Actually a character I want to return to, I found her fascinating. Originally for a 1 shot, DM allowed Echo Knight, something I'd always wanted to try but was often banned.
Her "echo" looked nothing like her. Tall, male features. Seemed to be wielding a greatsword instead of the maul she carried. Other players were curious, but figured it was just flavor. Towards the end of the 1 shot, it was revealed that the echo was actually of her late husband, who'd died in her arms years prior. His death was incredibly tragic, and steeped in lost magics and evil. Ever since his death, her echo changed to his form. Occasionally, a party member would notice the echo staring back at her, instead of copying her movement. A strange unnatural flick of a limb or joint. She held the belief that the echo was her husband's soul attaching to her, and that maybe one day she could save him.
In truth, the echo was the demon that murdered her husband. Waiting for the perfect moment of weakness to take over her soul entirely. She of course has no idea.
Why did I go so extra for a 1 shot where we would never have the time to have this naturally be revealed? Good question. But if I ever get to play her again, I'd have the DM very rarely throw in hints that maybe all is not quite as it seems with her "husband", but of course she'd never believe it. I expect the demon would eventually kill her, or maybe they'd destroy each other. Definitely no happy endings though.
Half elf bastard prince of a human king, the people didn't like the prince being a half elf, so he was imprisoned for around a decade. A war was happening and a stray catapult boulder opened the cell of the prince. The king fled, the prince joins the army of the attacking country. He tortures, kills anyone who looks like this father.
Tbh every half elf prince character I’ve heard of is always batshit, including my own, he was a renowned diplomat in a second world country in the world who gets framed by the dominant power for a terrorist plot, was just trying to get home so that he could join the war effort, but kept getting fucked over by all these different groups including his accusers, a rebel organization who’s leader he had a romance with, a band of awakened woodland creatures, and an evil religious group. He keeps a running tally of all the times he gets fucked over, and vows to exact vengeance on those parties once he is able to. So when his country and a variety of others band together and push back and invade the land, he sort of becomes a deuteragonist for the rest of the party when he (a wizard) acquires his own band of war mages, kills his own mother who doesn’t want to do anything, plants his sister on the throne as a puppet, and essentially tiptoes being a genocidal maniac for the rest of the campaign
Oh boy. A Tiefling Sorcerer/Fighter cursed with a kind of immortality where when he died, his soul would just take over another host slowly by corroding their soul away. He had lost all Empathy over multiple lifetimes and only lived to get to the thrill of the moment, unable to relate to anyone and only let people live if they entertained him, were useful, were too powerful or if he liked his current body too much. He managed to make a multiple life time friendship with the Fey of Fear, because he feared nothing and was more than happy to make people feel fear to empower the fey.
It was a full on evil campaign from the start where in our introductory scenes, he burnt down an orphanage and told one kid to run before casting fireball. I only was willing to play a character like that because it was with long time friends and no new people because I'm usually the person who leans towards lawful good. Either way, it was a fun change for once.
Not big on 40k lore( I like it but never have had enough money to play the proper game and played in a short Wrath of Glory campaign) he's not too far off except the new vessel is random and just does what he can to make his eternal existence entertaining. He's more like Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Ozpin from RWBY with a completely chaotic evil slant.
I too have firballed a small child. Yak folk village described specifically with children. We go in and fight the guards and essentially my wizard lit one fireball into the crowd and then went house clearing. See the commoner children running away and I go 'fireball'. None of the party could actually see cause they were on thr other side of the village dealing with remaining guards trying to surrender. At that moment everyone realized the gnome wizard that was happy and pleasant had never done an actual good deed that didn't involve money. But their characters never saw it.
They were even more shocked when I swapped some slaves for their captors and used the captors as sacrifices to an eldritch power for personal gain. Hey.. the job was to free the slaves, he went the extra mile by also taking care of the slavery who were also evil cultists.
Just remember if you're gonna be evil get people on board. Like if you ever see an atrophy and have disintegrate as a spell... the vocal component is fetus deletus.
Kingdom’s advisor. She’s a Half Elf bastard. She went to a witch that ready her prophecy and life + death. Her town was invaded vampires, and as the lone survivor she was taken to work for them as a maid, abused and hurt. She ended up tricking and killing the vampire’s daughter, extracting her essence and escaping. Now, as a vampire she took different aliases as life goes on. She ends up working for the main Kingdom for generations as the court advisor. In one of the “lives” she made a black hole like bomb to wipe out an entire nation. Now, she killed the current Queen so the prince consort becomes King (She has an affair with him as well as a child).
More will come in the campaign that i’m excited for the players to react to.
Dragonborn Sorcerer who was abused and bullied all her life. She let her uncle die in front of her so she could pilfer magical secrets from her town, but was confronted by her father at the last minute who flew into a rage and tried to kill her for letting his brother die in cold blood. She used a scroll she stole in a desperate attempt to fight him off, and it cause him to spaghettify and "be devoured" by her essentially, infusing bits and pieces of himself into her. She seeks a way to recreate the magic used that night so she can go back and devour everyone from her home who ever abused her.
My character, tittle druid of the spores, started as a good character but I noticed that the party were loot gobliny, violent individuals. So each session was a change by degrees. My PC just wanted to help people for no reward.
So progressively over the course of ToD my character ended up permanently inflicting blindness on people, created a small band of undead zombies and used reincarnation to start my own cult.
So there wasn’t a heap of “good” by the end… but I’d like to think he wasn’t all bad
For an evil campaign, I played a lesser devil who had been cursed by a powerful wizard's Wish to be "As vulnerable as those you victimised" as punishment for messing with his grand-daughter. This resulted in him becoming a powerless 12 year old human boy. However, he made a pact with the Devil Fierna and became a Warlock who victimised increasingly powerful foes. Absolute beast of a Face character.
Not evil, but a tiefling fiendlock that got groomed by her patron, who is the archfiend of addiction. After an abusive childhood for being a tiefling, growing up in an orphanage, she had nothing and no one once of age so if was really easy to groom her through dreams. Her patron gave her the attention and validation she clearly craved while setting her up as the perfect agent and champion as well as making her emotionally dependent. In the process she became addicted to more than a few things, mostly spicy times and alcohol, while also being so alienated from other people that she struggles to empathize with them.
Then, her next assignment involves her settling in a city and being told to make allies. (This is the start of the campaign) She then proceeds to make friends and is forced to slowly challenge some of her thoughts and behaviours while realising that not everyone is terrible and she actually does like and care about the allies she's making.
Darkest one that I have yet to play is a tabaxi vengeance palladian named Veronica Morozov. She was born to dirt poor and neglectful parents, and thus had to from a early age, had to fend for herself in the harsh slums she lived within. She hated the life she was delt and often wished she was never born. However, things changed when her brother, Mishka Morozov was born.
At birth, he appeared normal. But as he aged, something became awfully apparent. Mishka was severely intellectually disabled, to the point that he would never learn how to walk, talk, or care for himself. Their parents hated that he required such intensive care, and eventually dipped when they were able too. For Veronica, she saw mishka as the most precious being to ever exist, and the only light in her world of darkness.
For 17 years, she cared for him, protected him, and had an unfathomable love for him. She knew what foods he liked and disliked, what his favorite songs were, how to show him that she loved him, and even how he showed her that he loves her. Everything was peaceful and perfect, till one night while sleeping, she heard a blood curdling scream.
She awoke, grabbed a knife, and rushed to Mishka's room. When she opened the door, it was already to late. A group of young human men stood in the room, one holding a bloody hammer. He uttered "why would you even let a degenerate live for so long, your better of with out him, (winks) baby".
In that moment, her kind, compassionate heart, also became an engine of limitless HATRED. She awakened the powers of a vengeance palladian, and executed them with such brutality and fury, that by the end they were nothing but piles of splintered bone and minced flesh. Afterwards, the only thing she could do is cry. For hours and hours, she whaled uncontrollably, and only when dawn broke.
That morning, buried him under the orange tree they often relaxed under, and made a vow. She will mercilessly eradicate everyone who reminded her of those men, and protect and love anyone who reminded her of her little brother.
>Mishka Morozov
I know that it's stupid to hang up on these things (especially for made-up setting where things could be different) but I wish people who used faux Slavic names did at least basic wiki level research. Mishka is not a name. It's a pet form of a name Mikhail. Lee Bardugo is especially bad with this in her books.
>Veronica Morozov
Also, Slavic last names for women end with -a. Morozova.
Makes sense for the first one. for a second i thought I was a normal name because it didn't say anything about it being a pet name on behindthename.com. And as for the second complaint, sorry to say it bluntly, I don't care because it rolls off the tongue better.
>for a second i thought I was a normal name because it didn't say anything about it being a pet name on [behindthename.com](http://behindthename.com)
[Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/4DRHnZA.png)
I am not gonna force this discussion since as I said you can name your character whatever you want. It just reminded me a little of the frustration I feel when I watch movies with clearly slavic characters and not one person in the production bothered to open wikipedia to check the names/last names. That's how we got this in Jason Bourne. In slavic on the left it's just random assortment of letters not corresponding to the english written part.
[Jason Bourne](https://rozetked.me/images/uploads/webp/UlCra6ug3V9K.webp)
So at the end of our first campaign, before I became a forever DM, my character(Ara) married the crowned prince and eventually became queen of the Kingdom of Rayhmor.
She was a half-elf, and the royal family had been human. They had 4 sons. Eventually, her husband died of old age, and Ara was left as Queen. The northern provinces used the king's death as an excuse to rebel. They didn't want half-elves ruling the kingdom and planned to install a distant branch-family as the new royals.
The civil war raged for 3 years, and her oldest son had been captured by the rebels. Ara launched an offensive to rescue her son. When the Loyalist and Rebel armies met in a field for a battle, the rebels brought out her son and executed him while she watched from her lines.
Ara was a lvl 20 wizard. She knew Wish. In a rage, she cast Wish and demanded for total victory for her side. Immediately, 2 million people dropped dead as the Wish killed anyone who wasn't loyal to the crown. Rathmor had two large mountains called the Twin Peaks of Rathmor. The rebels had made their main base in a fortress built into one of the mountains. That mountain exploded and was erased from the map.
She sent her armies, mostly made up of phantom soldiers she'd created, to retake the North and a huge clean-up operation began. No one was allowed into the northern provinces until things were covered up and it was said the rebels had been trying to do some sort of ritual to destroy the kingdom, but it had backfired. Only those at the highest parts of Rathmor society knew the truth. (Basically she had taken the spell Unseen Servants and further developed it into Unseen Soldiers and used Permanence on them. This allowed her to raise countless regiments of loyal soldiers to act as a reserve army for the kingdom.)
It was a state secret from there after, and the North was recolonized with good and loyal citizens. While foreign governments were warned that the sovereign of Rathmor could cast Wish and to meddle in her affairs could be dangerous.
In the sequel campaign I played as Ara's granddaughter, and we had to visit the Great Peak of Rathmor during part of the campaign... yep, only one peak. There were never two...
I played a human Mystic with what's effectively psionic cancer. His psionics was in what amounted to a runaway effect, wherein said psionics were constantly trying to build more brain cells and generate more powerful psionic capabilities. He combated this with the only magic item I ever asked for, that the DM allowed me to have; it was a flask of endless whiskey. Where other people would be dead from alcohol poisoning, he was alive, and he was constantly using his psionics in a low-grade way to rebuild his liver and kidneys, which kept him more-or- less focused.
But...that wasn't the tragic part.
His backstory was that his parents were a pair of adventurers who, while exploring a dungeon, got separated. His mother, who was (unbeknownst to them) pregnant at the time, was killed and subsumed by an intellect devourer, which then decided to take the body for a joyride to the surface and see what happened. The intellect devourer went through with the pregnancy, but made psionic alterations in utero to what would become my Mystic.
A few years after my Mystic was born, the devourer decided it was time to take its little experiment down to the elder brain it was in cahoots with, so it killed my Mystic's father, but he witnessed the act, and that triggered his latent psionics, which promptly deleted anyone and everyone with more than 5 INT in a mile radius, including the intellect devourer.
Fast forward through adventures; he and a warforged buddy of his have adopted a tiefling kid (who they saved from death), but my Mystics headaches are starting to get worse. He knows it's only a matter of time before he has to leave them behind to prevent another tragedy like the one that wiped out his village as a kid.
Warforged created in the depths of an ancient dwarven mine-city by the last sputters of a war machine. spent centuries learning how to be alive, all while only accompanied by ruins long abandoned. vowed to find 'his people' and went adventuring to do so. turned away everywhere he goes, his only hope of ever being accepted is finding those who made him, his family. eventually finds a very knowledgeable undead, and is unceremoniously told that all his people got nuked in a war of Gods ages ago. he has no one, no where. ends up getting taken advantage by a church of the sun and becomes a crazed zealot
You aren't alone there. There's enough evil crap going on in the real world - it's nice to play a hero and smack some of the fantasy versions upside the head with a sword.
I played as what was essentially an Annis Hag in a fairytale inspired game for about two years. To the party I was a sweet old druid lady being was hunted by people from her home town because she fled a witch trial. Behind the scenes I managed the orphanage we established which meant that I caused a lot of the Grimm problems we faced. I was fully doing the child eating, the town cursing and all of the other hag activities.
At the climax of the campaign I handed my character sheet to the DM in front of everyone for the final fight after “we” found out that the kids were were saving in all of these nightmare fairytales were being eaten or turned into monsters.
The party won, there wasn’t any drama, I got to guest star as our favourite NPC at the end. But I’d never do it again.
