Your Most Memorable Villains

[Fiery Justice]

As we all know, a hero is only as good as the struggles he faces. One of the major struggles of most PCs is the villain. Of course, there are the many cannon-fodder villains, played with little invention or greatness. But every once in awhile, a villain sticks out in your mind as special. Maybe they're particularly terrifying or funny, maybe they're deeply sympathetic or disgusting. Your favorite villains, the ones that you talked about months or years after they had made a particularly satisfying thud when they hit the ground.

I'd love to hear any exceptional villains and the stories that go with them, and I'm sure we could all pick up on a few good tips and ideas. So, go ahead and post them here. You can explain what they did or what made them stick out in your mind.

[Crel]

Well, I can't really think of any truly genius (as in good character villians) villians from any of my games. Good moments are far more common than astounding BBEGs. From outside a DnD game though, I would say Ashera from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for Wii. The moment that you realize that (SPOILER WARNING!) the god that everyone has worshipped for thousands of years and created the world is now trying to destroy it, along with finding out that the game isn't Good v. Evil, but Order v. Chaos, and then the added benefits of her being an extremely powerful boss and controlls the most powerful heroes ever apart from your party. Combined, she's just amazing, not as a vile villian, but as a unique character.

[Brauron]

Carl Stanford, head of a globe-spanning Cthulhu cult in the Call of Cthulhu campaign Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. It's been a year and a half since that campaign wrapped up and my players still curse and spit at the mention of his name.

I think it was that I played him as unfailingly polite and pleasant as he screwed over the PCs over and over again, and even knew the names and correct honorifics of PCs he hadn't met yet that made the party hate him as much as they do.

[ondonaflash]

Killer-of-His-Own-Kind, an Aasimir assassin who didn't kill Aasimirs... He killed assassins. He duel wielded two magic scythes and his first introduction was when he showed up to kill an Assassin who had been harrying the party.

His idea was that he was a "Clean-up" man, designated by the Assassins' Guild to clean up messes by Assassins who had failed, or where the job was so secret that the Assassin sent to complete the job had to be removed.

He was interesting because he seemed really up-beat and friendly for an Assassin, even going so far as to tell the party why he was there, and that there were Assassins after them.

Of course eventually the party runs across one too many Assassins' paths and he has to come try to kill us. Tragic really.

[Fiery Justice]

(SPOILER WARNING!)

If you're going to post a major spoiler to a thing you should use the spoiler function which you can get like so: [ spoiler][/spoiler] except without the space in between the first bracket and the s.

[Mongoose87]

In our Eberron campaign, one a PC's sister was accidentally merge by way of a creation forge with the Lord of Blades and Vol. She then proceeded to spend a decade in a time-lapse in a library of all of the world's knowledge. Result: a four way gestalt of the 20th level, using fighter, druid, sorcerer and another I'm forgetting. Oh, I forgot to mention: she decided to take over the world, and was doing a very good job of it.

[waterpenguin43]

All elder evils are very well done, some have truly disturbing signs (eg.Atropus,Ragnorra) and minions(eg.Atropus,Father Llymic), several are disturbing themselves as well(eg.Atropus,Ragnorra,Zargon,Worm that Walks).

[Piedmon_Sama]

The Chief of the Black Fang Kobold Nation. This guy never even had a proper name, and he was the very first boss baddie my players faced down in our first game, waaay back in 2005. The players had smashed their way into a Kobold warren, and while the Black Fangs were mobilizing, the PCs killed the doorguard and broke into a "safety room" designed for Kobold troops to fall back in. It was lockable from the inside, with heavy stone doors, virtually impregnable. I had meant the PCs to shelter there long enough to rest and recharge before fighting their way through the next layer of Kobold defenses.

Well, as a detachment of Kobolds surrounded the chamber from the outside, their Chief strode up and bluffed that he could break down the door. I got a 1 on the bluff, and the PCs realized they were safe in the chamber. So then the Chief suggested they let him inside---just him---so they could negotiate their surrender.

The PCs let him in, thinking they could take the Chief hostage and escape from the warren. I roleplayed the Chief, this middle-aged Kobold with half his face burned away by an old acid wound, as completely cocksure and confident, standing completely relaxed with a short sword at his hip while the PCs (who included a Draconic Elf Monk, and a Half-Ogre Fighter) shut the door and surrounded him. The Chief completely ignored their threats and told them if they didn't throw down his weapons, his men would kill them.

No Sense Motive was even rolled. The PCs threw down their weapons and surrendered, and I was left going "bwuh?" Apparently they had assumed the Chief's brazen confidence meant that even alone he could have defeated them (no chance), and their only hope was to give themselves up.

Now I was unsure what to do (this was my first time DMing a game since Middle School). They should have frankly been dragged out back and executed. So on the spot, I came up with a new plothook: the Black Fang Kobold's foragers had lately been attacked by warriors from the Yellow Moon Goblins up north. The Chief informed the PCs they could "repay" the damage they had done by going up north on a scouting mission, getting the lay of the Yellow Moon territory and reporting to the Kobolds why they had broken the peace. And as "collateral," the Chief took from them each their most valuable possessions--the Bard's instrument, the Cleric's holy symbol, the Fighter's axe, and the Wizard's spellbook (in retrospect, only the Wizard had lost anything irreplaceable and it was a dumb idea in a party with a Monk, but anyway).

That mission became a sprawling quest of 2 months traveling through tundra, taiga and over frozen lakes in-game, and about 35 sessions played over the course of a year out-of-game. The PCs learned that the Yellow Moons had been taken over by a band of exiled Hobgoblin soldiers, and swore to help those who were fighting back by traveling the long way around an impassable plateau, over a 9-mile long lake, then back through a haunted forest on the other side of the plateau and finally to attack the Hobgoblins' headquarters from the other side. Along the way they fought a loch monster, hordes of undead, the last of an eldritch fay race, and discovered the remains of a powerful Devil which possessed the mind of the Bard. And the whole time, under their breath, the players were swearing vengeance on this nameless, 3rd-level Kobold warrior. :p

[The Gilded Duke]

Grassy Gnoll

The Conspiracy Theory loving Gnoll Gladiator who won gladitorial matches with his trademarked "Set it on fire" strategy. Besides once beating a mindflayer in an arena battle (Diamond Mind counters + Desert Wind for damage) he loved to kill all the agents of the Aurum who kept on trying to take over his mind.

