What is your succesfull attempt at an Evil Ending in your campain?

[Asmotherion]

As I was writing this little memory (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24674211&postcount=23) down, I was wondering, what's your version of a campain were the evil character(s) in the party have their way, and end up with "unlimited poweeer". Bonus point if it is a story of succesful betrayal, plots and machinations that went through for a huge amount of time.

If the whole party was evil, it fits, but at least one Villain that ended up winning must have been a PC, who acted of his own free will (so no dominated by the BBEG plots).

Best story wins a dark side cookie!

Go!!!

[Mrark]

I am an evil character who recently gained overwhelming powers. I still have some plot ideas I have to discuss with the dm, I'll let you know in the end :smallwink:

[Asmotherion]

I am an evil character who recently gained overwhelming powers. I still have some plot ideas I have to discuss with the dm, I'll let you know in the end :smallwink:

Great, I'll be waiting for the ending :smallwink:

[Zanos]

At the end of one of my campaigns, the necromancer I was playing populated the city he had created with intelligent undead, and levitated the whole thing. It became mobile trade hub that specialized in magic items and fine crafts and would go from major city to major city to trade. It was also an authoritarian hellhole, but hey. Awakened skeletons don't grow on trees, so your papers better be in order.

[Asmotherion]

At the end of one of my campaigns, the necromancer I was playing populated the city he had created with intelligent undead, and levitated the whole thing. It became mobile trade hub that specialized in magic items and fine crafts and would go from major city to major city to trade. It was also an authoritarian hellhole, but hey. Awakened skeletons don't grow on trees, so your papers better be in order.

Ah, yes. Living the dream with a profitable Necropolis. My only question is, was it Awakened Skeletons only, or a variety of species?

[Cirrylius]

My character never really had an endgame goal to accomplish. He cracked epic levels before the campaign ended, so the sky was pretty much the limit at that point.

All things considered, at least socio-politically, his high point was probably founding a tiny maritime arctic nation.

...which was going to be a front for privateers, pirates, smugglers, fences, and mercenaries to use as the biggest shadowport on the continent.

Being a necromancer and loremaster, his interests were much more rarefied, of course. He just needed to something his party was already good at to pay the bills while he got on with his undead Mengelesque research.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

One of my PCs took control of the bbeg's ascension ritual to become the new god of death after a big fight with another more righteous PC, and his fellow evil PC is now a successful pirate captain with a very powerful favor in the bank

[PhantasyPen]

This was in a 5e game (HERESY! I know...) set in Ravnica when that book had just came out.

I was playing a Gruul with aspirations of becoming a Genghis Khan/Alexander the Great expy, with just a hint of Cuchulainn to make things interesting.

By the end of the campaign, I had eaten the Gruul god of Riots and taken his mantle, burned Sunhome to the ground with the largest Gruul warband in living memory and captured Aurelia, the Angel in charge of it, and one of the other PCs (a Rakdos) tore open a portal to the Nine Hells that allowed the entirety of Avernus to pour through in a mad bid to stop me from doing to the rest of Ravnica what I did to Sunhome.

[King of Nowhere]

a bit of a different case since i was the dm, but when the final main villain revealed himself, the npc who had been the major villain for a long while decided to jump the boat and ally with the pcs, in exchange for getting away for his previous misdeeds. he ended the campaign as one of the most powerful people in the wrold after the pcs, and he eventually got to retire rich, powerful and unrepentant.
then again, his organizational skill was used for the greater good, so it still counted as a good ending, with a major bad guy swapping sides and managing a karma houdini.

the final main villain also survived the campaign; as a genius with unique knowledge about several aspects of magic, the party decided he'd be more useful alive (well, undead) than dead, and offered him the chance to be a well-treated prisoner as long as he researched stuff for the benefit of all. we plan to play another campaign set in the same world in the future, and it may well be that he will also manage to get an happy ending

[DwarvenWarCorgi]

1st edition whfrp had a long running game where we started out working for a mysterious gentleman, later we found out he was actually the bbeg and the left hand man of the chaos god Kane. I was playing a pirate who had been shipwrecked on a monster inhabited island for an undisclosed amount of time before being rescued by the party,, and had a deficit of sanity as a result.
Long story short, sold my soul into servitude, but got it back, then found an artifact I kept from the rest of the party, started all kinds of shady stuff behind their back, eventually became the right hand man of Kane and then defeated the bbeg in single combat and ushered in a whole new Era of chaos while the rest of the party just went wtf just happened. Dm had a random table he and another dm had developed for chaos effects, literally ended the campaign by laughing maniacally while sprouting hellboy horns.

Next game we started over as new heroes in the aftermath.

[Quertus]

Hmmm… most of my stories tend to be much more "grounded" than "unlimited power". But, for successful evil endings, how about…

Killed a fellow PC who messed up, hid the body.

Killed and ate the quest-giver.

Insinuated into the nobility after having played sadistic bondage games with the runaway princess.

Killed everything the State pointed us at (waded through them like they were humans), managed not to have the citizens form a torch-wielding mob / convinced them that we were in their side, or at least the lesser of two evils.

Left town after killing all our enemies, most our allies, and half the town.

Got paid. Got an apprentice. Got married. Got to stay in Ravenloft.

Any of these sound like the type of stuff you were after?

Oh, actually… how about…

Took advantage of the gods being in a bad state; negotiated for everything he wanted (including, effectively, the divine Creation power) effectively under threat of "say 'yes', or no-one will ever help you" (because he was the only one who knew what was going on, no-one else *could* help them).

[Particle_Man]

I had a Hexblade who used political machinations to end up emperor. He was actually CN at start but drifted to evil (power corrupts and all that).

And hey I did it with a low-tier 3.5 Hexblade!

[Efrate]

My long time 3.5 game ended with both Asmodaeus and a Great Wyrm Green Dragon the party were working with, ascending to divinity after convincing the god of healing and sacrifice to give up his divinity.