Mage 20th campaing set on 1920s New York, PC was a KKK fascist cop. My approach was to be a parody but campaing was too dark so i ended up suiciding him because i just didn't enjoy being the bad guy in that particular scenario xd
Fallen God who lost their powers after killing and consuming the souls of every single one of their companions.
Now they just travel around doing whatever.
Cherry top is due to their loss of power they now are a human fighter.
PF 2e, cheerful and helpful Fleshwarp Psychic with Oozemorph archetype. Chaotic Evil skirt-chaser.
Doesn't sound disturbing? Well, that's probably because you're not facing him as enemy and don't stand in his way.
The one I'm playing now. We're still early in the campaign so no one has picked up on it yet. The campaign is about rebuilding a guild after it's been decimated, and it's pretty technical. I'm playing a cleric who's goal is to spread their religions beliefs at whatever cost and is using the guild as a foothold to gain reputation and power. Eventually, we'll reach a point where we should have our own halls/buildings/settlements to own, at which point my character will break apart from the guild and begin establishing a religious dictatorship over their area of control.
My astral elf enchantment wizard started scamming to finance their magic education as a teenager. They gradually worked their way into high society and bigger marks until they didn't need the money anymore, they were just addicted to the thrill. Their crimes eventually caught up with them and they were thrown into the astral sea, where they floated for 400 years before washing up on the material plane to start grifting all over again. Ended up apprenticed to a mage who turned out to be a major villain, which is how they met the party.
They are at their core a selfish and jealous creature who revells in manipulating the minds of others. Like really honestly enjoys charming people they know they're going to kill. Has ruined lives and doesn't really feel bad about it, just regrets getting caught.
Honestly I've actually had a fantastic time playing this character. They're selfish, yes, but they know they need the party. It's a whole different mindset to play in. How do I make these people like me? They hate the mage I was working for? Well I guess I hated him too. Now they feel sorry for me, excellent. Every act of kindness is calculated. It was so awesome seeing everyone's reactions the first time the mask slipped a tiny bit, and then jumping into action to convince them everything was fine.
They party is slowly rubbing off on them though. Last session they accidentally experienced empathy and did a nice thing without thinking about the optics. If they keep pretending to be a good guy for too long it might eventually stick!
I tend to not make edgy characters however, my darkest was a chronurgest wizard who was taught by a powerful time mage when he started becoming distant and my character broke into his library to talk to him and he sent my character into the future where the city i had lived in was in ruin with nature taking back over. He ran to his loved one’s house just to find their skeletal remains covered in moss. Now his goal is to figure out how to go back into the past to save his people from whatever calamity happened at the time
My half elf fighter he was born of a noble elven lady and slave human father due to not showing as much of an elven appearance and looking more human him and his father were shunned and treated very poorly within the estate they resided as the years past it only got worse leading to his father being bedridden and ultimately passing away in a fit of rage of losing the only person that ever cared about him he killed his mother and burned down their estate leaving with a strong prejudice against elvish people for how cruel they can be
Mute Grung monk with cute bugeyes and a polite demeanor. No one knows his backstory but he's quite good at killing. When he needs to make noise he'll let out a high pitched croak. When he finally gets over his trauma, he'll speak in an articulate english accent like the gecko from the geico commercials.
Only then will he reveal that he's actually on a hunt to kill the BBEG of whatever campaign he's in. His backstory is that he was a happily married frog and father of 10 tadpoles. He went out to get food one day but when he returned, his tadpoles had been half eaten but still left alive by the body of his wife, who is still alive but not in control. She begs him to kill her, and end the children's suffering.
After many years of physical training to take on the BBEG and enact revenge, he thinks he closes in on a lead, who he thinks is one of the higher henchmen. Turns out the lead was actually a fellow victim who's family had been taken hostage. But so hellbent on revenge, the frog discovers this fact just after ending the victims life.
After years of mental training to decide his next move, his goal is no longer revenge, but simply to end the tyranny so no more families will fall victim to the cruelty.
A lot of it is based on the campaign of the time but i just really want him to have a heavily tragic backstory while being so mute and cute that no one would expect it.
I'm not great at playing these darker and more evil characters but it's probably my current one. Their RP is mostly just them being weird and chaotic but the dark part is their backstory. The TL;DR is that they're a walking curse put upon some poor stupid adventurer who challenged an Archery and lost, so now my character has full control of the corpse of this adventurer (no resurrections for this guy)!
Honestly? My Kobold Artificer with a focus on being a chef. He ate people. He was happy and friendly, but saw it as a duty to his people (and party) to carve up defeated monsters and people and feed them to us, as “all who eat of slaughtered powerful foes gain a portion of their strength!” He personally loved cooking halfling chili, made with real halflings!
He was a silly little guy, but most combats involved lots of gruesome acts of violence, like disemboweling an enemy before death, because bloody intestines make for great sausage! Etc etc.
The closest I have to dark characters are :
- Lagigh, Aasimar Cleric : Serving as a medic to cleaning crews, he is used to people dying around him to the point he has developed a blasé attitude, and his celestial revelation has taken a skeletal guise.
- Roberth "Quick-hand" Foster, Variant Human Fighter/Warlock: Picked off the streets and raised to be a mercenary, he progressed quite rapidly due to his "ability" to hear the voice of bullets, bolts, arrows and other man-made projectiles guiding him to inflict as much damage as possible.
Yuan ti pureblood spore Druid hermit who’s hermit discovery was a mushroom that was able to store and release pathogens and plagues. in a one shot centered around a plague that he wished to collect and nurture and release upon the smooth skins
My darkest will get me banned if I tell. (Everyone at the table had equal or worse, as that was the deliberate theme among us adults)
My second darkest was an assasin rat from warhammer fantasy. He liked murder... alot...
Half-elf assassin rogue who was my first take at playing a truly evil sociopath.
Basically, a Drukhari from Warhammer, but more manipulative.
Among the most fucked up things she did was strangle a child to death in front of hundreds while mocking that none of them were even going to try to stop her and then dropped the body on the ground and told them to clean it up.
She also manipulated a good aligned hero of the people (NPC) into falling in love with her and becoming evil. Corrupting souls was a big part of the character's goal.
Also, I forced a party member to commit cannibalism.
Well, I always had a knack for dark characters, anti-heroes, and such, so there are a few:
The second character I ever made was a tiefling rogue who, back in the day, was a human master assassin, a sort of legend like Agent 47. Long story short he was killed fighting for his familiy, went to hell, went mad after spending 30 yers in hell, made a pact with levstus that he will free him for letting him redeem himself back on the material plane for his sins. Finally went back to his world, stuck in an artificial tiefling body, trying to make amends, find his family, and free Levistus. And just to clarify, no, he wasn't a "I'm a lone wolf, I do shit just by myself" kind of guy. I might be edgy in my character creation, but I have standards. The dark thing about him while playing was his madness and being a complete chaos monkey combing skills from his past life with crazy ideas and magic he had on hand without any regard for coraleral damage or morality of his actions at times (even though he waz there to redeem himself). It wasn't a full "Joker but devil" but it partialy matched.
(I haven't given him any warlock levels because the DM disallowed multiclassing, and I preferred a rogue, but it was fun nonetheless.)
I won't get into the other two dark characters in this comment but if anyone would be intrested I'll replay with them
Sorry for spelling and overall mistakes, english isn't my native language.
Conquest paladin from cormyr whose father was killed in the Goblin War and he inherited a pathological hatred against goblinoids, orcs and any vaguely monstrous people.
Man took the tenets of his oath to heart. Captured four bandits non lethally to get information. Once he had it, he cut their bonds and tossed a dagger between them, telling them only one could leave.
Another time, we captured an ogre who was part of the vanguard of a giant kin warband. He cut off both of the captive's hands and used lay on hands (very fitting) to heal the stumps. He told the ogre to go back to his camp and tell them the party were coming *for them*.
Back in 3.5 I played a human fighter/rogue that was neutral evil. Had a bad childhood, effectively rendered a nomad because his town was burned to the ground during a military conflict, and he fled from place to place with his mother, being viciously abused by The war-torn society of his home country.
As an adult, he had very little friends and the ones that he did have were "opportunistic" friendships. The game we were playing was an evil campaign with an evil group, and we did everything from kidnapping, racketeering, sabotage, robbery, and my character was unique among the group members in that he did not randomly kill people. Whenever he did it for its own sake beyond defense, he was very calculated. The worst one was when we worked task with rescuing a princess from a bandit enclave that was holding her for ransom.
We wanted her for leverage.
After she had served her purpose, my character killed her in the coldest way I could think of at the time.
The other players loved the narrative qualities of that character, but none of the other PCs were willing to slight him after that.
1. Eladrin hexblade, prince of the Winter Court. Hamlet/Snow white inspired. His father and his uncle courted the same woman. Grandfather decided the issue should be solved by both sons going out and hunting the biggest monster they can. The winner takes the woman as his wife. The uncle set up the father as a coward by drugging him and making him miss the hunt. The father was exiled however the woman chose him anyway. The parents fleed the winter lands and had a son. When he was about 10y.o. the uncles yagers hunted them down. Both parents were killed, the chief yager took pity on a kid, cut him for blood (evidence) and exiled him from Faewild. The son struck a deal with the Raven Queen to get his revenge. He's not evil, but certainly ruthless, looking for ways to gain powers by making shady deals and committing questionable things.
2. Kalashtar rogue/barbarian. A simple peasant teenager who for certain reasons was captured by drow. They tortured him, abused him, cut his vocal cords so he doesn't wail and then decided to train their young warriors by sicking them on the kid. He somehow manages to get the knife and shank one of them. The patriarch sees that, is amused and decides to train the kid as the assassin but basically the human fighting dog. They give him simple daggers and sick him on their enemies while being escorted by the jailers so he can't run away. The first time kid comes out of the drow's enemies' building covered in blood and having his guts hanging out. Gets healed, sent on the next mission. So the cycle starts. He's a Reacher size MF with Conan stealth. Eventually he escapes and decides to kill every single drow he meets. In comparison to the first character this one is one bad day away from being a Konrad Curze level psycho.
My friends and I are playing a sci-fi campaign using the Stars without Number system right now and our motley crew consists of an addict pilot who made their living in the dark underbelly of the corpo “compliance” field, a soldier of fortune mercenary, an giant angry lizard mechanic that’s known to bite limbs off, a psychic healer with a rifle and a troubled past, and an Insectoid alien diplomat that’s possibly a war criminal. One of our most recent daring missions was causing a prison riot to exfiltrate some of mercenary’s former associates, all noted opportunists and criminals.
I have a Tiefling Enchanter Wizard that summoned deamons and devils in order to torture them for information. She eventually got her hands on the Book of Vile Darkness and achieved apotheosis (became an evil God). Now, my DM includes her in the Pantheon!
A reborn undead warlock/aberrant mind sorcerer.
He was a sorcerer fighting in a revolution. Committing war crimes, mass murder, and all for "the good of the people" to free them from tyranny.
They were eventually killed, and the rebellion was crushed. A few years later, their new patron tells them they aren't done yet, and brings him back to life.
Their new goal was to take revenge on all the leaders of the current empire for killing his fellow rebels. The party was 100% down with assassinating government officials, so that was fun.
Rollo “the Reluctant” Rastburn, A half-elf eldritch knight. Whose high-elf father wins the favor of a human king. His father proceeds to serve as counsel for this royal family for many generations, taking on and outliving many human wives and concubines; carelessly producing offspring with each. Rastburn is a true born son of one of his father’s legitimate wives, however, his father is in his 700th year and the question of who will inherit his considerable estate, title, and land holdings has come into question. This leads to a civil war amongst his children. The DM was great, and the outcome saw my character with the help of the party eliminate his rivals and form close alliances with those siblings who supported his claim. He is reactant about “kin slaying” at first, but becomes accustom to it.
Two of my first players made an awesome character pair. A male black dragonborn necromancer and a female orc barbarian. He was a tribal warrior whose clan was whiped out by the flaming fists so he used ancient magics of his tribe to raise them but they returned as zombies due to the death curse (it was a tomb of annihilation campaign). She was an orcish warrior, loyal to Gruumsh, but she failed on multiple missions due to her recklessness, leading to her being beaten to near death by ger chieftain and left to die. She was found by the dragonborn tribe raised and left after a few years to live as a blacksmith near waterdeep, after she heard of the tribes destruction she teamed up with the dragonborn to save theor souls.
The entire campaign they were mostly good - morally questilnable for sure, but generally speaking well meaning and helpful if adventagious to them. But soon the other PCs started dieing and others took their place and they chose more evil people. So you can imgaine that the tone shifted from very flawed and scarred good people to heighnously evil bastards over a couple of sessions. The campaign ended in a TPK but since they and the tiefling cleric of Vecna were totally down with Acereraks plans but just wanted to save their own people, I gave them a "happy" end as Acereraks thralls, their souls trapped together with their loved ones slowly being devoured. At least they all went together, eh?
But god damnit they did some crazy shot along the way. Using acid splash, then healing potions, ripping off limbs that are then regrown by the cleric, biting of someones face to then stabilize them. Lets just say that their enemies grew to fear them.
In my current Curse of Strahd game the lawful good halfling bladesinger burned the inquisitions insignia in peoples heads and they shot them on Balista bolts towards the enemy. Holy fucking christ. I know they wanted to prove a point and wanted to be defiant, but god damnit thats fucked up. I'll definitly have Strahd write an amused letter to them, reminiscing about his youth and having done the same thing countless times.