His Arena team went through lots of stable hands. Among other things he claimed to worship the Dark Lady Vol. But that was crazy, because everyone knows that there is no actual "Vol" in the Blood of Vol cult but that the name instead comes from a hereditary line of early necromancy cults branching of from main Aernial belief about the time of the Elvish migration from Xen'Drik.

Right?
The party's psion crushed him under a rock.

One villain who survived was Dr. Alfons Doom, Professor of Post-Modern Archeology at Morgrave University. He was secretly a beholder working for one of the Fleshweaver's apprentices. He cut a deal with the party.

[Fiery Justice]

*Awesome Story*
Wow, if I had done half that well on my first campaign, it probably would have been really good (as opposed to the abyssal failure that it was). For an on the spot bit of DMing you did very well and it sounds like it would've been a fun campaign.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I've got two of them, with quite a bit of background is required for each.

The Elven General
I recently ran a very strange campaign (not a comedy campaign, just...strange) wherein the PCs built a giant flying turtle fortress as a base of operations. The elves--specifically, one cult of Asmodeus that was secretly running the government--were the main bad guys, and there were two castes of elves the players encounter: the Crimson Brotherhood (who they called "Reds") were the ones in charge, and Ivory Guard (who they called "Whites") were the rest of the military, who didn't know what the Brotherhood was up to but were being manipulated.

In the first session, the players managed to piece this information together from a captured formerly-mind-controlled White and some information from the PCs' dwarven allies. They made it their mission to free the Whites from the Reds' control, because if they did that the outnumbered Reds might be forced to surrender before the major devil invasion they were working towards could commence. After being attacked by a major army, a few more captured Whites revealed that there was an elven city that had gone "off the grid," and that that was where all the Whites were trained. Of course, the PCs investigated.

They got there to find the city swimming with demons and devils (yes, both of them; the elves managed to work out a truce in the Blood War) and discovered that the last White left alive was their leader, General Melchor. He did all he could to help them escape, was very polite, and generally made a good impression, so the PCs took them with him. Fast forward a few in-game months; the Reds seem to know exactly what the PCs are doing, regardless of anti-scrying defenses, and they were on the run. The exact machinations of General Melchor are far too complex to post here, but suffice to say not only did they trust him completely and believe that lots of the Red attacks were meant to kill him for being a traitor, they also let him report back to the Red leadership as their spy.

They met him at 4th level. At 18th level, after peeling back the layers of conspiracy, they determined that the elves on a first-name basis with the Demon Princes and Archdevils were the Council of Night, who they named the Blacks. It took them 2 sessions, but they finally determined what the Blacks' plans were. They pieced together all the facts and discovered that a Black was working undercover as a White to follow the PCs. They of course immediately suspected one of their recently-captured Whites to be a Black trying to kill Melchor--I had them eating out of my hand. By the time they put 2 and 2 together and determined that one of the 5 BBEGs had been with them literally every step of the way for 14 levels, that he had been reporting back to his compatriots constantly, and that he had been so nice and fooled them all completely, they wanted to kill him even more than they wanted to save the world.

They tracked him down (since he'd escaped), only to find him sitting in a nice mansion offering them wine and sandwiches. They had a very nice chat where he explained all of his plans, apologized profusely for betraying them--he really hadn't wanted to, you see, they were such nice people, but he had no choice--and regretfully explained that they were scum of the earth and he had to kill them. They finally managed to take him down when all but one PC were down and the last was in single-digit HP...but there were some strong indications that he survived. To this day, my players still shudder when "elf," "general," or "black tunic" are mentioned.

The Demilich
The one and only epic campaign I ran, the party was steamrolling any monsters I threw at them and were asking to fight "the most powerful epic bad guy I could make."

Bad idea.

I introduced an epic organization of necromancers, and for a while the mooks the party faced each appeared to be a single, simple, jeweled skeleton--obviously just a demilich with a body to move it around, right? After facing a few battles with them, the PCs started whining again, when they walked up to another one like all of the others...and died. They were rezzed...and died. It kept screwing with them for 4-5 sessions and 16-17 rezzes. A basic demilich is CR 21, and these guys were ECL 70-ish. What was the trick? They finally figured it out and almost killed me.

Jeweled bone = demilich, yes, but how many bones are there in the human body?

206. :smallbiggrin:

Here's how everything went down:

Basically, to make a memorable boss fight, I keep as many abilities in reserve as I can to be surprises. The first fight was simply a single widened disjunction from the head and 205 widened maximized empowered twinned energy admixed (acid) energy admixed (sonic) energy admixed (cold) energy admixed (electricity) fireballs from the others. All of the demiliches had Enhance Spell, ISC (10), and 3 Improved Metamagics, so that was easily doable for them and did upwards of 29000 damage, blowing through what little protection was left after the disjunction (though all the PCs had immunity to at least 2 energy types from templates) and KO'ing them in 1 round.

For round 2, after the contingent resurrections and contingent teleports kicked in, they realized they were seriously outgunned. (Hey, they said they wanted to fight the most powerful creature in the multiverse....) They looked up the demilich's (they still thought it was just 1) immunities (many) and vulnerabilities (few), specced up on anti-undead spells and items, and headed out again.

Predictably, they focused on offense and forgot some defenses. Like protection against disjunction and the fact that death ward doesn't matter after you're hit by one. One disjunction and 205 fingers of death later, it was back to the drawing board.

DING DING DING! Round 3. They finally got immunity to disjunction and headed out again. They had been winning easily up to this point, so none of them had needed to nova. They looked up the best nova strategies, "surprised" the demiliches, unloaded a nova, and destroyed them...only to find out that all demiliches know astral projection. Death number 3.

At this point, the party realized that destroying the baddies (now they knew there were multiple ones) would do no good if they didn't find and destroy the phylactery, so the casters brute-force divined the phylacteries' locations (yes, locations, plural), and nova-d and rested in a timeless plane until all were destroyed...only to be ambushed at the last spot by the BBEG. Death number 4.

They headed out again, and were promptly nova-d by the BBEG. Death number 5. Mind you, the lich hasn't regained spells since death #1 at this point.

Round 6. They find the BBEG, figure out it's astral projecting, go find the bodies, and prepare to take out the defenseless BBEG...only to have the projected form ambush and kill them from behind.

