You know 'em. You love 'em. You absolutely hate 'em. Immoral, base, vile, and despicable creatures haunt every good story. From a person’s mind to a grandiose dark god; we’ve all seen our villains take root. Perhaps you’d be willing to share the monsters you’ve made? Take a seat, tell me of your demons.
I’ll not speak first this time. I’ve got so many villains I want to share I don’t particularly know where to start!
I’m in the process of fleshing out a new villain from Altielle’s past. Halaxxi, an eredar who oversaw the recruitment, corruption, and infusion of felborne in Suramar. She actually survived the Legion war and is currently hiding out, gathering elf slaves by getting them addicted to fel magic.
Her goals are not yet entirely clear, and might range from simple survival to rebuilding the Legion to starting her own thing on a quest for power.
She’s going to pop up again soon in Altielle’s life, eyes set on making her the felborne she was destined to be.
I’m going to take every idea from this thread and merge them into one super villain who is unconquerable.
Back in the Legion Era I created a campaign for Steelpaw Shao’din heavily featuring my Rogue in the guild, Zhihao Winterclaw, and her past. The campaign entailed a conflict between the Steelpaw and the Dreadclaw clan, a group of Pandaren Felsworn composed of the remnants of the Winterclaw clan and other allied clans.
There were two main villains planned, technically three. These included the original leader and technical founder of the Dreadclaw, Yun Winterclaw, Zhihao’s older sister, along with her eventual replacement Guanyu and the mastermind behind it all Thylaris.
Yun was meant to be the main face of the entire thing. She is, at best misguided but well meaning. Much of what she knew of Fel and the Legion was fed to her by Thylaris, and with it the belief that joining the Legion was the only way to save Pandaria. Unfortunately for Thylaris the latter didn’t register to Yun in quite the way she had anticipated. Ultimately Yun wanted to do a sort of Illidari approach to the issue. She and her clan would use their powers and trust against them to destroy the Legion from the inside. That was at least the goal she had. Unfortunately not everyone in the clan shared that vision. As time passed Yun’s control over the clan waned as the intent of those within became more apparent. The power and influence of Fel, coupled with that of Thylaris and her own supporters, tested Yun and those most loyal to her. Their resistance soon alienated them from the rest of the clan, causing a schism; resulting in the instillation of Guanyu. More on her and Thylaris later.
Guanyu’s ascension was paid for in Yun’s bloody betrayal. It was at this same point that Yun realized the error of her ways; that Thylaris should never have been trusted. She saw her clan fall for the second time, now due to her own incompetence, and believed there was only one way atone. She and her loyalists briefly fought against the rest of the Dreadclaw. In the aftermath of the conflict the remaining loyalists killed themselves and Yun instigated a fight against Zhihao over of important heirloom of their clan. In essence all Yun wanted was to do what she was raised to; to lead protectors of Pandaria to victory. She was ill-equipped to take on the threat she was faced with, and further led astray by misplaced trust.
I’m going to include Guanyu and Thylaris in another post. I don’t have much on the former and I don’t want this post to be overlong.
I’ve got a villain.
Demo O’Gorgo, Master Mist. He who lives within a crooked tower across an inverse lake, upon the dark side of Elune. A troublesome spirit, this being has haunted our world as long as it has known trickery. As he has walked this world, he has left a path of confusion and tragedy, leaving few to remember his name.
Those unlucky enough to have written it down, before facing rather untimely and comical demises. Hundreds of faces have been worn by Demo, as hundreds of lives have been ruined by the grin he carries with him. An offering of generous gifts and any wish to be granted, should be taken with extreme caution. Be careful what you wish for.
It is said he takes the souls of those who break his accord, of those who cross him in bad days. A master of illusions, foul magicks, and even fouled tastes… It is for the best that you ignore a trader in yellow, who comes after springtime showers. Respect those who come to you in need, and never turn a blind eye to the poor, unless you seek to become the object of a malicious creature’s pleasures.
You’re better to forget the name you read, to not study this obscurity. He knows if you’re looking for him, and it’s for the better that you do not elicit his attention.
