Long-Term Schemes in Fiction

[Kitten Champion]

So, I have a shiny new Monster Manual for D&D 5e. Looking through it, I was pondering the monsters with long-term scheming in their basic MO - something like an Aboleth - and considering how I would approach such a plot. The basic concept is interesting, but it's something that needs high a degree of plotting for it to work without becoming all Star Wars Prequel-y where everything works unless you think about it for five minutes or have to do all the logical heavy-lifting yourself instead.

One that comes to mind is the Reapers in Mass Effect and their systematized culling of organics through somewhat convoluted methods on a galactic scale over hundreds of thousands of years. I've seen the idea of a eugenics plan explored a few times in science fiction and fantasy with an organization or an immortal individual that have been controlling blood-lines from the shadows for generations to produce a saviour or what-have-you for their own purposes or something like that -- Dune I believe did it, it came up in Supernatural, Blizzard did it with Kerrigan... kind of.

However, my mind goes blank beyond that.

I'm curious as to what sort of plots that extend - decades, centuries, millennia - you've encountered in other works, and preferably liked at the end of the day.

[Douglas]

The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson has multiples of these, running concurrently and in opposition to each other. The Lord Ruler is running one, there are at least two others which would be spoilers to name, and they're all well done.

[gomipile]

Octavia Butler's Patternmaster series has Doro, an immortal body-jumping spirit, spending something like ten millennia breeding psychically talented humans. Wild Seed is the first novel chronologically, but not the first published. Butler matured considerably as a writer over the course of the series, which has a lot to do with why Wild Seed is also my favorite to read.

[Almarck]

As of Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void:

The Xel'Naga have a reproductive cycle that requires millions if not billions of year. Basically, they're some sort of multidimensional race that seeds new universes with life so that eventually two races emerge: One with the Purity of essence, the ability to be capable of great change, and one with the Purity of Form, the ability to house powerful Psionic potential. The races via some undetermined manner fuse into one and then after that fuse together into a proto-Xel'Naga which is then invested with the essence of a previous Xel'Naga. Said plan has been going on for multiple Universes.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson has multiples of these, running concurrently and in opposition to each other. The Lord Ruler is running one, there are at least two others which would be spoilers to name, and they're all well done.
Darn, beat me to it. And some of these long-term plans are centuries-old, I feel.

The Codex Alera series has a character who's known for this type of gambit, and he definitely winds up running at least one long con by the time things are done.

[Darth Credence]

The first and second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever might have some things that you are looking for. I don't hear many people refer to these any more, so I will give a quick rundown of why it might be what you want. Spoilers ahead, I guess, although I will go very broad strokes.

The books focus on Thomas Covenant, a leper from our world, who wakes up in a fantasy world. This world is recovering from an apocalypse that was brought on by the good guy thinking it would eliminate the bad guy. The bad guy is back, and he is setting up pieces to get what he wants long term. Covenant is there for the book, all the while thinking it is a dream, and goes on a quest that is both necessary and plays into the hands of the big bad. At the end of the book, he wakes back in our world, unsure as to whether it really happened. A short time later for Covenant, it happens again. While only weeks have passed for him, it has been years in the other world. The big bad's plan is progressing, and the people of the land need help.

Because of the time shifts, you see the plan has progressed without having to be around for it. In the second trilogy, you get an even more overwhelming time shift, and it shows you more of an end goal.

[Traab]

The Obsidian Mountain trilogy by Mercedes Lackey has long term plans by the bad guys. I will spoiler it because its got a lot of reveals in it. Basically, The Endarkened, a race of immortal demons, lost the last great war thousands of years ago. The ruler instituted a plan where she had an entire race of elvish prisoners crossed with goblins bred because through their elven blood, they would be immune to the magical wards that protect the elven lands. They spent these thousands of years taking over the underground caverns in elf lands being totally unknown until the next war started. They were used to sneak in monsters and such, as well as to provide reason for the elven army to stay within its own borders, because they could never be sure they had found all the cave cities of shadowed elves as they were called. A similar plan, though not as long term was, they setup this magical obelisk far outside of elven lands, that gradually changed the weather in elven lands to drought conditions. It took something like 7 years, but the forests were dying and they had no idea that it was anything but natural causes. Not until the heroes of the story showed up of course.

[Kitten Champion]

The first and second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever might have some things that you are looking for. I don't hear many people refer to these any more, so I will give a quick rundown of why it might be what you want. Spoilers ahead, I guess, although I will go very broad strokes.

