms, they've decided to go after bigger and bigger treasures, perhaps things less transient than mere gold and gems, with morality quickly falling by the wayside in the search for greater glory and power.
30. Master manipulator who works behind the scenes. Both the party and the apparent BBEG are pawns in his plans, and they might go through the entire campaign without ever encountering him face to face. He appears when he needs to, and is all but impossible to find when he does not. Goes to extreme measures to make himself seem nonthreatening, and avoids the over-the-top goals like destroying the world or wiping out a large populace, since those attract unwanted heroic attention.
31. Cult leader hoping to gather enough fanatical followers to reach godhood.
32. Leader of the last remnants of a nearly-extinct race, kidnapping anyone they can capture and subjecting them to magical rituals to transform them, hoping to repopulate their species from the brink of annihilation.
33. Ancient creature (dragon, aboleth, etc.) awakes from eons of slumber to discover its once-expansive empire is now a bunch of disparate states controlled by meager mortals. Begins systematically regaining control of its former territory and brutally enforcing its rule.
34. A trader of souls takes souls and grants a heart's desire in anyway he can. He's desperate to take souls, and even sells them if he thinks he can get a good profit out of them. The trade has twisted his physical form in small peculiar ways, but he remains mentally stable throughout it all and charismatic. He does all his work in order to trade a large number of souls to take his daughter back from the after life. Would you stand in the way of a father's love?
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35: we don't know the full story yet, but here's what we do know,
This guy is smart, like scary smart,
And like most guys even a third as smart when he looks at stuff his first thought is often "I could do that better"
He looked at the gods and the whole of reality and thought "look at them with their pitiful squabbles, their never ceasing politics keep them from ever actually doing anything! It is high time that the order is upset, and a new one put in its place,".
While this is troublesome enough, he has somehow got his hands on a peice of the threads of fate, or a high seer of some sort, and determined that the only way for him to be stopped is by some action on our part,... And he is leagues above us.
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36. Science. Free rein to play with science and a bottomless budget under someone willing to fund it. Wait, you don't *like* what I'm making in my lab? But...but it's science! Why are you drawing that sword?
37. One of several heirs to the current king who hasn't yet decided who should succeed him. Well, I happen to know a scientist I could put to work and help me make something very impressive...
39. The leader of a civilization lost to time and long disappeared to the eyes who watch. With subtle actions, they control all. Their leader will ensure his people live strong, long, and again. He could be ageless, he is a part of history mentioned in small pieces lost to archives. From his point of view he is fighting for every last one of his people's lives. He does not know what will happen when he is gone, so he feels though he cannot fail.
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40. His father died of sickness, and now he is trying to eradicate sickness in the world. But not because he misses his father, but because he was denied the chance to kill him before he succumbed.
He uses any means at his disposal to further his knowledge of diseases, subjecting entire cities to virulent strains, watching thousands die in agony and dissecting later to find anything that eould help.
His lair is full of grisly experiments, some half done.
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#41
The lyrics to track number 6 ("Dark Avenger") from Manowar's first album. The transcriber who wrote them down got a line or two wrong, but no so much you lose the story. In a 1e adventure based on this song back in the day the DM laid waste to our band of adventurers with this character. If you can, actually listen to the song. Orson Welle's spoken narrative is awesome.
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43. He views the heroes as rivals, and is constantly competing with them in new and dangerous ways. He's done this many times before, picking a foe and deeming them their rival and obsessively hunting and trying to do better than them, all against their will and without consent. Constant thefts, chases, test, and battles to prove their mettle to him before he can create an epic conclusion. It doesn't just make his prey stronger and ready for battle, it makes him stronger with every challenge he gives himself.
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Sort of simliar to the one above and a bit Golarion specific
44: One character's older brother, who left the home at a young age and went to the Sodden Lands (A wild, hurricane ravaged wasteland) after his ship was sunk by a group of pirates. HE spent the next decade there, fighting simply to get by. Blaming his ordeal on his younger brother, he managed to get into the next nation safely enough with one thing on his mind: revenge.
^ Too setting specific...
Remove the words sodden land, replace the parenthesis with colons. No longer setting specific.
45. A man who's seen the end of time in a vision. In some way shape or form, he wants to bring it about. He can end all the pain and suffering in the world, and he see's the pattern of history. Every step you take is one accounted for, and all part of the end, and he's sure to let you know.
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46. Once, there was a monk who had wished to purge himself of all impurity and achieve enlightenment. He meditated upon all the evils and wrongs he had done during his lifetime, and somehow managed to purge them from himself. His spirit faded to realms unknown while his body exploded in a flash of brilliant light. However, the failures of his past did not go with him. They remained behind, forming a shadow-like being that came to be an antithesis of all the good the man had tried to do during his life. The being wishes to start by undoing the good his double had achieved, then move on to even bigger goals.
47.(A neutral) Balance is an important aspect of life. There was once a man scorned by both the devils below and the archons above. He ruled the middle ground, understanding and contemplating the duality of all life. He leaves a wake of destruction, for in order to preserve balance, both good and evil must be destroyed all cost. There is no malevolence in his actions or thoughts, but a hope to free man from shackles of morality and temptation imposed by these outsiders.
49. ^And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.
52. A Faceless Stalker killed and replaced his wife, then proceeded to drink his young child right in front of him. He hasn't been the same since.