Evil Villainous Plots, Plans, and Schemes

[Drakeburn]

The princess gets kidnapped by an evil wizard or dragon, an evil advisor plots against the king to have the throne for himself, a cult gathers the energy they need to end the world.

While I prefer to use cliche evil plots for one-shot adventures, I'm having a bit of difficulty coming up with a good villainous plot. Or specifically trying to put in the details to the ultimate villain's plot.


So far, I have in mind a powerful evil dark elf lich who is imprisoned in a broken mirror. The only way he can get free is if all the glass pieces are put back together within the frame of the mirror (or if all the pieces of the mirror glass is destroyed, since the lich's power is divided and trapped into these pieces).

The details I have in question are.....

- Why would anybody want to free him?

- What kind of goals should I give this dark elf lich?

- What would he do after he gets free.

[braveheart]

Often major evils that are improsoned in some form of mirror have the ability to manipulate the weak willed into doing their bidding, and obviously once released this great evil he will obviously want to seek vengence upon those whom improsoned him, or their decendants. Beyond that they will likely look for little beyond attaining as much power as possible

[Reltzik]

The main question you need to answer is, what powers does the lich retain while imprisoned? Can it still, for example, project itself astrally through magic to influence peoples dreams? Cast charm spells if they encounter a piece of the mirror? Animate dead within a certain range of a shard? Appear in any reflective surface within 100 miles of a shard, albeit just as a projection? Subtly corrupt the subconscious of anyone who possesses a piece of the mirror for any length of time? Answering these questions will both help you answer your first question (though having a bunch of typical lackeys, minions, and lieutenants still at large trying to restore it to power is a good answer as well) and give you a good idea of what the process of getting the mirror back together will look like. Once free, revenge (be it on an individual or nation) for being imprisoned is probably a high priority. Feel free to have it rain total destruction upon the local capital metropolitan area with lots and lots of casualties and even more maniacal laughter.

[The Evil DM]

to OP. If you are willing to work along with me on the process I will help. In the next spoiler layer are the first tasks I would undertake.

Disclaimer 1: This is how I would do it. I cannot guarantee any compatibility with whatever system and magic you may be using.

Disclaimer 2: I have tried to state all my assumptions but I may have missed some.

Disclaimer 3: Tweak details as needed.

Disclaimer 4: This is developed as an overarching plotline intended for long term play. Not a short adventure.

Introduction
I will refer repeatedly to the Journalistic Questions. The Journalistic Questions are the who, what, when, where how and why details about a particular fact, object, place, event or some other thing in question. Training yourself to ask these questions religiously when developing content will help flesh out just about anything into internally consistent stories.

Premise as stated by OP

There is an evil dark elf lich trapped in a mirror. The lich can be released upon reassembly of missing mirror shards. This is a common but effective trope.

My First round of Journalistic Questions are:

1) Who is the lich? – Develop the character of the lich, make the monster and determine his motivations. – This requires its own set of journalistic questions to define all the characteristics.
2) What is the Mirror that trapped the Lich? Design the item. Was the mirror specifically designed for this job? If yes who made it? If no, where and how was it acquired?
3) When was the lich trapped in this mirror? How much time has elapsed since the lich was trapped in the mirror?
4) Where is the mirror's frame? To where must all these shards return?
6) How many shards must be returned?
7) Who trapped the lich in the mirror? Who is, or are, the protagonists in that story?
8) Are the people who trapped the lich still alive to be a potential resource for knowledge to use against the lich?
9) How was the Lich trapped in the mirror?
and as already mentioned
10) Does the lich have any powers or capabilities that can be used from or through the mirror shards.

This sets the backdrop. It tells you who the lich is, who his enemies were, and what magic has him trapped now.

Answer these questions for me I will compile and continue forward.

