KARDAM, THE BURNING KHAN
male human barbarian 11
Description:
Kardam is an imposing man - standing over six feet tall, his muscular frame is chiseled by years of rigorous training and nomadic life.
The visage of the khan is striking - numerous ruby shards are embedded in the left half of his face, with a larger shard replacing the left eye. This "eye" constantly drips a liquid reminiscent of molten metal; when this liquid touches the ground, it bursts into small flames and disappears.
Kardam's tanned skin bears many scars, some of them turned into elements of elaborate tattoos. The khan wears furs of fierce predators, and albeit simple, his garments hint at skill in the battlefield.
Motivation and goals:
As a part of the rite of ascension to the throne, Kardam had to leave the khanate on a sacred quest. Thus, he set out to find Ember Dust - the fabled sage of the steppes. The heir disappeared without a trace for two years, and everyone thought him dead. When he returned, the khanate trembled - what stood before the nomads was a being of beastly strength and otherworldly intellect, leaving a burning trail.
Kardam struck fear in the hearts of his people, convincing them that Ember Dust cursed the khanate to slowly dissolve and decay. The day the liquid stops pouring out of the khan's eye would mark the khanate's end, and the only way to stall the curse would be conquest and bloodshed. Now the nomads rally around him, persuaded that they defend their right to exist.
Kardam is thoroughly convinced that he is defending his khanate, but in reality his mind was poisoned by a devil that impersonated the wandering sage. While Kardam intends to preserve his people, he also tasted power - and his tainted soul likes it. Bent on fending off the curse, he lead the khanate to bloody victories over several settlements, and has no intention of stopping.
Adventure hooks:
Though powerful himself, Kardam governs a khanate of moderate size. Once word spreads among nomads, the number of warriors will swell quickly.
Hell-bent: Growing more confident with his leadership and grip of the khanate, Kardam plans an all out attack on a nearby city. He is the new menace civilized settlements in the steppes whisper about, and it is a matter of weeks to see which city will fall prey to the burning khan. Adventurers in these locales will undoubtedly hear tales of his bloody, cunning exploits.
Ember Dust: The real sage still wanders the steppes. Ironically, he could be key to stopping Kardam's savagery. Ember Dust knows that there is a devil posing as him, and knows the creature's tricks well. While he knows how to destroy the shards in the khan's face - the source of the unholy power and influence - Ember Dust is far too detached from the civilized world to care. The adventurers will struggle to convince him to share his knowledge.
A militaristic villain with the motivation to conquer, and his people have a reason to keep him alive. And he believes these killings are necessary, so you can't convince him otherwise. And he's not insane for thinking this! And the key to his undoing is another NPC, reluctant to get involved. And the source of the trouble is yet another villain, so when you defeat Kardam there's still more work to do.
The execution isn't great but there are a lot of useful elements here for a campaign.
Rec: advance to next round.
Initial Impression: A barbarian khan? With a molten-metal dripping ruby eye? Hmm. It’s not boring, that’s for sure…
Word Count: 494 (is there something wrong with my computer? Why are so many submissions measuring out at 494?).
Concept (name, title, is it actually a villain?, overall design choices, playability): D
The Good: Striking visuals. That’s good. You can put this guy on the cover, that is for sure.
The Bad: Limited to nomad lands. Not sure he will have much reason to get in the way of the PCs. His motives don’t really put him on course to conflict with them. He seems more of an adventure hook or story NPC than a true villain who, outside of the story, is an antagonist of the PCs. I don’t really get what he wants to do and why I should care (or more importantly, why my PCs should). He just wants to defend his khanate, which is what any leader wants. I don’t see his villainy. He’s an NPC that has been tricked or corrupted, in my view. As I see it, the villain here is the devil that we don’t know anything about. I mean, we could actually resolve a story involving him by finding Ember Dust, killing the devil, removing or destroying the taint and the ruby shard, and our khan would be good as new and be a nice guy. That’s not a villain. It’s hard for me to give a good grade to a submission that fails to identify the character in the submission that is actually the villain.