Round 7. This time they took a timeout to plan and figure out what went wrong. (The BBEG regained spells here.) They summoned some solars to go with them (12, I believe) and found the BBEG again...only to find that there weren't a dozen or so demiliches like they thought but 206 baddies. The solars were easily wiped and the party died again.

Round 8. They found the lich again, avoided the astral projection, found the body, and avoided an ambush until they could take out 5 of the demiliches. Then they died again.

Round 9. Repeat of round 8--they finally figured out how to hide from the BBEG. Took out 5 more demiliches. The BBEG now has no toes. :weep:

Round 10. Almost-repeat of round 9. However, one of the 7 they "destroyed" actually went invisible and split up from the rest. Remember that.

Round 11. The demilich followed them to home base and nova-d them.

Round 12. The PCs try for a war of attrition, hoping to wear down the spells until they could just kill them at leisure. They chased and were chased all over that world's equivalents to Mechanus and Acheron, but eventually they were cornered and killed.

Round 14. They discovered, to their chagrin, that the demilich that escaped in round 10 had built a new phylactery and was using illusions to swap out with some of the others and let them rebuild theirs. Yay for timeless planes--by the time the PCs figured it out, the remaining 189 all had their phylacteries back. Death #14.

Round 15. Thanks to attrition and guerrilla tactics, the PCs were able to wipe out the new phylacteries and kill another 106 demiliches, bringing them down to 83. This was the entire second-to-last session right here, and it was amazing. They still died, though. :D

Round 16. After their huge defeat in the last round, the liches focused more on defense. With a few epic spells and items (few? okay, lots), their HP shot into the 1000s (around 1500) and it seemed like they'd never be defeated. One by two by two dozen, the demiliches dropped, until there were only 5 left, the party was down to 80-90 HP each, and both the BBEG and the party casters were down to 1st level spells, except for 1 epic spell each they were saving for an absolute last resort; they couldn't be sure if they would have a chance to regain spells, so they wanted to hold something in reserve just in case. The non-casters of course were just whittling away at the BBEG at this point, and the PCs were out of active contingent resurrections, so this was literally the last battle. The PCs dipped into their reserves, and pulled out every last wand and scroll, their staffs being long since used up at this point.

Working together, they finally got the BBEG down to the last demilich, who still had >1000 HP. Unfortunately for them, the BBEG finally managed to trap the soul of 2 of the PCs. The PCs were literally down to their last wand, with no other charged or otherwise offensive items left, and it was a wand of dimension door. Right before he was trap the soul'd as well, the party cleric managed to get the wand to the wizard, then as his final act cast his only contingent resurrection on the wizard, and wizard used the wand to get out of the demilich's range.

Finally, the piece de resistance: the wizard was out of options and double checked his character sheet...only to find that in all the excitement he'd forgotten that what he thought was an epic mage armor in reserve was in fact his vengeful gaze of god, researched a while back for just such an eventuality. With the demilich only 15 feet away and closing, he cast the vengeful gaze of god, killing the BBEG with only 3 or 4 HP to spare, and killing himself in the process.

When he was resurrected, he regained spells, gated back to the Material Plane, and had the rest of them true resurrected. Then they ascended to be overdeities and the campaign ended. It was the most epic campaign we have ever done, and we haven't played epic since then because we don't think we could ever beat that.

[XAQ]

My favourites have been when a player in a long-term campaign has to quit (moving away, etc), and I can do what I like with their character. They occasionally betray the party and become a recurring villain. It has a lot more depth that way, since this is a character that the other players knew intimately.

Or THOUGHT they knew... heh.

[Heliomance]

Mary. Oh, how we loathed her. She wasn't the BBEG, she was The Dragon. Tiefling rogue/warlock. She had an incredibly patronising way of talking ("Oh, I've brought some friends who are just dyingto meet you. Play nicely together, won't you?" *summons some devils and teleports away*) We absolutely hated her, and took immense satisfaction in her death. We later went toinvade hell, and met her again, transformed into an Erinyes. Once again, we terminated her with extreme prejudice and no little satisfaction.

[DragonBaneDM]

The Seven Deadly Sins...

See my former thread with the above title. :P

Oh, and also my players have come to despise their own rivals, who are constantly making them look like jerks, beating them, and overall just insulting them.

[BloodyAngel]

I'm proud of a few of my villains.

The Dracolich! In the campaign setting I was using, Dragons were extinct... having been the original race to dominate the planet, they were eventually killed off by the more humanoid races, who rose to dominance. One particular red had managed to survive her fate, by being the inventor of the lichdom process. She performed a ritual on herself, so when she was slain by a band of human dragon-hunters, she was reborn as the first (and only) Dracolich. Alas, her clutch of eggs were not so lucky. (Imagine the beginning of Finding Nemo, if Marlin was a dragon... and there were no survivors) Knowing her race was done, she went on a campaign of vengeance that lasted thousands of years, working behind the scenes and using her magic elaborate, long-term infiltrations to manipulate kingdoms into pointless wars, encouraging genocide and conflict, starting and running a guild of undead assassins that slew seemingly at random... anything she could do to take one more hairless ape out of the world.

She was little more than pure hate at that point, because no matter how hard she tried, humanity refused to die out, and she realized her goal was a lost one. Even if she'd won, her own race was still gone, and there was nothing she could do about it. Over the course of the campaign, she grew more and more angry and desperate as the party thwarted her plans to wipe out humanity, going from coldly manipulative, to enraged, to having a complete villainous breakdown... to finally, when the party had stripped her last hope of success from her... willing to die if it meant taking them out too. The group hated her, and fought her at every turn... took out her assassins, her undead minions, even her half-dragon daughter... but in the end, even though they had to kill her, they felt bad for her. So much so, that I made a point of mentioning to them that she finally got to join her kin and children in the dragon's version of the afterlife... because some of them were depressed. She never even had a name, simply being "The Dracolich", but the whole group still remembers her.

[Greystone]

My most memorable villain is actually one I played in a nation game.

Her name was President Shona Han, and she ruled the N.A.C. (or North American Coalition, which included USA, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba).

It started in her profile for the game Total War 2125. In it I said that in the year 2122 she was elected President of the USA. Then, the Cubans and The Chinese invaded simultaneously wiping out Congress and leaving Han in complete command of the country. She knew the attack was coming, but did nothing to save her fellow politicions.

