While The Heroes Are Away, the Villains Will Play

[DragonBaneDM]

Hey gang! Here's a bit about a villain I've got going right now.

So there's this gnome businessman. His name's Zook. Zook's been bullied and put down by dwarves his entire life. Against this adversity he rose up to become a powerful merchant guild leader based in the dwarven district of a large city. Zook now employs hundreds of dwarves, gnomes, and humans and recently won a political office as well. However, he's immensely greedy and is frustrated by his inability to expand to greater power due to his low birth and unpopularity with the majority of dwarves in his part of the city. I've decided his alignment is neutral evil.

Zook recently received word of a new opportunity known by few: a dragon, along with an army, is coming to this city to "liberate" it from it's current occupants. Seeing a way to greater power (and a way to put the current dwarven leadership in their place) Zook jumped on this opportunity and immediately started helping small groups of monstrous humanoids into the city and equipping them in order to soften it's defenses for the coming battle.

TLDR: Rich gnome wants to let a foreign invader take over city he lives in because it promised him power.

Enter: the party. They found one of these infiltration squadrons, cleared out the dungeon they were in, and captured their leader. Luckily for the gnome, Zook managed to convince the party that they should leave the enemy leader with him so that she could stay in his compound's holding cell. After the party left, Zook had her killed so she can't be interpreted by any other authority, but the party is super suspicious of him.

Luckily for Zook, the party ignored him in favor of heading into the dwarven mines (which is where Zook has been smuggling monsters from) to try and figure out what's happened to a local dwarven leader who's been kidnapped and taken down to a dungeon within the mines.

So Zook is thrilled! It's probable that the party dies down in the mines. However, he's not an idiot, he's defintely working on a contingency plan to make sure they do die or that he gets out of dodge should they find out his connections and survive to rat him out. How do you think a villain like this would try to consolidate his power now that he's been given some space to work with and some darn good motivation? Here's some of my thoughts on some things he might try:



Flood or barricade the entrance to the mines so that the party cannot return.
Have evidence planted on other local leaders/political rivals to have them arrested.
Turn his compound into an absolute fortress and await the dragon's army to arrive.
Leave the city entirely, taking his family to the safety of the dragon's army.
Sending a monster or maybe even rival party of "adventurers" into the mines with the sole purpose of finding and killing the party.


Zook's got a ton of wealth, connections with mages and artificers, years of secret training using blade and crossbow (he's got many Rogue-like features in his stat block) as well as a few magic items he could make use of. I wanted to brainstorm here because I am not a rich, evil mastermind with a 16 Int, but maybe some of you are?

[Armored Walrus]

Riffing off your planting evidence idea... Maybe he works to spread rumors or create evidence that it's the PCs who have been sending the monsters to the surface, so when they come up from below they find the town turned against them?

[8wGremlin]

Be like batman. Always have a plan b,c and d.

Use aliases
Put many plans into action at the same time.
Use disguise and friends to have actual hostil witnesses for the other people.

[smcmike]

Riffing off your planting evidence idea... Maybe he works to spread rumors or create evidence that it's the PCs who have been sending the monsters to the surface, so when they come up from below they find the town turned against them?

Yes, this is a classic for good reason.

It doesn't sound like the party is Zook's biggest concern right now. Framing them or sending a special hit squad to take them out seems reasonable, but he does have a lot on his plate. Even with all he's accomplished, plotting the conquest of one's own city is a big deal.

Things to consider: how much does he actually trust this dragon? What does the dragon want from him, and what does he want from the dragon, exactly? What needs to be done to ensure victory (apart from dealing with those pesky adventurers)? Is there any way that he might see to use the adventurers to his advantage? Who are his real enemies within the city? Who does he have under his thumb?

Is it possible he is planning on double-crossing the dragon, at some point? Even if he isn't planning it, I'd think he wouldn't show his hand until victory was certain, if then.

[Armored Walrus]

All that

A contingency plan to cover his backside in case his treachery is discovered in town is to find a way to pin it on the party. Then he can be the town hero and force the party to prove their innocence by sending them out to defeat the dragon. This way he can turn on either one. Of course, he'll have a contingency to be able to reveal to the winner that he was backing them all along.

Alternatively - "Oh, you're not going out to face the dragon with all that loot from the dungeon on your persons, are you? It'll just weigh you down. I'll hold that for you. You can trust me since I already held your prisoner for you."

Alternatively - While the adventurers are clearing the dungeon, the gnome maneuvers a deal that leaves him owning title to the dungeon and all its contents. The PCs are charged with theft when they emerge. Their sentence is to save the town from the imminent dragon attack, and to forfeit all the loot to the gnome. If they win, he's the hero who saved the town from the dragon, if they lose, he fed the dragon the only serious opposition and kept the party from joining with the town's other defenders.