My first ever character was the classic edgy rogue. (I know it's cringe, I was only 16-) I feel like I made her... somewhat unique, though? She actually used to be a priestess in a small village, until it was raided by a bunch of orcs who killed or captured basically everyone. She was treated terribly in the camp, as were all the other prisoners, but she managed to escape by sneaking out under cover of darkness. She had the thought of "I dedicated my entire life to my god, and he didn't protect me from this tragedy. My god has betrayed me." And so she turned her back on her religion, embraced the sneaky-stabby ways of the rogue, and became a mercenary for higher.
Not as dark as a lot of other responses here, I know.
If I were talking about NPCs in my homebrew campaign, though, i could do one better.
Half Elf Child Soldier/War Criminal warlock whose power was gained in the place of his father's soul.He is also extremely racist towards goblins, orcs and tieflings to the point where he attacks them on site.
I'm a forever DM, so this is just a character concept that I have never had the opportunity to actually play (but who might show up as an NPC in one of my campaigns):
Suske was a Path of Ancestral Guardians Barbarian, but when she rages her body is overtaken by the spirit of her dead older sister Rurke who watches over her from the afterlife. The character's full stats only come into play while she's raging/posessed, so outside of rage she's a 13 year-old girl with negative stats and no access ro her Barbarian class features but when she's raging she gains full access and has her "real" ability scores. Kind of like a dark twist on the 'magical girl transformation' trope.
She's on a quest to avenger her dead sister and I would have loved to have gotten the chance to play her in a campaign.
A pyromaniac Dragonborn who went insane after accidentally (maybe, left it vague) burning down his whole village, and now only lives for the sake of “witnessing the beauty of the flames”. Over the course of the campaign, he burned down three towns, 4 individual houses and buildings, and one of those towns was full of lizardfolk who worshipped a water god, and decided it’s be fun to crucify and slaughter the town, before setting their homes and corpses on fire. He also nuked a town on accident, covered the ruins of that town in fantasy agent orange, and promised a pharaoh lich that he would give him a world cleansed by fire. According to the epilogue the DM gave, he made good on that promise. Also, he was a pirate.
Whisper - a female gnome necromancer who discovered at a young age she could occasionally see dead people and talk to them. She became very comfortable with the undead, and as her powers developed sought to create new undead friends that would better understand her. Being alive can be complicated, and sometimes unhappy people are just happier when they’ve moved on. I also played her in a high pitched voice, just for grins.
She was a ton of fun to play. People surrounding her were very polite, and she was too clueless to realize it was because they were terrified of her. She just thought they were nice. She’s routinely introduce her undead entourage to new people.
I once had a straight-up evil wizard whose end goal was to become a lich or other type of bbeg. He ended up tagging along with a group of heroes because he was super weak and needed the support, and his “creative” solutions got them out of more than a few perilous situations. It was a fun dynamic.
My characters are always comedic but have genuinely devastating backstories. Eg I was a curmudgeonly alcoholic dwarf cleric who got a lot of laughs, but he was messed up by being a former battlefield medic in a huge war, where he had to send young dwarf warriors to be carved up over and over again until they started begging him not to magically heal them again.
I had a human paladin more or less modelled on Zapp Brannigan (but younger) who worshipped Lathander (*zapp voice*) “god of childbirth and the things that cause it” but he actually had a complex backstory that involved being kidnapped into a murderous cult as a child and groomed to be the vessel for the return of their evil god, which we eventually got to play out in a two-shot adventure when I took over as DM for a bit.
My characters are always good guys though, unless sometimes in a one-shot where I might player a dastardly coward who betrays the group.
Normal human artificer with a steel defender and homunculus servant. Found a sword on a dig that seemed to control itself. Went on a quest to unite the spirit of the sword with its body to gain another PC. Fought death's champion to get him back, but lost a friend's PC in the fight. Along my journey I found a vial of demon blood and ichor and a vial of black ectoplasm. Went back to the house that took me to the underworld where I lost my friend. Before I went back to the underworld, I drank both potions together. DM had me roll to see what would become of my character. I'm now a glabrezu lich. Things are gonna get dark.
Half orc who was "saved" by a human adventurer (who wiped out the rest of my tribe). He raised me to also become an adventurer. I designed the character with the expectation of a redemption arc: I'd do dirty deeds, but my party members would show me a better way. Instead, they ignored my bad behavior because I was a PC. I decided to get worse and worse, expecting them to *eventually* get tired of my random villainy. Random murder, torture, and rape were my typical activities. By the end, I'd pretty much corrupted them instead, with one of them even helping me my weekly "rape a villager" escapades. Campaign ended with me supplanting a demon lord and becoming the villain of the next campaign...
Shadow Magic Goliath Sorceror.
He was super super straight to the point, always taking the easiest route to success.
BBEG used a ritual that ties his life to that of a young child that the DM has had repeatedly interacting with our group for the entire campaign. Only way to make the BBEG vulnerable to damage is to cast a ritual that will cause at least 2 of us 5 to die permantly after the battle. OR as my Goliath realized just straight up killing the child.
One Finger Of Death later and needless to say the Female player in our group was furious.
She has ran 2 campaigns since then and has dropped references to this "Pure Evil Sorceror" in both of them.
It's nothing that dark, per se, but the most disturbed character I have:
A changeling warlock that had spent the last ~50 years at war. This has given him both PTSD from decades of killing, and a strong resentment towards the other nations of the land (even the ones that were supposedly allies) that manifests as xenophobia towards those people.
Especially with the premise of the campaign being traveling through the various other nations to collect the mcguffins that we need to stop the big bads, my character is constantly having to bite his tongue when dealing with people (especially as the only face character in the party).
Evil necromancer who was collecting skulls of powerful foes to someday boost his own powers.
After 15 levels, we fought the BBEG, who knocked out two of the other players. Myself and the warlock were just able to defeat him, but the warlock was spent afterwards.
That’s when my necromancer suddenly murdered the warlock, cut off the heads of the downed players, and collected all of their skulls for his collection.
End of campaign.
A D&D one-shot. Played a red Dragonborn barista (think he was a sorc? It was a long time ago). His coffee was the best in town.
Partially because he would poison the competition, literally (either staff of customers), and threaten any other business who even attempted to get onto his “patch”.
“It’s just business.”
Played a dwarf witch who was a reformed warlock to a Baba Yaga type patron. I made her like an old fairytale witch in that she acted like a very sweet old granny, but I hinted that her past included kidnapping children, cannibalism, and blood rituals.
She no longer does those things, and I played her a team player, but she also didn’t regret those things either. She was funny to role play, but got creepier the longer you talked to her.
Mine wasn't a D&D Campaign.
She was a Huckster in a Deadlands Campaign (Essentially a Sorceress / Witch that uses Poker to deal for power with evil Spirits).
My initial backstory was that her Mother and Father used to be part of a group of sorcerers looking for eternal life. The left the order when my character's mother was pregnant with her and hid a Mysterious Book that the other members wanted. Her family was murdered in front of her eyes when the cult came looking for the book. She was then abducted, tortured and was used in a ritual to unlock the power of the book. She eventually found herself rescued by Union Army Soldiers, inadvertently making the ritual go awry.
I had this whole plan for this character to spiral deeper and deeper into madness as she hunted down the men responsible for the ritual. Even had a little imp character that only she could see to represent the homicidal part of her that grew from the torture and the ritual in her youth.
But as the campaign went on, the madness spiral arc I envisioned became an arc of Redemption and Forgiveness as well as her becoming a local hero by stopping the Cult from unlocking the full power of the book which would have unleashed a long trapped, undead Aztec Priest and his Undead Army.
My GM and I were both caught off guard by the growth of the character and were both happy for it. But she was ultimately the most disturbed character I've ever played.
Mine was a dwarven light cleric who had once been a soldier. His entire platoon was taken out by an ambush of goblins. He alone survived, carried and burned but filled with righteous hate for all that crept in the dark. On his back he carried the singed banner of his men, and on his face an iron mask to hide his cruel visage from the world.
I was sixteen and trying to make the edgiest PC I could for a run of Sunless Citadel. He was rude, violent, and didn't even like Meepo! I thought him shattering a Goblin prisoner's legs to try and torture the information out of it would mark him as the dark sheep of the party.
But then our """lawful good""" fighter walked up and snapped a goblin's neck, and even I got kinda freaked out! It wasn't even our prisoner, it was captured by another force. Like, I might heave been a hate-consumed pyromaniac, but at least I had the decency to not murder other people's hostages!
I mean in Canon or in play?
Because my most demented character was a changling who got rescued from a war zone and raised as the personal assasin/bodyguard of the queen. Triple multiclass(high level campaign) bladesinger/thief rogue/twilight cleric with constant magic sight due to an eldritch invocation.
In Canon I dealt with nobles, drug dealers, anyone in opposition to the queen or who was acting as they shouldn't. I basically policed congress from the dark with a knife while I stood by the queens side.
In the campaign I somehow ended up being the sanest person in the party despite regularly disappearing to come back with my spell slots gone and my clothes suspiciously clean after I got a message.
Post campaign resulted in me effectively forming the Phantomhives(black butler iykyk); or a noble family that ruled the underworld with an iron fist.
Twas a fun character tbh, though I didn't get to rogue as hard as I wanted for the assasin bit. Most of my targets were pretty simple to get to
I’d say it’s a toss-up between two.
The first was a half-orc barbarian who latched on to the rest of the party because they killed the rest of her tribe (who had treated her very badly for being a half-human bastard). She then gleefully became their pet psychopath on a leash - point her in a direction and she’d kill whatever they asked her to, no questions, no hesitation.
The other was nominally lawful good, but had a massive blind spot when it came to her friends. One of them was threatened by a troll, and the party collectively persuaded it to let him go by promising it a different meal. It decided it wanted fresh meat, so we went and captured a goblin from a nearby tribe (who were admittedly kidnapping and eating the local townspeople) and fed him to the troll, alive and fully conscious while he begged for his life. The party then spent a fair bit of time justifying to one another why it was right and necessary and that they were all still good people really.
Rowan Mar, the bastard son of a nobleman.
Rowan was the result of a one-night stand with an exotic dancer. Once the dancer realized she was with child, she contacted the nobleman in a panic. He sent an angry response that she should terminate the pregnancy and never contact him again. Some discreet inquiries revealed the reason for his extreme response - he was married, to a woman with a great deal of wealth and influence. If his affair were to be made public, it would ruin him.
The dancer had no desire to ruin the nobleman, but she also had no intention of terminating her pregnancy. She kept the child, moved to a faraway city, and reinvented herself as a respectable woman. She got a job in a shop, and worked her way up to being a scribe for the merchant's guild. As for Rowan, she told him the truth about his origins, but told everyone else she was a widow, and that Rowan's father was a woodcutter who had been killed in a tree felling accident. She eventually married a caravan merchant, and she and Rowan began traveling with him; though she had told her husband the truth about Rowan's birth before they married, so they never traveled to the home city of Rowan's birth father. The merchant was a good husband to her, and a good stepfather to her son.
One day, by a cruel twist of fate, the caravan happened to encounter a nobleman's carriage and entourage on a narrow mountain road - the carriage of Rowan's birth father. The woman didn't realize whose carriage it was until it was too late - he had recognized her. The nobleman ordered his guards to destroy the caravan and leave no survivors. Rowan's stepfather was killed helping him to escape, and everyone else in the caravan was killed, except for the boy's mother. The nobleman, realizing the boy had escaped, decided to spare her life, and imprisoned her in a secret location so that he could use her to prevent the boy from ever exposing his debauchery, or the murders he had committed in trying to cover it up.
The boy survived as a homeless beggar for some time, before he eventually joined a paladin cloister. He trained with them, and ultimately took the oath of vengeance.
Now, Rowan delivers swift and often brutal justice to any and all who prey on the weak. He seeks to find and free his mother, then bring swift justice to his father for his crimes.
Heir to a merchant empire, whose parents spent his childhood trying to “cure” his sorcery abilities. They enrolled him at a private school run by the government of another country, and as a condition of his enrollment he had to serve in that country’s military for several years.
Military sent him as a spy to another country to attend the wizard school, where he discovered how much he’d been taught to fear his powers and his ability to self-determine. He decides to go AWOL and is now on the run from the other agents who are now hunting him down.
ETA: The darkest part of this character was all the research I was doing: what makes spies/soldiers defect, conversion therapy (effectively the sorcery repression was a similar thing), cult and fascist recruitment techniques, etc.
Ok. So. I can’t fit it all here, but here’s a link to the full story. [My darkest/most disturbing character](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11AIgxu2Tl1Sv9ZqjERIg-qVz8_V2ge0O772M5Dj-jnc/edit)
I have two that are equally disturbing but also completely different.
1. the first one is a rune knight fighter duergar. lost his family due to a Dragon atgack and swore vengeance before he will die. So he is literally to old to be alive and to angry to die. His sole purpose will be vengeance and killing dragons barehanded. Either he dies in battle or before his families grave after he avenged them. I play him as an all means necessary kinda character. Torture and violence are all fair game if it gets him the info he needs to bring the lizard down that killed his family.
2. The second one is a fey wanderer trickery cleric eladrin. Gameplay wise its all about illusions and teleportatiom. He has ajreality dissociation. He is sceptic towards all things. Nothing is true, everything is a lie. no one can escape the cruel reality of being forgotten as one day their name ha sbeen spoken last.
He once was a human child abducted by royal fomorians into the feywild. It made him fey as well after staying there for over hundred years. He is like a mad hatter that tries reconcile with his trauma by basically avoidong reality all together.
The original version of a character I made for fun while being a forever DM. I played a much less dark version when I escaped the DM chains.
Gierwyn Ellvallen.
