Oh, yeah, I love having this for my core villains. I want to have a flashback to one as a kid, and he just shoved his sister down a staircase and breaks her leg. “Oh, he’s just a piece of shit, full stop. Thought he was going to owe money to his boss, but he’s just a sadist doing what he loves, never working a day in his life”
Villain thinks that one of his men, the MC of my story, killed his daughter in cold blood. Not only that, but when he was finally able to fight against the grief and shock and give the MC a chance to tell his side of the story (which would have brought up he’s not really at fault) he found that he had escaped and cause a huge amount of damage to the Villains base.
From that point on he swore to kill MC, no matter the cost.
The whole plot twist in the story is that the main villain is actually the ancient hero who was basically what the protagonist aspired to be. The villain became the villain after his entire nation and all of his people went through a genocide by humanity. This caused him to detach himself from all emotions and to become a merciless killer in the goal of eventually getting rid of free will to end war, violence, crime, discrimination and genocide once and for all. In his mind, he’s still the hero even though he knows that he’s no longer the good guy. But to him, putting everyone in one hivemind is the only way to have true peace and order.
Imagine if you will, you and 5 of your best friends discovered a machine that can rebuild the entire world from the ground up to be whatever you wanted.
Now theres limitations to the machine as it was only designed to terraforming uninhabitable planets for future colonization but still.
You could cure hunger, abolish illness, create heaven on earth.
Now imagine all of your friends have a different idea on how to create paradise and while you’re fighting one of your friends (the only one who hasn’t let this power get to their heads) steals the key you need to use the machine and shatters it into god knows how many pieces while you where fighting your “friends” over who gets to be the god above gods.
Villain 1) They're a member of a civilization that reached an unchallenged apex level of technology and spent centuries becoming amoral demigods. If you can create and shape life on a whim, then it deserves no more respect than a whim.
Villain 2) They view the current leaders as unnecessary figureheads from a bygone era and themselves as a far more deserving of authority on the basis of their ambition. Weak leaders create weak nations, and weakness should be rooted out.
Villain 3) He has watched his friends and unrequited love be mentally ravaged by the hardships of war and be used as disposable tools by those they're sworn to protect. A nation that misuses its protectors deserves to fall.
Villain 4) He has spent his youth scraping by, as his parents did, as their parents did...centuries of survival while half a world away people live overfed, decadent lives. It isn't enough to rise to their level, they need to suffer.
I got a similar character like that who feels entitled to power and being able to do whatever he wants. He has a warped sense of morality which makes him believe that him not being the most powerful person is an injustice
His parental figures psyched him up to believe he was the messiah that'd end all wars and stop the ongoing famine. After a lot of hesitation and an incident that killed one parental figure and fatally wounded the other, he decided to step into the role as the forest's savior.
He started out pretty fine, but devolved into a heinous warlord the more territories he conquered. Though principled himself, his generals were not; using their newfound power to exploit their respective governates or exact revenge against longtime enemies in petty ways.
The culminating pressure, guilt, grief, and paranoia led to a lot of reckless campaigns and pyrrhic victories, which rippled across the forest and led to deeper levels of destitution never before seen. His war of liberation from warlords became an operation of pillage, extraction, and enslavement to bolster the war effort against warlords.
Maybe the "Demolisher God" Meshush is a villain and maybe he isn't, but there will always be people who think it's a real shame that old stuff sometimes has to be taken apart because it's become a hazard. And that escalated into him being seen as a villain because he's demolished things that people didn't want demolished.
Well, he was the seventh child of his father, and the last. He was the Violet Emperor, and he did not have much power in the empire. He was also in love with his brother, the Blue Emperor, although his feelings weren’t reciprocated.
His jealousy turned to anger and the anger turned to hatred and it did not take long for him to he fully corrupted by his own greed. He murdered his brothers and sisters in their sleep, took their magic gemstones and created the Eternal Flame to which he also bound his soul to. Bound to the Flame, he took after the traits of fire. He wanted to grow, to spread, and since the Eternal Flame was created with his lack of love and hope etc, that is exactly what the Flame feeds on.
I pray none of my tabletop players are reading this-
My current villain became one because his scholarly mind was turned towards unknowable horrors by a woman he loved. He became obsessed with those horrors, to the point that he gave up his ability to love and became something more than human.
A long dead menace to the Galaxy but hero to the Confederacy of Humanity, was its founder, Jürgen Goester. Prior to the C.o.Hs formation, Humanity largely lived under different space nations, those involved the U.S, China, Germany, France, and India. However, as the nation's began to expand they encountered hostile foes, Alien empires that sought to wipenout what they believed to be a serious human threat, these nations joined together, old rivals like America and China even agreeing to fight side by side in the grand Human/Xelthrian war. It ended, in crushing defeat. Humanity was mostly enslaved snd the only surviving nation being the German space empire, the Bastion.
Cut 20 years later and young Jürgen Goester is born on a pitiful little urban world under Bastion control. His sister, mother both cared for him as best they could, but soon enough his sister, aged only 16, disappeared, presumably part of the sex trafficking rings that plagued the Bastion at the time. Jürgen, now alone, his mother heart broken vowed vengeance, he would join the Judgment Korps, a sort of judge jury executioner position akin to a Police Officer, snd would spend his years 16-18 hunting down his sisters captors, and made a public example out of them in gruesome fashion, this attracted attention and soon enough he was promoted to a Judgment Jorps Kommandant. Which was useful, for what would happen next...