She, you see, was a well-intentioned extremist. She believed that one nation on Earth would save the human race. During the course of the game she eliminated the countries need for fossil fuels, strengthened the NAC, offered protection to smaller countries, going to war with a Fasictic Roman Empire when they threatened her allies, attended peace conferences, had a extraordinarily tight covert program, assasinated those who got in her way (including one of her "husbands"), starting terroist groups, abolishing religion in her country, the list just goes on.

Here are some major points:

1) She was modeled on the Anti-Christ, and was the only recorded "Anti-Psion". She basically fed of mental energies without knowing it, which was why she was so persuesive. She, later when she found out, could practically suck a persons mind out leaving them little more than husks.

2) Stirring speeches, she could make people from her country and other countries simply believe with the sound of her voice and the power of her stare.

3) The Four Horsemen, Shona created four clones based on the four horses of the apocalypse.
A) War- Also known as Richard Warrinson, he and his band worked all around the world starting wars or helping them along He worked a lot in the middle east)
B) Plague- Crazy bastard, was involved in the zombie plague, gigantic plagues that killed a lot of people.
C) Death- A mysterious assasin who killed targets he alone chooses. They aren't usually anyone important, just a aide to a minister or a mailman. That said, it always is done in a way to avoid suspicion, and their deaths had horrible consequences (That aid had a memo, that the minister never got, so a war began because he said the absolute wrong thing... things like that)
D) Famine was an insidious one, though she got little to no screen time. She would infiltrate governments, usually in the agriculture element and redirect food supplies, puposefully acted incompetent. (She was in charge of the collapse of China and the destabilization of several Meditteranian nations)

4) Created a series of bases (known as Judas and Legion) in which her scientists designed bio-terrors and vast armies of Elite Clones.

5) She came very close to taking over the world.

6) When she eventually lost, she got away with it, because she ordered her troops that no rules of war would be broken!

[Rutskarn]

I've had some doozies. A few stereotypical puppetmasters, most notably one whose "funeral" was the first event in the campaign. An insane up-and-coming god who turned people into frothing, lock-grinned marionettes that mutilated their faces into harlequin diamond patterns and who bent reality into a surreal, white-purple tableau. A mage/cleric (it was a homebrew kinda setting where magic is derived from demigods) whose lord demigod granted him power over pain.

Most memorable, however, was a second-tier villain from my last campaign named Jawbone. In this campaign, one of the most powerful nations was determined to kill the player characters, and sent entire armies of mercenaries and gun-wielding soldiers to do so. However, none of these were as terrifying as Jawbone, a leader of a small group of bounty hunters.

Jawbone was a middle-aged balding man, very fit and muscular. He spoke in a southern gentleman accent, and seemed somewhat easygoing and calm. His accent was a bit slurred, however--mostly because there was a massive hole where his right cheek and teeth should have been. He chomped roll-up cigars, clamping his palm over the hole and then removing it to let the smoke drift out.

Jawbone he had a rule: he would give you the chance to turn yourself in, and if you didn't, he wouldn't stop until he'd killed you with his bare hands--bounty specifications be damned.

His gear included a sort of proto-shotgun and a set of brass knuckles. He scared the crap out of my players.

[Knaight]

Aukchitzi. This is in my waypoints game, which is a deliberate comedy concept, yet a serious game. Basically demons are fighting an undergtound war with certain humans, while both look for El Dorado and Atlantis, about a hundred years in the future.

Early on the players bumped into a squad of demons. This included a massive one with healing, a few smaller ones unarmed, and Jenoak, a sword wielding demon. After pinning down the big demon with mortar fire(repeated shots). Jenoak killed it and became the main villain. He has since mounted multiple assassination attempts and gone through multiple second in commands. Earlier he was by far the scariest Villain.

After the players killed his last second in command(it involved cutting his wings off then hitting him with a jeep at full speed, and slamming into a wall front first with him on the front) Aukchitizi was brought in as second in command. Within a few sessions the players were a lot more scared of Aukchitzi than of Jenoak. So far he has stolen demon materials from the PCs (the sword from a previous second in command), blown multiple buildings up and setting the players up for it, putting a land mine in the shoe of one of the PCs armor(powered armor) while they were nearby, and putting a second in front of the wheel of their jeep, dropping a biological weapon, and one particular act which deserves more explanation.

Aukchitzi, as a demon, has some magical power. This includes shielding and invisibility, and the shield makes it very hard to injure him with most weapons. However plasma can get through, as the shield is inefficient at blocking it. He can also turn invisible. While invisible he dropped a highly explosive dust over the PCs, in a cloud around them. If a plasma weapon was discharged it would blow it all up, and the result wouldn't be pretty. The players knew that a plasma weapon(which they recently acquired) would bypass the shield. Aukchitzi then stood outside the mist, shield up, invisibility down, and invited the PCs to fire at him. They did, things exploded, and the last thing they saw before they blacked out was the plasma splattering over a treated glass plate Aukchitzi had held in front of them. It wasn't visible through the dust.

That last one alone pushed Aukchitzi into the position of scariest villain in the game. The PCs will go way out of their way to avoid him. If this means bumping into significant portions of Jenoak's demon army, so be it. And Jenoak has some very powerful demons in his army.

[Teeka]

'The bird man'. No name, he never entered combat, he just stood and watched, nodding from time to time and staying just out of range, then, when the players finally finished off whatever was standing between them and him, he would vanish. The players were terrified of him, even though he never made any move to harm them, though his description might have had something to do with that.

He wore ragged robes made of layers of black, dark blue and deep purple cloth, had thin, pale hands and wore a mask that brought to mind the skull of some huge bird with a long, down turned beak and was accompanied by a faintly sweet smell.

In truth I just put him there as a piece of moving scenery during one battle in the insane maze my players were exploring, but he left such an impression that I ended up letting him show up several other times.

The krazy kobolds. They were nothing like Tucker's Kobolds, they used no strategy, they used no weapons other than their claws and teeth, they wrapped themselves in scraps of cloth and the skins of slain foes and they made horrible yipping and hissing noises. Basically they were ordinary kobolds albeit stupid ones, could be killed in one good hit and hardly did any damage, but because of the way I described the combats with them they ended up being terrifying. Even though my players knew exactly what they were facing, kobolds straight out of the book, they swore that the things were impossible to hit, could survive ten points of damage and that three of them were capable of taking down two level three characters.

None of this was true of course, it was just that failure and frustrations against these kobolds became more memorable than the times the player characters walked away without a scratch.

