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Leliel
2008-12-05, 07:26 PM
Anyway, in my Gothic Matrix project-it's in the Homebrew forums-the main villains, the Gil-Guilm corporation, have a procedure for turning a normal humanoid into a living bastion of magical energy called a Daeva, which would be fine, except it also disentigrates their temporal lobe while sending them into constant agony, causing them to devlop a disposition similar to that of Albeldo from Xenosaga. In case you haven't played that game, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kae5RELMVI) is what happens when he's allowed to play god with a bit of space-time...and that kid is his brother.

Of course, with my affinity for tragic villains, I want to shove it into the head of my PCs that what is truly horrifying about the Daevas is that they don't want to be evil, and that due to the nature of their power, even the best person who becomes one can only hurt those they care about.

So, any ideas on how to show that deep down, these guys are not so bad while also showing that the best thing to do to them is give them a nice death?

Tacoma
2008-12-05, 07:33 PM
All the villains escape the test center. Instead of wreaking havoc in the streets they scatter.

The first one the PCs find is trying to erase everyone's memory of its family. Then it will erase its own memory. That way it cannot hunt them down and kill them.

The second one created a magical prison for itself, which the PCs have to navigate. Inside are scenes from its previous life. It's constantly destroying and remaking these things, crying and moaning.

The third is out in a remote place, maybe the desert or the moon or something, trying to kill itself with its own magical power. But as soon as it fades and loses focus, it automatically heals up again. Its thrashing around is endangering a nearby mining town.

The fourth is hunting down its creator. But because it broke its bond it's slowly dying, losing pieces of itself in a trail of blood and slain corporate guards.

Just off the top of the head.

Nerd-o-rama
2008-12-05, 07:44 PM
TESTSUOOOOOOOOO!!
KANEDAAAAAAAAAAA!!

Look, I didn't reference SRW this time. Still not all that apropos to my suggestion, though.

I think basic things like having them screaming for help or warning everyone to get away while they indiscriminately magically irradiate everything around them can be effective. Emphasize how helpless their conscious minds are compared to their raw power.

Tacoma
2008-12-05, 07:46 PM
"Babies need meat ... "
"I'mmm ... soooorry. RAGH!"

NEO|Phyte
2008-12-05, 07:56 PM
"I'mmm ... soooorry. RAGH!"

So very yes.

Xuincherguixe
2008-12-06, 03:37 AM
I'm a fan of psychotic anti heroes myself. Which are close enough ^_^.

It might be that a villain has trouble distinguishing between reality and illusion. For added fun, their perception could also be going into alternate realities. It might be fun to create a few fairly elaborate ones, and have the character interact in great detail with them.

Ideally, whatever problems they have is something inflicted on them. Wee bit of a cliche, but always fun is that the world turned on them, and so they're lashing out at it. And if you want to really have some fun, the resolution of events isn't murder. You can have this whole violence as a cycle thing. What happened to your sympathetic psychopath wasn't their fault, and so "unbalance", "evil", "violence" or whatever you want to call it has entered them. It reaches a certain point and they explode, and break. And so now they go out and inflict suffering on others, who themselves may well not deserve it (best if they get some revenge though). Because of this, now the PCs have to come and murder them, as the populace demands justice. But in doing so, they are drawn into "the cycle". The wrongness continues to flow.

Some sort of ghost (or similar thing) might work too. There could be one awful solution, to "banish" it, and the other is that the people who wronged it need to apologize, and beg forgiveness. Naturally, the latter is by far the harder path.

Going even further, there could be some jerk god that's the cause of all this. But that's not really necessary. If you do, they should have some reasoning behind it all, be it irrational or otherwise. Or just some guy who's really good at plotting things.


They could also be truly awful people with no excuses, but a couple redeemable features. Such as in the middle of battle, they might take the time to rescue a kitten. And perhaps chew the party out for putting cute little mittens in danger. ("My murdering of people is completely different! People are worthless after all!")


Probably best not to do with psychopaths, but you could have someone who's a pretty nice person except for whatever crazy evil shenanigans they've got going. Donating to charity, saving kittens, offering low interest rate loans to the poor... and waking up Cthulhu so that he eats the world so that no one has to suffer anymore. (Okay, Cthulhu is a bad example. Lets say set off a bomb big enough to blow up everything)


So I guess general misanthropy is the way to go ^_^

Xefas
2008-12-06, 04:19 AM
The best way to make someone sympathize with someone else is to make that person seem like a human being to them. This may seem like a strange notion, but the reason why people are able to do all the horrible things they do like stealing or murdering, or even simple things like not freak the hell out when they're shown the gruesome deaths of thousands of real people on television is because the average human can only except a relatively small number of individuals as equal living things.

For instance, if I point out the fact that my grandpa died, it probably doesn't make you sad at all. You probably felt more sadness for when your goldfish died or something similar, despite the fact that your goldfish was barely sentient and my grandpa was a complex person who made a major impact on the lives of everyone around him. That's fine; it's actually physically impossible for most humans' brains to treat people outside their immediate circle of importance as living, breathing things that have hopes and dreams, etc.

So, what you need to do is show your players that these characters are "people", which is a mighty task, considering it's already difficult to make people feel sympathy for a real person much less a fictional character.