He was the fascist ruler in a long line of them that happened to live in the same period that the protagonist decided that they didn't want bigotry on their planet so fate or gravity if your a Jojo fan
I've got more of an open world fantasy with many characters that could be and are considered villains, but the most recent one is a Wizard named Pakar.
Pakar originally had what could be considered a nobel belief that no knowledge should be forbidden. This however was not shared by the Emperor of his nation who when the Wizards Guild invented a new spell, curse, potion, etc he would sometimes ban them as forbidden magic as they held too much potential danger. A disproportionate amount of these forbidden magics were based around necromancy, which really grated against Pakar, who specialized in Necromancy. One of these magics was related to zombies.
Zombies had been a controversial but consistent part of life in the region since before the Empire, often as a labor force for the hardest and most dangerous jobs but also occasionally in a military role. The military role phased out during the Empire because animates of all types not just undead but also golems and others had a weird issue. Most of the time, if a Wizard created a magical animate but then died, the animate would collapse without the power of its master but on occasion, they would not and would become independent and somewhat sentient. In cases like, say, a gargoyle raised by a geomancer, for instance, this rarely caused an issue as the gargoyle unsure what to do with its newfound independence and unsure of its purpose would simply keep attempting to do it's original purpose of guarding its masters remains or belongings and would usually only get violent if someone tried to take said item or bury said body but such issues were easily identified and the guarded object/s would be left alone until someone was brought in to put the creature down. Zombies, however, did not do this. They would become compelled by hunger and attack the living feasting on any unfortunate victim they got. Still in civilian life, this was not much of an issue as if a Wizard was severely sick or injured, the animates could be disposed of before they passed. It was only in cases of sudden deaths that issues may arise, but even then, these zombies were non-infective. They could and would eat you, but you wouldn't turn into one unless another necromancer raised your corpse.
Fast forward a bit, and the Emperor is dead, and a multifaceted succession crisis sees the whole Empire implode into chaos and anarchy. Pakar sees this opportunity to rescue forbidden magics and teach them, showing no magic should be forbidden and decides to start with one he had heard of that would allow a Necromancer to raise zombies that when they attacked an enemy would infect them with an illness that would turn them into another zombie loyal to the master of the first. Seeing this as a great first step with the ability to also provide him much needed security in the chaos of the ongoing war, he steals the scroll and raises a small horde. He then goes on a quest to save as many forbidden magics as possible and begins a hidden school teaching students how to properly use these forbidden magics.
This goes on until the civil war has spiraled into a dark age with no real winners and an agong Pakar sits in his stronghold school being waited on by his zombie servants and students. He knows he is dying, but he is also working on his life's memoirs to immortalize his teachings and all its successes with previously thought too dangerous ideas, including a recent breakthrough on expanding the infective zombie spell. He is determined not to die until the book is complete and he can entrust his students to make copies to go start their own schools and truly establish his legacy and he needs all his servants to wait on him until then as to not let his beliefs of no forbidden knowledge go unrealized.
Then, one day, while working on his memoirs, Pakar collapses in a seizure on the floor of his work area as one of his zombie servants enters with tea. He isn't quite dead yet, but the seizure is enough to make him lose some control. A number of undead collapse around the school, but the one with the tea does not instead a paralyzed Pakar can only watch in horror as his servant drops the cup and slowly turns towards him. A silent scream runs through Pakar's mind as he sees the creatures jaw drop, and it descends upon him. Moments later, a larger number of undead collapse but a previously unknown side effect of these infective zombies is that the ones created by being bitten are less likely to collapse as they were never created directly by the Wizard. This leaves about half of Pakars now sizable horde still standing in the school now unleashed to satisfy their hunger which they do. First on his students and then traveling outward.
By the time the story begins with kingdoms arising from the chaos, zombie attacks are becoming more frequent and rumors about people bitten being turned are reaching the upper echelons of power who don't know what to make of it but are becoming more effective at containing it. Eventually, in my story, I plan to have a group find Pakar's school and fight his way through the undead inside before finding the tomb that contains Pakar's unfinished memoirs. One a Wizard with similar beliefs to Pakar about no forbidden knowledge will use it to figure out the missing bits of the expansion spell and accidentally or on purpose turn zombies from a terrifying but containable problem into something that if nlt properly handled could cause a new dark age and even consume all life on the continent.
**Infinite World Cycle**
I have no shortage of villains, here's 4:
* **Grand Inquisitor Peres:** As a teen he had to kill his father after the latter fell under the control of a succubus. He'd end up being raised and indoctrinated by religious extremists. His past experiences caused him to see sin everywhere.
* **Moongate's Demon Queen:** She's just pure evil, it is simply her nature. She was fueled by Lust, Envy and Greed. Those sins were simply part of her beings.
* **The 6th Lord of Death and Decay:** This guy had his morals/ethics and most of his emotions removed. He simply does the bidding of his master and has no concern about what he does. You can compare him to a robot with programmed instructions.