The books focus on Thomas Covenant, a leper from our world, who wakes up in a fantasy world. This world is recovering from an apocalypse that was brought on by the good guy thinking it would eliminate the bad guy. The bad guy is back, and he is setting up pieces to get what he wants long term. Covenant is there for the book, all the while thinking it is a dream, and goes on a quest that is both necessary and plays into the hands of the big bad. At the end of the book, he wakes back in our world, unsure as to whether it really happened. A short time later for Covenant, it happens again. While only weeks have passed for him, it has been years in the other world. The big bad's plan is progressing, and the people of the land need help.

Because of the time shifts, you see the plan has progressed without having to be around for it. In the second trilogy, you get an even more overwhelming time shift, and it shows you more of an end goal.

So, if I'm reading this right, it's like Mistborn? Insofar as the hero's good intentions ultimately play into the villains hands because the villain had been manipulating the circumstances all along?

[Legato Endless]

As of Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void:

Starcraft also gives us an example of what not to do: never ever claim everything went according to your plan. This rarely makes any kind of sense upon examination long term. 9 out of 10 times an antagonist makes this claim, it's poppycock.

The key to stating out an eon long plan is to keep it simple. The end goal should be clearly summarized in one sentence. It can be vague, what it can't be is complicated. The vital steps to get there should be few. You might have thousands of implied moving parts, but the big thing is you have very few critical points of failure. In real life, even the simplest of plans typically fail in chaotic scenarios. Unless it's a closed system, keep it simple.

Then there's justification for the length of time. The most common feature is one of the conditions for your plan simply takes this long to bring to fruition. Breeding programs are super common for this kind of thing of plot. Millenia of breeding to create a prescient messiah. Lensmen takes a few billion years longer to get their's. The Shadow War in Babylon 5 is another, although it's complicated by being more a pissing contest and philosophical debate. 50,000 years for the galaxy to spit out another spacefaring race in Mass effect. In Red Sun Lex waits through decades of enemy conquest to psychologically mold the fool alien into being vulnerable to a single psyche shattering question.

Alternatively, it's not that it takes a long time, but the window of opportunity is limited, and you've botched the last several attempts. One of the three families in Fate Stay Night has such a plan, but it's taken decades because they can never managed to win.

For a good real life example that ultimately failed for both sides, see the Great Game between England and Russia.

[Raimun]

Hmm... I can only think of some that took decades:

There's one in Watchmen.
Ozymandias' scheme to forge world peace, a la Alexander the Great at Gordion, via uniting the nations of the world against a scary, common (but fabricated) enemy.

Hellsing Ultimate has also one.
The Major's 50+ year long plan that ultimately claimed millions of lifes all around the world, decimated his vampire army, Vatican's crusader army, saw the end to all manner of supernaturally powerful entities and cost him his own "life". All this to kill one dude. One almost unkillable undead dude. Alucard.

Metal... Gear!
The Patriots! The Philosophers! Cipher!

Edit:Oh, and then there's always Tzeentch. He doesn't really count, right? No one, not even the people writing the fluff knows what he is planning. Unless you count the fact that he just likes to make crazy plans just for the sake of it.

[Kitten Champion]

The key to stating out an eon long plan is to keep it simple. The end goal should be clearly summarized in one sentence. It can be vague, what it can't be is complicated. The vital steps to get there should be few. You might have thousands of implied moving parts, but the big thing is you have very few critical points of failure. In real life, even the simplest of plans typically fail in chaotic scenarios. Unless it's a closed system, keep it simple.

I see your point, a longer-term plan can have more moving parts in place - and thus be far harder to topple - but the motives of the character(s) responsible are not any different than if it were a short-term plan. Rather than forming a gang or a party to fulfill your goals, you build a nation, an army, a whole religion around yourself because you have the time to gather these resources and form them into what you need - which I now recall the basis for Joe Abercrombie's First Law series.

[HandofShadows]

In the Honor Harrington series the big bad is the Mesa Alignment, genetic slavers who has been quietly plotting/working to take over humanity and make everyone genetically engineered for something like 600 years. However once the plan starts moving big time it has major problems. (And it's NOT the doing of the series main character either)

[Yora]

Old Classic: Sauron is a minor god who wants to create a world like the big guys did. Since he doesn't have that power he takes a section of the existing world and tries to make it his own, according what he things a good world would look like. That the result isn't pretty doesn't overly concern him, as long as it's his own work.