That is so creepy. It reminds me of Koh the Face Stealer from the Last Airbender.
Ah yes. The best villain I ever created was Teilaya “Mystfire” Sangryn. Growing uo rejected by her own noble-blooded father (daddy issues, how original) she learned quickly to survive on her own. But always expected to die young.
When she met Vor’rinar Solarshade who would become her eventual fiance and father of her daughter, she was still pretty young and naive, only 900 or so, and was completely taken in by the Warlock’s charm. And they became the criminal duo known as Tei and Vor (a play on Bonnie and Clyde). “Wanted by Silvermoon, and their fans even more. Cause they the type of villains e’rebody roots for”.
While she loved the freedom her life of crime afforded her. She knew how dangerous it was and hid her daughter from it best she could. Her life of crime culminated in what she calls the Roseflame heist.
It was where she “won” her wealth and lost everything else. She falsified her love for the noble Mallaen Roseflame, going so far as to take his hand in marriage only to slit his throat as her partner Vor’rinar emptied the noble’s vaults to an unknown island in the south seas (portals, not even once). But Roseflame has precautions in place. And the duo we’re forced to flee.
Vor’rinar vanished without a trace, leaving Teilaya to fend for herself. She broke into the home of the priestess Aelsa’Mori Mystfire, slit her throat and took her identity before fleeing Silvermoon.
She stowed away ln a ship that crash landed on the then mist hidden shores of Pandaria, and met an older couple who were suspicious, but allowed her to live. Eventually teaching her a form of mistweaving called fistweaving.
She rejoins the game storyline proper in Legion when the … Well, Legion invades the peak of serenity. And that is where she joined the horde, and the military life for a time. Until circumstances forced her to say farewell to her comrades in arms and fake her own death due to the blackmail of an even bigger villain. The Shadow Father, Zae Warren.
When she finally killed the Shadow Father was when she finally realized she was free.
Except Vor’rinar is still alive, and she intends to kill him next.
I know I rambled but this story is my pride and joy and I could talk about it for hours. I am currently writinh Myst’s IC memoirs on shift someday I may even post them!
(I read all of these posts, if people are ever worried that I’m just liking because they’re on my thread.)
I’ll share more of my things later, if/when more people post!
A bit of backstory on the Winterclaws will help when talking about Guanyu. They were a clan of Pandaren assassins based in the mountains of Kun-Lai. Peculiar to them was the widespread use of elemental magic through shamanism and pseudo-shamanism. The Shaman and fighters of the clan would each undergo a ritual to establish for themselves a life long companion in the form of one of the local elementals. How they did this was up to them, and in the eyes of all informed about that individual.
Guanyu, one of the clan’s Battle Shaman, obtained her second by sheer force, subjugating it through her will; a step away from methods that have historically led to exile. Guanyu is, at her core, the kind of person who should not be given power but deeply lusts for it. What sets her most apart from similar power hungry despots is that she knows where and how to get it, and when to use it.
It is probably no wonder that Guanyu would be easily taken by the appeal of Fel magic, especially with Thylaris helping her along. She and the rest of the clan was fed similar lines as Yun. She heard of the things the Legion had accomplished and was easily seduced by them and Thylaris. Thylaris’ influence invoked in her infatuation and obsession, with the Fel arts and with Thylaris herself. Guanyu was the second highest ranked Shaman in the Dreadclaw, her and her superior were symbolic of the eventual schism within the clan. Her ambition helped drive that schism and her usurping of Yun cemented her idol’s true vision. Her fall, along with that of many of the renegade Shaman of the Dreadclaw, was orchestrated by Xiangu; one of the few other members, and few Shaman of the Winterclaw not affiliated with the Dreadclaw.
