Master Malakie, mastermind and patron to all Demons. He can't be touched by any mortal without being slaughtered swiftly by his extrodinary might. Although he is only a Half-Fiend, he is feared for his ability to stand against an ancient Red-Dragon by himself, and to take it down in one hit!
Malakie is the archvillian of my campaign. He is one of the major forces of evil behind most of the catastrophies. His main goal is to turn the Demons and Devils against eachother, let them fight it out and to take over once they're dead and done.
My question is simple: What archvillians do you all respect, and what makes them so scary/powerful? Give my some ideas for my camps. please! Blessed * Be!
An nemesis at the moment is one I have developed for a campaign to be run in the not too distant future.
Jarleth D'Armex. He is.. get this a plain old human. And directly, not very powerful at all. He is a low/mid level Aristocrat (NPC class from DMG) with a great deal of influence and resources (Money and contacts, as well as manpower). A behind the scenes schemer with a desire to send the world into chaos and war in order to emerge atop the heap and rule it all. He's got a long way to go, but sme powerful allies to help along the way.
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An evil arch-wizard I made up for a couple of campaign past, who sometimes snaps back in action, every now and then.
He was the tutor of the tutor of the group sorcerer, who seemingly died of old age after a not-so-glamorous life, basking in the glory of having defeated an evil wizard himself.
During the campaigns his other students - mainly wizards, and recently some warlocks from the Complete Arcane - revelead themselves as nasty fiend-worshipping evildoers, killed the sorcerer's tutor, his uncle (the only surviving relative after the Greyhawk Wars), some NPC friends, and generally harassed the group.
After defeating them, the PCs discovered that the mage was still alive, and dead at the same time: the original wizard suffered from schizofrenia (sp?), and his evil, dominant personality exorcised the good part of himself, giving it a material body and a new identity.
After some time he killed the good part, assumed the new identity, and faked his own death, disappearing from history. The good part is now bound into a relic sacred to Pelorian paladins, a relic stuck into a portal to the Abyss (removing or destroying it would be BAD); the relic acts as a phylactery.
So even if the BBEG is defeated and killed, he will resurface sometimes later, kept in this world by the relic.
The PCs are now questing after a way to destroy the portal, free the relic (and the good part of the original mage), kill the evil wizard once and for all, and discovering the nature of the magical disease that originated the schizofrenia (sp? again). All the while trying to survive an orcish invasion.
Third (and probably fourth) campaign in a row, based around a very popular and succesful villain. Quite happy about it.
Favorite.. I don't have many, but one that my players seem to "love to hate" (or just hate; whenever he shows up again their is alot of cussing) is Flavon Merck, a human assasin (actually Figher) who paricularly enjoys whistling which he kills his victims. He is working for the githyanki who have come through portals opened by the Karrnathi's using a special dragonshard (Destiny Dragonshards) which changed the text of the Prophecy to make it fortold that they came through (and get the dragons to help). He is always there to annoy the PCs plans, and recently was killed.
MY PLAYERS DO NOT READ FURTHER!!!!!
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He has recently been ressurected by the gith and will come back as a vampire to attempt to thwart the PCs plans one last time.
Mwahahahaha!
WaterdhavianFlapjack
I've had a couple over the years, but the one I have fondest memories of is an Arcanaloth named Shar'Locke. He is very much modeled after the 2nd ed. Planescape artwork. . . with the narrow glasses on the snout, and bundles of scrolls under his arm.
Granted, he isn't a "bwah ha ha, I'm-going-to-kill-everything-and-take-over-the-universe" type. . . but it was always fun role-playing the encounters with the PCs. To run him, I usually worked out a number of logical arguments in my head, regarding his philosophy, etc. and pitted his minions against the PCs. They party Paladin was always a target. . .
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I have a couple of faves, but the one that is closest to my heart has to be Spedaan GreenCap, a Quickling bandit that terrorized players through high school and college. Crafty, ruthless, relentless, and plain full of malice, he is only 'little person' that players quickly learned not to take for granted.