[Drakeburn]

The main question you need to answer is, what powers does the lich retain while imprisoned? Can it still, for example, project itself astrally through magic to influence peoples dreams? Cast charm spells if they encounter a piece of the mirror? Animate dead within a certain range of a shard? Appear in any reflective surface within 100 miles of a shard, albeit just as a projection? Subtly corrupt the subconscious of anyone who possesses a piece of the mirror for any length of time? Answering these questions will both help you answer your first question (though having a bunch of typical lackeys, minions, and lieutenants still at large trying to restore it to power is a good answer as well) and give you a good idea of what the process of getting the mirror back together will look like. Once free, revenge (be it on an individual or nation) for being imprisoned is probably a high priority. Feel free to have it rain total destruction upon the local capital metropolitan area with lots and lots of casualties and even more maniacal laughter.

Well, I had an idea where one of the pieces had an effect in some catacombs that raises the undead.

Another idea I just came up with is that maybe the drow lich's consciousness can take possession of any host that has a piece of the mirror? Although he cannot use his spells while inside his hosts, he can transfer from one host to another (in case the party kills off one of his hosts). (and I'm not gonna lie, I took that idea from Record of Lodoss War. So sue me. :smallsigh:)

[TheCountAlucard]

Revenge isn't necessarily going to be at the top of the Lich's priority list; in fact, if I were him, and my imprisonment was any significant length of time, my first set of actions would be to ensure I could never be thus imprisoned again. If released by the mirror-shards being reunited, destroy the mirror utterly, and disintegrate the frame; if the mirror was created, murder every last person involved in its making; if it's a thing that can be made today, destroy everything vital to that process; suppress the knowledge of the mirror having even ever existed.

I imagine all that time being trapped might make him a tad… claustrophobic. He might go all-out and use overwhelming force against something that threatens to trap him again.

As for what else he's gonna do, that really is so dependent on who he is and what the world is like that we can do little other than paint with broad strokes.

[NRSASD]

Since you've got a lot of good advice already from the other posters about how to build him as a character, I thought I'd try to address the other aspect of your question: why would anyone want to free him?

a. He informs the party that the mirror is a portal to immense treasure. He could do this through telepathy via shard contact, or maybe have henchmen spread rumors about the "golden mirror" so that the party gets the story from a 3rd party.
b. There's a bigger threat (real or imagined) that only he can thwart (or so he claims).
c. He pretends to be a merlin-esque good guy who was trapped in the mirror by his enemies.

Basically, the party needs to mis-identify the mirror's function, the being held within, or think they stand to gain by releasing him.

*Fun idea: Once the mirror is rebuilt, the only way to release him is if someone else is absorbed in his place.
Hope this helps!

[Steampunkette]

I'm with NRSASD.

Go with the hero angle. Make the players work for you.

Start out the campaign with one of the players, a descendant of the people who put the lich in the mirror, receiving the first shard scott-free. It gets delivered by an NPC who is being hunted down and is killed by undead beings. Preferably while the PC watches.

The Lich appears in the mirrorshard as a handsome person of (insert gender the PC is attracted to or least expected to reject here) and gives the player helpful advice on how to avoid the undead, destroy them, or otherwise get away. If the PC takes the Lich's advice the undead die, quickly. In truth, the Lich animated them, sicced them on the delivery boy, and when the PC takes the Lich's advice the Lich ends the spells animating the undead.

Have the Lich make up a story about being a good spellcaster who fought a powerful Lich, but lost the battle and was trapped within a Soul Mirror. Describe the mirror as a powerful artifact, say it has unique powers, and make all of those unique powers just the Lich using it's abilities through the mirror and PC holding it as a conduit.

The "Good Spellcaster" then explains how the "Lich" shattered the mirror so that the mirror-bound mage would be unable to escape and would be able to perceive the world through each of the mirror shards to truly feel the evil Lich's terrible wrath as he attempts to conquer the world. That one of the shards was found by a group of adventurers who were killed by the Lich while they tried to put the mirror back together to free the mage, but one of the shards was mailed to this PC because it is their Destiny (As prophesied by so and so of such and such) to save the world and free the Good Spellcaster who can fight the Lich.

At this point your players will likely buy into the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. But if they don't, allow them an Insight Check and give the Lich seriously higher Deception bonuses than a level 1 fighter has Insight.