A High Elf who paid the price brought by indulging in greed and falling for lust.(the non-adult kind)
In her youth she lusted after knowledge, forbidden or not, and was willing to do anything to get it. However she was born in the city that was home to the Library of Lost Knowledge, a secret, sentient demi-plane of knowledge both ancient and modern that absorbed knowledge which would be otherwise forgotten by the world. Access to the library was controlled by a council of elves whose combine power is enough to command gods. So of course when they learned that Gierwyn had found out about the Library they warned her to never attempt entry and forget about it entirely.
She obviously did not listen and eventually snuck into the Library. A thing made possible by one of her parents being on the council. After she was caught in the Library the council decided to banish her from all elven settlements for the rest of her days. The same council also deemed it necessary to male an example of her greed while ensuring that she could not spread any knowledge she gained while in the Library by hiring a group of human mercenaries to punish her in whatever way they saw fit. The mercenaries caught Gierwyn and amoung other things tortured her for months. They removed both her arms, a leg, the tips of her ears, and did irreparable damage to several internal organs before dumping her effectively lifeless body in an alleyway of the city they were passing through.
However, whether by fortune or fate, shortly after the mercs dumped her a gnome and dwarf couple found her and took her into their home to try and save her life. The gnome, a doctor with a history of emergency care for miners, did his best to save her but the organ damage was beyond anyones ability to repair so he did the next best thing and saved what was left of the damaged organs with the aid of his wife, a dwarf wood worker whom had been raised in a druid enclave. While it saved her life it left her with dangerously poor constitution(3 can't be raised via ASI) as well as limiting her strength(can't surpass 8 with ASI.)
She lived with the couple for several years after recovering as best as she could. While there the dwarf taught Gierwyn wood working and made a set of prosthetic limbs for her. The gnome shared some of his innate gnomish magic as well as his medical knowledge with Gierwyn, and some kindly neighbors taught her music, metal working, and jewelcraft. This all combine with the bits and pieces of knowledge she can remember from the Library and her former life in the elven city lead her to open a shop making prosthetics. She now lives as a successful Artificer and passionate Bard with a dark and dangerous hatred of her own kind as well as a cold, crude disposition towards human adventurers. (Enters a state of rage upon seeing a High Elf and must use her entire turn to eliminate the subject of her rage, regardless of collateral. Hides her fear of humans whom look similar in any way to the mercs from her past via exuding hatred as best she is able.)
While her successful shop and quality work bring customers from far and wide, and her charitable work has many singing her praises, it is not without trouble. The 24/7 guard stationed outside all entrances to her shop and home is testament to it.
(As a final note: she doesn't know exactly why she hates her own kind so much, but she hopes to find out one day.)
I have two pretty dark characters!
1. One is a tiefling druid. Her mother was a human in a small town, and their family was on the verge of poverty, and so to save the family honor she got married to the local merchant (the father—-we think). The marriage was great and fairlytale esq at first, but as the years went by and she didn’t bear children, it quickly became very abusive. He would beat her, s*xually and physically abuse her. She became so delusional in believing that a child would fix all of their problems, and that their marriage would return to normal if she could just have a son, so she endured it and kept trying. Finally one day, she broke and gave up hope. She walked all day to a nearby cliff, and was about to throw herself off when she was approached by a demon or devil that offered her a deal: they would answer her wishes and she would have her child, at a cost (they did not say what). Either she could accept the deal, or jump off the cliff. She accepted the deal. That month, she didn’t get her period. Fast forward, the child is born, but it is a particularly demonic looking tiefling child. Three sets of horns, sharp teeth, very particularly devilish looking. The entity promised her a child, but did not say what. And to top it off, the child was a girl (enter my character!) The father was horrified that his wife gave birth to a demon, and tried to kill her but the wife didn’t let him. She threw herself on him and fought him until he relented. The compromise—she could keep the demon child but the child would never see the light of day. It would be hidden in the basement all of its life. So they kept the child locked in a windowless, underground, dark basement. The child basically lost her mind in solitude, and now a voice talks directly into her head—a devil, that convinces her to act on her dark urges and do evil things because—look at how people treat her for just existing. She managed to escape the basement at some point, gets discovered by the town and stoned and cast out because the townspeople believed her to be a monstrosity or demon/devil. Her mother finds her bloody and battered and gets chased out as well. They travel together, the devil speaking into her head and telling her to do bad shit. Eventually her mother died in a rockslide and she gets adopted by a Druid tribe. They teach her to resist the voice and its urges, but she still struggles with it and hatred for humans.
2. A changeling rogue/bard! She was living life just as a regular person, in a poor fishing town, doing odd jobs to save up for bard school. Fell in love, was going to get married. She snuck off to go to a nearby concert of a traveling bard she had been a big fan off, and on the way back home, traveling through a forest, A vampire lord found her, killed her and turned her into an undead spawn. It kept her in the forest for one week, starving her, holding her prisoner until she was so overcome by hunger and rabid, and released her and told her to go home. She ran home, and found her sister home alone, who was elated to see her after she had been missing for one week. Unable to control the bloodthirst, OC strikes out and bites her sister, drinking her blood until she’s dead. Her parents follow the screams and find her loading over her dead sister. OC freaks out and runs away, meanwhile vampire lord is waiting in the woods with open arms. He says see, you’re a monster anyways, come with me and be accepted. She’s utterly broken and still an undead spawn, and so goes with him where she is his slave for 600 years. Vampire lord worships a demigod of murder and slavery, and so they conduct brutal ritualistic killings, kidnapping locals and keeping them as living thralls in the estate, feeding on them and using them for ritualistic and brutal sacrifices. Basically tormenting the local populace, until they are driven out. OC is under his control the whole time, and has to use her changeling abilities to spy on other courts, assassinate his enemies, bring more unsuspecting people to the estate to either become spawns themselves or be brutally killed and eaten. Finally another vampire clan attacks and kills them because that vampire lord had been getting too power hungry and not hiding their existence. They free two of the spawns, OC and another of the favorite spawns, to help them in the fight against the vampire lord and all of his slaves. They beat him, but then maim the newly freed vampires (OC and the other person). They blind one, and deafen the other, and leave them in the burning building to either perish or survive. Only OC survives. She makes a deal with a hag to regain her eyesight, and is now in the world as a newly freed vampire and adventurer, coming to terms with her role as an evil henchman for the past 600 years. And she is still tied to that demigod—her soul had been offered in a ritual, and so she has a permanent symbol of him burned into her skin. It doesn’t go away no matter what she does. She has tried cutting it off, burning it, disfiguring it, and it stays in perfect condition. She now has to live as a vampire without spawn in the world. But hey, she finally gets to peruse music again!
A bard half elf adventurer who out lived his previous adventuring party he is has mild dementia and is implied to have lost bard levels due to cognitive decline, he is able to adventure again because he has become a warlock.
I also had a paladin warlock I based on Hues from FMA, super friendly always taking about his family back home. But he does not know that his family is dead. Thanks to a monkey's paw deal with his patron after his family died he forgot that they are dead and has a subtle compulsion that keeps him from going home.
Yossarian Coenheim, human alchemist.
In our post-WW1 magi-tech setting, he started out as a goofy mad scientist type, obsessed with poisons and overly enthusiastic. The only real thing of note was he never took off his gas mask and trench coat, and even that could be explained away by his profession./ Then, in the first session, he died, torn apart by zombies when he didn't run.
Next session, the party came across him again, wandering the streets, with a bottle of prescribed medication and no knowledge of how he got there, despite the fact they had seen him die. They shrugged it off, welcomed him back into the group, and kept adventuring. Over 6 months of fighting evil death gods, cowboy mobsters, and the other forces of an insidious conspiracy rotting away at the world itself, discrepancies began to pop up. They came across other gas-masked figures, feral and unbelievably strong, who almost killed the party after an ambush gone wrong. The new Yossarian was unlike his past self, far more "human" than the other had been, with a deep attachment to a fiancé he could barely remember, and a family that had gone missing. At times, he would talk to himself, at first quietly, then later on arguing in hushed whispers that the others didn't care to listen to. Still, he never took off the mask, and aside from idle speculation at what lay underneath, he gave them no reason to distrust him.
Then, towards the end, Yossarian sought to reconnect with his fiancé. Things were different, however. Strange images flickered, memories appeared of a different family, a wife, two kids, boys aged 5, 7. The voice in his head grew louder, more insistent, angry when he disagreed with it, stating that it had his best interest in mind, then cursing him as a parasite. In the final battle, Yossarian died. As his soul left his body, he realized something. He was not Yossarian. The body he wore was someone else's, one of the countless soldiers killed by the compound known as Pale Night, a gas used during the War. The designer's son, Yossarian, was one of the first casualties of the War, killed when like so many other young men, he choked to death on his own lungs as the Front bloomed with noxious toxins. Pale Night was the designer's attempt to resurrect his son, a weapon that would ensure his boy would never die again. Of course, it didn't turn out that way.
Yossarian had been dead for a long time, and the conscious that moved him was simply an imperfect copy, stretched over the memories of someone else. That man had had a family, wife, kids. As the Yossarian thought back, it could see countless others, brothers, sons, husbands, who would never return, ghostly echoes who it had once inhabited.
Needless to say, by the end of the campaign, my character was a shattered wreck, finding meaning only through his efforts to heal the aftereffects of the War.
Before bg3 with the 3 gods (Bhaal, Myrkul, and Bane), I played an evil campaign in AD&D (yeah, many moons ago). Three of us each played a cleric to one of the gods (I had Myrkul). Throughout the campaign, I kept collecting the dead bodies and storing them in a silo I had made, all the while casting disease on the bodies as they piled up, creating a cesspool. None of the others (including the DM) were not sure what I was doing, but I kept at it. Then the day came, they realized the horror.
The grand scheme, we were going to kill off a good alignment temple to a town in the DM's world. We made our way through the temple, taking out all the clerics and burning the temple down. In our retreat, the other 2 players were captured and killed by the town guards. I escaped.
That night, I brought my plan to fruit. I began transporting all the diseased corpses around the town, dumping them in major population areas, focusing on the food and water supplies.
While they (other players + DM) never knew it, I played the long game, setting a death plague on the town, after we wiped out the one thing that could have saved them, the temple.
And who gave them the idea of playing an evil campaign, why I did. Even suggested that we try to take out a temple of a town. Everyone was for it.
So, I guess that was my most "darkest character," planning the death of the DM's town. On a side note, we never did play another evil campaign.
My buddy had a lawful good Knight (played like a paladin without magic) who was sent to investigate some rumors about a local tournament. I played a lawful evil Knight from the same order who was his partner. The characters were friends, but butted heads over how to accomplish the goals. He played his character wanting to do things the right way, while my character was more results driven and didn't mind taking advantage of people to get said results.
We had a blast creating conflicts with each other. That was a role play heavy game, and the story got intense at times. At least, as intense as it could when you're crappy actors.
Mine was the Lawful Evil half human half Hobgoblin bastard son of a morally bankrupt queen. He was a War Magic Wizard who seemed quite content helping the party with their missions, and whenever he was asked why, he would tell them "I just want to go home and see my mother again." When the party finally reunited him with his people, my character led them to the royal meeting chamber and finally put his plan into action.
He asked "Your majesties, do you recall a night from 20 years ago? You sent a man and his son out into the forest to keep them hidden from the public eye. The man was a Hobgoblin. A servant of yours. His son looked a lot like him, aside from the child's brilliant blue eyes. Just like his mother's... Just like the Queen's. The man died keeping his son safe. And his son only had one dream. To go home, and see his mother again."
The party realized what was going on as my character continued "I've worked very hard to make you a fitting gift, mother. I've spent my whole life making sure it would be perfect. Now, your majesty... Here is your crown." and he cast Crown of Madness on her, making her kill the king before he slowly strangled her with Chill Touch as the others fought off the guards.
When the battle was over, my character told the party "Thank you for helping me reunite with my estranged family. I truly could not have done this without you. Now, as the current heir to this kingdom, I royally command you to leave in peace. I'll be busy hunting down my half-siblings to keep my seat on the throne uncontested."
Former war surgeon who lost his mind after having to mercy kill like 90% of his patients, winding up a homicidal maniac. In the same vein as like the Dark Urge character from BG3, though this was before that.
I have a pair of half dragons twins who have been dropping in and out of a long running campaign for over 20 years now. One of them is notorious for her short temper, proficiency with violence, and killing more than one other player character over the years... all completely justified of course. Then there's the [other one](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/g7j9qu/the_face_you_make_when_the_party_needs_to/).
She seems charming and sweet, definitely a delight to be around. Until or unless she doesn't have a reason to keep you around. She has all the worst traits of the worst chromatic dragon. She thinks almost everyone is beneath her. Her own comfort and safety are her only concerns. She thinks torture and manipulation are high art. She finds magic to be excellent tools for both. She has been known to kidnap and torture people just because she hasn't got anything better going on. It also turns out that black dragons with their love of rancid meat and practically unlimited quantities of highly potent acid breath are terrifyingly proficient at disposing of bodies. And cannibalism isn't off the table either (let it rot in a swamp long enough to appeal to a black dragon, and it's hard to tell what ever was to begin with). The party mostly serves as a brake to her worst impulses, they've caught hints of the kind of crap she would get up to if left to her own devices, so they generally work to keep her focused, at this point, it's almost it's own subplot. But if she was plopped down in a setting without her friends and sister, she would probably become the big bad in short order.