To give you the idea, an insane blue dragon was less frightening to the players than the kobolds. The players felt sorry for the dragon, gave it all their gold and promised to come back to help it if it would be willing to get the kobolds to leave them alone.

[Rhiannon87]

My DM has played some truly excellent villains in his campaign... and we're gonna be heading to this arc's BBEG soon, one I've helped design (as he is my character's father), and I'm both intrigued and terrified to see what my DM has done.

The two best villains we've had thus far were both from Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Strahd and Bildrath.


Strahd's fairly obvious: the vampire lord ruling over everything, watching us with scrying, driving the group apart with telepathic messages to make us paranoid. The fact that I was playing a spy caught in a web of rapidly dissolving lies only fueled the paranoia and mistrust. One of the greatest scenes was at the end of a day when we actually managed to pull off something pretty cool, stealing the mail that was being sent out with reports on all of us. We'd been successful in a couple tasks lately, and we were enjoying dinner at the inn when Strahd storms in and demands that we hand over his stolen property, Irena (the NPC traveling with us that he was obsessed with), and one party member to make up for his servants that we'd killed. Everyone around the table just sat there in dead silence, because what the hell could we do. Eventually Strahd just hauls of with a Fell Drain Lightning Bolt down one line of chairs, we set off a couple fireballs and run like hell. Really, really intense scene.

Kind of sad that he met his end by rolling a 1 on a fort save against a disrupting thighbone.


And Bildrath. For those who've played this module, you may remember Bildrath as the town's only merchant who overcharged people. And he was that in our game, too... but the DM decided to throw in a twist when I mentioned that my spy was going to try and buy the ingredients for poison from Bildrath.


The DM made Bildrath into a Zhentariam poisoner, very highly ranked. He blackmailed the hell out of my character and got her to kill a couple people who annoyed him. In one scene, he started listing off how he'd kill her companions and friends if she disobeyed. The best moment came when my character tried to fight back against him, putting demands on the man holding her leash and calling the shots. I still have that conversation with my DM saved (we did it online, outside of game) because it was so good and chilling. Bildrath slashed her face and poisoned her with something really horrible; it did INT, WIS, and CHA damage at the same time. She ended up catatonic, and spilled a lot more information than she should've.

We eventually went to fight him, and he had a teleport contingency spell set up, so he escaped. I'm rather looking forward to fighting him again. My character has a personal nemesis! It's so cool.

[Zanatos777]

I've had a couple of good ones. In my most recent game I had an immortal monk named Duncan. He wasn't the ageless immortal but the invincible kind. He turned out to be working for the BBEG, who is next on the list. He did some bad things and generally harassed the party. They killed him by exposing him to antimagic, it took away the power that kept him alive and he died. They were so happy.

Felix
Then form the same game was Felix, the BBEG. He started as a PC with a cruel streak. After the player had to leave and the character became and NPC the party slowly stopped paying him (they were mercenaries) and stopped treating him like he was their friend. One new player started what could have been a romantic subplot with him but then the character was killed. A few hours later while exploring and ancient lab he was offered power by a mysterious evil voice. He took it. After that he disappeared for months showing up to steal a magic gem to become a god and defeat the party's most powerful ally (who was one of the potential BBEGs for the game). She was eventually freed from the imprisonment spell and together the party and her army fought and defeated Felix. Of course he had become a god and gods are not so easily slain.

Incidentally he also had special monsters called Dark Soldiers who were so dangerous one of the PCs asked one NPC to enchant his weapon to specifically kill them.

C
In a Cthulutech game I created a villain simply called "C". He was a unique dhohanoid with time/space powers. Usually he simply sat near the battle laughing and playing on his PDA. One of my players gained an intense hatred for him. They never killed him actually.

Donald
Donald was a favorite villain of my players in my Rhodes game. They liked that he was very polite to them and refused to fight unfair battles (which he defined as anything beyond duels). The favorite moment was part of the party running to the temple of Apollo and he appeared before them intending to fight one of the PCs. She responded by yelling at him that it was not a convenient time for them and he stepped aside. It solidified him as one of their favorite villains.

Harold
Harold was an assassin that the party met in the first session of my first 3.5 game. He was killed and animated as an undead assassin by the BBEG and sent to occupy the party while she did evil things. Harold proved to be the most annoying opponent they have ever fought. He would follow them around invisible (ring of invisibility) and strike out whenever one of them separated from the group. They didn't know about see invisibility as they were new players. Eventually they did discover it and fought and defeated him. There were a lot of PC deaths in that game (10+) and probably 75% were caused by Harold. I have no other NPC villain that my players dread more.

[BigPapaSmurf]

All I gotta say is you do not want to mess with Papa Smurf in my game world, after destroying his lich-lair in progress and cooking and eating Smurfette, P.S. put the PC's into temporal stasis for three years and they awoke to find that their beloved home city had been turned into a massive mushroom kingdom with a million little warrior smurfs(four apples high) running around.

[Capricornus]

One thing I have found that makes a memorable villain in the games I have DMed is survivability. Even just the fact that a villain escapes time and time again invests the players with a burning hatred and need to put an end to the villain's evil.

One example from my most recent D&D campaign was a fellow by the name of Brother Jarrod. He started out as a mid-level flunky in a cult called the Church of Light. The Church of Light was a religious movement started by a former Cleric of Pelor who took to calling himself the Radiant One after a magical cataclysm caused all the deities to disappear. Brother Jarrod was in charge of kidnapping an Aasimar Cleric of Pelor who the Radiant One believed was the key to a prophecy. The party was tasked with protecting her. Eventually Jarrod was able to outmanouver the PCs and took her captive and fled back towards the Radiant One's stronghold with the party in hot pursuit. The pursuit went badly for the PCs however, and it ended with a party TPK, though the NPC ally the PCs had with them survived and escaped with the Cleric. The new characters found out about Jarrod from the Cleric (who became a long-time ally and occasional adventuring companion).

Later in the campaign, the party ran across the Church of Light again, and they discovered that the Radiant One had become possessed by a being from the Plane of Radiance, and was bringing more Radiant beings from that plane and using them to possess more followers. He wanted to capture and convert the Aasimar so that she could act as a planar link to the Radiant plane so he could take over the material plane. Jarrod led the attack on the party's base. Now a Favored Soul with the Radiant template (from Dragon Magazine), he proved to be a challenge for the party, but a well-timed Languor from the Druid knocked him out and he was taken prisoner. Their Cleric friend was infected with a Radiant disease, however, that was slowly converting her into a Radiant being. Jarrod was remanded to an anti-magic cell at the Arcane Academy, where they transported their friend to attempt a ritual to cleanse her of her disease.