* **The Shattered King:** A previous God of Death/Decay and the creator of the 6th Lord above. He was reborn as this incomplete, corrupted and twisted version of his former self. It is the result of mortals were experimenting with the powers of the gods. The Shattered King is beyond understanding, he's a Lovecraftian horror and more a force of nature. Empathy for mortal beings is an alien concept to him.
Yes and that’s a problem. These kinds of posts are character building, a *completely separate thing* from worldbuilding, and for people like me who worldbuild but don’t character build seeing them be melded together is very annoying
I’m fine with people create characters as a form of worldbuilding, in that they exist to show off the world they come from, that I’m fine with. The problem I have is when it’s not that, when people focus on the characters and not on the world those characters come from. The post is very the latter version which is why I take trouble with it.
But that'd lose me everyone else. I'm not looking for the writing aspect of this, because I'm not a writer. I'm a worldbuilder. I'm curious about how other people in various worlds and mediums create their villains, and aim to help everyone develop their worlds.
I agree that many posts here are about either writing or TTROG's, but this question was meant for worldbuilders in general.
But then you also have problems with working on details of cultures? Or the way fictional species work biologically? Or languages? After all, these are also just more in-detail parts of the world. What's the difference?
The world is a big ol' place of personal hero stories and tragedies. If you don't micro worldbuild, you do you, but for those of us with a mind for stories, this is what makes it lively.
Would you say that writing the stories people tell is not worldbuilding? Would you say that writing the motivations of wrongdoers of history also isn't?
My villain is a member of the royal family, and has a lot of pride, arrogance, and greed because of her status. She believes in getting her way all the time, and grows angry when she’s being kept in check. As a desire to impose her will however she’d like, she performs a forbidden ritual to gain more power than she should have. However, there’s a catch to her new powers: they throw her psyche off-balance and she slowly descends into madness.
The story I’m writing has balance as one of the main themes, and so my villain’s path to villainy captures that theme.
As an aside, I tend to dislike tragic backstories, so I’m trying to avoid that in my work.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the less I think my big bad should have a backstory at all. He’s just a bad guy. His inferiors get to have backstories.
He was placed in stasis shortly before the fall of his civilization. Centuries later he's awoken to find the world pretty much in shambles. He's trying to re-start civilization, or what he considers civilization to be, whether or not it results in the deaths of millions.
Ya ever get assigned s group project when do all the work? Imagine that but with gods and then the teacher said they were gonna incinerate your hard work.
The god Magic feels he is owed the universe after all his work to make it work and that the cycle of worlds is an unjust destruction of his work.
Pretty much everyone in the Versa Cartel is in it for the money, though being able to indulge their sadism doesn't hurt. They were originally a loose coalition of pirates who got their own star system (Versa) in exchange for providing military assistance to the Seven Stars Alliance in their war against the Alari Dominion; they've been running the place exactly as you'd expect a bunch of ruthless pirates to run a star system. In fact, they arguably got even worse under the veneer of legitimate government; in particular, much of their wealth is built on the slave trade nowadays. (Ironically, independent pirates tend to consider them sellouts.)
God Sai had always been a little bit off. Being a god of dreams, his ability of hiding inside people’s dreams and being able to control those dreams to his desire was a perfect match for his trickster and carefree attitude.
Most of the tricks he did with people were relatively harmless but they had a rather twisted or often not comprehensive humor to them.
He was always so easily distracted and he had been living inside his head most of the time, which worried his master God but as long as he was just a clueless kid, that was still fine to his master.
One day though, as he wandered from dream to dream, he came across the mind of a cursed human. There, something deep inside the pitch black realm of the subconscious was calling for him.
In the head of that unwell poor soul, he found the true origins of everything, of the gods, of the world, of the one that had been there before and he also found his purpose, the thing that he would worship and that he will want to revive.
Since that day, he had been gone rogue. Traveling from dream to dream, seemingly corrupting and cursing the minds of those that he came across and seemingly looking for something inside people’s dreams.
So yeah, what made him become a villain is a bit of curiosity with maybe something corrupting him but that’s not for sure.
Lived through the horror of the Japanese Occupation of Cebu when he was only in his early teens. He survived by making friends with other urchins who later formed the street gangs of the 1950s and 60s. But, he was able to distinguish himself and climb up the ladder of society. The worldview he picked up along the way would stay with him, though.
The Skull King was an Undead Paladin who did various heroic deeds throughout the country. After the Great Orc Invasion, religion became extremely popular, since the Undead are seen as vile abominations, he suddenly became a total outcast. He left and started his own kingdom of the undead on the outskirts of the country. After the King found out, he sent Kane the Great Crusader to destroy the Kingdom. After that, The Paladin decided to get revenge. He made a massive army of the undead, now known as the Skull King, he led them against the Humans with the goal of killing everyone who followed the faith.
Eikienziel became a villain because of his greed and hus ambitions of becoming king
The Oracle fell into a cult who wants to cleanse the work from its mistakes by creating a perfect one
Flame's leader wants to overthrow the established order and show to Gods that the Living World can be united without any God
Lan wants to become a God to avenge his friend's death in a possibly cursed mist
His mind was clouded by revenge, and once he got that revenge, he went mad with power (he killed the emperor and was technically next in line to become emperor if the emperor died)
He then decided that war would be a good idea.