Spedaan was very lucky on the treasure table when I was rolling him up. He had the lucky stroke of having found a ring of longevity. For a short-lived race like Quicklings, there could be no greater treasure. It gave him the one thing that he couldn't steal naturally...time to plan, plot, and strategize. Smart enought not to squander the gift, he used it to his fullest advantage. He would painstakingly plan ambushes and contingency plans so that his raids on caravans had the greatest chance of success, and if things went poorly or the caravan had some surprisingly adept guards (PCs) he didn't mind withdrawing and taking the time to change his strategies.
His favorite tactic was to hide in cover near the side of the road and as the lead wagon in a caravan passed, speed out and evicerate the lead animals (He enjoyed hearing the moaning of gutted oxen as they died), then take well off into the underbursh again. With the front-most animals down, that generally slowed the caravan even more, letting him and his crew 'cherry-pick'. He frequently recruited other humanoid bandits to join his troop, 'Spedaan and the Laughing Boys'.
It turned a funky, one-off encounter into a recurring threat. I've not used him in 3.5ed yet, but he's waiting in the wings.
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My worst enemy was my first characters familiar. I had an elven fighter/mage and when I rolled for familiar I got a faerie dragon named Jiff (yeah, like the peanut butter). My DM provided his voice and personality, each of which were annoying. He eventually got eaten by my character (who had been reicarnated as a troll).
MY PLAYERS OUT!
Gladan d'Deneith. Blademark for the Sentinel Marshalls, ex-dreamlilly addict, and possessed by a quori spirit. (Evil dream spirit, for those not familiar with Eberron). As a DM, I gave the PCs a few characters to gravitate towards as patrons, and they ended up choosing my favorite, Gladan. The man will do his job to the best of his ability to maintain cover, which means his goals often overlap with the PCs. Furthermore, he is deployed to look into a very dangerous rakshasa who has hassled the PCs on numerous occasions. As such, he's a strong ally of the PCs, who have no idea of his nefarious nature, and often helps the PCs locate the rakshasa.
I'm planning on eventually causing creeping troubles with the guy. I'm considering having him turn the PCs against a cell of Kalashtar "terrorists".
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I once had a great villain for my campaign years back, during AD&D times.
His name was Thorben Kardig. His love was killed by marauding orcs and the local bishop (his uncle) wanted to ressurect her. Thorben had been at this ceremony but the bishop failed in bringing her back. Bitter about this loss anf going mad with grief he killed his uncle and left the city.
He wanted to be together with his love again and turned to the dark side of religion. The dark powers he worshiped granted him power beyond imagening and while he was searching for a way to bring back his love Fiona, he preserved her body at a secret place.
His gods told him (well, he believed it had been the gods), that they would tell him the secret of life to bring back Fiona, but therefore he had to wipeout the whole clergy of the opposing believe.
This made him conquer the enemy clergy on a grand scale and the pcs got involved.
He had lots of undead at his disposal, but as he was able to raise the dead bodys, he was not able to bring Fiona back to life. This made him more and more mad...
Anyway, he had been just a normal, high-level evil cleric with no special abilities, but with a lot of helping undead. It was a great campaign and it got better as my players learned more and more why Throben was doing what he did...
So I think his believe, willingness, love and devotion made him powerful! Old ideas, but they stil work!
MY PLAYERS OUT!
Gladan d'Deneith. Blademark for the Sentinel Marshalls, ex-dreamlilly addict, and possessed by a quori spirit. (Evil dream spirit, for those not familiar with Eberron). As a DM, I gave the PCs a few characters to gravitate towards as patrons, and they ended up choosing my favorite, Gladan. The man will do his job to the best of his ability to maintain cover, which means his goals often overlap with the PCs. Furthermore, he is deployed to look into a very dangerous rakshasa who has hassled the PCs on numerous occasions. As such, he's a strong ally of the PCs, who have no idea of his nefarious nature, and often helps the PCs locate the rakshasa.
I'm planning on eventually causing creeping troubles with the guy. I'm considering having him turn the PCs against a cell of Kalashtar "terrorists".