And now for Thylaris. Thylaris was once a Blood Elf; a Priestess turned Warlock turned felsworn demon. Her zeal, charisma and cunning made her a Shivarra in nearly every way but form. Her Ambition brought her to Pandaria in search of power artifacts. It was during the procurement of one such artifact that she met Yun and saw an opportunity. Thylaris excelled in uncovering and exploiting vulnerability. Her cult is composed entirely of individuals who held some manner of fatal flaw; a Wretched obsessed with vanity, a disillusioned Demon Hunter, and vengeful Blademaster to name a few. Yun, haunted by the fall of her clan and death of her parents, pressured to aid her homeland against the then current crisis, was perfect fodder to build a new weapon for the Legion’s use. With a few words of sympathy and a friendly offering of lore she planted an idea in Yun. When she offered the Pandaren felblood, told them what it could do, her plan had truly been set in motion.
When her intended puppet showed signs of resisting she quickly sought out those within the clan who would not; the clan had been formed, who the Pandaren thought was leading mattered little. She would use those loyal to her, those seeking power over glory, to purge the rest. Unfortunately for her she underestimated the cunning of her planned puppet, as well as the strength of Pandaria’s local defenders. When it became apparent that she had failed she contemplated her return and left behind the promise with her dying breath.
Hmm…where to start?
Back in Vanilla/Burning Crusade, long before Wrath of the Lich King was even known to be in the pipeline, I ran a story on my original server of Thorium Brotherhood about my then main at the time - Alanos Highstorm, late of the Kingdom of Alterac and the Knights of the Silver Hand.
He was a good, virtuous man…who happened to be being harassed mentally by the Lich King. That’s right, I was RPing as a Death Knight before being a Death Knight was even a thing. It was a lot of fun honestly, if a bit shallow.
Eventually I retconned the whole thing out of existence and wrote a fan fic where Alanos ends up - due to a mishap with the Dark Portal - being flung into Tamriel during the onset of the Oblivion Crisis.
More recently, it would be whole Vanndrel here was before I revived Vanndrel as a character. My Human Hunter Clinton Avers. Former resident of Theramore, he was one of the “lucky” refugees to be picked up by Kor’kron patrol boats off the coast of Duskwallow.
He spent the next several weeks/months (however long in-game it was) as a “guest” of the Kor’kron in Ogrimmar. He was tortured brutally having his entire left arm degloved, an eye gouged out and half his upper lip missing due to a female Kor’kron deciding to “give him a kiss”.
He was rescued in the course of the Siege, but obviously there were scars that went beyond the horrible physical ones. And since Warlords of Draenor was the next expansion, needless to say Avers relished the chance to get some back from the “Mud covered piggies”.
His garrison’s walls were COVERED in crucified Orcs, y’all.
Eventually, he has a mental breakdown when even his bloodthirst is sated and officially I left Avers on AU Draenor at the completion of WoD (Even though he existed through Legion), seeking to atone for all the blood he’d split.
Prior to the Dreadclaw campaign I wrote another one for Steelpaw. This one involved a Naga invasion. The main villain of this one was named Azjira, a Sea Witch and Necromancer.
Azjira was an ambitious conqueror. She saw Pandaria as an opportunity to gain rulership, along with the favor of Azshara. In addition she sought the lore of the Mogu; their knowledge of the soul and all things pertaining. With her power over the dead, coupled with the influence she already heald amongst her people, she fielded a massive army and began a number of projects and assaults inland.
A major part of her machinations entailed the creation of various unique and powerful abominations whom the Steelpaw had to seek and destroy one by one. This also had the additional purpose of collecting reagents for an item used to purify a tan-chao the Naga corrupted to collect the departing souls of the dead in the Jade Forest; not unlike what’s apparently happening with The Maw in the game’s main plot, but on a smaller scale. The monsters’ creation were each overseen by Azjira, they included the following:
A giant centipede-yak
A big sea turtle with lightning powers
Ghostly drider made of one of the previously slain generals from a previous event
And some others I can’t remember.
Having lost too much ground and various important subordinates and resources Azjira eventually called a peace summit which led to her pulling her forces from Pandaria. She did so with the promise of her eventual return. In retrospect I didn’t do quite as much with the necro stuff as I wanted; and Azjira never actually took part in any battles herself. She also pretty high on the pecking order among the Naga so there’s a lot of potential for what could happen in her second crack at ruling Pandaria.