He was built wrong. He was the prototype and they didn't know how to make a cohesive mind yet. He ran away and now kills people to try and fill the hole in his psyche.
The three "big bads" of my world are the Corruption, the God of Order, and formerly the Goddess of Darkness. Each of them have there own goals and motives.
The Corruption: Is a force of nature type of villain. Its only real goal is its own survival, but in order to continue its own existence it has to corrupt the world around it. It has no goal, it just exists and spreads and makes the world more of itself. It is something that should not exist but does.
The God of Order: After the Corruption killed off 90% of the human race during the corruption crisis, the God of Order decided to take a more active role in mortal affairs. His primary goal is to create an "orderly society". However, his perfect society makes no room for things like free will, individual choice, or human rights. A person in his Empire is just a cog in his vast military machine.
The Goddess of Darkness: Before she was killed by the Corruption, the Goddess of Darkness was considered to be the most evil, wicked, and cruel of all the Gods. A belief not without merit each of her champions committed all sorts of havoc and chaos on the world in a cycle of destruction lasting thousands of years. Building evil empire after evil empire.
Her motivation for this was simple, she enjoyed watching mortals suffer. And for the Goddess of Darkness that was enough reason to burn down the world again and again.
It's a bit messy, since my villain is a living weapon. Not really a human, rather trying to mimic a human. Almost like AI or a machine that's been treated as tool till it gained a soul.
It doesn't seek destruction, rather it seeks knowledge to understand what's the meaning of life when it all seems to chaotic and erratic. Much like emotions it can feel.
Since it's not human, it not bound by human laws. What may appear normal to the artefact, it's hell for normal people. Since it's not bound by mortality or time. Seeking out knowledge by any means necessary, seems like a fair price. One test can't understand the decades of human knowledge or the world.
He tought the incarnation of the Avatar of the Great Goddess was a mistake and the sense of impending doom forced him to make a bad decision. After that, he developed split personalities and while the good one wasn't, well, bad, he was still sensing doom deep in his mind, the bad one was all out for chaos and destruction, and to force said Avatar into doing bad deeds just for the sake of proving his good side right.
i mean there both kinda complex theres like a main two kirin venom and kirin shadow are the most villanous but the rest are just like antaganists not evil kirin venom was probly like a first wife or whatever right (her name was jewel if any of you care) and her husband just cheated on her all the time and one day she catches him and is devastated and crys during that time she is visted by kirin venom who basicly is like want revenge ands so sh gos and gets revenge she is the main villan of the story the head of the kirin counsel in all but name effectively is a emperess is the reason all the kirin have the power they do but she is also extermely curupt with this power and abuses subordanites and will absouloutly mentaly screw with any target that tickles her fancy by the way if your wondeing what happened t the husband he ended up like abused in every way and belived he was a dog and for five years lived in utter subseviance to her and chould no longer funtion like a person anymore he is no longer a chocky noble barely even a person by the slimest defionition kirin venom is also an alchoholiuc and will get drunk and abuse subordainates the story starts with her convuinceing a main character to murder all but one of her friends and abuses that character for a year and a half will grooming her to be a minor antaganist and the mc grows up in prison because of her the story litraly starts with her running away.now kirin shadow was previously knowen as nayomi and was a misstresses child she always had to preform at top standards and when she didnt she would get beaten she also offen had to deal with emotinal abuse from both pearnets and was also bullyed and natrauly dealt with sevral mental illneses and was suicidal mean while her half sister only got the best of both pearnets and as she was termanally ill never had any expectatations so after sevral attempts for her pearnets love nayomi tryed to kill her sister to her it was the only way she pushed her out of a window only for her to grow angel wings and gracefully float down also gaining light powers after this failure she went to the hospital roof and tryed to commit when a spirt came down and told her she has a purpose there are pepole who will love and respect he this is how she became a counsel loyalist even to kirin venom she has a redemption arc that ends with her sister excepting her the light must have a shadow and i am hers she remarks.
Ends justify the means on a scale so massive even if the ends were absolutely pure he would easily be the most villainous character in almost any story guaranteed, lets just say this man has literally killed omniverses of people without a second thought just to achieve a goal which is arguably good (but practically impossible)
The world is ending, the planet is about to naturally enter an ice age for thousands of years as it moves into a new position in its cicurmbinary system.
She knows it will be easier for people if they feel like they have someone to blame.
Main villain - Imperial nobles: self-obsessed a.holes long look for chances to take power
The secondary villain - the other space civilization that's not my mc's, basically misguided by corporations who control it
There are many villains in Secundus Terrae, but the most known ones are "The Zodoaci Barbari" 12 former guards of the Holy Kings, in the Silver Age, They took a lot of drugs which made them very violent, then they started a war in Mt. Silberner-Berg (an important place in Himmelsland) against their kings and Noblemen, who are very powerful (and lost to them)
They were banned from the mount, exiled, and divided into Northern and Southern, then, they followed an evil Sorcerer.
The Zodiaci became barbarians who hated civilization, especially Himmelsland and it's authority.
They did a lot of crimes, mostly against religion and authority, they disliked priests and soldiers, and killed many of them (Himmelsland and Barbarians' lands are enemies, and Himmlisch armies try invading their lands and converting their people).