Cool. I'm planning on doing a campaign invoving the Sharn House Deneith enclave being infiltrated by the Inspired and I might have to yoink this idea. (With your permisson, of course) ;)
WaterdhavianFlapjack
It started out being a powerful wizard named Rufas who led a cult monster humainodies that wanted to summon Tiamat to conquer. The killed him, but he was blessed by Tiamat for his power and might to come back and was reincarnated into a living fireball spell in the shape of his face. His psion sidekick, Jamine came as a villian and she turned out to be the drow PCs sister. She comes in later. Next in the line is a kobald cheif who gets his hand on the most powerful artifact ever, and it gave him the power to suck the life force out of ANYTHING! It ended with a kobald+ the Titanic template (MWHAHAHA) THen Jasmine comes back they kill her but in the process learn of an awakened epic level vampire lord (Malganis, lvl 30) BUT then I ran them through the Malgoth series and now they are parinoid if he will come back. IN THE MEAN TIME, the have runins with Malganises apprintance. From here I plan on making them fight the Malgoth through the super uber artifact then lvls 20-30 are blank until I run Quicksilver Hourglass where they will defeat malgnis. I plan to end it at lvl 35 and still dont know who the arch arch villin is yet. ANY ideas, comments, rude remarks?
MY PLAYERS OUT!
Gladan d'Deneith. Blademark for the Sentinel Marshalls, ex-dreamlilly addict, and possessed by a quori spirit. (Evil dream spirit, for those not familiar with Eberron). As a DM, I gave the PCs a few characters to gravitate towards as patrons, and they ended up choosing my favorite, Gladan. The man will do his job to the best of his ability to maintain cover, which means his goals often overlap with the PCs. Furthermore, he is deployed to look into a very dangerous rakshasa who has hassled the PCs on numerous occasions. As such, he's a strong ally of the PCs, who have no idea of his nefarious nature, and often helps the PCs locate the rakshasa.
I'm planning on eventually causing creeping troubles with the guy. I'm considering having him turn the PCs against a cell of Kalashtar "terrorists".
Cool. I'm planning on doing a campaign invoving the Sharn House Deneith enclave being infiltrated by the Inspired and I might have to yoink this idea. (With your permisson, of course) ;)
WaterdhavianFlapjack
Go for it. I'm personally having much mirth at my PCs cluelessness. If you get any good stories, post them here! We're going on seven or eight sessions now and I'm pretty sure they're all in the dark. Enough hints are there, but they definitely haven't even noticed something suspicious.
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My favorite villian is a necromancer I played in 2nd edition. It was in the Birthright campaign setting, and he was a minor noble of the house Volarae in the realm of Diemed. I rolled a 3 for my constitution score and the DM offered me the dark pacts from the old blue necromancers handbook. I selected slow and regeneration. Now, regeneration from the blue book is pretty tough, it allowed me to regenerate from ash that was scattered to the wind. With this power in mind, young Marcellus Volare tested his regeneration gifts often, unbalancing him and driving his slightly older brother Edmund insane with terror. The necromancer used his high charisma and diplomacy proficencies (one from Dragon magazine, the other from the Birthright setting) to manipulate others around him and used charm magics on family members. His cousin El-Dried (fellow player Tony) from Khinasi however, saw through the games of Marcellus and exposed him as a witch. The result (after heavy manuvering on my part) was a charmed jury, and my evil alignment misdirected by magic to El-Dried while the Paladin PC detected it. The Paladin challenged El-Dried to a duel for trying to dishonor a noble of Diemed, and I used my slow ability (from hiding) on El-Dried so that the Paladin PC easily won. Afterwards I had servants deliver El-Drieds body to my laboratory where my PC ate his brains. That was in 95' and Tony still brings it up.
For the Diemed sourcebook I uploaded to the net(Birthright. net used to have it in the downloads section but after they revamped the site it was gone along with an awesome Ghoere book) I made him a 7th level necromancer with the lich template minus the undead traits.