While incarcerated, some of the Church of Light's agents among the city guard freed Jarrod, and he and these agents attacked the party while they were performing the ritual, causing it to fail and further imperiling her soul, after which he plane-shifted away (escaping again!) The party then mounted an assault on the Church's headquarters to 'cut off the serpent's head' so to speak. They succeeded in defeating the Radiant One, scattered the cult and saved their friend, but Jarrod was still out there.

Later, while traveling to a Druidic enclave to defeat an evil Druid, their travel spell got hijacked and they found themselves on a prison plane. (Lifted and modified from the Age of Worms Adventure Path) This plane was used by the Druids to imprison dangerous enemies but also to conceal knowledge. While there, they ran into Jarrod again, along with a group of powerful minions. He was there seeking the knowledge to become a god. The party fought him, but he escaped again, eventually to find out that he had succeeded in retrieving the information he sought. They became even more determined to get rid of him, but they found out what he needed, and were able to set a trap.

Unfortunately, their trap got sprung prematurely by the agents of a Pit Fiend who had been another long-time enemy of the party. They captured their Cleric friend as bait. However, Jarrod also wanted something from the Cleric, and pursued the Devils through a Gate to the Abyss. (In my campaign, The Abyss is the generic term for the plane where all fiends originate) The party followed and mounted an assault on the Hell prison where their friend was being held, only to run into Jarrod again. In a fierce battle, they managed to defeat Jarrod, but outside of the material plane, his Radiant form was able to emerge, and they had to defeat him a second time. With the help of their Cleric friend and a massive Bolt of Glory, they were finally able to put an end to their long-time nemesis!

The players found this to be very satisfying when they were able to kill a for that had eluded them so many times before.

Now they have a Lich they've killed at least three times, but he is so good at hiding his Phylactery, they haven't been able to finish him off yet.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Seeing as I've not yet run the game (only just got the rulebooks), I haven't run a villain, but I've had the idea of a villain...

Riding a T. Rex(Maybe even Half-Dragon T. Rex)

And it would be awesome.

[Arcane Copycat]

Possibly the most memorable 'bad guy' I faced with my team was not memorable so much for himself, but for one magical item.

Our 4th ed party was mostly neutral, although we had a Paladin of Moradin who had since sold out and became a Paladin of Asmodeus. On his way there, he comminted a lot of... well not so noble acts, like openly saying who we would an wouldn't heal in battles (namely the halfling) and stealing booze from towns (We're talking several kegs at a time if he had the storage space on whatever we were riding). Well riding over a massive field I dubbed 'The Calm Lands' (FFX nerd) we encounter a Dwarven Paladin of Moradin on horse waiting for us.

He calls out the Paladin, and produces a list of crimes our Paladin committed. About halfway through, something strikes me as odd.

Me: "Hold on, nobody could possibly know we extorted that town. We were in the middle of freaking nowhere. Whose your source?"
Paladin: "This is a magically enchanted scroll that can call up any and all crimes and wrongs you have ever committed.
Me: "Really now? So, is it just his, or can you read mine?"

He asks my name, and as I call it out the list triples in length (It was already trailing on the floor as it was). Well after seeing that, the entire party starts calling out to see how long their list is. The Paladin gets annoyed and charges us. Well, maybe it's because I called out "Screw it, let's just kill him and take the damn thing off of him, that's too awesome to not have." Who knows?

Anyway, after a long combat that we were starting to lose, he stops, saying that he'll give our Paladin time to change his ways. After doing our current quest, we decided that we were chasing that guy down and taking that scroll no matter how long it took us.

[Zaydos]

My last party talked about this one for months after they finally beat him and the final battle against him dragged out for over two hours and the planning for the battle... I had my PCs talking strategy for fighting him for weeks. He was Marcus an ullitharid cerebromancer who used to be the party wizard/druid/arcane hierophant's best friend and teacher of the arcane arts. They fought him on the 3rd adventure (having started at 12th level) and narrowly woe (with some fudging of dice on my part) but knew he'd be back. The next few adventures he was only indirectly active in, and the next time they actually fought him it was in his original base. Again they barely won, using dimensional anchor to try and stop him which led to the melee combatant leaping down a 500+ ft pit after the mage but, unfortunately for him, the ullitharid teleported before hitting the ground (whether he died I never said, he did have cleric minions). He then allied with the PCs to stop Cthulu from being summoned by a group of illithids that wanted to return their overthrown master to power and destroy all existence. Finally they fought him in a final battle at a battlefield of the gods' choosing and all but lost only pulling it off when the knight hit with his aberration bane holy greatsword because of a +2 bonus from the arcane hierophant's tiger using aid another which made all of his minions instantly be destroyed by the gods. The PCs vowed to go into hell to drag his uncorrupted soul back forth into life as a human once more... they never got to since we all started college and I now have a new group but it was fun; I even gave him his own soundtrack for the final battle.
The villain that replaced him for the few adventures we did manage (the PCs being all of 18th level and not ready to face a god) was no where near as epic, except in the I'm higher than 20th level sense.

[Dienekes]

Two of them

Caellach, was created by a player of mine as his evil older brother. My players family was that of a half-elves, however external strife between the Lanrian Elven nations and Gandia, the human nation forced the family to choose sides. Most the family decided to stay with the humans, Caellach however joined the elves. The character is obsessed with power, racial and political. He sided with the elves because he thought the race was superior, and showing his allegiance he destroyed his own impure family. Now, after that back story I decided I wanted to add him in as a recurring villain and simply place him as a tactical genius and a clever politician. He is in some way or another attached to plots to seize the elven thrown and decimating the human cities. He was the first main boss the characters faced as he attacked and destroyed their home city. But what really got him into awesome villain category was when the players were put in a position where they could see him every day, but could not kill him. The players found themselves as delegates to the Dwarves asking their allegiance in the Elf/Human war, upon entering they found Caellach as the opposite representative. Before the dwarves he would act incredibly polite (especially to his brother) but alone he would flaunt how he destroyed their homes and that they couldn't touch him. Upon hearing his name my players start cursing because they have to maneuver around him and try to undermine him just as he is undermining them.