Using a bit of metagaming, insert some information about the villain that each player can relate to. Does one of your players have a little brother or sister they care about more than anything in the whole world? Give the villain a younger sibling around the same age. Does another player love a certain kind of food more than any other? Have the villain eating something similar (though not necessarily exactly the same) and then when they gut the villain and he's lying, bleeding on the ground, breathing his last, he can relate to them how he'll miss the frosty winter evenings where he'd sit down with his sister, snuggled up in a blanket, and even though they didn't have a lot, they'd splurge and get X food that he loved even though his sister didn't like it so much, even though she told him that she did so that he wouldn't feel guilty using their money to buy it, but he knew anyway and that his one regret will be not getting to say thank you and goodbye to her.

hamishspence
2008-12-06, 06:49 AM
villains vary a lot. sympathetic trait is villain's concern for another (after all, even villains tend to have something or someone they are attached to. Seeing a villain grieve, or help somebody can make them seem more of a person.

Demented
2008-12-06, 07:38 AM
what is truly horrifying about the Daevas is that they don't want to be evil, and that due to the nature of their power, even the best person who becomes one can only hurt those they care about.

What makes them evil, despite not wanting to be evil? Furthermore, what is the nature of their power that affects them so wholly that they can serve as super soldiers but not donate money to charity?

hamishspence
2008-12-06, 07:51 AM
In a sense, they are Cursed to Do Evil, which can make them evil- and the evil "may only show itself under certain conditions"

Champions of Ruin- lycanthropy- probably werewolf-

"A character who has contracted lycanthropy, for example, might donate trreasure to widows and orphans, build temples, slay dragons, and help old ladies across the street- but on the night of the full moon, he hunts down and slaughters those widows and orphans and feeds the same old ladies to the dragon. Most of the time he is good, but his curse outweighs all the good he does."

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-06, 08:27 AM
Diaries.

Have the PCs find, somewhere in the Shinra Mansion Gui-Gilim Testing Facility a hidden diary of one of your more fleshed out Daevas, written while the procedure was being carried out. Mix it in with plot-relevant stuff so that the PCs will look it over.

Make the transformation long and agonizing, and let the PCs watch as an otherwise good and normal human being (perhaps a corporate security guard with a family or something) slowly is driven violently insane.

The more work you put into this, the better it'll creep your players out.

For bonus points, put the diary in a file marked with your Daevas' name, and include newspaper clippings of how the fully-transformed Daeva murdered his family/loved ones when it escaped. :smallamused:

Fishy
2008-12-06, 10:24 AM
The words you're looking for are "danger to himself and others".

Some villains have to be stopped. They have something they want, they have a plan to reach out and take it, and they don't know or don't care who gets hurt in the process. You need to prevent them from doing what it is they want to do.

Some villains have to be -put down-. You can't reason with them, you can't find a peaceful solution, because the problem isn't what they're doing, it's who they are. The Daevas are magical nuclear waste, and they can't exist in a peaceful society. The fact that they are human beings with minds and emotions, the fact that, deep down, they're good people, just doesn't matter. And that's what makes it a tragedy.

I personally would play down the 'Daeva-izing makes you evil', in favor of 'Daeva-izing makes you dangerous'.

1- Go and watch Heroes Season 1, and take notes every time Ted Sprague the Exploding Man shows up on screen. He's a perfectly normal man, who happens to kill everyone and everything that gets close to him. That does things to a guy.

2- The first Daeva the PCs find is a psychopathic nutjob, a petty crook who uses his new powers to go on a killing spree. PCs are Big Damn Heroes.

3- The Second Daeva is found huddling in whatever devastating magical aftermath his power causes. The PCs got there too late, but he knows he's a monster, and agrees to come quietly to some sort of prison/containment facility.

4- The Third Daeva is Ted Sprague from Heroes, Season 1. He's furious at the monsters who 'did this to him', and is out for messy revenge, forget about collateral damage. Maybe he mistakes the PCs for bad dudes, maybe he teams up with the PCs, and then starts haphazardly blowing stuff up during an important battle.

5- Meanwhile, the Second Daeva explodes again. He didn't mean to, but he kills a whole bunch of guards and knocks a massive hole in his prison walls. He agrees to come quietly to a newly rebuilt and higher security holding facility.

6- The Fourth Daeva is fine. He knows about his powers and how dangerous they are, but he's fine now. He has them entirely under control. So the PCs can walk out and leave him alone now. Because he's fine. And he's not crazy. Who told you all the Daevas are crazy? Well, they were lying to you. That's a lie! I mean, look at this guy, he's fine, he's absolutely in control and you can Leave Him ALONE- <kaboom>.

7- The Second Daeva explodes again. He comes quietly to a newer, better facility.

8- The Fifth Daeva is another actual bad guy, because the PCs might be pretty depressed at this point.

9- The Second Daeva explodes again. He *runs*. And if the PCs try to put him into another box, trapped like a rat until he kills *more* people, he starts shooting up the place.

10- Profit!

Prometheus
2008-12-06, 12:37 PM
The villain shouldn't be melancholy and reluctant, he should be inhuman with a tiny bit of humanity in him, even if it doesn't make any sense at all.

Maybe after everyone he kills he attends their funeral and mourns them deeply. When asked, he says he knew them in ways that no one else could ever, but doesn't elaborate. The thing is, he is not a reluctant killer, in fact, the death scenes are gruesome and disgusting. He does not feel guilty, personally responsible, or even a bystander for that person's death. But he attends the funeral because it was someone he knew.

Alternatively, after seeing the faces of the Gothic Matrix folks while in extreme pain, they have associated humanity with pain. They go around therefore, putting everyone out of their misery (and the Daeva's own) without it ever occurring that something was wrong with that. They usually start with the face, and it is never intact by the time that person is dead.