[4e] Making a Boss truly despicable

[Random NPC]

I'm creating an adventure with ideas taken from the city built around the tarrasque. The city of Bael Tarrasqa is the capital of the Tiefling empire of Bael Turath, enemy of the Dragonborn kingdom of Arkhosia.

I want to introduce the players to the whole idea with an adventure where they go and kill this slave trader Hobgoblin.

The adventure will start in a small village that serves as a mid point between two bigger cities. Goblins arrive to the town in the name of Bael Turath, demanding people to serve the great Tarrasque (as food). I plan for the party to be introduced to the Hobgoblin master by this point. After that, the Goblins take some citizens, go to their base before leaving to join a bigger caravan of the food collecting army.

I will make sure to establish that going after the caravan would mean suicide(or at least at level 1 or 2), but they can save the citizens before the goblins meet with the caravan.

The idea is railroady, but I want to hurt the player and character's ego and morals by making them want to tear this guy to pieces, but I need HALP

[Yukitsu]

Depends on the group. I personally would have hunted the guy down, paralyzed him, and placed his face in a bowl of water without any prompting beyond the words "slave trader" out of principle, whereas many of the people I play with wouldn't act unless the guy stole their gear.

[Myshlaevsky]

I'm creating an adventure with ideas taken from the city built around the tarrasque. The city of Bael Tarrasqa is the capital of the Tiefling empire of Bael Turath, enemy of the Dragonborn kingdom of Arkhosia.

I want to introduce the players to the whole idea with an adventure where they go and kill this slave trader Hobgoblin.

The adventure will start in a small village that serves as a mid point between two bigger cities. Goblins arrive to the town in the name of Bael Turath, demanding people to serve the great Tarrasque (as food). I plan for the party to be introduced to the Hobgoblin master by this point. After that, the Goblins take some citizens, go to their base before leaving to join a bigger caravan of the food collecting army.

I will make sure to establish that going after the caravan would mean suicide(or at least at level 1 or 2), but they can save the citizens before the goblins meet with the caravan.

The idea is railroady, but I want to hurt the player and character's ego and morals by making them want to tear this guy to pieces, but I need HALP

There really is very little limit to how dark you can make this. Here's a wiki article with some fruitful offshoots for the ideas.

A few things that always struck me as particularly bad were, "When a slave learns to write, cut off his thumbs so he can no longer do so," and "When a slave tries to run away, hobble her so she can never run away again."

The worst story I've ever heard about slavery was about the slavers in mainland China who used to collect little girls to sell to brothels. At the time there was a market for very young girls in the brothels in China. These bandits would either raid a village, killing everyone but the girls, threaten the villagers to hand the girls over or simply buy/take them from poor families who couldn't bear the burden of raising another child.

Every night, the slavers would pick a number of the girls to rape them and then, because the price for a girl who has suffered the mental and physical trauma of being raped is low, kill them and move on in the morning.

I don't think this is the kind of thing many people would include in their games, though. I would not like to encounter it in a game.

Given that you're talking about a savage humanoid race, killing weak slaves and devouring them is pretty plausible, too.

[Optimystik]

BoVD has some nice ideas on depravity that you can toss in. Slavery, oppression, soul-trafficking, things like that.

[Tyrmatt]

Hmm...children are the future of this evil idea.

If the PC's pursue the leader as he drives a cartload of children away in a fast pace horseback chase, have him throw children in their path from the moving cart. Not only is it evil, the PCs have to make a harsh choice. Stop and aid the thrown child, or charge on potentially trampling the poor kid and others as the chase continues in order to halt the greater evil.

If they enter his base of operations, have them enter through the dungeons. While a few of the children may still be capable of moving and be ready to escape, have a few of them be so weakened by starvation, brutal beatings and the conditions that they are near skeletal, terrified of everyone and flinch at the gentlest touch to reassure them. Take great pains to describe this, pressing onward if you see the PCs look disgusted.
Have one as well who is utterly catatonic and doesn't respond in the slightest. Make it a girl and when the players ask what happened, have the children point to "The Room". Which will contain a filthy bed, a number of whips and switches and restraints. That should make it pretty obvious what was going on in there for the PCs.