The other was Williams the Inquisitor and his minion Mors. I will be the first to admit that I completely stole the bases for the characters from Arch Lector Sult and Inquisitor Glotka respectively from Joe Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy. These were one shot characters, meant to be a filler villain since one of my players was going to be away for 2 sessions and the others still wanted to play around. What really got my players was at first these two seemed to be allies, unscrupulous, but working with them to crush some bandits. The party actually seemed to respect Mors which made the double cross all the more fun. I think the 3 factors that really got to my players was that they were tricked, bad, by the pair, that they as a group actively lost, not against armies or insurmountable odds but were simply outplayed. And that Williams laughed in their faces and told them that they were not worth his time to hunt down. That really set their teeth on edge. I may have to bring these two back in, though I don't know quite how. They only really worked for the intrigue, hell Williams was a level 8 aristocrat.

[woodenbandman]

Please tell me if these are memorable. I need a bit of help with these villains.

Kalkol, The Yellow Jester


Rogue5/Hexblade4/Blackguard4

Kalkol was plucked from poverty at a young age to the court of the king at Lothos. Though he was thankful to the king for rescuing him and making him a beloved minstrel, he was loath to see the bickering and petty arguments that went on in the court daily. So he one day vowed to change all that.

Coincidentally, his methods of inspiring humor in the king's court were exceptionally brutal and vile. The nation of Lothos was formed out of a civil war between the citizens who wanted to war against a rival nation and those who did not. This, combined with the system of government based on rule by the strong, means that the most vicious of warriors were the kings and nobles. And the most vicious warriors demand the most vicious of entertainment. Kalkol provided that by providing ample black humor and torture scenes whenever called upon on enemy troops, traitors, or animals.

Kalkol almost never lets down his stage personality in the presence of others, which is what made his "confession" that the nobles were attempting to overthrow the king all the more convincing. The King, after discovering the makings of a plot (planted by Kalkol), had all the nobles jailed and summarily executed. With them out of the way, Kalkol turned his attention to the last obstacle in his path to the throne: The princess of Lothos.

Fortunately for the princess, she wasn't around to be executed and learned of the plot. Kalkol became the King's most trusted advisor as a result of his act, which made it entirely believable when he blamed the princess for the king's murder. He acceded the throne, and now steers the nation towards a catastrophic war.


Neex Hist, MP Commander

Mister Hist is an Ulitharid in charge of the nation of Kalibri's military police force. He holds most of the power in Kalibri, along with the leader of the Society for Genetic Progress. These two are in agreement that the nation of Lothos must be eradicated if their great nation is ever to span across continents, but their efforts are held back by a particularly annoying thorn in their side, one Yikady Mordain, the monarch of Kalibri. Not to let something so trivial as a monarch get in their way, they hatch a diabolical plot to kill her as a traitor. Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances arise, and she isn't their for the killing. Being branded a traitor by the MP, however, it's unlikely that she'll pester them at all anymore.

Neex was just a child when the nation's capital, the Helix 1, crash-landed from outer space just over 200 years ago. (Or maybe not, I don't remember how long mind flayers live). Soon after, they absorbed the nation around them into their population and not much has been heard from them since.


Name Undecided

Expert 10

Name was an advisorSPY to the nation of Sunderlabridgia (which split into Lothos and Jamakal after the war). She disappeared 50 years ago after rumors of her turning traitor ruined her career. Being an elf, she lives for a long, long time. After losing her career, she kept tabs on everyone, observing and waiting, like a cat ready to pounce. She invites everyone together with a proposition: Take over the world. They will work together to help overthrow the tyranny of Lothos and Kalibri, and in the aftermath of the war, she will assume leadership as queen of the new nation.

Of course, she's not one to share, so everyone in the group she assembles has to die in a horrible accident. The old double-cross. The main reason she is so nefarious is that she doesn't do any hostile actions herself, preferring to use subterfuge, her extensive network of information and traps, and her ability to play people against each other.

[Dienekes]

@ woodenband man.

you're characters seem fine, but that's not in my opinion what makes them memorable. Interesting backstories are only a part (and a lot of time the least important part) of a good villain. Take the kobold chief someone mentioned earlier (err, I think it was kobold, I'm too lazy to check), he's memorable because he defeated the party just by talking to them. The memorability is only determined by their interactions with the party, and the party will only get to know bits and pieces of these backstories as they progress, unless the villains going to monologue their backstory to them which will actually just hurt your case there.

My suggestion, is keep the backstories, they're interesting and can set up a good personality, but be very sure if you want them to be memorable they need to actually cause emotion in your PCs, generally anger, or disappointment, or (if you're a damn good GM) sadness.

Of course for my advise remember that I listed one of my most memorable villains as a random 1 shot.

[Umael]

I asked a couple of my players to tell me who, in their opinion, were my most memorable villains. Given that I was noted for being one of those nasty, but fun GMs, I figured I should several villains come to mind. However, I couldn't think of any.

So it was only with a little surprise when they said that my most memorable villains were some of the PCs I have played.

I couldn't figure out why my GM villains weren't memorable, until one of my players pointed out that I am a good GM because I made the game about the PCs and never had the villains overshadow them. More powerful, yes, and sometimes they had stories to be told, but it was never their stories were more important than the PCs and their stories.

As a sidenote, I guess this is why I never see myself as someone who railroads the players - because while I have a big interest in crafting stories, the stories require the PCs and their independent input.

This isn't to say that I don't create good villains as a GM, just that... well, if someone was, say, playing an elf rogue, I would toss out xenophobic orcs, uptight paladins, treasure that would talk, a rival rogue, etc. - and these would not even necessarily be enemies or villains, just antagonists. When the players would look back, they might remember Sir Nestor, Sr., Lord of someplace, but their elf rogue would be far more memorable for what she did to thwart Sir Nestor.

Okay, here is one of my PC villains (from Vampire: the Masquerade LARP, incidentally)...

Lews Damodred
When I first played Lews Damodred, he was a Gangrel who got Embraced because he stepped between his Sire and a Brujah who got into a disagreement. He was not a typical Gangrel by any means - he was a shy, puny librarian. But people really liked the character a lot, so when he died after I had been playing him for less than two months, it soured me a little. I had a great concept cut way short.