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Razenforel- A incubus fiend of tempatation, warlock
He infiltrated the Pelorian theocracy of Pelegaria in my world, turned loose the terrifying Deathsong (BOVD) plague in a new magic-resistant form [which my players accidentely had a hand in delivering into the.. well.. wrong hands], and tormented the poor half-fey swashbuckler both at social gatherings (fun w/ Charm Monster and a CHarisma of 41) and by sending Demonic assassins to implicate the party in gruesome crimes. Indeed, even the elderly Heirophant of Pelor was a pawn in his plans, as he capitalized on her near state of paralysis in the guise of an innocent apothecary with a wodnerful cure (read Fiendish Gift) for the ailments of age.
With his schemes and plague slowly overwhelming the hard-pressed society, the party continually tried to track him down, finally confronting him in the Cathedral of Dawn at the city's heart, with the believed-dead swashbuckler returning, newly sainted, to bring the fiend down.
Even before their direct confrontations with Razenforel, my party continually plotted to hunt him down given his known alliance wiht one of their other tormentors, a yuan-ti cultist of terrfying power... But that's for another time :).
The end of my very first campaign, after playing about two years (and logging in a lot of hours) was the revelation that a cambion prince had been manipulating everything major that had happened in most of the campaign, to bring about a plague that would only kill off humanoids and demi-humans, but leave humans untouched. This plague was meant to start a massive war between every species on the continent, and thus start Armageddon, and the cambion, having incited it, could rule the Lands of Chaos (the world after Armageddon). While it started to work, survivors of several of the races, banded together with the PCs, managed to find the source of the plague. Unfortunately, there was no turning back, but they discovered that the plague went dormant on other planes. This led to a mass migration, after the PCs with allies of nearly every race, including the (pre-Drizzt) drow, smashed the Cambion's fortress. All of the PCs, even the humans, opted to leave, and we played, very breifly, in the Forgotten Realms with these characters, to introduce them to the setting. Then they started over in the Realms with 1st level PCs.
The Cambion was infuriating to them becuase he was so matter of fact and unemotional. They also hated that he knew everything about them, and took credit for every bad thing that had happened in the campaign for years. Instead of just having a series of mishaps in various adventures, they now felt like they had been manipulated by this lowlife, and they wanted to vent their frustration. He even staved them off a while by making them think he had a cure.
The other villain I loved was in a DragonLance campaign that I ran. He was a corrupt Knight of the Rose, and he never fought the PCs. About halfway through the campaign they knew he was on the take from the Dragon Armies, but couldn't prove it. When they finally proved to the knights that the Dragon Armies had violated their treaties and were starting to mass for war, the knights acted, but they still had to deal with the Rose Knight. They brought him up on charges in the Knight's Council, and we roleplayed a great court room drama, and in the end, they couldn't offer evidence of a thing, and the Rose Knight walked away a free man. They were fuming. One of my player's even got so flustered while roleplaying that they grabbed me by the shirt and tore it, lol.
I really like making long history chains in my world. Rather than just a bunch of important but mainly unrelated events in the past, many are linked in some way or form that gives my world's history a more joined, flowing feel. I haven't really developed many individual villains, mainly just important evil groups, but there is one segment of history with villains I really like.
The whole story is very long and has many twists and turns, but the part that most directly concerns this thread is this. Over a thousand years ago, the red dragon Feyrnex threatened to conquer most of the known world. He was eventually defeated, but centuries later, his blue dragon lieutenant assumed control of a city, marshalled armies, and threatened the world once more. He was defeated, but not before releasing Feyrnex's son, Gallanex, from a magical prison. Gallanex attempted to take up where his sire left off, gathering draconic allies to him.
The most powerful of these allies still remaining was Durthaign, the black dragon. He betrayed Feyrnex in the old days and tried to claim the emerging empire for himself. Durthaign failed, but Fayrnex was killed by the forces of good before he could retaliate against the black dragon.
Durthaign then marshalled a smaller army and tried to take over a series of countries to achieve his goals of emipre, anyway. The knights of these lands banded together and attacked him in his lair in the massive Talas Swamp, but Durthaign, in his death throws, brought his entire mountain down on the armies. All were declared dead.