Execution (quality of writing, hook, theme, organization, use of proper format, quality of mandatory content-physical description, motivation/goal, scheme/plot, presence of any disqualification criteria): B-
The Good: Reasonably well-written.
The Bad: I needed more about this ruby. What is it? What is it doing to him? How has he been tainted? Who or what is this devil and why didn’t it just take the ruby shard thing? This seems too disjointed and not well thought through. I think the real problem here is that the khan isn’t the villain—the unnamed devil is.
Tilt (did it grab me?, is it unique and cool?, do I like it?, flavor and setting): C-
I like the magic ruby aspect, but the submission is lacking in key details. His motives are not clear and I don’t see why the PCs care. He lacks immediacy. And, as noted above, I don’t think he is the real villain of this submission.
Overall: C-
A big guy with a metal-dripping eye that he got from a devil. But what he wants and needs is unclear, and it highlights that the real villain here is the devil not the khan.
Recommendation: I DO NOT recommend this villain submission for advancement.
From the author of the scarlet legionary banner! I wish you luck and hope the voters see it differently than I did!
Kobold Press
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Love the name, love the premise, and mostly like the delivery.
You've got a character with a good description that immediately engages my interest. And frankly, barbarians *should* be major villains all the time: that's why they're barbarians, they pillage the good and honest folk of civilized lands. Plenty of meat to chew on in that.
I respectfully disagree with Clark, though: he's not really limited to the khanates, especially if there's other lands nearby. Conquering the other khanates is clearly Step 1. Step 2 is turning the Ruby-eyed Horde to loot the soft underbelly of civilization!
Yes, there are mechanical concerns and questions, but for the most part, the designer is making us ask the right questions. As judges, he's getting us interested in the villain, wanting to know more. That's a very good sign.
So, the Burning Khan's got motive, he's got the means, he's got the opportunity! Absolutely a villain I could use in Zobeck or Greyhawk or Golarion, which all have horse tribes of some stripe.
Recommendation: Powerful military villain, well-executed. Recommended.
I would first like to thank the judges for their thoughts on my creation. It has been an honor to read both praise and critique, and I am thrilled by the opportunity to be commented by the creator of my favorite setting - the Forgotten Realms.
--redacted--
V-
I think Vic might need to edit your comments if you dont. I think you should refrain from providing additional explanation. Its prohibited by the rules.
Basically, your first paragraph is fine. Everything else after that is not. As I see it, anyway...
Please edit your post.
I redacted. Sorry!
Kardam's pretty cool. A good fantasy twist on the leader of the barbarian hordes, and I was pleased as punch to see that he wasn't a hobgoblin or orc.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Dedicated Voter Season 6
aka Eyebite
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Eh, I don't know about this one.
The ruby shards stuck in his face remind of me the Bond villain from Tomorrow Never Dies, with the diamond shards in his face.
The tear of molten lava reminds me of the Bond villain in Casino Royale who cries tears of blood from his one eye.
I'll have to consider this one strongly before I cast my vote - my initial feeling is just that he's a Bond movie rip-off.
The other elements presented here are pretty cool/useful though . . . hm, I'll have to give it some thought.
Thanks for the kind commentary! I'm happy that you find my villain compelling and entertaining. That's the best I can hope for!
The ruby shards stuck in his face remind of me the Bond villain from Tomorrow Never Dies, with the diamond shards in his face.
Hah, if that helps my case, I never went to see Tomorrow Never Dies... I think I was seven or eight when it came out, and I didn't pay much attention to 90's Bond afterwards. :) I shall correct that mistake, though.
EDIT: I haven't seen Die Another Day, either. I am so lacking in my Brosnan 007-fu, it's embarassing.
The ruby shards stuck in his face remind of me the Bond villain from Tomorrow Never Dies, with the diamond shards in his face.
Psst. That was Die Another Day. Wrong Bond movie with "Die" in the title.