I recently remembered another Pandaren villain character. This one was conceptualized but never fully developed for various reasons. She was essentially a farmer turned soldier who had seen the worst examples the Alliance and Horde at wartime had to offer. Concluding that both were destined to destroy all they touched, she wanted to forcibly militarize all of Pandaria; either to ensure Pandaria could withstand what she perceived as inevitable attempts to conquer it or decimate both factions for its safety (I can’t remember which).
She was heavily inspired by Apollyon, the main antagonist of For Honor.
Oh, I’ve got a memorable Villain character. I created him to be an antagonist for my Kul Tiras guild here, KTMC. He as called Thaseidon, the Drowned King. He was a Kvaldir that had been dragged down to Helheim by Helya and damned to gather souls for her for all eternity, only to be freed from her control by a chance encounter with an Old God relic called ‘The Lantern of Lost Souls.’ He became leader of a massive Horde of undead called ‘The Drowned,’ which consisted of those who had died at Sea. The Lantern was very specific. It could only raise things that had died in the Ocean. The Drowned were like Davy Jones and the Flying Dutchman meets the Scourge. All barnacled and sodden with water. Definitely rotting, bleached and brinewashed. It all cumulated with a massive armada of risen ships setting course for Kul Tiras and we had to go stop them. This was all before BfA, also. Still one of my favorite things to Rolelay.
That Lantern -did- turn up again though. It’s very One Ring-y. Thaseidon was always just a puppet. He’s in the Maw right now. Might see him again come Shadowlands.
I’ve created a villain that I can’t really call a villain.
In my Homebrew tabletop setting, there was a war that ended just a few years ago. (Blatantly ripped off from Eberron, yes.) The city the players are in now is built into three layers. The Upper City, the Lower City, and the Depths.
The way I’ve got things planned out, the players will hear stories about people going missing in the Lower City. Ideally, they’ll go to investigate. What they’ll eventually find is someone who seems to be drunkenly stumbling. If they go up to investigate, they’ll find out it’s actually a zombie.
The person responsible is, for lack of a better description, a child trapped in the body of an adult with the powers of a necromancer. I’m planning on reading this out to them when they encounter her.
“Do you like my dolls? I made them myself. It gets lonely down here. Daddy said that he had to make the bad people go away. Then he didn’t come home. Then Mommy told me to hide. I was all alone. But then my new friend told me I could see them again. That I would never be alone again. I could make them just like dolls. Don’t you like them? I can make you a doll, too. Do you want to be my doll?”
I’m also planning on playing this music each time they encounter one of the “dolls.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om-e0D629YQ
The Dreamer. Not a traditional villain, she still possesses that simple “demon of the mind” station. When Sint’s mind started to shatter due to a curse put upon her by her greatest ever adversary, she hired the aide of a spiritual healer to fix the cracks that he placed in her head. The healer, Kuraav, put them both into a sleep-like trance so that he could enter Sint’s mind through a door of dreams.
Within a realm he called “The Realm of Endless Sleep”, Kuraav was able to see Sint’s memories, her hopes, her ambitions, and her pain. He could see his own, of times long before even the rule of Velen and Kil’jaeden on his own homeworld. In sleep could one find the source of suffering, the agent that causes so much pain. In Sint’s mind, he found it. Jagged black lines started to cross through her memories, erasing what was good, cutting things together to make things far worse. The line spoke in some of her memories, replacing important figures with the face of the Lord. Even though the Lord had been defeated by Sint, it was clear that he had gotten the last laugh.
So Kuraav met the council of Personas, all aspects of Sint’s mind. At the head of the council, the Queen of Ambition, the Dreamer. A kind and regal soul that understood love and loss, who embodied resolve and hope even past the greatest pain. Her eyes held a different pain than the Sint he spoke to in the waking world. This pain would stay with Kuraav until his dying day. For it was Kuraav who destroyed all of these personas, tainted by the Lord’s hand, even the Dreamer faced death due to the means Kuraav had to resort to.