Enjoy your campaign in which the heroes do the villain's work for him/her/them and you can have other groups of adventurers, undead, and the like opposing the PCs. Including an evil (Rival) Lich who wants to keep the mirrorbound one out of his hair and is quickly labeled the "Real" threat by the helpful NPC in the mirrorshards.

Give each player who gets a shard more and more of the Lich's powers as they gain levels and your players will scramble over the living and the dead for more power.

At the end of the campaign, the Lich is unleashed and immediately reveals his/her evilness in a short monologue about how the "Gullible Fools" brought the last descendant of the ones who trapped him/her to be killed in a ritual that will make him/her all powerful/unstoppable/etc because Destiny. The Lich then attempts to engage the party in nonlethal ways, hoping to capture the Destined One for a blood sacrifice to do (Horrible Awfulness goes here). The party has to deal with the betrayal, the villain gains instant heat as the party realizes that they were duped and constantly attacked by their own patron, and you've got a built in encounter mechanic (Protect the Destined One) to increase the stakes for the campaign's end.

[nedz]

The shard idea is good, but it might be better to keep it's insights more cryptic — perhaps have the Lich claim fragmented memories — rather than use it as a distorted info dump. After all he should be out of contact with the world.

Instead have a competitor to the party who, for their own reasons, wants to collect all the shards. Now their reason could be based on misinformation, and maybe they are a good at lying ? You could even have several such NPCs, each with different motives, who have one or more fragments already. This should lead to a showdown where they defeat what they think is the big bad — only for the real one to emerge at the end.

You could even have good, though unreliable, NPCs give the party fragments of the truth — only for the party to discount them. This could lead to a third showdown where the forces of good, late to the party, confront the duped heroes.

The advantage of this approach is that it avoids lots of McGuffin quests, instead they have a series of rivals.
Now you could have some such quests, but these then become a race against the agents of the other collectors.

[Brendanicus]

Steampunkette had a great idea by making the players the agents. A slight twist on this could be making the lich in the mirror appear to be a powerful magical creature, such as a noble genie or angel. The "lich" promises anybody who holds a shard free wishes, provided that they assemble/destroy all the shards.

This opens up many angles as to how the story plays out. Fellow shard-seekers could include rival adventurers, evil cults, greedy dragons, a noble and her elite flunkies, etc.

One such rival could be a revanent who is also an Oath of Vengeance Paladin, who knows the true secret of the mirror, but purposely wants to free the lich just for the opportunity to kill her. The Revenant can't speak, that way the players don't get spoilered.

Having numerous factions opens up numerous side quests aside from, "find/steal shards". For example, the dragon threatens to burn down a nearby village if the PC's don't hand over their shard. While robbing the cult, the players discover a plot to assassinate a friendly noble NPC. The noble mistakenly thinks that the shards are powerful magical components, when in reality the lich enhances shard-fueled magic in order to incentivise more shard destruction.

[Steampunkette]

Great Old One Warlock kills the Nonspeaking Revenant angle at level 1 with telepathy. Wizards, sorcerors, and bards kill it at level 3 with detect thoughts. Once those abilities are in play, the Revenant's motives become plain as day.

[Drakeburn]

I would like to apologize for putting these into double spoilers, but the reason is I don't want my gaming group to stumble onto this.



I actually don't like the idea of the PCs working towards freeing the dark elf lich. I mean, sure they might do it anyways to see what might happen because they might be curious, but I'm not too big on the whole "pretending to be a good guy to trick the PCs" idea.

I've actually gotten an idea that a couple of the lich's lackeys might want to buy the mirror shards off from the PCs, but that is one idea I'm sticking with.

I'm starting to realize that my question isn't exactly quite clear.

- When I say "What reason would anybody have to free the lich?", I should've specified that to "Why would any henchmen or evil lieutenants want to work for him?"

So just out of curiosity, what other evil plots, plans, and diabolical schemes are there that would be great for a campaign?

[Maglubiyet]

Why would henchmen want to free an ultra-powerful evil spellcaster? Unless they are somehow compelled (Geas'ed/Cursed), basically it boils down to "the lich is the best/only means for them to achieve X".