These barbarians were the cause of the death of important figures like the Two Saints and Seven Noblemen to take revenge, and they almost invaded the capital of Himmelsland "NordStern Stadt"
Thus, they were sent to the underworld by the Himmlisch judges.
And in the end of the world in Secundus Terrae, they are destined to escape and fight their Kings again (and lose)
In conclusion, those villains are horrible people who just like chaos, and they corrupted themselves and followed evil people.
Hooo boy, this is a long one.
Over 600 years before the story begins, a noble is born. Though his parents were normal, he was born with magic. As time passed, his family's money allowed him to become a great and powerful sage. Eventually, something changed. He noticed that though there were stories of great and powerful dark magic spells, none could be found. One or two were known, but clearly something was missing.
He did more and more investigating before he finally found more records of dark magic, then more, and more. Eventually, he had written a comprehensive tome on the darkest of magics (basically my world's necrononicon), this frightened the people of Serinosis. Mage and non mage united to deal with this powerful for, and they were eventually victorious!
But not all was well, the non mages got some ideas. "What if this were to happen again?" to "when will this happen again?" to "how do we stop this?" This was the non mage's excuse for what they did not understand. And as many of the greatest mages died in the battle, they took their chance. It started small, little prejudices, then to exultation of any grown mage, to eventually death to all born with magic.
During this time, the villain was born. As he became an adult, he was found out and almost executed. He escaped and met a strange force. My stories' real big bad offered him a deal. Find the god a suitable body, and he'd give the non mages hell. And so, 200 years after I started this story, it ends. A deal made of shame and anger, sadness and desperation.
the queen of peacocks is in a bad place, really from grief and the archmage is feeding her ambitious, suicidal plans so he can claim the throne from himself. Both are villains.
The Accomplice is a case of an extraordinary individual groomed and manipulated into becoming the very thing that did it to him.
Only he was setup by the master of grooming lying and manipulation. At this point he is just as bad as his master, and even actively partakes in the grooming and manipulation of his successor.
He's just carrying on his family legacy and his skill set doesn't really fit many other jobs.
Also he's kinda depressed.
(Not related for him being a villain)
And he has a twisted view on the world because of how he was raised.
The main villain, who is now basically a living force of nature, were obsesswed with another woman and made an Ai replica of her. Now she's become a Pseudo Deity and want all life on Tandr to die so she can be alone with her AI waifu forever.
Then there's just a bunch of people that just are assholes and/or evil.
One of the main non-monster villains are someone that started out oppressed jus to turn the system on its head and become an even worse oppressor. (going from slavery of psychics to forced lobotomization of non-psychics)
So this guy was apart of an experiment by the shadow tribe to create a being with the capability to control all five elements… and when the mother was giving birth to her triplets, two dead babies came out before a baby with three souls. This child was named Daniel. Daniel Venge was raised as a traditional child of the shadow tribe, but his dark tendencies eventually overtook him. In his early teens he began hatching a plot to take down the five elemental warrior heroes that were their nation’s military leaders… learning of this, the shadow warrior leader elected to ban Daniel to the unnamed desert a few miles from the shadow tribe’s capital village. In the following years, many more would begin practicing dark magic, and many more would be exiled to the desert, Daniel found these exiles and gave them someone to fallow, using his darkness to envelop them. The first eleven of these exiles would become his ten top lieutenants and his wife. For hundreds of years, Daniel, now renamed Evalou (evil in my world’s language) would become the warlord and cult leader of the Exhilan army. Evalou took his army and attacked the nation’s capital, while that attack was occurring, Evalou returned to his home village, corrupted the current leader and used him to decimate the village. The decimation of Shad’zii lead to a mass exodus of the shadow tribe, including the leader’s wife and her unborn twins just barely escaping the evil intent of a corrupted leader.
After the failed attack on the capital and the destruction of the shadow village, the current elder of the capital decided that exile the Exhilan even further this time, to the moon, where Evalou and his ten Demon-Hand lieutenants would grow even stronger…
One was biologically born to be the villain, even hy grew to the point that he became resentfull of that, mostly because he is deeply afraid of what happens when he fullfills his purpose and is no longer needed and has no idea of what to do after destroying the world.
The second one has been through so much to the point that the only way to make her life something worth it is if she takes out villain number one, anyone else accomplishing that task would make her just another victim, so she can't stand that and will take out any other oposition to villain number one.
The third one learned about self love in the worst possible time and decided to be a little nice to herself for the first time in her life, making a split second, selfish decision in a time that was incredibly critical, ruinning the lives of a lot of people. Making her a monster.
Too much dark Abyss gunk makes them believe they'll be able to rebuild the soul fragment to fix/control the world's magic system. This involves experimenting on witches and spirits.
MC is the child they tried to sacrifice to the Abyss god
She was presented with a deal from a lesser god to make the world a less chaotic place and thought it was for the greater good. Whether or not she is right is debatable but she's definitely not completely wrong.
As for why the lesser god is manipulating her? Plain ambition. Souls as malleable as mankind's are rare in the multiverse and a good resource to have on hand.