He did not act maliciously. The Dreamer begged him to kill them all. Through fire, a new mind would be forged. But Kuraav would never forget the Dreamer, a new demon to live within his conscience for the rest of his days. He never stopped asking himself if there was another way, that the Dreamer was wrong. Although he’ll never find the answer, it keeps him awake at night.
[Looks at title of thread. Reads op. Looks at his roster of characters.]
May be easier to list my non villainous characters.
Yeah, I’ve got a penchant for “antagonistic” characters myself.
My longest played character was an old Troll Witch Doctor whose concept could best be summed up as Disney Villain mixed with the folklorish personality of Marie Laveau. Had a lot of fun playing the shady person that you make a deal with, only to find out it causes more problems than it solves. Very rarely would she come to actual blows with people, as she was always kind of on the sidelines, or putting people more into a “be careful what you wish for” kind of scenario.
Then Princess and the Frog came out, and she ended up being taken more and more for a Dr. Facilier expy 
Tam here is definitely another antagonistic and often villainous character, only for socially oriented stories. She doesn’t assault people or plot world domination. She gossips, shoots shade, manipulates, and uses people for petty and personal reasons- which kind of makes her all the more obnoxious, as it’s a very real and relatable kind of villainy, and one that you can’t usually vanquish with with sword and spell.
I’ve never actually played a villain, or even an antagonist really. I tried to make one once long ago, with the idea of them possessing no tangible power (magic/martial skill), but rather influencing others towards an end that ultimately would be commendable, perhaps even, “Good,” but the methods of achieving it being bad.
It just never really panned out as within five minutes of rolling the character someone came up and killed him for being, “Bad.” That was a product of the times though. In the old days people just jumped on antagonists before they had a chance to even start rolling.
The concept itself was a peasant who’s ambition was to bring about great prosperity for Stormwind and her peoples. That was the long term goal which most would say is a good motivation, and it’s one he would have shared with people he’d try to rope into his plots. With the long-term goal in hand he’d focus on short-term goals to reach that, the first naturally being the acquisition of significant wealth. This would naturally begin with the most legitimate of methods; hard work and sweat. Those roped into his grandiose plans would, at that point, be made aware of the new short-term goal: actively fighting the threats of Stormwind.
Using that previously acquired wealth he’d arm and train people, and send them against the likes of Gnolls, Murlocs, Bandits, etc… The goal would be to earn a reputation, even if a fairly minor one. Such individuals would of course bring back the spoils of war, which would be re-invested to further increase the quality of equipment and training. At this time, however, two accounting books would come into play; one open to anyone, and one just belonging to this antagonist. That second one held a true account of the wealth garnered, with accounts being set aside for less legal transactions, mostly involving goblins.
Once a sizable influx of capital was established, and most major threats had been dealt with, he’d have started manufacturing false threats for his unaware heroes to tackle, with said threats themselves being as unaware as possible of his hand in it. At the same time, generous donations would be made to the beneficiaries; orphanages, schools, the poor, the church… and off the book, gifts would be sent to the proper members of nobility. In time the names of certain nobles would begin to be associated with the efforts of those heroes.
I’m sure you guys get the idea by now. A person wielding immense influence rather than power, working behind the scenes to manufacture suffering and need so that his heroes can answer the call. Someone who’d play different factions against one another (nobles and royals as an example), maintaining their only interest is the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom…
Typical political villain, basically, just one who starts out at the bottom and works his way up.
Ooh. I love this thread. So I have had this villain in Latilda’s plot for years now. Morwenna Rommel. She, along with a small cult of Gilneans, ascended into a void/incorporeal state that allows her to fully access the power of the void. However, in doing so, she became atool of N’zoth and seeks to rebuild a body for herself, and needs Rommel blood to do it.
She’s harassed Lat for YEARS and has yet to succeed. I’m hoping to resolve her story by the end of 8.3
At one point I was considering a campaign for Shadow Vault. The main villain was Night Elf Lich who sought to turn the world’s population undead, specifically into ethereal undead. I can’t remember anything beyond that, unfortunately. I think her motives had something to do with wanting to achieve world peace.