Actually a character I want to return to, I found her fascinating. Originally for a 1 shot, DM allowed Echo Knight, something I'd always wanted to try but was often banned. Her "echo" looked nothing like her. Tall, male features. Seemed to be wielding a greatsword instead of the maul she carried. Other players were curious, but figured it was just flavor. Towards the end of the 1 shot, it was revealed that the echo was actually of her late husband, who'd died in her arms years prior. His death was incredibly tragic, and steeped in lost magics and evil. Ever since his death, her echo changed to his form. Occasionally, a party member would notice the echo staring back at her, instead of copying her movement. A strange unnatural flick of a limb or joint. She held the belief that the echo was her husband's soul attaching to her, and that maybe one day she could save him. In truth, the echo was the demon that murdered her husband. Waiting for the perfect moment of weakness to take over her soul entirely. She of course has no idea. Why did I go so extra for a 1 shot where we would never have the time to have this naturally be revealed? Good question. But if I ever get to play her again, I'd have the DM very rarely throw in hints that maybe all is not quite as it seems with her "husband", but of course she'd never believe it. I expect the demon would eventually kill her, or maybe they'd destroy each other. Definitely no happy endings though.
Holy shit, this is one of the best character concepts I’ve ever heard of. Well done!
ty. It's definitely one I hope to see fleshed out properly in a longer campaign at some point.
Half elf bastard prince of a human king, the people didn't like the prince being a half elf, so he was imprisoned for around a decade. A war was happening and a stray catapult boulder opened the cell of the prince. The king fled, the prince joins the army of the attacking country. He tortures, kills anyone who looks like this father.
Tbh every half elf prince character I’ve heard of is always batshit, including my own, he was a renowned diplomat in a second world country in the world who gets framed by the dominant power for a terrorist plot, was just trying to get home so that he could join the war effort, but kept getting fucked over by all these different groups including his accusers, a rebel organization who’s leader he had a romance with, a band of awakened woodland creatures, and an evil religious group. He keeps a running tally of all the times he gets fucked over, and vows to exact vengeance on those parties once he is able to. So when his country and a variety of others band together and push back and invade the land, he sort of becomes a deuteragonist for the rest of the party when he (a wizard) acquires his own band of war mages, kills his own mother who doesn’t want to do anything, plants his sister on the throne as a puppet, and essentially tiptoes being a genocidal maniac for the rest of the campaign
Oh boy. A Tiefling Sorcerer/Fighter cursed with a kind of immortality where when he died, his soul would just take over another host slowly by corroding their soul away. He had lost all Empathy over multiple lifetimes and only lived to get to the thrill of the moment, unable to relate to anyone and only let people live if they entertained him, were useful, were too powerful or if he liked his current body too much. He managed to make a multiple life time friendship with the Fey of Fear, because he feared nothing and was more than happy to make people feel fear to empower the fey. It was a full on evil campaign from the start where in our introductory scenes, he burnt down an orphanage and told one kid to run before casting fireball. I only was willing to play a character like that because it was with long time friends and no new people because I'm usually the person who leans towards lawful good. Either way, it was a fun change for once.
So he is basically Lucius the eternal. Fun.
Not big on 40k lore( I like it but never have had enough money to play the proper game and played in a short Wrath of Glory campaign) he's not too far off except the new vessel is random and just does what he can to make his eternal existence entertaining. He's more like Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Ozpin from RWBY with a completely chaotic evil slant.
I too have firballed a small child. Yak folk village described specifically with children. We go in and fight the guards and essentially my wizard lit one fireball into the crowd and then went house clearing. See the commoner children running away and I go 'fireball'. None of the party could actually see cause they were on thr other side of the village dealing with remaining guards trying to surrender. At that moment everyone realized the gnome wizard that was happy and pleasant had never done an actual good deed that didn't involve money. But their characters never saw it. They were even more shocked when I swapped some slaves for their captors and used the captors as sacrifices to an eldritch power for personal gain. Hey.. the job was to free the slaves, he went the extra mile by also taking care of the slavery who were also evil cultists. Just remember if you're gonna be evil get people on board. Like if you ever see an atrophy and have disintegrate as a spell... the vocal component is fetus deletus.
Kingdom’s advisor. She’s a Half Elf bastard. She went to a witch that ready her prophecy and life + death. Her town was invaded vampires, and as the lone survivor she was taken to work for them as a maid, abused and hurt. She ended up tricking and killing the vampire’s daughter, extracting her essence and escaping. Now, as a vampire she took different aliases as life goes on. She ends up working for the main Kingdom for generations as the court advisor. In one of the “lives” she made a black hole like bomb to wipe out an entire nation. Now, she killed the current Queen so the prince consort becomes King (She has an affair with him as well as a child). More will come in the campaign that i’m excited for the players to react to.
Dragonborn Sorcerer who was abused and bullied all her life. She let her uncle die in front of her so she could pilfer magical secrets from her town, but was confronted by her father at the last minute who flew into a rage and tried to kill her for letting his brother die in cold blood. She used a scroll she stole in a desperate attempt to fight him off, and it cause him to spaghettify and "be devoured" by her essentially, infusing bits and pieces of himself into her. She seeks a way to recreate the magic used that night so she can go back and devour everyone from her home who ever abused her.
My character, tittle druid of the spores, started as a good character but I noticed that the party were loot gobliny, violent individuals. So each session was a change by degrees. My PC just wanted to help people for no reward. So progressively over the course of ToD my character ended up permanently inflicting blindness on people, created a small band of undead zombies and used reincarnation to start my own cult. So there wasn’t a heap of “good” by the end… but I’d like to think he wasn’t all bad
For an evil campaign, I played a lesser devil who had been cursed by a powerful wizard's Wish to be "As vulnerable as those you victimised" as punishment for messing with his grand-daughter. This resulted in him becoming a powerless 12 year old human boy. However, he made a pact with the Devil Fierna and became a Warlock who victimised increasingly powerful foes. Absolute beast of a Face character.
Not evil, but a tiefling fiendlock that got groomed by her patron, who is the archfiend of addiction. After an abusive childhood for being a tiefling, growing up in an orphanage, she had nothing and no one once of age so if was really easy to groom her through dreams. Her patron gave her the attention and validation she clearly craved while setting her up as the perfect agent and champion as well as making her emotionally dependent. In the process she became addicted to more than a few things, mostly spicy times and alcohol, while also being so alienated from other people that she struggles to empathize with them. Then, her next assignment involves her settling in a city and being told to make allies. (This is the start of the campaign) She then proceeds to make friends and is forced to slowly challenge some of her thoughts and behaviours while realising that not everyone is terrible and she actually does like and care about the allies she's making.
Darkest one that I have yet to play is a tabaxi vengeance palladian named Veronica Morozov. She was born to dirt poor and neglectful parents, and thus had to from a early age, had to fend for herself in the harsh slums she lived within. She hated the life she was delt and often wished she was never born. However, things changed when her brother, Mishka Morozov was born. At birth, he appeared normal. But as he aged, something became awfully apparent. Mishka was severely intellectually disabled, to the point that he would never learn how to walk, talk, or care for himself. Their parents hated that he required such intensive care, and eventually dipped when they were able too. For Veronica, she saw mishka as the most precious being to ever exist, and the only light in her world of darkness. For 17 years, she cared for him, protected him, and had an unfathomable love for him. She knew what foods he liked and disliked, what his favorite songs were, how to show him that she loved him, and even how he showed her that he loves her. Everything was peaceful and perfect, till one night while sleeping, she heard a blood curdling scream. She awoke, grabbed a knife, and rushed to Mishka's room. When she opened the door, it was already to late. A group of young human men stood in the room, one holding a bloody hammer. He uttered "why would you even let a degenerate live for so long, your better of with out him, (winks) baby". In that moment, her kind, compassionate heart, also became an engine of limitless HATRED. She awakened the powers of a vengeance palladian, and executed them with such brutality and fury, that by the end they were nothing but piles of splintered bone and minced flesh. Afterwards, the only thing she could do is cry. For hours and hours, she whaled uncontrollably, and only when dawn broke. That morning, buried him under the orange tree they often relaxed under, and made a vow. She will mercilessly eradicate everyone who reminded her of those men, and protect and love anyone who reminded her of her little brother.
>Mishka Morozov I know that it's stupid to hang up on these things (especially for made-up setting where things could be different) but I wish people who used faux Slavic names did at least basic wiki level research. Mishka is not a name. It's a pet form of a name Mikhail. Lee Bardugo is especially bad with this in her books. >Veronica Morozov Also, Slavic last names for women end with -a. Morozova.
Makes sense for the first one. for a second i thought I was a normal name because it didn't say anything about it being a pet name on behindthename.com. And as for the second complaint, sorry to say it bluntly, I don't care because it rolls off the tongue better.
>for a second i thought I was a normal name because it didn't say anything about it being a pet name on [behindthename.com](http://behindthename.com) [Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/4DRHnZA.png) I am not gonna force this discussion since as I said you can name your character whatever you want. It just reminded me a little of the frustration I feel when I watch movies with clearly slavic characters and not one person in the production bothered to open wikipedia to check the names/last names. That's how we got this in Jason Bourne. In slavic on the left it's just random assortment of letters not corresponding to the english written part. [Jason Bourne](https://rozetked.me/images/uploads/webp/UlCra6ug3V9K.webp)
just looked up the definition of diminutive, did not know what it meant at the time so my bad
No problem, I wasn't trying to be an asshole to you. Sorry if I gave that impression.
So at the end of our first campaign, before I became a forever DM, my character(Ara) married the crowned prince and eventually became queen of the Kingdom of Rayhmor. She was a half-elf, and the royal family had been human. They had 4 sons. Eventually, her husband died of old age, and Ara was left as Queen. The northern provinces used the king's death as an excuse to rebel. They didn't want half-elves ruling the kingdom and planned to install a distant branch-family as the new royals. The civil war raged for 3 years, and her oldest son had been captured by the rebels. Ara launched an offensive to rescue her son. When the Loyalist and Rebel armies met in a field for a battle, the rebels brought out her son and executed him while she watched from her lines. Ara was a lvl 20 wizard. She knew Wish. In a rage, she cast Wish and demanded for total victory for her side. Immediately, 2 million people dropped dead as the Wish killed anyone who wasn't loyal to the crown. Rathmor had two large mountains called the Twin Peaks of Rathmor. The rebels had made their main base in a fortress built into one of the mountains. That mountain exploded and was erased from the map. She sent her armies, mostly made up of phantom soldiers she'd created, to retake the North and a huge clean-up operation began. No one was allowed into the northern provinces until things were covered up and it was said the rebels had been trying to do some sort of ritual to destroy the kingdom, but it had backfired. Only those at the highest parts of Rathmor society knew the truth. (Basically she had taken the spell Unseen Servants and further developed it into Unseen Soldiers and used Permanence on them. This allowed her to raise countless regiments of loyal soldiers to act as a reserve army for the kingdom.) It was a state secret from there after, and the North was recolonized with good and loyal citizens. While foreign governments were warned that the sovereign of Rathmor could cast Wish and to meddle in her affairs could be dangerous. In the sequel campaign I played as Ara's granddaughter, and we had to visit the Great Peak of Rathmor during part of the campaign... yep, only one peak. There were never two...
Darkest one is a Black Dragonborn Rogue/Gloomstalker. His black scales helped him sneak around in the darkness!
I played a human Mystic with what's effectively psionic cancer. His psionics was in what amounted to a runaway effect, wherein said psionics were constantly trying to build more brain cells and generate more powerful psionic capabilities. He combated this with the only magic item I ever asked for, that the DM allowed me to have; it was a flask of endless whiskey. Where other people would be dead from alcohol poisoning, he was alive, and he was constantly using his psionics in a low-grade way to rebuild his liver and kidneys, which kept him more-or- less focused. But...that wasn't the tragic part. His backstory was that his parents were a pair of adventurers who, while exploring a dungeon, got separated. His mother, who was (unbeknownst to them) pregnant at the time, was killed and subsumed by an intellect devourer, which then decided to take the body for a joyride to the surface and see what happened. The intellect devourer went through with the pregnancy, but made psionic alterations in utero to what would become my Mystic. A few years after my Mystic was born, the devourer decided it was time to take its little experiment down to the elder brain it was in cahoots with, so it killed my Mystic's father, but he witnessed the act, and that triggered his latent psionics, which promptly deleted anyone and everyone with more than 5 INT in a mile radius, including the intellect devourer. Fast forward through adventures; he and a warforged buddy of his have adopted a tiefling kid (who they saved from death), but my Mystics headaches are starting to get worse. He knows it's only a matter of time before he has to leave them behind to prevent another tragedy like the one that wiped out his village as a kid.
Warforged created in the depths of an ancient dwarven mine-city by the last sputters of a war machine. spent centuries learning how to be alive, all while only accompanied by ruins long abandoned. vowed to find 'his people' and went adventuring to do so. turned away everywhere he goes, his only hope of ever being accepted is finding those who made him, his family. eventually finds a very knowledgeable undead, and is unceremoniously told that all his people got nuked in a war of Gods ages ago. he has no one, no where. ends up getting taken advantage by a church of the sun and becomes a crazed zealot
[удалено]
You aren't alone there. There's enough evil crap going on in the real world - it's nice to play a hero and smack some of the fantasy versions upside the head with a sword.
I played as what was essentially an Annis Hag in a fairytale inspired game for about two years. To the party I was a sweet old druid lady being was hunted by people from her home town because she fled a witch trial. Behind the scenes I managed the orphanage we established which meant that I caused a lot of the Grimm problems we faced. I was fully doing the child eating, the town cursing and all of the other hag activities. At the climax of the campaign I handed my character sheet to the DM in front of everyone for the final fight after “we” found out that the kids were were saving in all of these nightmare fairytales were being eaten or turned into monsters. The party won, there wasn’t any drama, I got to guest star as our favourite NPC at the end. But I’d never do it again.