Witcher 2 also has a nice one that spans several years.
The Emperor of Nilfgaard wants to expand his empire north but his last attempt failed because the threat he poses is the one thing that gets the northern kingdoms to combine their forces. So he sends agents with the mission to throw the northern kingdoms into a war and once they destroyed each others armies, he can move in with his own and take over. The plot gets much more complicated when those agents learn of a conspiracy that is currently going on and use that one to their advantage to make even more chaos while disguising their own true motive.
And that's really just the final phase of the long term goal of invading the north, which has been going on for decades.

Oh, and there's of course the old classic Baldur's Gate:
The god of murder had a premonition that he would die, so he created a number of demigod children. Once he was dead and the children grown up, they would turn against each other and the massive slaughter that results would allow him to be reincarnated in the winner of the fight. One of these children learns about it and uses the resources of the powerful man who raised him to start a really big, but ultimate pointless war. As long as he is responsible for a lot of deaths, he thinks he can gain the powers of a god. Given that some of those children are elves and giants, the preparations for that plan have started centuries ago.

The Shivans from FreeSpace also have a very interesting plan. They appear from nowhere, start blowing stuff up, and in the end they blow up a star. And then they suddenly disappear again. And nobody has any clue what that plan might be because it's way to alien to comprehend.

[Kitten Champion]

The Shivans from FreeSpace also have a very interesting plan. They appear from nowhere, start blowing stuff up, and in the end they blow up a star. And then they suddenly disappear again. And nobody has any clue what that plan might be because it's way to alien to comprehend.

Does this have a resolution of some kind, or it is just left hanging as inscrutable?

[Starwulf]

Hellsing Ultimate has also one.
The Major's 50+ year long plan that ultimately claimed millions of lifes all around the world, decimated his vampire army, Vatican's crusader army, saw the end to all manner of supernaturally powerful entities and cost him his own "life". All this to kill one dude. One almost unkillable undead dude. Alucard.

And in the end: He still failed. Alucard came back years later after he had gotten rid of every copy of Schrodinger's soul inside of his body. So the Major's gambit was a complete loss after it was all said and done.

[GloatingSwine]

The Downstreamers from the Manifold series.

If your plan doesn't include "and here is how we survive the heat death of the universe" it's not really long term planning...

[Lvl45DM!]

Supernatural
(6 year old spoilers)

*Deep breath*
Azazel after spending presumably years looking finally contacts Lucifer in his cage in Hell and Lucifer tells him to find a child and so Azazel then spends the next 10 years going around to mums and ruining their lives and then offering to make it slightly better in exchange for him being allowed to come into their house in 10 years which he does to a Huntress named Mary Winchester and a whole bunch of others then when he comes into their house in 10 years he bleeds in mouths of their 6 month old babies to give them demon powers that will activate when they are 22 then he gets caught and murders Mary (and some others) and so Marys husband becomes a hunter and trains his two sons, one of whom has the demon blood but noone knows that, to hunt monsters but Azazel is so uniquely powerful it takes Marys husband, John, 22 years to find anything, during these 22 years Azazel surrounds Sam, the demon blooded kid with demons keeping an eye on him, then when Sam quits hunting Azazel has one of his demons murder Sams girlfriend, that the demon had set Sam up with, so Sam goes back to hunting, where along the way he meets a hot chick Meg, meanwhile Azazel is setting up another round of demonkids just in case then John finds a magic gun that can kill Azazel so while running this other scheme Azazel sends Meg to kill all Johns friends to lure him into a confrontation so Azazel can possess John, cripple his other son Dean to make John sell his soul to Azazel o save Deans life, and manages to get the magic gun thrown into the bargain AND John's life, not a great haggler John, after this he goes around encouraging his Demonkids to play around with their powers and murder people to make them stronger, then he grabs his demon kids throws them in a battle royale and when the winner isn't Sam he's sad but moves on to the winner, hands the winner the magic gun that can kill Azazel, tells the winner that the gun can kill Azazel just so he can convince the winner to do things Azazel's way with threats cos he's ****ing insane, he gets the winner to use the magic gun to open the gates of hell, then Dean kills him.