But, Durthaign wasn't. He laid unmoving for half a century before secretly returning to the world and sponsoring low-profile raids to gather resources back to himself. When Gallanex returned, he sought out the former traitor, this time using a powerful artifact as insurance against betrayal. Gallanex nearly succeeded where Feyrnex failed, but a small band of adventurers smashed the artifact, and Durthaign rebelled. The fight was devestating, but Gallanex won and killed Durthaign, but was too weakened in turn to fight off the forces of good, and was summarily slain himself.
Somehow, Durthaign's magic was so great, he returned as a dracolich a while after Gallanex's death. Once again the world was threatened by his menace. His necromantic armies started spilling forth from the Talas Swamp, but an alliance of wizards and priests managed to cast a powerful spell and lock him away inside the marsh, though they could not destroy the undead dragon. Durthaign remains to this day, trying to find ways around the wards, and sending his minions out to cause pain and strife across all the lands around the Swamp.
ME!!!!! An evil minded DM with a sadistic streak.
ME!!!!! An evil minded DM with a sadistic streak.
lol, my players think the DM is a lvl 999 who lives on the edge of the far realm sitting in a high teche control room mocking them about just about everything:)
When I first started as a DM, I didn't have any intention of creating an arch villain, but in one of our games I was using a doppleganger in the guise of a noble. He hired them to take out a supposedly evil merchant and bring back some treasure that he said was his. The PCs were supposed to figure out that he was a bad guy who had sent them to take out a rival, but they never did. He popped up alot for quite awhile until a true seeing spell (I think, hard to remember) revealed him for what he was. Thinking about bringing that idea back again.
A bit from my Hoarde.
For 10 years, my primary group's arch nemesis was a Suel archmage lich that for most of that time they had no idea why this guy had it out for them so badly. This guy kept turning up, and they kept thwarting his plans. Then they did the "back-in-time" adventure that is described on my "Secrets of the Twin Cataclysms" webpage (site URL below) where they met a young mage who was apprentice to the Suel Council and accidentally got him in such trouble with the Council that he was banished just before the Rain of Colorless Fire hit. They then learned it was the same mage that had become the lich.
Eventually they had a major show down with the lich while trying to break into Marchanter's personal quarters in Melkotia Castle (also on my website), a castle built by a very powerful archmage and abandoned 40 years before. The lich was permanently destroyed, however that same adventure saw the release of Marchanter from his magical prison, an archmage very much alive and alot more powerful then the lich ever was. Besides being an even higher level wizard, he wields many unique magic items, has had access to artifacts, and (unlike the undead minions the lich controlled) controls fiends as his minions.
Denis, aka "Maldin"
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Maldin's Greyhawk http://melkot.com
Check out the ton of cool Edition-independent stuff on my website:
New Spells, Magic Items, Campaign Notoriety, Artifacts, Kyuss, secrets of the Twin Cataclysms, the Codex of the Infinite Planes, the Dreadwood, the cities of Melkot, Greyhawk and Irongate, a guide to RPG mapmaking, a unified theory for the D&D multiverse, and much, much more!!
Master Malakie, the paragon Half-friend that rules over a forced alliance between Demons and Devils (known to the Clerics as "The Covenant"). While he destroys countless cities and holy sites for power, other factions kick into play. This being the only known group to interfere with the adventurers, they are blind to the true plan behind the scenes. Although powerful beyond all belief, Malakie is NOT in charge of the strange dissappearances of miners in the nearby caves, and the dead found in the streets in the morning. Those actions were done by a group of Mindflayers {Illithids} known to others as "The Illithid Conclave", and the politically powerful Vampires that secretly rule the City's imports and exports and gambling. These Vampires are known "The Dark Hand" because of their mysterious rule over the City's government.
Soon, with the three in total chaos, and the prophecy of a Red Moon soon to arrive, a new threat called "The Warriors/Orcs of the Red Moon. {Basically, these are scary PARAGON Orcs. I mean, SCARY, PARAGON ORCS!!! Or I might make them those 4-armed red guys. you know the ones I'm talkin about...^.^;}