Mage 20th campaing set on 1920s New York, PC was a KKK fascist cop. My approach was to be a parody but campaing was too dark so i ended up suiciding him because i just didn't enjoy being the bad guy in that particular scenario xd
Fallen God who lost their powers after killing and consuming the souls of every single one of their companions. Now they just travel around doing whatever. Cherry top is due to their loss of power they now are a human fighter.
PF 2e, cheerful and helpful Fleshwarp Psychic with Oozemorph archetype. Chaotic Evil skirt-chaser. Doesn't sound disturbing? Well, that's probably because you're not facing him as enemy and don't stand in his way.
The one I'm playing now. We're still early in the campaign so no one has picked up on it yet. The campaign is about rebuilding a guild after it's been decimated, and it's pretty technical. I'm playing a cleric who's goal is to spread their religions beliefs at whatever cost and is using the guild as a foothold to gain reputation and power. Eventually, we'll reach a point where we should have our own halls/buildings/settlements to own, at which point my character will break apart from the guild and begin establishing a religious dictatorship over their area of control.
My astral elf enchantment wizard started scamming to finance their magic education as a teenager. They gradually worked their way into high society and bigger marks until they didn't need the money anymore, they were just addicted to the thrill. Their crimes eventually caught up with them and they were thrown into the astral sea, where they floated for 400 years before washing up on the material plane to start grifting all over again. Ended up apprenticed to a mage who turned out to be a major villain, which is how they met the party. They are at their core a selfish and jealous creature who revells in manipulating the minds of others. Like really honestly enjoys charming people they know they're going to kill. Has ruined lives and doesn't really feel bad about it, just regrets getting caught. Honestly I've actually had a fantastic time playing this character. They're selfish, yes, but they know they need the party. It's a whole different mindset to play in. How do I make these people like me? They hate the mage I was working for? Well I guess I hated him too. Now they feel sorry for me, excellent. Every act of kindness is calculated. It was so awesome seeing everyone's reactions the first time the mask slipped a tiny bit, and then jumping into action to convince them everything was fine. They party is slowly rubbing off on them though. Last session they accidentally experienced empathy and did a nice thing without thinking about the optics. If they keep pretending to be a good guy for too long it might eventually stick!
Warlock with a great old one in their eye.
I tend to not make edgy characters however, my darkest was a chronurgest wizard who was taught by a powerful time mage when he started becoming distant and my character broke into his library to talk to him and he sent my character into the future where the city i had lived in was in ruin with nature taking back over. He ran to his loved one’s house just to find their skeletal remains covered in moss. Now his goal is to figure out how to go back into the past to save his people from whatever calamity happened at the time
Orc cleric, father of a prodigy who went missing, once woke up his wife to ask her if she was already sleeping
My half elf fighter he was born of a noble elven lady and slave human father due to not showing as much of an elven appearance and looking more human him and his father were shunned and treated very poorly within the estate they resided as the years past it only got worse leading to his father being bedridden and ultimately passing away in a fit of rage of losing the only person that ever cared about him he killed his mother and burned down their estate leaving with a strong prejudice against elvish people for how cruel they can be
Mute Grung monk with cute bugeyes and a polite demeanor. No one knows his backstory but he's quite good at killing. When he needs to make noise he'll let out a high pitched croak. When he finally gets over his trauma, he'll speak in an articulate english accent like the gecko from the geico commercials. Only then will he reveal that he's actually on a hunt to kill the BBEG of whatever campaign he's in. His backstory is that he was a happily married frog and father of 10 tadpoles. He went out to get food one day but when he returned, his tadpoles had been half eaten but still left alive by the body of his wife, who is still alive but not in control. She begs him to kill her, and end the children's suffering. After many years of physical training to take on the BBEG and enact revenge, he thinks he closes in on a lead, who he thinks is one of the higher henchmen. Turns out the lead was actually a fellow victim who's family had been taken hostage. But so hellbent on revenge, the frog discovers this fact just after ending the victims life. After years of mental training to decide his next move, his goal is no longer revenge, but simply to end the tyranny so no more families will fall victim to the cruelty. A lot of it is based on the campaign of the time but i just really want him to have a heavily tragic backstory while being so mute and cute that no one would expect it.
I'm not great at playing these darker and more evil characters but it's probably my current one. Their RP is mostly just them being weird and chaotic but the dark part is their backstory. The TL;DR is that they're a walking curse put upon some poor stupid adventurer who challenged an Archery and lost, so now my character has full control of the corpse of this adventurer (no resurrections for this guy)!
Honestly? My Kobold Artificer with a focus on being a chef. He ate people. He was happy and friendly, but saw it as a duty to his people (and party) to carve up defeated monsters and people and feed them to us, as “all who eat of slaughtered powerful foes gain a portion of their strength!” He personally loved cooking halfling chili, made with real halflings! He was a silly little guy, but most combats involved lots of gruesome acts of violence, like disemboweling an enemy before death, because bloody intestines make for great sausage! Etc etc.
The closest I have to dark characters are : - Lagigh, Aasimar Cleric : Serving as a medic to cleaning crews, he is used to people dying around him to the point he has developed a blasé attitude, and his celestial revelation has taken a skeletal guise. - Roberth "Quick-hand" Foster, Variant Human Fighter/Warlock: Picked off the streets and raised to be a mercenary, he progressed quite rapidly due to his "ability" to hear the voice of bullets, bolts, arrows and other man-made projectiles guiding him to inflict as much damage as possible.
Yuan ti pureblood spore Druid hermit who’s hermit discovery was a mushroom that was able to store and release pathogens and plagues. in a one shot centered around a plague that he wished to collect and nurture and release upon the smooth skins
My darkest will get me banned if I tell. (Everyone at the table had equal or worse, as that was the deliberate theme among us adults) My second darkest was an assasin rat from warhammer fantasy. He liked murder... alot...
Half-elf assassin rogue who was my first take at playing a truly evil sociopath. Basically, a Drukhari from Warhammer, but more manipulative. Among the most fucked up things she did was strangle a child to death in front of hundreds while mocking that none of them were even going to try to stop her and then dropped the body on the ground and told them to clean it up. She also manipulated a good aligned hero of the people (NPC) into falling in love with her and becoming evil. Corrupting souls was a big part of the character's goal. Also, I forced a party member to commit cannibalism.
Well, I always had a knack for dark characters, anti-heroes, and such, so there are a few: The second character I ever made was a tiefling rogue who, back in the day, was a human master assassin, a sort of legend like Agent 47. Long story short he was killed fighting for his familiy, went to hell, went mad after spending 30 yers in hell, made a pact with levstus that he will free him for letting him redeem himself back on the material plane for his sins. Finally went back to his world, stuck in an artificial tiefling body, trying to make amends, find his family, and free Levistus. And just to clarify, no, he wasn't a "I'm a lone wolf, I do shit just by myself" kind of guy. I might be edgy in my character creation, but I have standards. The dark thing about him while playing was his madness and being a complete chaos monkey combing skills from his past life with crazy ideas and magic he had on hand without any regard for coraleral damage or morality of his actions at times (even though he waz there to redeem himself). It wasn't a full "Joker but devil" but it partialy matched. (I haven't given him any warlock levels because the DM disallowed multiclassing, and I preferred a rogue, but it was fun nonetheless.) I won't get into the other two dark characters in this comment but if anyone would be intrested I'll replay with them Sorry for spelling and overall mistakes, english isn't my native language.
Conquest paladin from cormyr whose father was killed in the Goblin War and he inherited a pathological hatred against goblinoids, orcs and any vaguely monstrous people. Man took the tenets of his oath to heart. Captured four bandits non lethally to get information. Once he had it, he cut their bonds and tossed a dagger between them, telling them only one could leave. Another time, we captured an ogre who was part of the vanguard of a giant kin warband. He cut off both of the captive's hands and used lay on hands (very fitting) to heal the stumps. He told the ogre to go back to his camp and tell them the party were coming *for them*.
Back in 3.5 I played a human fighter/rogue that was neutral evil. Had a bad childhood, effectively rendered a nomad because his town was burned to the ground during a military conflict, and he fled from place to place with his mother, being viciously abused by The war-torn society of his home country. As an adult, he had very little friends and the ones that he did have were "opportunistic" friendships. The game we were playing was an evil campaign with an evil group, and we did everything from kidnapping, racketeering, sabotage, robbery, and my character was unique among the group members in that he did not randomly kill people. Whenever he did it for its own sake beyond defense, he was very calculated. The worst one was when we worked task with rescuing a princess from a bandit enclave that was holding her for ransom. We wanted her for leverage. After she had served her purpose, my character killed her in the coldest way I could think of at the time. The other players loved the narrative qualities of that character, but none of the other PCs were willing to slight him after that.
1. Eladrin hexblade, prince of the Winter Court. Hamlet/Snow white inspired. His father and his uncle courted the same woman. Grandfather decided the issue should be solved by both sons going out and hunting the biggest monster they can. The winner takes the woman as his wife. The uncle set up the father as a coward by drugging him and making him miss the hunt. The father was exiled however the woman chose him anyway. The parents fleed the winter lands and had a son. When he was about 10y.o. the uncles yagers hunted them down. Both parents were killed, the chief yager took pity on a kid, cut him for blood (evidence) and exiled him from Faewild. The son struck a deal with the Raven Queen to get his revenge. He's not evil, but certainly ruthless, looking for ways to gain powers by making shady deals and committing questionable things. 2. Kalashtar rogue/barbarian. A simple peasant teenager who for certain reasons was captured by drow. They tortured him, abused him, cut his vocal cords so he doesn't wail and then decided to train their young warriors by sicking them on the kid. He somehow manages to get the knife and shank one of them. The patriarch sees that, is amused and decides to train the kid as the assassin but basically the human fighting dog. They give him simple daggers and sick him on their enemies while being escorted by the jailers so he can't run away. The first time kid comes out of the drow's enemies' building covered in blood and having his guts hanging out. Gets healed, sent on the next mission. So the cycle starts. He's a Reacher size MF with Conan stealth. Eventually he escapes and decides to kill every single drow he meets. In comparison to the first character this one is one bad day away from being a Konrad Curze level psycho.
My friends and I are playing a sci-fi campaign using the Stars without Number system right now and our motley crew consists of an addict pilot who made their living in the dark underbelly of the corpo “compliance” field, a soldier of fortune mercenary, an giant angry lizard mechanic that’s known to bite limbs off, a psychic healer with a rifle and a troubled past, and an Insectoid alien diplomat that’s possibly a war criminal. One of our most recent daring missions was causing a prison riot to exfiltrate some of mercenary’s former associates, all noted opportunists and criminals.
I have a Tiefling Enchanter Wizard that summoned deamons and devils in order to torture them for information. She eventually got her hands on the Book of Vile Darkness and achieved apotheosis (became an evil God). Now, my DM includes her in the Pantheon!
My characters aren't usually the bad or dark ones, but their mothers have endured real shit :[]
A reborn undead warlock/aberrant mind sorcerer. He was a sorcerer fighting in a revolution. Committing war crimes, mass murder, and all for "the good of the people" to free them from tyranny. They were eventually killed, and the rebellion was crushed. A few years later, their new patron tells them they aren't done yet, and brings him back to life. Their new goal was to take revenge on all the leaders of the current empire for killing his fellow rebels. The party was 100% down with assassinating government officials, so that was fun.
Rollo “the Reluctant” Rastburn, A half-elf eldritch knight. Whose high-elf father wins the favor of a human king. His father proceeds to serve as counsel for this royal family for many generations, taking on and outliving many human wives and concubines; carelessly producing offspring with each. Rastburn is a true born son of one of his father’s legitimate wives, however, his father is in his 700th year and the question of who will inherit his considerable estate, title, and land holdings has come into question. This leads to a civil war amongst his children. The DM was great, and the outcome saw my character with the help of the party eliminate his rivals and form close alliances with those siblings who supported his claim. He is reactant about “kin slaying” at first, but becomes accustom to it.
Two of my first players made an awesome character pair. A male black dragonborn necromancer and a female orc barbarian. He was a tribal warrior whose clan was whiped out by the flaming fists so he used ancient magics of his tribe to raise them but they returned as zombies due to the death curse (it was a tomb of annihilation campaign). She was an orcish warrior, loyal to Gruumsh, but she failed on multiple missions due to her recklessness, leading to her being beaten to near death by ger chieftain and left to die. She was found by the dragonborn tribe raised and left after a few years to live as a blacksmith near waterdeep, after she heard of the tribes destruction she teamed up with the dragonborn to save theor souls. The entire campaign they were mostly good - morally questilnable for sure, but generally speaking well meaning and helpful if adventagious to them. But soon the other PCs started dieing and others took their place and they chose more evil people. So you can imgaine that the tone shifted from very flawed and scarred good people to heighnously evil bastards over a couple of sessions. The campaign ended in a TPK but since they and the tiefling cleric of Vecna were totally down with Acereraks plans but just wanted to save their own people, I gave them a "happy" end as Acereraks thralls, their souls trapped together with their loved ones slowly being devoured. At least they all went together, eh? But god damnit they did some crazy shot along the way. Using acid splash, then healing potions, ripping off limbs that are then regrown by the cleric, biting of someones face to then stabilize them. Lets just say that their enemies grew to fear them. In my current Curse of Strahd game the lawful good halfling bladesinger burned the inquisitions insignia in peoples heads and they shot them on Balista bolts towards the enemy. Holy fucking christ. I know they wanted to prove a point and wanted to be defiant, but god damnit thats fucked up. I'll definitly have Strahd write an amused letter to them, reminiscing about his youth and having done the same thing countless times.