If you get the children out, perhaps have the oldest one be caught as he helps the other children out/over the wall etc. Have him brought into the "boss room" before the boss. Let the kid perhaps grab a sword and charge the boss. Who instantly picks him up and snaps his neck. The corpse falls and bounces down the stairs, a twisted marionette with it's strings cut. Then a spitwad arcs onto the fallen child's corpse, spat from the malevolent mouth of the boss.

If you can trick them into it, have the PCs find the dungeons empty but the kitchen tables fully stocked with freshly roasted joints of meat. Bonus points for getting them to eat it.

[Jalor]

How dedicated are these players to acting Good-aligned? I've had players whose Neutral Good characters are utterly unmoved by the baby-eating villain, but who attack NPCs for looking at them wrong.

If you have sucky players, have the villain steal their gear. if you have decent players, the suggestions in this thread should work.

[Dienekes]

A more intriguing idea, to me anyway, would be to have the slave trader capture one of the PCs.

All the list of terrible terrible things that slave traders have done have now gotten personal.

And remember when going to the dark for your villains, implications are often much worse than showing what has been done.

Using the example of Sharikov's story would be showing the PCs a slave girl being taken from the lot screaming and never being seen again. Or shown later to be completely mangled by the group.

I've always found that the stories with the most disturbed, grotesque villains get the strongest reaction from my players. If you show them something that truly stretches the limits of evil (but believable) they will remember it for a long time.

[erikun]

Why the heck would you bother feeding the Tarrasque? For that matter, why bother keeping it concious? The whole point is that it's an indestructable beast that keeps going, no matter what you do. If it was up to me, I'd have crews working 24/7, carving the thing down to the bones and then hacking away at the skeleton. Of course, it's going to keep regrowing, but you should be cutting off as much as possible.

I wouldn't see a point at throwing slaves into it's open mouth, besides being cruel or part of some wierd cult.

That said, and entire city build around slicing open a regenerating monster and using it's body parts? The first thing that comes to mind is that they probably wouldn't limit themselves to just the big guy. Small-time organizations who aren't licensed to work on the Tarrasque anymore will probably keep troll or werewolf in their basement, for "cheap rations" or similar products. Heck, the slavers may be buying the slaves to turn them into werewolves, for the renewable-meat and -spell components market. Perhaps they were already "infected" by the werewolf slave handler, and they're just waiting for the next moon back in Bael Tarrasqa for the change to complete.

[Jack_of_Spades]

I say, make him be the reason the PCs fail.

In one campaign I'm in, our characters had to enter into a formal ninja battle. It was kinda like street fighter plus gladiator plus the karate kid. There were a bunch of rules that we had to follow and the goal was to both survive the fight and get more points than the enemy team. The BBEG was the guy who made the rules. Every time we started to get ahead, he would list a rule that we violated and deduct points from us. We got pissed at him. Not the DM, just the BBEG.

Hell, we didn't care what plot we had to go through as long as it ended with KILL THAT GUY!

[Jack_Banzai]

For some reason the villain that always angered my players most was one I had who was essentially a wizard/rogue pimp. If a girl was holding out on him, he would Hold Person them and disfigure them with a boning knife. It really shocked the heck out of my players (as it should) but I ripped the idea off of any number of pieces of fiction.

This will totally border on the grotesque, but (don't read if you have a weak stomach)

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the other thing that really outraged my players was a villainous cleric who, drunk with power, ritually performed female circumcision on the hapless village maidens powerless to resist. Disgusting, yes. And horrifying. And it happens in real life, and somehow this transcends most "fantastic" acts of evil.

[bosssmiley]

Coffles of whimpering halflings and cage carts full of weeping children are always a good start. Casual, almost reflexive brutality should be the order of the day, with a seasoning of slave as livestock ("Good teeth. Solid muscle. Tractable.") and/or sexual plaything added in ("Not a virgin? That's 90% of its resale value gone. Throw it to the orcs...").

Relevant to your interests: A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords

[Random NPC]

Why the heck would you bother feeding the Tarrasque? For that matter, why bother keeping it concious? The whole point is that it's an indestructable beast that keeps going, no matter what you do. If it was up to me, I'd have crews working 24/7, carving the thing down to the bones and then hacking away at the skeleton. Of course, it's going to keep regrowing, but you should be cutting off as much as possible.