*Deep breath again*
BUT EVEN AFTER HE'S DEAD HIS PLAN KEEPS WORKING, because he opened the door to hell because he needed to free Lilith the first demon because she can break the seals that free Lucifer, the first of which needs a righteous man to spill blood in hell, which Azazel was using John for but John's too awesome and breaks outta hell, but Dean the other son had ALSO sold his soul, so Azazel had a backup and then Dean dies, goes to hell, spills blood and Lilith begins breaking all the locks to Lucifers cage, during which time one of Azazel's protege demons begins a 2 year long campagin to gain Sam's trust, teach Sam to use his psychic powers by drinking demon blood and manipulate him into turning away from his (Resurrected) brother Dean all so Sam can kill Lilith with his demon powers a the right time in the right spot because killing Lilith is the final seal and Lucifer pops out but Sam lives and Sam is Lucifers vessel which is easier for Lucifer to control him due to the rage issues Azazel stoked Sam's whole life and won't explode holding Lucifer because of all the demon blood he's been drinking and in the end it took God intervening twice, an angel rebelling, John Winchester rising from the dead, The embodiment of Death being on the good guys side and an archangel rebelling to stop Lucifer winning which was Azazels plan all along

PHEW!
So yeah a 37 year plan filled with layers and redundancies so good that it worked even after the planner died.

[Rodin]

The one that comes immediately to mind is Fullmetal Alchemist.

The villain wants to gain sufficient power to eat God (or something similar, it's never really clearly defined WHAT "The Truth" really is, but it's certainly godlike) and gain his strength and knowledge. To do so, he needs to be able to sacrifice 50 million people all at once.

He already has immortality, so he begins building a country from scratch. He sets himself up as the power behind the throne and engages in various wars and annexations in order to gain a sufficient population that he can control for the ritual.

The ritual itself requires the spilling of blood in various locations, so he incites revolts in the necessary places and then has the military go in and put it down bloodily. He also secretly digs tunnels to form the lines needed for the circle.

All of this takes several hundred years to complete.

[Yora]

Does this have a resolution of some kind, or it is just left hanging as inscrutable?

No, after the star blew up, they just disappeared again. Maybe from where they had come or to somewhere else. It's a different kind of strory, which is more about dealing with an alien enemy and not about figuring out what they want. Like The Dark Knight.

[Kitten Champion]

The one that comes immediately to mind is Fullmetal Alchemist.

The villain wants to gain sufficient power to eat God (or something similar, it's never really clearly defined WHAT "The Truth" really is, but it's certainly godlike) and gain his strength and knowledge. To do so, he needs to be able to sacrifice 50 million people all at once.

He already has immortality, so he begins building a country from scratch. He sets himself up as the power behind the throne and engages in various wars and annexations in order to gain a sufficient population that he can control for the ritual.

The ritual itself requires the spilling of blood in various locations, so he incites revolts in the necessary places and then has the military go in and put it down bloodily. He also secretly digs tunnels to form the lines needed for the circle.

All of this takes several hundred years to complete.




I recalled this recently myself, I don't know why I forgot it.

The first Fullmetal Alchemist anime arch-villain's plot wasn't too dissimilar from the manga's/Brotherhood's in concept, though less epic in scale and vision.


Supernatural
(6 year old spoilers)

*Deep breath*
Azazel after spending presumably years looking finally contacts Lucifer in his cage in Hell and Lucifer tells him to find a child and so Azazel then spends the next 10 years going around to mums and ruining their lives and then offering to make it slightly better in exchange for him being allowed to come into their house in 10 years which he does to a Huntress named Mary Winchester and a whole bunch of others then when he comes into their house in 10 years he bleeds in mouths of their 6 month old babies to give them demon powers that will activate when they are 22 then he gets caught and murders Mary (and some others) and so Marys husband becomes a hunter and trains his two sons, one of whom has the demon blood but noone knows that, to hunt monsters but Azazel is so uniquely powerful it takes Marys husband, John, 22 years to find anything, during these 22 years Azazel surrounds Sam, the demon blooded kid with demons keeping an eye on him, then when Sam quits hunting Azazel has one of his demons murder Sams girlfriend, that the demon had set Sam up with, so Sam goes back to hunting, where along the way he meets a hot chick Meg, meanwhile Azazel is setting up another round of demonkids just in case then John finds a magic gun that can kill Azazel so while running this other scheme Azazel sends Meg to kill all Johns friends to lure him into a confrontation so Azazel can possess John, cripple his other son Dean to make John sell his soul to Azazel o save Deans life, and manages to get the magic gun thrown into the bargain AND John's life, not a great haggler John, after this he goes around encouraging his Demonkids to play around with their powers and murder people to make them stronger, then he grabs his demon kids throws them in a battle royale and when the winner isn't Sam he's sad but moves on to the winner, hands the winner the magic gun that can kill Azazel, tells the winner that the gun can kill Azazel just so he can convince the winner to do things Azazel's way with threats cos he's ****ing insane, he gets the winner to use the magic gun to open the gates of hell, then Dean kills him.