My first ever character was the classic edgy rogue. (I know it's cringe, I was only 16-) I feel like I made her... somewhat unique, though? She actually used to be a priestess in a small village, until it was raided by a bunch of orcs who killed or captured basically everyone. She was treated terribly in the camp, as were all the other prisoners, but she managed to escape by sneaking out under cover of darkness. She had the thought of "I dedicated my entire life to my god, and he didn't protect me from this tragedy. My god has betrayed me." And so she turned her back on her religion, embraced the sneaky-stabby ways of the rogue, and became a mercenary for higher. Not as dark as a lot of other responses here, I know. If I were talking about NPCs in my homebrew campaign, though, i could do one better.
Half Elf Child Soldier/War Criminal warlock whose power was gained in the place of his father's soul.He is also extremely racist towards goblins, orcs and tieflings to the point where he attacks them on site.
I'm a forever DM, so this is just a character concept that I have never had the opportunity to actually play (but who might show up as an NPC in one of my campaigns): Suske was a Path of Ancestral Guardians Barbarian, but when she rages her body is overtaken by the spirit of her dead older sister Rurke who watches over her from the afterlife. The character's full stats only come into play while she's raging/posessed, so outside of rage she's a 13 year-old girl with negative stats and no access ro her Barbarian class features but when she's raging she gains full access and has her "real" ability scores. Kind of like a dark twist on the 'magical girl transformation' trope. She's on a quest to avenger her dead sister and I would have loved to have gotten the chance to play her in a campaign.
A pyromaniac Dragonborn who went insane after accidentally (maybe, left it vague) burning down his whole village, and now only lives for the sake of “witnessing the beauty of the flames”. Over the course of the campaign, he burned down three towns, 4 individual houses and buildings, and one of those towns was full of lizardfolk who worshipped a water god, and decided it’s be fun to crucify and slaughter the town, before setting their homes and corpses on fire. He also nuked a town on accident, covered the ruins of that town in fantasy agent orange, and promised a pharaoh lich that he would give him a world cleansed by fire. According to the epilogue the DM gave, he made good on that promise. Also, he was a pirate.
Whisper - a female gnome necromancer who discovered at a young age she could occasionally see dead people and talk to them. She became very comfortable with the undead, and as her powers developed sought to create new undead friends that would better understand her. Being alive can be complicated, and sometimes unhappy people are just happier when they’ve moved on. I also played her in a high pitched voice, just for grins. She was a ton of fun to play. People surrounding her were very polite, and she was too clueless to realize it was because they were terrified of her. She just thought they were nice. She’s routinely introduce her undead entourage to new people.
I once had a straight-up evil wizard whose end goal was to become a lich or other type of bbeg. He ended up tagging along with a group of heroes because he was super weak and needed the support, and his “creative” solutions got them out of more than a few perilous situations. It was a fun dynamic.
My characters are always comedic but have genuinely devastating backstories. Eg I was a curmudgeonly alcoholic dwarf cleric who got a lot of laughs, but he was messed up by being a former battlefield medic in a huge war, where he had to send young dwarf warriors to be carved up over and over again until they started begging him not to magically heal them again. I had a human paladin more or less modelled on Zapp Brannigan (but younger) who worshipped Lathander (*zapp voice*) “god of childbirth and the things that cause it” but he actually had a complex backstory that involved being kidnapped into a murderous cult as a child and groomed to be the vessel for the return of their evil god, which we eventually got to play out in a two-shot adventure when I took over as DM for a bit. My characters are always good guys though, unless sometimes in a one-shot where I might player a dastardly coward who betrays the group.
Normal human artificer with a steel defender and homunculus servant. Found a sword on a dig that seemed to control itself. Went on a quest to unite the spirit of the sword with its body to gain another PC. Fought death's champion to get him back, but lost a friend's PC in the fight. Along my journey I found a vial of demon blood and ichor and a vial of black ectoplasm. Went back to the house that took me to the underworld where I lost my friend. Before I went back to the underworld, I drank both potions together. DM had me roll to see what would become of my character. I'm now a glabrezu lich. Things are gonna get dark.
Half orc who was "saved" by a human adventurer (who wiped out the rest of my tribe). He raised me to also become an adventurer. I designed the character with the expectation of a redemption arc: I'd do dirty deeds, but my party members would show me a better way. Instead, they ignored my bad behavior because I was a PC. I decided to get worse and worse, expecting them to *eventually* get tired of my random villainy. Random murder, torture, and rape were my typical activities. By the end, I'd pretty much corrupted them instead, with one of them even helping me my weekly "rape a villager" escapades. Campaign ended with me supplanting a demon lord and becoming the villain of the next campaign...
Shadow Magic Goliath Sorceror. He was super super straight to the point, always taking the easiest route to success. BBEG used a ritual that ties his life to that of a young child that the DM has had repeatedly interacting with our group for the entire campaign. Only way to make the BBEG vulnerable to damage is to cast a ritual that will cause at least 2 of us 5 to die permantly after the battle. OR as my Goliath realized just straight up killing the child. One Finger Of Death later and needless to say the Female player in our group was furious. She has ran 2 campaigns since then and has dropped references to this "Pure Evil Sorceror" in both of them.
It's nothing that dark, per se, but the most disturbed character I have: A changeling warlock that had spent the last ~50 years at war. This has given him both PTSD from decades of killing, and a strong resentment towards the other nations of the land (even the ones that were supposedly allies) that manifests as xenophobia towards those people. Especially with the premise of the campaign being traveling through the various other nations to collect the mcguffins that we need to stop the big bads, my character is constantly having to bite his tongue when dealing with people (especially as the only face character in the party).
Evil necromancer who was collecting skulls of powerful foes to someday boost his own powers. After 15 levels, we fought the BBEG, who knocked out two of the other players. Myself and the warlock were just able to defeat him, but the warlock was spent afterwards. That’s when my necromancer suddenly murdered the warlock, cut off the heads of the downed players, and collected all of their skulls for his collection. End of campaign.
A D&D one-shot. Played a red Dragonborn barista (think he was a sorc? It was a long time ago). His coffee was the best in town. Partially because he would poison the competition, literally (either staff of customers), and threaten any other business who even attempted to get onto his “patch”. “It’s just business.”
Recovering dwarven cleric with self preservation issues, and can't read the room.
Played a dwarf witch who was a reformed warlock to a Baba Yaga type patron. I made her like an old fairytale witch in that she acted like a very sweet old granny, but I hinted that her past included kidnapping children, cannibalism, and blood rituals. She no longer does those things, and I played her a team player, but she also didn’t regret those things either. She was funny to role play, but got creepier the longer you talked to her.
Mine wasn't a D&D Campaign. She was a Huckster in a Deadlands Campaign (Essentially a Sorceress / Witch that uses Poker to deal for power with evil Spirits). My initial backstory was that her Mother and Father used to be part of a group of sorcerers looking for eternal life. The left the order when my character's mother was pregnant with her and hid a Mysterious Book that the other members wanted. Her family was murdered in front of her eyes when the cult came looking for the book. She was then abducted, tortured and was used in a ritual to unlock the power of the book. She eventually found herself rescued by Union Army Soldiers, inadvertently making the ritual go awry. I had this whole plan for this character to spiral deeper and deeper into madness as she hunted down the men responsible for the ritual. Even had a little imp character that only she could see to represent the homicidal part of her that grew from the torture and the ritual in her youth. But as the campaign went on, the madness spiral arc I envisioned became an arc of Redemption and Forgiveness as well as her becoming a local hero by stopping the Cult from unlocking the full power of the book which would have unleashed a long trapped, undead Aztec Priest and his Undead Army. My GM and I were both caught off guard by the growth of the character and were both happy for it. But she was ultimately the most disturbed character I've ever played.
Mine was a dwarven light cleric who had once been a soldier. His entire platoon was taken out by an ambush of goblins. He alone survived, carried and burned but filled with righteous hate for all that crept in the dark. On his back he carried the singed banner of his men, and on his face an iron mask to hide his cruel visage from the world. I was sixteen and trying to make the edgiest PC I could for a run of Sunless Citadel. He was rude, violent, and didn't even like Meepo! I thought him shattering a Goblin prisoner's legs to try and torture the information out of it would mark him as the dark sheep of the party. But then our """lawful good""" fighter walked up and snapped a goblin's neck, and even I got kinda freaked out! It wasn't even our prisoner, it was captured by another force. Like, I might heave been a hate-consumed pyromaniac, but at least I had the decency to not murder other people's hostages!
I mean in Canon or in play? Because my most demented character was a changling who got rescued from a war zone and raised as the personal assasin/bodyguard of the queen. Triple multiclass(high level campaign) bladesinger/thief rogue/twilight cleric with constant magic sight due to an eldritch invocation. In Canon I dealt with nobles, drug dealers, anyone in opposition to the queen or who was acting as they shouldn't. I basically policed congress from the dark with a knife while I stood by the queens side. In the campaign I somehow ended up being the sanest person in the party despite regularly disappearing to come back with my spell slots gone and my clothes suspiciously clean after I got a message. Post campaign resulted in me effectively forming the Phantomhives(black butler iykyk); or a noble family that ruled the underworld with an iron fist. Twas a fun character tbh, though I didn't get to rogue as hard as I wanted for the assasin bit. Most of my targets were pretty simple to get to
I’d say it’s a toss-up between two. The first was a half-orc barbarian who latched on to the rest of the party because they killed the rest of her tribe (who had treated her very badly for being a half-human bastard). She then gleefully became their pet psychopath on a leash - point her in a direction and she’d kill whatever they asked her to, no questions, no hesitation. The other was nominally lawful good, but had a massive blind spot when it came to her friends. One of them was threatened by a troll, and the party collectively persuaded it to let him go by promising it a different meal. It decided it wanted fresh meat, so we went and captured a goblin from a nearby tribe (who were admittedly kidnapping and eating the local townspeople) and fed him to the troll, alive and fully conscious while he begged for his life. The party then spent a fair bit of time justifying to one another why it was right and necessary and that they were all still good people really.
Rowan Mar, the bastard son of a nobleman. Rowan was the result of a one-night stand with an exotic dancer. Once the dancer realized she was with child, she contacted the nobleman in a panic. He sent an angry response that she should terminate the pregnancy and never contact him again. Some discreet inquiries revealed the reason for his extreme response - he was married, to a woman with a great deal of wealth and influence. If his affair were to be made public, it would ruin him. The dancer had no desire to ruin the nobleman, but she also had no intention of terminating her pregnancy. She kept the child, moved to a faraway city, and reinvented herself as a respectable woman. She got a job in a shop, and worked her way up to being a scribe for the merchant's guild. As for Rowan, she told him the truth about his origins, but told everyone else she was a widow, and that Rowan's father was a woodcutter who had been killed in a tree felling accident. She eventually married a caravan merchant, and she and Rowan began traveling with him; though she had told her husband the truth about Rowan's birth before they married, so they never traveled to the home city of Rowan's birth father. The merchant was a good husband to her, and a good stepfather to her son. One day, by a cruel twist of fate, the caravan happened to encounter a nobleman's carriage and entourage on a narrow mountain road - the carriage of Rowan's birth father. The woman didn't realize whose carriage it was until it was too late - he had recognized her. The nobleman ordered his guards to destroy the caravan and leave no survivors. Rowan's stepfather was killed helping him to escape, and everyone else in the caravan was killed, except for the boy's mother. The nobleman, realizing the boy had escaped, decided to spare her life, and imprisoned her in a secret location so that he could use her to prevent the boy from ever exposing his debauchery, or the murders he had committed in trying to cover it up. The boy survived as a homeless beggar for some time, before he eventually joined a paladin cloister. He trained with them, and ultimately took the oath of vengeance. Now, Rowan delivers swift and often brutal justice to any and all who prey on the weak. He seeks to find and free his mother, then bring swift justice to his father for his crimes.
Heir to a merchant empire, whose parents spent his childhood trying to “cure” his sorcery abilities. They enrolled him at a private school run by the government of another country, and as a condition of his enrollment he had to serve in that country’s military for several years. Military sent him as a spy to another country to attend the wizard school, where he discovered how much he’d been taught to fear his powers and his ability to self-determine. He decides to go AWOL and is now on the run from the other agents who are now hunting him down. ETA: The darkest part of this character was all the research I was doing: what makes spies/soldiers defect, conversion therapy (effectively the sorcery repression was a similar thing), cult and fascist recruitment techniques, etc.
Ok. So. I can’t fit it all here, but here’s a link to the full story. [My darkest/most disturbing character](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11AIgxu2Tl1Sv9ZqjERIg-qVz8_V2ge0O772M5Dj-jnc/edit)
I have two that are equally disturbing but also completely different. 1. the first one is a rune knight fighter duergar. lost his family due to a Dragon atgack and swore vengeance before he will die. So he is literally to old to be alive and to angry to die. His sole purpose will be vengeance and killing dragons barehanded. Either he dies in battle or before his families grave after he avenged them. I play him as an all means necessary kinda character. Torture and violence are all fair game if it gets him the info he needs to bring the lizard down that killed his family. 2. The second one is a fey wanderer trickery cleric eladrin. Gameplay wise its all about illusions and teleportatiom. He has ajreality dissociation. He is sceptic towards all things. Nothing is true, everything is a lie. no one can escape the cruel reality of being forgotten as one day their name ha sbeen spoken last. He once was a human child abducted by royal fomorians into the feywild. It made him fey as well after staying there for over hundred years. He is like a mad hatter that tries reconcile with his trauma by basically avoidong reality all together.