I wouldn't see a point at throwing slaves into it's open mouth, besides being cruel or part of some wierd cult.

That said, and entire city build around slicing open a regenerating monster and using it's body parts? The first thing that comes to mind is that they probably wouldn't limit themselves to just the big guy. Small-time organizations who aren't licensed to work on the Tarrasque anymore will probably keep troll or werewolf in their basement, for "cheap rations" or similar products. Heck, the slavers may be buying the slaves to turn them into werewolves, for the renewable-meat and -spell components market. Perhaps they were already "infected" by the werewolf slave handler, and they're just waiting for the next moon back in Bael Tarrasqa for the change to complete.

Well, using the conquered as ritualistic sacrifice is not something unheard of. Many cultures have done it. It boosts the empire's ego and lowers the conquered.



As for the ideas thrown in, I like them. The party has yet to be formed. Right now I'm barely outlining the plot and thinking of encounters for the possible party. I know some of the players will get angry at the evil asshat slave master, but for some players that won't be enough.

I want all the players to ask for blood. I want to make it personal.

[Tiki Snakes]

Well, using the conquered as ritualistic sacrifice is not something unheard of. Many cultures have done it. It boosts the empire's ego and lowers the conquered.



As for the ideas thrown in, I like them. The party has yet to be formed. Right now I'm barely outlining the plot and thinking of encounters for the possible party. I know some of the players will get angry at the evil asshat slave master, but for some players that won't be enough.

I want all the players to ask for blood. I want to make it personal.

Do the PC's have family?

[Jack_Banzai]

I suppose you could always have one get separated from the party somehow and have the villainous BBEG Charm them into doing some slightly questionable deeds then lay a compulsion on them not to talk about it to their fellow party members. Gradually the BBEG subverts their will more and more, and then the PC is made into the BBEG's total thrall.

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And possible sex slave. Don't be graphic, but try to bring across the pain, shame and humiliation that their character feels. That would probably do the trick. If that's a little harsh for you, hell, make it a female BBEG. For some reason that seems to be less offensive but it still hurts to realize that your character was being led around by the nuts (so to speak).

[Random NPC]

I suppose you could always have one get separated from the party somehow and have the villainous BBEG Charm them into doing some slightly questionable deeds then lay a compulsion on them not to talk about it to their fellow party members. Gradually the BBEG subverts their will more and more, and then the PC is made into the BBEG's total thrall.

Spoiler

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And possible sex slave. Don't be graphic, but try to bring across the pain, shame and humiliation that their character feels. That would probably do the trick. If that's a little harsh for you, hell, make it a female BBEG. For some reason that seems to be less offensive but it still hurts to realize that your character was being led around by the nuts (so to speak).

Heh!

However, I can see this particular player saying "heeeey, I got laid " regardless of if it was male or female.

[erikun]

So they're easily offended by morally degrading acts? That makes things easy.

I would recommend against using family members in this case. It's really cliché, especially if the players aren't that familiar with the family member in question. Yes, it can be dramatic, but there's only so many times you can say "Okay grandma, try not to get kidnapped by kobolds again," and really mean it.

Plus, getting kidnapped would likely mean they'd need to stay kidnapped, if the PCs are to remain in town - they'd be transporting their family members back to safety once they found them.

Heh, I just had an amusing thought. Giant Magical Steamroller flattening some random village. It will probably get the PCs plenty upset listening to survivors retelling what happened. I can't think of a reason for the BBEGs to do so, though, beyond just a test run. (Then again, killing an entire town for a "test run" might just be worse.)

[Hzurr]

*ducks in* I just wanted to duck in really quick and give props on running in that setting. It's 5 kinds of awesome. I'm thinking very strongly of trying it after my current campaign is done

[Jack_Banzai]

Heh!

However, I can see this particular player saying "heeeey, I got laid " regardless of if it was male or female.

Not if they were being given the, ahem, traditional female role in copulation. Think about it. And again, don't go into specifics. You don't want to be in poor taste.