*Deep breath again*
BUT EVEN AFTER HE'S DEAD HIS PLAN KEEPS WORKING, because he opened the door to hell because he needed to free Lilith the first demon because she can break the seals that free Lucifer, the first of which needs a righteous man to spill blood in hell, which Azazel was using John for but John's too awesome and breaks outta hell, but Dean the other son had ALSO sold his soul, so Azazel had a backup and then Dean dies, goes to hell, spills blood and Lilith begins breaking all the locks to Lucifers cage, during which time one of Azazel's protege demons begins a 2 year long campagin to gain Sam's trust, teach Sam to use his psychic powers by drinking demon blood and manipulate him into turning away from his (Resurrected) brother Dean all so Sam can kill Lilith with his demon powers a the right time in the right spot because killing Lilith is the final seal and Lucifer pops out but Sam lives and Sam is Lucifers vessel which is easier for Lucifer to control him due to the rage issues Azazel stoked Sam's whole life and won't explode holding Lucifer because of all the demon blood he's been drinking and in the end it took God intervening twice, an angel rebelling, John Winchester rising from the dead, The embodiment of Death being on the good guys side and an archangel rebelling to stop Lucifer winning which was Azazels plan all along

PHEW!
So yeah a 37 year plan filled with layers and redundancies so good that it worked even after the planner died.

I remembered Supernatural had a really beefy villainous plot, though seeing it written out like that gives me new respect for its vision. Though the thing that stuck in my mind was the Winchester boys were secretly the products of a multi-generational breeding scheme to create the vessels for Michael and Lucifer for their apocalyptic battle, though that was Azazel's direct doing I think.

[Clertar]

Not an evil one, but arguably a precedent of this concept: in the Foundation, the way Hari Seldon forsees the future and sets a plan in motion to correct the chaos that would follow the fall of the Galactic Empire.

[Darth Credence]

So, if I'm reading this right, it's like Mistborn? Insofar as the hero's good intentions ultimately play into the villains hands because the villain had been manipulating the circumstances all along?

I haven't read Mistborn, so I can't say for sure how they compare. But the "hero" doesn't have much in the way of good intentions - Covenant doesn't fully believe that he has gone to another world, so he doesn't really commit to helping. He commits to getting through it so that he can wake up in his world again.

The people of the world he goes to do have good intentions that play into the villain's plans. But this is not just because of background manipulation - Lord Foul is pretty upfront about it. The first thing Foul does is to give a message for the council, that there is a quest that needs doing, completing the quest will result in Foul becoming more powerful and bring him closer to victory, but not completing the quest will mean that someone else will take out the council much quicker. There is some stuff he doesn't let them know about, but a big chunk of it is that he has arranged things so that the best choice the council can make at any stage of the process will play into his hands.

[lt_murgen]

I like The Black Company series, for (short) long term plans and long long term plans.

[Adderbane]

Does this have a resolution of some kind, or it is just left hanging as inscrutable?

Unfortunately for various reasons Freespace 3 was never made. However, this left a massive number of plot threads to play with--Admiral Bosch, Project ETAK, the disparity between Great War and Second Incursion Shivan forces and tactics, the nodes beyond the nebula Knossos, and a lot more. This has given rise to a large number fan made campaigns that often take a stab at answering things..

If you want to know more you'd have to play the game.

It's very good.

[Dragonus45]

Unfortunately for various reasons Freespace 3 was never made. However, this left a massive number of plot threads to play with--Admiral Bosch, Project ETAK, the disparity between Great War and Second Incursion Shivan forces and tactics, the nodes beyond the nebula Knossos, and a lot more. This has given rise to a large number fan made campaigns that often take a stab at answering things..

If you want to know more you'd have to play the game.

It's very good.

It also has an expansive fan made sequel series of sequels that are easily the best games of the genre ever made. Ever.

[Lvl45DM!]

I remembered Supernatural had a really beefy villainous plot, though seeing it written out like that gives me new respect for its vision. Though the thing that stuck in my mind was the Winchester boys were secretly the products of a multi-generational breeding scheme to create the vessels for Michael and Lucifer for their apocalyptic battle, though that was Azazel's direct doing I think.

Nah that was the angels and it apparently had been going since the time of Cain and Abel. But thats a way lamer long term scheme, because they just sent a Cupid to wave his hands and make the right people fall in love.