[DragonBaneDM]

Yes, this is a classic for good reason.

It doesn't sound like the party is Zook's biggest concern right now. Framing them or sending a special hit squad to take them out seems reasonable, but he does have a lot on his plate. Even with all he's accomplished, plotting the conquest of one's own city is a big deal.

Things to consider: how much does he actually trust this dragon? What does the dragon want from him, and what does he want from the dragon, exactly? What needs to be done to ensure victory (apart from dealing with those pesky adventurers)? Is there any way that he might see to use the adventurers to his advantage? Who are his real enemies within the city? Who does he have under his thumb?

Is it possible he is planning on double-crossing the dragon, at some point? Even if he isn't planning it, I'd think he wouldn't show his hand until victory was certain, if then.

These are fun questions for me to think about, a lot of them are things I haven't thought out, simply because I figured the party might have made Zook their first priority.

Zook's never actually met this dragon, only monstrous humanoids representing her. However, Zook's seen the dungeon that the dragon's had built in the dwarven mines and the terrible monsters it holds, and this inspires fear and respect within the gnome. So much so that he's had a secret tunnel built that connects his compound with the dungeon in order to better smuggle the invaders and have a place to run to. If the adventurers find that, it's sort of game over for him.

In order to ensure victory, Zook believes that the dwarven part of the city, which is underneath the main city, has to be taken and used as a base to launch attacks from. So weakening or converting the military forces of the dwarves is a big plus. However, even if he does that, he'd still have to deal with the nobles and their knights living above him, so that's where he's trusting the dragon to make good on her promise to bring in an army strong enough to defeat the city above. He can't take the city alone right now, and he won't try it.

From the dragon, Zook wants, and has been promised, complete and utter dominance over the dwarven part of the city. Right now he's stuck sharing that power with two other people. The leader of the mining guild (who's just been taken down into the mines as a prisoner) and the Headmistress of the Artificer Academy. This is the person Zook considers his greatest enemy, if Zook's going to be trying to get someone arrested, it's her.

The adventurers are in the mines now, they're a little out of Zook's reach to be "useful" to him. However, he could try and use a Sending Stone to send a message to his contacts down below to plant evidence to turn the party against the Headmistress? That way if they do come back, they're coming back angry at her and not at Zook. The party's rogue is a master at forgery, so this might be a good way for him to beat another forger at their own game and spot insincere documents or journals.

Zook's greatest lackies include a half-dwarf with the ability to polymorph himself back and forth into an ogre, a disgraced knight who has an affinity for fighting along monodrones, and an earth elemental that he has bound to the shell of an ankheg in case he needs to cause structural havoc. However, a lot of different merchants, criminal organizations, mercenary mages, and even some nobles and adventurers "owe him one", so I could come up with more diverse group if I had to.

I think Zook plans to try and double cross the dragon if it looks like the dragon can't make good on her promise to take over the city.

[Kane0]

What Zook needs is a solid Xanatos gambit.

Send in a hit squad to take out his mines and everyone within. Deliberately misinform them so they appear for all intents and purposes to be enemies of Zook wrecking his mine and killing his people. Seal the mine behind them. At the same time also get some tunnels set up from his ally's den to the competition's holdings. Do everything by proxy of course.

- If the party dies, he wins.
- If the party gets out, Zook rewards them for helping save his mine and offers employment to figure out and punish who did this (his competition or the dragon as appropriate).

- If the party accepts his quest, have him place false evidence and frame his competitors while also bugging out and covering his tracks in preparation for the assault of the army. If the party sets after the dragon just give a nice heads up and help plan an ambush.
- If the party refuses, tell the authorities that they ruined his mine and killed his employees then wait for their arrest. Use this to his advantage in the press and against his remaining competition. Make preparations to make himself scarse when the army gets on the move or the party gets out.

- If the party successfully helps him get rid of his competition keep them employed as long as is beneficial then feed them to the dragon. This could even turn into an evil campaign!
- If the party fails, he wins.

Is a rough outline but you get the idea. Have plenty of barriers between him and the party until such a time as is appropriate for him to be hoist with his own petard.

[JackPhoenix]

As I play CaW game, I'd have him send a warning to the monsters in the mine that the enemy is coming. If the message arrives before the PC's, the monsters would have their defenses prepared to deal with them. Even if it arrives later (but before the PC's clear the whole area), it would mean that the PC's would be unable to deal with the enemy one encounter at a time, but there may be a whole dungeon's worth of foes waiting for them at once. Which may be somewhat helpful, if they decide to run: They should be able to figure out that *someone* warned the monsters that they are coming, and if they escape, well, how many people knew where they went? It may the clue that lead them to the traitor, or at least warns them that there is a traitor, and limits the possible suspects.