Definitely a well-written character, very memorable. Khanate just means my players are going to be screaming "Khan!!" every time I mention him, but that's ok. I'm not sure how to involve the PCs with him - is it really their job to stop a war? Wars happen all the time, and unless the PCs have a vested interest in that particular strip of land (or it's imminently evident he's going to take over the world), it's hard to pit a party of 5 or 6 against an army. First impression, it comes down to "He's waging war, we should stop him!" "Why?" ".. cuz war is bad?"
Basically, I would have liked more personal elements, how he's going to get inside the PCs heads. Still, totally sweet-looking character. Probably also in my top 4.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Dedicated Voter Season 6
aka Eyebite
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Psst. That was Die Another Day. Wrong Bond movie with "Die" in the title.
The ruby shards stuck in his face remind of me the Bond villain from Tomorrow Never Dies, with the diamond shards in his face.
Meh. Die Another Day, Tomorrow Never Dies - the Brosnan Bond movies all run together for me.
But you get what I meant. :)
Marathon Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7
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Reckless Ratings
Concept3
(Is this villain villainous?)
Content3
(Grammar, Format,Spelling, Etc.)
Coolness2
(Would my players be impressed by this? Am I?)
Credibility3
(Does the villain’s motives make sense?)
Clarity3
(How good a sense of how to stat this villain do we get?)
Scores out of 5 and completely based on my opinion only.
Total Score14
Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
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Thank you for making a good, old-fashioned, kick-butt villain, with a theatrical appearance. I don't really understand villains that are average-looking, non-descript, etc. Heroes want to fight memorable-looking bad guys! This fellow sounds like he's straight out of a pulp fantasy comic book, which is precisely where my players want to dwell.
While I love the imagery, this struck me as Ghengis or Khubla Khan with a magical (if devil enduced) twist. Just doesn't grab me enough from history. Sorry.
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I just like the idea of the group traveling all the way to "Outer Effing Mongolia" to find the old crazy Mako from Conan, convince him to straighten this crap out, find the devil and kill it, run away from the fiendish mammoths or whatever else is around there, all the while this Khan guy is laying waste to half the civilized world. I got a copy of Marco Polo's travel log and a strange trip halfway around the world like that would fit right in with this guy.
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I love the imagery and I have a soft spot for Khanates (the Khanates were one of my favorite countries in Mystara). I don't know that the background as written quite works to entice the PCs unless there's already a nomadic country right next door, but I can already see how to expand the plot enough to work him in. I havn't decided yet, but it's likely that Kardam will get one of my votes.
In short is the Burning Khan a minion/puppet, or a genuine dyed-in-the-wool villain who with a bit of diabolic assistance got going a bit sooner and more energetically than he might have done otherwise?
Gah, I really hate myself for redacting one of the sentences in my draft now...
Anyway - thank you all for your commentary and I hope the khan interests you!
I like this villain. There's nothing overly flashy about him, but it's nice to have an option which doesn't require in-depth investigation or political machinations. He represents a real threat to a wide region (Ghengis Khan anyone?) which is a good way to draw PCs into the conflict.
I would have liked to see a bit more about the forces under his command. As it stands, the PCs may get bored of hewing down barbarian henchmen over and over again, so it would have been good to see a bit of flavour in the form of different creatures or forces that march with the Khan. The writing is solid, and the alternate means of defeating him are intriguing. Nice job.
CR
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8
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KARDAM, THE BURNING KHAN
male human barbarian 11Description:
Kardam is an imposing man - standing over six feet tall, his muscular frame is chiseled by years of rigorous training and nomadic life.The visage of the khan is striking - numerous ruby shards are embedded in the left half of his face, with a larger shard replacing the left eye. This "eye" constantly drips a liquid reminiscent of molten metal; when this liquid touches the ground, it bursts into small flames and disappears.
Nice, but wheres the meat? What does the eye "do"? How did he get it exactly?
Pro:
BARBARIAN!!! - a first so far.