Oh and I forgot that while Azazel was running this whole scheme he also managed to run a field test for Croatoan, the zombie rage virus, which was the biggest weapon in the Apocalypse Arsenal

[Closet_Skeleton]

For a good real life example that ultimately failed for both sides, see the Great Game between England and Russia.

The Great Game wasn't a plan, it was just constant meddling in order to maintain a stalemate. Each side may have thought the other had some long term strategy that they were stopping but both sides were really just opportunists.

The French had a sort of long term world conquest goal during the Third Republic but it was more of an ideology than a plan in that is basically just amounted to 'the French are the best so if we just spread French culture as much as possible everyone will eventually adopt it in the future' and at some point we'll get revenge on Germany and take Alsace back but we can't actually be bothered to provoke such a war despite basing most of our rhetoric on how much we hate Germany for humiliating us and making sure all our alliances are ant-Germany ones.

Louis XIV had a long term plan that was to bring the French border all the way east to the Rhine, but never actually did much to make that happen and spent most of his reign as an opportunist and spreading his sphere of influence by meddling wherever possible.

Of course in real life even relatively short term plans can take years of preparation. The old fictional "every so many years we'll do a ritual" plan often seems like a short term plan rather than an actual long term one since there doesn't actually seem to be that much preparation to do. The problem with all long term plans is that they're mostly about waiting, not about being smart or anything like that.

[Manga Shoggoth]

A couple of older ones:

In "Ringworld" (Larry Niven) you have the puppeteers, who have some very long-term plans (moving their entire solar system away from the core explosion, twin breeding plans for Humans (luck) and Kzinti (reducing aggression). The human(s) and kzin that discover the plot aren't all that impressed.

In the Lensman series (more obvious in Triplanetry than the rest of the series as it covers a longer time period) the Arisians are running a covert opposition against the Eddorians which is started before the Eddorians break into this universe (long before the Human race gets started), and culminates in the far future. The Eddorians were only slightly less focused on the long-term plans.

(I actually like the Arisian version, as they knew right from the start that their plans would (effectively) mean the end of their race, but they went ahead and did it anyway.)

[Raimun]

And in the end: He still failed. Alucard came back years later after he had gotten rid of every copy of Schrodinger's soul inside of his body. So the Major's gambit was a complete loss after it was all said and done.

Heh, it sure was. Still, it was a plan that lasted several decades and was eventually executed. It was a crazy plan.

[Starwulf]

Heh, it sure was. Still, it was a plan that lasted several decades and was eventually executed. It was a crazy plan.

Yeah, it really was one of the more interesting gambits I've ever seen in an anime before. World domination? Nah. Absolute riches/wealth? Forget about it! Genocide? Sorry, but no cigar! Just want to wipe out one person, that's all I care about.

[Gnoman]

-snip-

That's a massive spoiler, and it goes even further than that.


The Alignment was responsible for the fall of the original Republic of Haven and the creation of the People's Republic of Haven, as the old ROH was one of the only powers strong enough to contest their planned conquest of the galaxy. At the time, Manticore was just a tiny star nation that happened to have a decent amount of money, but the PRH's conquests forced Manticore to build up, eventually turning every ship that isn't Manticoran, Grayson, Havenite, or Andermani into expensive skeet and dooming the Alignment's plan. Basically, the Alignment shot themselves in the face.

[Joran]

Not an evil one, but arguably a precedent of this concept: in the Foundation, the way Hari Seldon forsees the future and sets a plan in motion to correct the chaos that would follow the fall of the Galactic Empire.

Not only does Hari Seldon start a plan, but he creates an entire organization devoted to ensuring the plan succeeds. The plan is also flexible enough that the organization can change the plan on the fly to meet the requirements of reality, using the science of psychohistory.


Not only does he create the Foundation, but Hari Seldon actually foresees another threat, that of psychic people, so he creates a secret second Foundation to make sure the first Foundation doesn't go off-track. It's really quite clever.

Then Asimov didn't know how to end the series, spent a couple decades sitting on the series, and then robots happened.

[Sapphire Guard]

Legacy of Kain. At least four separate entities have plans spanning centuries or millenia, most of which hinge on the actions of one guy at specific moments in time.

Malazan Book of the Fallen. Everyone. Every deity, long lived immortal, political entity, undead...has some kind of long term plan, of varying effectiveness.


Heh, it sure was. Still, it was a plan that lasted several decades and was eventually executed. It was a crazy plan.

Pretty good plan, though.

I'll give him credit for robbing Al of his thousands of extra lives


[/SPOILER]