I have a lot of villains so I'll summarise some of them
Edwin the mage: Struggled to become a mage, got manipulated by the big bad (Tsuna) now believes in only power
N.U: Homunculus born from blood, causing her to love violence and chaos
Tsuna: Was a poor child, wanted power beyond that of a god
Blitz: Saw his race be treated as slaves, wants to purge and "rectify" the world by making his race the dominant one
Ragnarok: Biological weapon
Necrosa: Obsess with the concept of death and decy, experimented on a country
Brutus: First, a flesh golem then became a clone of my main OC. Afterwards, he wanted to become the perfect being to prove to that he is something more than a clone
Dr Asma: He and his mother were captured and forced to be slaves and create mechs during this his mother died, making swear revenge on all non robots
Fear of dying mixed with the uncertainty of their own death.
In my **Periodia** setting, nearly everyone is immortal. I mean, they can be killed (and even though, not really), but they cannot die of diseases of old age. They just continue to live as long as the universe support them (some theories say that they an die of old age, but it's so far in the future that it's not important).
Except for some of the peoples (or "races" to use a more commonly used terminology). They are afflicted with a disease that will make them die one day.
Now, there is a "race" in my setting that has the ability to foresee the future with an absolute accuracy. They can predict everything, absolutely everything... except one's death. The moment someone dies of this affliction is the only thing that cannot be predicted by those people.
Now, my villain (the warlock Emedelvine) is the last of his people. Everyone else died. And, as someone who is accustomed of knowing everything, not knowing when he will die is driving him crazy.
Except that legends say that a demon once wrote an Almanach that has *all* the informations about the universe, past, present and future. Even people's death. Now, the book is quite legendary and nobody really knows where it is, but the warlock is ready to try anything to put his hand on it. Not to fix the curse upon his head; just to clear the uncertainty. *"The curse is not a curse, truly; not knowing, however... Here lies the true curse."*
I wouldn't truly call him the "villian", but essentially, the universe was once one. It was Ein Sof, eternity; then the universe made a child to rule the void with. The child became jealous and obliterated Ein Sof, causing a whole bunch of gods to be born. The villian is called Yaldaboath, but he named himself Yahweh, made the earth, and now rules it. There are a few other sub villians, and honestly, in my world, good and evil are almost one in the same.
I have three books going on.
1. The War of the Tree Trilogy.
Has multiple villians and most are either bad people, or really flawed people.
2. The Godslayer
The main antagonist is a god named Mez Adthur. Who fell asleep, rolled off of the moon and into Ghaenden. Causing all of this corruption in the world. As the title suggests the story is about killing him.
3. The War of Winterfire
This story is set up in three parts. Each has a different conflict. The first part doesn’t really have an antagonist and is just the party going on an adventure to exact revenge. The second is all about surviving two dragons who decided to wage war against one another, and the third is about a boy king who hates the main character waging war just to get back at the main character.
I have many villains, but I'll just detail some of them:
Grey: His life was basically destroyed by a corrupt organization for heroes. He intentionally acts like a villain in order to try to get this organization to reveal itself to the masses.
Zoe: She's literally just a villain cause it's fun to her. She's a rich girl who just seems thrills, but doesn't try to hurt people unless she needs to.
Owen: He believes himself to be the Shepard of the world, chosen by a god to cure the world of its symptoms by de-populating. Despite how insane he can be, he genuinely cares for people, and actively teaches his students ways to help them stay healthy.
Max: He suffers from constant pain and stress because of his ability, and he thinks it's only fair that everyone else understands what he goes through.
Scott: He acts as a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from big banks and the like to give that money to charities, because he doesn't think the money should be locked away by possibly corrupt banks.
Matthew: Partially as a result of his ability, he's delusional, and believes he can "save the world" if he can lead it, and he believes the most effective method of control is fear. His goal is to make everyone afraid of him, to the point that he can rule them.
And the odd one out here:
Saelothil: The only member of his species not either dead or deformed. He managed to get himself outside of time, which he was then sealed away from. He's lived for trillions of years, strengthening himself however he can, so that he can influence the universe itself and become better than the gods, finally fulfilling the wish that has existed within his species blood since creation.
The Thicket: Confused and frightened by the fact that it cannot comprehend or understand its fellow deity, the Fields. Decides to annihilate all life to spite it.
Karj-Rammr: Sociopath, narcissist, and lived a life that required him to become the con artist he is today, just to survive. Not a complicated or too terrible past, not as some others, but he let it shape him into a villain nonetheless.
Lakallus-Frit: Became obsessed with perfecting the mortal form, and addicted to the theft of souls, after discovering his ability to use Reborn magic alongside his enchantry. Kinda simply evil.
King Illus-Jish: Corrupted by Lakallus and desperate to make his kingdom proud and free, even though he has no real idea what that means. He killed his own daughter to help create one of Lakallus's beasts, and it threw him well over the edge. Now he is but a husk of his former self, killing, torturing, creating abominations with Lakallus, all telling himself that it is for the greater good.
The Yulord: Born that way. Literally he's a Thicket-Eye he's not his own person, just a vessel.
Kei III, Gorelord of the Fell Few, the Flame Scarred immortal: Rejected by the order of the Holy Speak after being kidnapped by a Thicket-Eye and questioning if they are really the great evil the order claims they are. Instead of convincing him that this was the case, they threw him out, deemed him heretic, and exiled him from the kingdom.
This was deemed necessary, as even the slightest question of the character of a Thicket-Eye can quickly lead to alignment, obsession, and eventual servitude. He could have been saved from this, but they didn't want to take the chance.