Con:
His eye, I want to know more and didn't get it. It must do something beyond just 'looking' cool [hot] right?
I hate having a caveat that the PCs must seek someone out for help to stop some guy a sword would probably just kill, if inserted repeatedly into his stomach.
What's stopping the PCs from just simply doing this and ignoring the sage and then getting the flavor text of the demon out there still?
Not much I think.
Got my fourth vote. Barely, as there are issues and holes here, many of them discussed already...
About the necessity of being in or right next to the nomadic lands: just reading a book about medieval history of Europe, and somehow Visigoths ended up founding a kingdom in Spain, other barbarian hordes in northern Italy, Rome was sacked and Huns and Hungarians frolicked pretty much across Christian Europe...when at the same time Seljuk Turks went across Islamic Middle East. So at least there is historical precedents of determined nomadic tribes Going Places. So restriction to a nomadic area is not a necessity, if one wants to make a full-blown campaign of barbarian hordes progressing across the continent.
Magdalena, thank you for pointing out something I was dying to say (but didn't, because I'd risk a DQ).
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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Dedicated Voter Season 6
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This one has some villain chops for me - I like that he's a barbarian focused on destruction, rather than a noble savage.
I'm left wanting more details on how he got cursed, and that's not a good thing in this case. I feel like it's half a description, rather than the whole foe. The weeping metal eye is also not a strong seller for me.
The real sage wandering around is a nice touch.
On the balance, the outsider wanting to tear down the pillars of civilization has me inclined to vote for this entry, despite the flaws.
I like Kardam. A lot. He was in my top five. Unfortunately I could only vote for four. The entry was too vague in places to grab me as much as some of the others, so I ended up not voting for it, but it was a really tough decision. I hope that he makes it into the next round. I would love to see this guy's stat block. Good luck.
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The Bad: Limited to nomad lands. Not sure he will have much reason to get in the way of the PCs. His motives don’t really put him on course to conflict with them. He seems more of an adventure hook or story NPC than a true villain who, outside of the story, is an antagonist of the PCs. I don’t really get what he wants to do and why I should care (or more importantly, why my PCs should). He just wants to defend his khanate, which is what any leader wants. I don’t see his villainy. He’s an NPC that has been tricked or corrupted, in my view. As I see it, the villain here is the devil that we don’t know anything about. I mean, we could actually resolve a story involving him by finding Ember Dust, killing the devil, removing or destroying the taint and the ruby shard, and our khan would be good as new and be a nice guy. That’s not a villain. It’s hard for me to give a good grade to a submission that fails to identify the character in the submission that is actually the villain.
with utmost respect Clark... tell that to the hundreds of towns and dozens of cities that either Atila the Hun or the Mongol Hordes burned to the ground from Asia to Eastern Europe.
More Importantly... Kardam already tasted power and liked it... even if he is 'cured' from the curse he would do everything in his power to regain this or even more power...
Vladislav, you have my vote, anything that reminds me of Genghis Khan mixed with the rage of Kratos and still gives me something to work with... deserves to continue.
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This is a villian I can use. Saddly, while my players are in the perfect region for me to use him, they are just second level so they are not ready to face this guy yet. Congrats on creating the first villian I have read through that I actually liked.
don't send him first... send scouts ahead... or monsters or other people being displaced by the Khanate that could easily become a Horde
this is definitively going to end in a big war, just taking the 'curse' from him would be anticlimatic
Nomads FTW!! Now, if he just had a drinking problem...
I quite liked this villain. Good, original description. Clear direction given on how the villian may develop throughout a story arc.
6/10
Hmm, extra credit for being a villain with a real class (barbarian). And a very anime look to him. It'll be a little difficult to use him long term, as warlords tend to just be the boss the characters kill after killing some waves of his minions. But with some careful planning, he could be fun as there's a number of different angles (like the devil angle) to this.