So I brought him back in another game, where he got to show a (slightly) different group of people what a fun wimp he was. Some time after playing him, I figured that I had played him enough, it was time to "retire" him in a manner most fitting.

As it turned out, there was a Gangrel, Misfit, who was even more a pathetic example of the Clan than Lews was. She was Embraced by a particularly sadistic Gangrel who kept her locked in a cage and called her a "bad puppy", completely breaking her self-esteem and effectively brain-washing her. When she escaped, Lews took pity on her and protected her, Blood Bonding her to him in the process.

In a strange break of personality, Lews developed a backbone, tracked down Misfit's Sire, and Diablerized him. With the Storyteller's okay (Misfit's Sire was just a background NPC), Lews absorbed the mind and memories and soul of Misfit's Sire, who became a second personality. Unlike other personalities, this personality (whom I named Damodred) became the dominant personality, one who could hop in and out of control at will and had full access to Lews memories and personality, while Lews remained ignorant not only of Damodred, but even of the memory that he had confronted Damodred and Diablerized him.

As Damodred, he knew that he had already "lost", as Lews had Diablerized him. However, he wanted to break Lews and destroy as much as he could about which that Lews cared.

After a while, Lews would show up, claiming to have no memory about what happened to him (during which Damodred would have taken control of him and did nothing abnormal). Some vampires (with Lews permission) looked into his memories and found nothing suspicious. Then Damodred showed up a few times, passing himself off as Lews and claiming the same lack of memory.

Finally, he tried to go to the next stage of his plan, ambushing a vampire that Lews cared about. Luckily for the vampire in question, she got away and warned the others. Lews/Damodred was tracked down and knocked into Torpor.

This time, they did a full investigation and found out that he had Diablerized recently. They had to kill him, but before they did, they wanted to find out WHY.

So when they awaken my character, he laughed at them, and told them everything, and that there was nothing they could do, because Lews had to die. Lews, who lost his memory so still remained an innocent in so many ways, would have to die (and yes, he did).

The best moment for me was when they told Misfit. I didn't see her, I just hear this absolutely beautiful, painful scream of anguish.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

I have a few that have either never seen light of day or saw a pathetic end.

Oxiann Von is a high level gestalt villain, a Kolyarut/psion//warblade/oracle knight (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30165) who was forged from the body parts of the Soulsteel Uron(D&D game, just taking little bits of Exalted for fun) and was imbued with both his Kolyarut duties and to the duties of the cult of the now dead Soulsteel Uron. His body looked like it was composed of empty space, including his large "feathery" wings and his sword. He was in a game where a group of harbingers of chaos(including one daelkyr) were using a plane of time to bring about the end times and turn the world back into the Far Realm from which the material plane arose. He was going to have a time travel engine and I had him use the Soulsteel Caste (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5823198&postcount=6) epic destiny. I want to use him again for something, though 'again' would imply I got to use him before.

Gut-Horn the Bloodcaller was a rageforged ragelord and likely one of the more clever rageforged to see a game. He started out with an artifact tool(an ancient demon's horn turned into an instrument), and ambushed the party in a mansion on Shello in a town that was under his attack. The party quickly did away with the cronies, and since he was melee-capable despite being a bard, he attacked. He did not get to make a single melee attack before being slaughtered.
I plan to remake him, but I have no idea where I can use him. This time though, I have some more martial adept PrC's for (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111058) bards (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99438) and the Bloodcaller will be far more imposing. He'll also have a feat that makes his body an instrument, so he'll look like he was impaled on an organ made of bone, twisted his way out and survived.

Ky'Uusikk was a daelkyr that had found a nice little abandoned town in Shello and set up shop. He was obviously insane, as are all daelkyr, and was a supremely skilled eldritch biologist. He had taken a few of his own cells, and reversed them into what was like a cross between a polyp and a stem-cell, then shot them up with Far Realm juices and they evolved VERY quickly. They roamed the area and called that square mile or four of Shello their home, much to the dismay of potential adventurers. The PC's met a couple of the monsters but never saw Ky'Uusikk before the game died. He was actually not so much a villain, but something to throw the party's morals into question. He would offer them dinner, not poison them, nor do anything bad to them at all. The only aggression would be from chaotic and not-too-bright monsters that hung out around his house. I was hoping they took it as a sign of aggression from him and attack. I even have pictures of him (http://nny2.deviantart.com/art/Ky-Uusikk-92857100) and some (http://nny2.deviantart.com/art/Aberrant-Behemoth-95015674) monsters (http://nny2.deviantart.com/art/Aberrant-Creature-92804920) of his (http://nny2.deviantart.com/art/Aberrant-Bird-92804585).

[7th lvl scrub]

Well, in our current campaign there were a few of these villains. The first, was a Young White Dragon we fought in our second session, who the only time he hit anybody in the party was with his Frightful Presence. The others were quite a bit more personal, as they were our character's rivals, but one stood out above all the rest.

First a little backstory of the relevant characters, we have a Minotaur Barbarian, and a Dragonborn Warlord (Myself). There was a small blue Dragonborn Rogue in the Warlord's village, who was banished after killing a hatchling. This Dragonborn eventually stumbled upon a village of Minotaur's and proceeded to murder the Barbarian's mother and frame him. It eventually turned out that the blue Dragonborn is absolutely insane, (think the Joker from The Dark Knight and multiply it by 5) and that he and the Warlord are brothers. Of course the Barbarian beats the Rogue into a pulp but he escapes.

A tier and a half later, we find the Rogue again, this time we work with him for a session and a half. When the session ends it turns out our campaign's Archmage was controlling him since he slaughtered the Dragonborn hatchling, which in game terms, took place over a decade earlier. The Rogue gives a heartfelt speech, which was really moving, and nearly brought both myself and the Minotaur's player to tears. This time when Minotaur beats him into a pulp he him live and vows to kill the Archmage, and now the Rogue is an ally to our party.

[DragonBaneDM]

A tier and a half later, we find the Rogue again, this time we work with him for a session and a half. When the session ends it turns out our campaign's Archmage was controlling him since he slaughtered the Dragonborn hatchling, which in game terms, took place over a decade earlier. The Rogue gives a heartfelt speech, which was really moving, and nearly brought both myself and the Minotaur's player to tears. This time when Minotaur beats him into a pulp he him live and vows to kill the Archmage, and now the Rogue is an ally to our party.

Thanks for that, Akatosh. I'm glad you guys liked Anek so much. I miss that campaign...