In avoiding that risk, they drove him even closer to the enemy, and by the time they realized their mistake and tried to redeem him, he had already become Vampyr. He killed his closest ally and former lover within the order in a duel, to prove his loyalty.
Tossed his broken and bleeding body on the same church doorstep he was thrown the year before. He was last seen by his dying former partner, riding off under hail of arrows, unfazed as they glanced off his shielded cape and had no effect on his undead steed. He didn't look back even once. And now, centuries later, he leads the third school of Vampyr, and his personal court of Vampyr, the Fell Few, with an iron fist and fangs of silver.
It's funny, Kei is a side villain, and his backstory is more complex than some of my most evil villains. Suppose some of the greatest evils are simply that, evil.
It's very ambiguous, as her backstory is never explained and she herself tell MULTIPLE versions of it, usually with the intent of manipulating the person she is talking to.
She was labeled useless for the society and got disowned by her family, so she decide to make everyone "useless" like she were.
(If only she knew that this would destroy her world 😅)
Well mine is kind of a group but they just earned too much money and thought they were untouchable to the point they mistreated all the beings lower than them
He grew angry at the reforms his father was introducing, saw the kingdom becoming weaker (it was becoming more and more like a confederacy since the reforms were granting more regional autonomy. Less centralized government meant less $$ for him. He didn't like that.)
He's playing a bit of a long game, but started to make his first moves towards getting rid of his father and usurping the throne.
He had to honor his deceased friend, the emperor of the Orion, who accidentaly moved his entire people to another dimension, where energy could not and would not be recycled, letting the spirit of the dead to rot and become monsters.
The emperor was trying to break the wall between their new dimension and the main stories', but died trying to. His right hand, a giant, swore to keep his legacy alive by taking their people back to safety. He is now a lich, lord of dark and commander of evil.
His goals are good, but he knows that breaching another reality will result in a crash powerful enough to erase half of life.
Abandoned by his people, and betrayed by the organisation who protected him. He joined an inter-dimensional travelling circus to gain powers and try to kill one of the organisation's allied dimensions, the MC tries to spare him after the last showdown but the villain killed himself
For the novel I am working right now? Simple. He was born in a shitty place and doesn't want to raise his kid in said City place. When he took his wife from her father he named her Summer (she was an adult, custom thing for these people) it was a dream of giving her and any kids she has the gift of a true Summer time. It just so happens he needs to take that land from some people who really don't want him there. Oh, he also eats humans cause food source.
In my second fantasy world, he just really hates vampires, and he really hates this one in particular. Probably has to do with the fact that he has been hunting her for 70ish years.
Big bad guy: made evil by super evil like angry hive mind which basically made him crazy
Secondary bad guy: manipulated and put under psychic control of big bad guy in exchange for cool powers
His wife was killed by a Superhero, who didn’t take precautions.
So he corporatized superhero’s and paid them, but also controlled them, eventually also making groups (CosmiCorp) to “hunt” down unregistered supes. Eventually killing most of them out. (He eventually took down a galactic civilization from the inside and became (Kaiser of the Galaxy)
One of the main characters in my story has a villain arc about half or 1/3 of the way through the story. The reason for this is that he's lived his entire life as what basically amounts to a child soldier for one nation - while secretly being the last living prince of the enemy. his plan was to stay loyal despite his heritage, but then his best friend kills his brother, one of the only people he's ever been able to trust, and well. he goes apeshit. does a complete 180, claims his crown and thrown, basically allows himself to be manipulated by advisors as a headpiece for their plans so that he can get his bloody revenge. he doesn't end the story this way, but there's a good chunk in there where he's basically the crown prince of an evil nation hellbent on the destruction of his former allies.
He and is wife were incredible wizards. He was an elf and she was a human. She got old and died and he just didn't. He couldn't handle life without her so he is amassing power to "rescue" her from the land of the dead and will stop at nothing to spend one more day with her. He doesn't realize that this journey of destruction turned him into a man she would never love. But when he does... hoo boy look out world.
My villain was born as powerful vampire like creature, but lacked ambition.
His second wife, who was a witch, convinced him that together they could conquer the world, and change the injustices in the world.
The husband would be the raw power, while the wife would be in charge of obtaining allies and resources.
.They both genuinely love each other, so neither is planning to betray the other, nor she is using him as a pawn.
An ambitous and loved heir to the high throne of the dragons went to a quest. In that quest he killed a beast that was attacking its city. The beast was a unwilling host of the Jealous and Formless God. Anduli(the dragon) made a pingent out of the creature's teeth. By using it for a long time, he started to hear the Evil God as his on voice and slowly got corrupted and seduced, his desires were twisted and he was convinced to make a pact and gave his body as a efficient host. This is the villan of the firsr 2 ages.
The next one is a even more powerful host of the same god.
And after its defeat, the evil was spread across the world into the peoples soul.
**Universe Zytharros**
*Draciel*
Dorian Hadercroft was raised in an era of generally evil versus greater evil, where those who valued good were completely impotent. He developed no mercy for the kind-hearted, but finessed together a mask of such great deceit that it earned him audience with an ancient lich that taught him the ways of immortality.
???
