If you were my Villain, what would you do?

[FreeloadingSausage]

Hey all. I am planning for a game I'm running tomorrow in the 7th Sea system, and unfortunately my usual forum is flirting with net death, so I figured I'd see if anybody felt like helping me workshop a recurring villain character that I hope will harry my players for sessions to come.

What I'm basically going for is a series of bread crumbs in the form of an Apocalyptic Log that tells the story of all the horrible things he is doing, and why. Basically, by the time this villain actually shows up in person, I want the party to be horrified and not a little afraid at what he can do. However, I'm a little stymied beyond the first encounter, trying to come up with a motivation for the villain to keep doing awful things and leaving his notes behind to terrorize the players.

Here's a little background: He's basically a Spiderman villain. He was a friendly doctor who one of the protagonists asked to do some research into a strange form of beast known as a Black Wolf (For those who don't know 7th Sea, it's basically a wolf that has been driven insane by sorcery, and can now blink in and out of the prime plane to sort of teleport around.) In the process of his research, the doctor contacted some old friends from a secret society of inventors, but his old friend also happens to be a mad scientist. Following the friends' advice, the doctor got into progressively more and more dangerous experimentations on the Black Wolf's blood, testing its effects on other creatures.

By the end, his friend's correspondences have convinced the Doctor that he should test the effects of the beast's blood on himself, causing him to go insane, and gain vestiges of the beast's powers. Now he is a raving murdering loony, and the PC who set him on the path initially is appropriately horrified by the results.

Now I want the Doctor to continue doing research, murdering people and gaining in power, but I'm just not sure where to take the narrative from here. There's another evil creature in the same city that the party has already encountered, called an Echo, basically a spirit of a person who died by their greatest fear. They are resurrected as a murderous spirit that attempts to kill other people by the same manner, and which is surrounded by an aura of fear that makes it dangerous, but resisting the fear is a key part of defeating it. This particular Echo is another player's dead father who was killed by drowning. They encountered it before but failed to disperse it, so it's a logical next step for Dr. Crazy-Teleporter.

Does anybody have any ideas or advice on what sorts of things my villain can be looking for? Perhaps even beyond the encounter with the Echo? I'm really just brainstorming. Any cool plot hooks or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Demidos]

Why, start his clone army of course. Plus, say, multiple clones of anyone who's died in your campaign so far. And some who havent.

...whaaat?

[FreeloadingSausage]

Thanks for the response!

It's funny. I lit upon an idea pretty quickly after I posted, and it dovetails nicely with your idea.

I decided that his first priority would be survival, now that he's effectively a monster, and there are all sorts of local monster-hunting organizations (some heroic and some villainous) nearby. So when he goes after the Echo, he's looking to adapt the spirit's ability to affect the minds of its victims for his own use to mask his presence. I decided that when an Echo kills a victim, the victim is raised as another Echo, sort of an echo of the Echo. So in order to study the spirit's abilities, he simply provides it with a constant supply of victims to feed on, and raise into copies of itself. Now the building that was once haunted by a single Echo that the heroes barely escaped once will be haunted by dozens. Fortunately, the wicked doctor learned ways to destroy the spirits, and to hold them at bay, so his researches will provide the party with what they need to defeat the monsters. Of course they'll also realize that the Doctor has grown even more powerful as a result.

Anyway I'm gonna keep this guy going in my campaign for a while, and I'm always eager to read more ideas, so if anybody feels like contributing, I would greatly appreciate it.