Ideas for what X is:

loot/treasure
fulfilling their Dark God's prophecy
they want to make a bargain with him to do some of their own evilness (revenge for a fallen people, destruction of a rival, etc.)
chance to be on the winning side of the coming apocalypse
fringe benefits
"some men just want to watch the world burn"

You could also use this for the characters. Like maybe the lich is the only one who can stop some other horrific other-worldly power that's threatening reality. They need to free him to stop the REALLY BBEG and then figure out how to deal with the lich later.

[Brendanicus]

So just out of curiosity, what other evil plots, plans, and diabolical schemes are there that would be great for a campaign?BBEG unleashes chaos across the land, but only as a distraction so that her army can rise to power.

The king has not one, but two evil advisers, each serving a competing dark power. They wage a shadow war in the city streets.

An enterprising warlord seeks to conquer the continent in order to create a bloodbath at every major city. Once each bloodbath is complete, the ritual to bind a demon army may begin.

A vampire seeks to bite every major world leader in order to bring about world peace. Once every world leader is on the same side, war will end in favor of eating the peasants.

[Segev]

In a game where we were all playing supervillains, the player who had what seemed the least-fitting, most pointless character actually came up with the best villainous plot out of all of us. I forget his name, so will call him "Duckman," even though I think he had something longer. Duckman was, obviously, duck-themed, and had amongst his powers a demon-duck companion that was big enough to swallow people whole and the power to uplift ducks in his presence to just slightly above human intelligence and get them to turn on people. (He had a duck-superiority complex, believing them to be the "better" species.)

He came up with a plot whereby he would use his demon duck to eat powerful and wealthy men and women, then set up puppet people (this may have involved ducks cleverly disguised as them, I forget how that part was supposed to work) to control their wealth just long enough to pool it into a project to build a satellite which would amplify and broadcast his personal uplifting aura world-wide, while simultaneously building duck-scale and -usable firearms. His world-spanning army of slightly-smarter-than-humans ducks would then take over the world! [insert maniacal laughter here]

[Ettina]

Why would anybody want to free him?

Was he a wizard or similar learning-based spellcaster who became a lich?

Maybe there's some spell or something that learned wizards of the lich's time period often knew how to do, and although the fact that they could do this is common knowledge, exactly how to do it has been lost through the ages. (Just like we forgot how to make beaver hats IRL.) The lich may be the only one 'alive' who remembers how to do whatever it is, and the henchman guy plans on freeing the lich in exchange for getting instructions from him.

Whether the lich keeps his end of the bargain is another matter, and one that could lead to some plot twists.

[EdokTheTwitch]

- When I say "What reason would anybody have to free the lich?", I should've specified that to "Why would any henchmen or evil lieutenants want to work for him?"



This can always be resolved by affection, a la Belatrix Lestrange? A fanatical follower of the lich could be hunting down the shards out of sheer adoration, or even love for the lich. This way, you don't need to bury the lich in other McGuffins, and the person attempting to release him has a motive to push even in the event of the pursuit posing a risk to them.

[Shamash]

Make the Lich have goals that are not evil for some, maybe he is from a nation that sees necromancy as a good thing.

He had plans to make an entire city undead since he and his followers see undeath as a blessing. Heroes stopped him and sealed him in the mirror.

Now a wizard is trying free him to learn the secrets of immortality in undeath from him.

[GloatingSwine]

How about:

Due to the length of exposure to the lich's soul and power, the shards of the mirror are, themselves, magical items which confer some desirable benefit. (long life, personal power, tendency to accumulate wealth, ability to persuade and manipulate others, y'know, the standard set of things that a medium bad might use to empower himself to big badness), The more complete a collection of shards an individual has the more of that benefit they get.

A nonzero number of entities or organisations are aware of the power of the mirror shards and are seeking them in order to get one over one each other, in fact it drives the major conflicts in the world. Hence even without the PCs people are trying to assemble this mirror and are doing so in a way that is likely to result in Adventure.

Then as soon as someone assembles it and looks in the mirror they free (or maybe swap places with) the lich.

[Bard1cKnowledge]

The BBEG uses his good looks and charm to sway the populous, taking advantage of mob mentality to rule with a gold lined iron fist