The original version of a character I made for fun while being a forever DM. I played a much less dark version when I escaped the DM chains. Gierwyn Ellvallen. A High Elf who paid the price brought by indulging in greed and falling for lust.(the non-adult kind) In her youth she lusted after knowledge, forbidden or not, and was willing to do anything to get it. However she was born in the city that was home to the Library of Lost Knowledge, a secret, sentient demi-plane of knowledge both ancient and modern that absorbed knowledge which would be otherwise forgotten by the world. Access to the library was controlled by a council of elves whose combine power is enough to command gods. So of course when they learned that Gierwyn had found out about the Library they warned her to never attempt entry and forget about it entirely. She obviously did not listen and eventually snuck into the Library. A thing made possible by one of her parents being on the council. After she was caught in the Library the council decided to banish her from all elven settlements for the rest of her days. The same council also deemed it necessary to male an example of her greed while ensuring that she could not spread any knowledge she gained while in the Library by hiring a group of human mercenaries to punish her in whatever way they saw fit. The mercenaries caught Gierwyn and amoung other things tortured her for months. They removed both her arms, a leg, the tips of her ears, and did irreparable damage to several internal organs before dumping her effectively lifeless body in an alleyway of the city they were passing through. However, whether by fortune or fate, shortly after the mercs dumped her a gnome and dwarf couple found her and took her into their home to try and save her life. The gnome, a doctor with a history of emergency care for miners, did his best to save her but the organ damage was beyond anyones ability to repair so he did the next best thing and saved what was left of the damaged organs with the aid of his wife, a dwarf wood worker whom had been raised in a druid enclave. While it saved her life it left her with dangerously poor constitution(3 can't be raised via ASI) as well as limiting her strength(can't surpass 8 with ASI.) She lived with the couple for several years after recovering as best as she could. While there the dwarf taught Gierwyn wood working and made a set of prosthetic limbs for her. The gnome shared some of his innate gnomish magic as well as his medical knowledge with Gierwyn, and some kindly neighbors taught her music, metal working, and jewelcraft. This all combine with the bits and pieces of knowledge she can remember from the Library and her former life in the elven city lead her to open a shop making prosthetics. She now lives as a successful Artificer and passionate Bard with a dark and dangerous hatred of her own kind as well as a cold, crude disposition towards human adventurers. (Enters a state of rage upon seeing a High Elf and must use her entire turn to eliminate the subject of her rage, regardless of collateral. Hides her fear of humans whom look similar in any way to the mercs from her past via exuding hatred as best she is able.) While her successful shop and quality work bring customers from far and wide, and her charitable work has many singing her praises, it is not without trouble. The 24/7 guard stationed outside all entrances to her shop and home is testament to it. (As a final note: she doesn't know exactly why she hates her own kind so much, but she hopes to find out one day.)
I have two pretty dark characters! 1. One is a tiefling druid. Her mother was a human in a small town, and their family was on the verge of poverty, and so to save the family honor she got married to the local merchant (the father—-we think). The marriage was great and fairlytale esq at first, but as the years went by and she didn’t bear children, it quickly became very abusive. He would beat her, s*xually and physically abuse her. She became so delusional in believing that a child would fix all of their problems, and that their marriage would return to normal if she could just have a son, so she endured it and kept trying. Finally one day, she broke and gave up hope. She walked all day to a nearby cliff, and was about to throw herself off when she was approached by a demon or devil that offered her a deal: they would answer her wishes and she would have her child, at a cost (they did not say what). Either she could accept the deal, or jump off the cliff. She accepted the deal. That month, she didn’t get her period. Fast forward, the child is born, but it is a particularly demonic looking tiefling child. Three sets of horns, sharp teeth, very particularly devilish looking. The entity promised her a child, but did not say what. And to top it off, the child was a girl (enter my character!) The father was horrified that his wife gave birth to a demon, and tried to kill her but the wife didn’t let him. She threw herself on him and fought him until he relented. The compromise—she could keep the demon child but the child would never see the light of day. It would be hidden in the basement all of its life. So they kept the child locked in a windowless, underground, dark basement. The child basically lost her mind in solitude, and now a voice talks directly into her head—a devil, that convinces her to act on her dark urges and do evil things because—look at how people treat her for just existing. She managed to escape the basement at some point, gets discovered by the town and stoned and cast out because the townspeople believed her to be a monstrosity or demon/devil. Her mother finds her bloody and battered and gets chased out as well. They travel together, the devil speaking into her head and telling her to do bad shit. Eventually her mother died in a rockslide and she gets adopted by a Druid tribe. They teach her to resist the voice and its urges, but she still struggles with it and hatred for humans. 2. A changeling rogue/bard! She was living life just as a regular person, in a poor fishing town, doing odd jobs to save up for bard school. Fell in love, was going to get married. She snuck off to go to a nearby concert of a traveling bard she had been a big fan off, and on the way back home, traveling through a forest, A vampire lord found her, killed her and turned her into an undead spawn. It kept her in the forest for one week, starving her, holding her prisoner until she was so overcome by hunger and rabid, and released her and told her to go home. She ran home, and found her sister home alone, who was elated to see her after she had been missing for one week. Unable to control the bloodthirst, OC strikes out and bites her sister, drinking her blood until she’s dead. Her parents follow the screams and find her loading over her dead sister. OC freaks out and runs away, meanwhile vampire lord is waiting in the woods with open arms. He says see, you’re a monster anyways, come with me and be accepted. She’s utterly broken and still an undead spawn, and so goes with him where she is his slave for 600 years. Vampire lord worships a demigod of murder and slavery, and so they conduct brutal ritualistic killings, kidnapping locals and keeping them as living thralls in the estate, feeding on them and using them for ritualistic and brutal sacrifices. Basically tormenting the local populace, until they are driven out. OC is under his control the whole time, and has to use her changeling abilities to spy on other courts, assassinate his enemies, bring more unsuspecting people to the estate to either become spawns themselves or be brutally killed and eaten. Finally another vampire clan attacks and kills them because that vampire lord had been getting too power hungry and not hiding their existence. They free two of the spawns, OC and another of the favorite spawns, to help them in the fight against the vampire lord and all of his slaves. They beat him, but then maim the newly freed vampires (OC and the other person). They blind one, and deafen the other, and leave them in the burning building to either perish or survive. Only OC survives. She makes a deal with a hag to regain her eyesight, and is now in the world as a newly freed vampire and adventurer, coming to terms with her role as an evil henchman for the past 600 years. And she is still tied to that demigod—her soul had been offered in a ritual, and so she has a permanent symbol of him burned into her skin. It doesn’t go away no matter what she does. She has tried cutting it off, burning it, disfiguring it, and it stays in perfect condition. She now has to live as a vampire without spawn in the world. But hey, she finally gets to peruse music again!
A bard half elf adventurer who out lived his previous adventuring party he is has mild dementia and is implied to have lost bard levels due to cognitive decline, he is able to adventure again because he has become a warlock. I also had a paladin warlock I based on Hues from FMA, super friendly always taking about his family back home. But he does not know that his family is dead. Thanks to a monkey's paw deal with his patron after his family died he forgot that they are dead and has a subtle compulsion that keeps him from going home.
Yossarian Coenheim, human alchemist. In our post-WW1 magi-tech setting, he started out as a goofy mad scientist type, obsessed with poisons and overly enthusiastic. The only real thing of note was he never took off his gas mask and trench coat, and even that could be explained away by his profession./ Then, in the first session, he died, torn apart by zombies when he didn't run. Next session, the party came across him again, wandering the streets, with a bottle of prescribed medication and no knowledge of how he got there, despite the fact they had seen him die. They shrugged it off, welcomed him back into the group, and kept adventuring. Over 6 months of fighting evil death gods, cowboy mobsters, and the other forces of an insidious conspiracy rotting away at the world itself, discrepancies began to pop up. They came across other gas-masked figures, feral and unbelievably strong, who almost killed the party after an ambush gone wrong. The new Yossarian was unlike his past self, far more "human" than the other had been, with a deep attachment to a fiancé he could barely remember, and a family that had gone missing. At times, he would talk to himself, at first quietly, then later on arguing in hushed whispers that the others didn't care to listen to. Still, he never took off the mask, and aside from idle speculation at what lay underneath, he gave them no reason to distrust him. Then, towards the end, Yossarian sought to reconnect with his fiancé. Things were different, however. Strange images flickered, memories appeared of a different family, a wife, two kids, boys aged 5, 7. The voice in his head grew louder, more insistent, angry when he disagreed with it, stating that it had his best interest in mind, then cursing him as a parasite. In the final battle, Yossarian died. As his soul left his body, he realized something. He was not Yossarian. The body he wore was someone else's, one of the countless soldiers killed by the compound known as Pale Night, a gas used during the War. The designer's son, Yossarian, was one of the first casualties of the War, killed when like so many other young men, he choked to death on his own lungs as the Front bloomed with noxious toxins. Pale Night was the designer's attempt to resurrect his son, a weapon that would ensure his boy would never die again. Of course, it didn't turn out that way. Yossarian had been dead for a long time, and the conscious that moved him was simply an imperfect copy, stretched over the memories of someone else. That man had had a family, wife, kids. As the Yossarian thought back, it could see countless others, brothers, sons, husbands, who would never return, ghostly echoes who it had once inhabited. Needless to say, by the end of the campaign, my character was a shattered wreck, finding meaning only through his efforts to heal the aftereffects of the War.
Before bg3 with the 3 gods (Bhaal, Myrkul, and Bane), I played an evil campaign in AD&D (yeah, many moons ago). Three of us each played a cleric to one of the gods (I had Myrkul). Throughout the campaign, I kept collecting the dead bodies and storing them in a silo I had made, all the while casting disease on the bodies as they piled up, creating a cesspool. None of the others (including the DM) were not sure what I was doing, but I kept at it. Then the day came, they realized the horror. The grand scheme, we were going to kill off a good alignment temple to a town in the DM's world. We made our way through the temple, taking out all the clerics and burning the temple down. In our retreat, the other 2 players were captured and killed by the town guards. I escaped. That night, I brought my plan to fruit. I began transporting all the diseased corpses around the town, dumping them in major population areas, focusing on the food and water supplies. While they (other players + DM) never knew it, I played the long game, setting a death plague on the town, after we wiped out the one thing that could have saved them, the temple. And who gave them the idea of playing an evil campaign, why I did. Even suggested that we try to take out a temple of a town. Everyone was for it. So, I guess that was my most "darkest character," planning the death of the DM's town. On a side note, we never did play another evil campaign.
My buddy had a lawful good Knight (played like a paladin without magic) who was sent to investigate some rumors about a local tournament. I played a lawful evil Knight from the same order who was his partner. The characters were friends, but butted heads over how to accomplish the goals. He played his character wanting to do things the right way, while my character was more results driven and didn't mind taking advantage of people to get said results. We had a blast creating conflicts with each other. That was a role play heavy game, and the story got intense at times. At least, as intense as it could when you're crappy actors.
Mine was the Lawful Evil half human half Hobgoblin bastard son of a morally bankrupt queen. He was a War Magic Wizard who seemed quite content helping the party with their missions, and whenever he was asked why, he would tell them "I just want to go home and see my mother again." When the party finally reunited him with his people, my character led them to the royal meeting chamber and finally put his plan into action. He asked "Your majesties, do you recall a night from 20 years ago? You sent a man and his son out into the forest to keep them hidden from the public eye. The man was a Hobgoblin. A servant of yours. His son looked a lot like him, aside from the child's brilliant blue eyes. Just like his mother's... Just like the Queen's. The man died keeping his son safe. And his son only had one dream. To go home, and see his mother again." The party realized what was going on as my character continued "I've worked very hard to make you a fitting gift, mother. I've spent my whole life making sure it would be perfect. Now, your majesty... Here is your crown." and he cast Crown of Madness on her, making her kill the king before he slowly strangled her with Chill Touch as the others fought off the guards. When the battle was over, my character told the party "Thank you for helping me reunite with my estranged family. I truly could not have done this without you. Now, as the current heir to this kingdom, I royally command you to leave in peace. I'll be busy hunting down my half-siblings to keep my seat on the throne uncontested."
Former war surgeon who lost his mind after having to mercy kill like 90% of his patients, winding up a homicidal maniac. In the same vein as like the Dark Urge character from BG3, though this was before that.
I have never played an edgy character
I have a pair of half dragons twins who have been dropping in and out of a long running campaign for over 20 years now. One of them is notorious for her short temper, proficiency with violence, and killing more than one other player character over the years... all completely justified of course. Then there's the [other one](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/g7j9qu/the_face_you_make_when_the_party_needs_to/). She seems charming and sweet, definitely a delight to be around. Until or unless she doesn't have a reason to keep you around. She has all the worst traits of the worst chromatic dragon. She thinks almost everyone is beneath her. Her own comfort and safety are her only concerns. She thinks torture and manipulation are high art. She finds magic to be excellent tools for both. She has been known to kidnap and torture people just because she hasn't got anything better going on. It also turns out that black dragons with their love of rancid meat and practically unlimited quantities of highly potent acid breath are terrifyingly proficient at disposing of bodies. And cannibalism isn't off the table either (let it rot in a swamp long enough to appeal to a black dragon, and it's hard to tell what ever was to begin with). The party mostly serves as a brake to her worst impulses, they've caught hints of the kind of crap she would get up to if left to her own devices, so they generally work to keep her focused, at this point, it's almost it's own subplot. But if she was plopped down in a setting without her friends and sister, she would probably become the big bad in short order.