This guy opens lots of political story lines. Do the PCs align with one nasty barbarian horde to stop another? Do they try to assemble a coalition of warlords to oppose him, risking that the new coalition will not turn out to be an even bigger threat? He needn't survive to keep the story going. Good design!
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I like this one pretty well. The visual is neat, the backstory is nice and a clever flip with the motivation for the barbarian tribes (initially his own but really ALL of the allied ones) to fight like howling devils for him. This isn't a guy who just has visions, but is following a clear-cut (false) prophecy from (he thinks) the wisest sage in all the steppes. He's not just looting civilized lands because they are decadent and weak but because he must... AND he likes it!
I think this villain has a fair amount of meat on its bones, and with the depth around the villain's story of the devil, the sage, the other khans, the reactions of various civilized lands, I think there is a lot of potential for him as a focal point, and one that can be aggressively pointed at almost any place wherever the PCs happen to be (okay, someplace like Absalom not so much, but most countries on the Golarion map could flavor up a guy like this close enough to be a menace).
I've finished most of the villains and I'm not sure this one is quite in my top 4, but it's on my short list to think about.
Thank you for your positive comments, everyone!
Jason, it means a lot to have one of the top four of 2008 like your entry. It means I'm on the right path!
Vote the Burning Khan, and he will spare your homestead! ...For a while! :)
So, this is basically your classic "self-fulfilling prophecy" feedback loop deal, where the prophecy goads the subject into action, thus ensuring that the khanate will die when he dies, because he gambles the khanate's survival on this campaign.
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This is a villian I can use. Saddly, while my players are in the perfect region for me to use him, they are just second level so they are not ready to face this guy yet. Congrats on creating the first villian I have read through that I actually liked.don't send him first... send scouts ahead... or monsters or other people being displaced by the Khanate that could easily become a Horde
this is definitively going to end in a big war, just taking the 'curse' from him would be anticlimatic
I agree with you completely on this. I think a few of the entries this year have seen a bit of hesitation because people are worried they are too strong for the PC's to run in and kill instantly. But to me, part of the point of a good villain is feeling her presence and wanting to do something about it and having to plan. Someone that you can just run up to, hack to pieces in 30 seconds, and ride away from is not a memorable villain.
With that said, I like this guy because he is an active presence, because he has the means to come across the PCs, and because there is versatility with the possible plot hooks.
I'm really torn on the eye. Part of me thinks that it's really goofy, the other part of me likes it because I can see how that might be used as proof of his experience and his right to rule.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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Dedicated Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka Steven T. Helt
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I'm not excited by this guy. What happened to the devil that fooled him? Is there a larger agenda?
The writing seems clunky and rushed. I think the first hook is very weak. Barbarian warlord rattles his sword isn't very inspiring. The inclusion of the NPC who holds the answers is fair, but not enough to earn my vote, I think.
Honorable mention for being more complete than most.
It seems my tastes are unusual... or at least, very different from the judges. Most of the villains I'm keenest to see in the next round received unanimous "no" recommendations from the judges. But this one didn't, so I'll take the risk that it's more likely to go through than the others, and vote for the ones in more danger of getting knocked out. Sorry - because this is a great villain I want to see more of, and I'm crossing my fingers that it makes it through.
Good luck!
Edit: You know what? I've changed my mind. You get my fourth vote!
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka JoelF847
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I like this entry a lot. It's pretty amazing to me that in all of these entries, this is the only fighter type warlord leading an army of destruction. Instead of just going for that, you gave him a magic ruby eye, a secret weakness needed to defeat him (find the real sage and deal with the devil influence first, then beat Kardam), and a simple but effective motivation (keep killing or your life runs out.)
I'd go so far as to have him be invincible until the eye is disabled with the secret knowledge gained by the sage, and/or make him super powerful until it's dealt with (say CR 20 with the eye, but CR 11 after it's dealt with). This pretty much forces the PCs to deal with the sage and devil before Kardam.
Depite being a good entry, it didn't quite beat out my top 4, but I really hope to see you advance!