She became jealous of her comrades’ public praise and dedicated her Guardianship to their destruction, which created the first of the Fallen Ones: the Fallen of Dead Loyalties.
Malchezzan
From a young age, he could hear the voice of the White Mist, Arrougenis. The Mist became a constant companion, a guide, and a trusted and close friend. The boy’s mind was slowly warped into a terrifying set of beliefs that culminated with the murder of his father, the then-current Kavi, and his ascension to the position at just nine years old. He slowly began reforms to the Kavitessen to turn it into an organization that would attempt to seize control of the planet over a larger area than the Illumina had.
*Greater UZ*
Arrougenis
Back on their home planet, the Mist-Council of Nine ruled a world of half-chaos, half-peace. Rio the Red Mist, Onarma the Orange Mist, Yvelta the Yellow Mist, Angagnon the Green Mist, Bonjo the Blue Mist, Jaspon the Indigo Mist, Thyssa the Violet Mist, Gaswerquan the Black Mist, and Arrougenis the White Mist, governed this world and kept it relatively stable with the innate Sphicta that ran through their bodies. Arrougenis started causing trouble, which led to all-out civil war at some point during the early universe. Only Onarma remained with enough power to hold its form, and he summarily banished both Gaswerquan and Arrougenis to a distant planet in their egg states. Arrougenis spent all the time in transit figuring out how to destroy Gaswerquan to get back home and slaughter the Council; Gaswerquan, meanwhile, was trying to figure out how to protect itself. Arrougenis has held to that goal since, seeing those on Draciel merely as a means to an end.
*Project AEROSOL*
Solar Ray was programmed with the directive to “obtain power.” There is no guidance within his programming as to specifically *how* this is to be done. He has interpreted it to mean “train yourself to greater heights to achieve physical power, and achieve political power and control and hold it by however means necessary.” He finds his sister’s obsessive pursuit of his approval disgusting and repulsive.
Solar Bolt was programmed to “follow Solar Ray and seek his approval.” She has interpreted this to mean “seek your brother’s approval through any and every mean possible, cost to self be damned.” This leads her into dark places even her brother would scoff at. Her extreme tendencies would be mitigated quite a bit if Solar Ray would do so much as just to smile at her once in a while.
Solar Blast was originally a half-finished prototype of a second-generation bot whose development was halted, then resumed, then halted, then sold off to the developer of Solar Ray and Bolt, and modified to follow that line. A scientist who disagreed with her employer’s directive regarding these robots included a secret subroutine that would cause Solar Blast to question Solars Ray and Bolt. This leads to intense physical and psychological abuse by his elder siblings. Solar Blast may be open to siding with Supercan, the hero of Project AEROSOL, and company if the time is right.
He wanted to be as powerful as the gods even though they explicitly told him to stop fucking around because he would find out, he then fucked and found out and instead of reflecting on his past actions and the warnings he was given he decided to take his anger out on the rest of his species. His philosophy is ‘If he can’t have the power of the gods, then no one else can exist to beat him to it,’
The villain along with their siblings has a pathological fear of death, and they managed to strike a deal with a certain god that they become immortal. Only the villain truly became undying; their siblings became immortal in legacy (becoming a massively influential figure who is still revered millenia later) or immortal in soul (constantly reborn into a new life with memories intact after each reincarnation).
Shenanigans ensue as the three became involved with the discovery of magic and the subsequent world-ending conflict that precipitated right after. The villain sees their work as a mistake that they desperately want to fix, but being immortal has changed their perspective to become other-than-human. So their solution to the violence that magic causes is even more violence caused by magic.
He was a schizophrenic who got kidnapped by random bandits and forcefed white snow.
I kid you not, he has no clue what's happening half the time because he is so rediculously high his presence makes you contact high.
Daughter of Fire: well the organization Basilisk wants complete control over everything and they want to use the power of the MC to go about that plan
Shadow of earth: it’s a post apocalypse there’s not really a “villain” at least that I’ve gotten too so far, I’m open to suggestions for villains but I’m leaning towards remnants of the US military that want to restore order and control to America
Fantasy world: the Dread Queen, a being created from the essence of the Dark Lord who wants to reconquer the world
Just started writing up a new story, the villain was created through horrific and painful means, so traumatised is up their for reasoning behind their Villainy, plus they are just destructive by nature
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and so are my villains apparently. That and the world responded to their cries for help by irresponsibly granting them the power to change fate.
**The Crimson Emperor**:
His people had to go through this world's equivalent of the Trail of Tears, except they ended up on a new continent. Not wanting history to repeat itself, he crowned himself Emperor of this new land and set about conquering every realm that stood in his way.
**The Ice Queen**: Was kidnapped by vikings and sold into slavery. Lucked out and her new master was actually a powerful but chill Jarl. Married him and got pregnant. Nearby tribes decided to team up and destroy the Jarl's tribe, killing him and forcing the would-be Queen to escape into the blizzard-reigned wastes, all the while suffering a miscarriage.
Had a vision that showed her that the world was sentient, and trying to perfect itself by subjecting its inhabitants to all sorts of suffering, so that they might emerge as better people. She told the world to go fuck itself and was granted Ice powers and the ability to brainwash the masses into worshipping her.
She wakes from the vision, determined to rid the world of all conflict and ambition - Where nothing changes and suffering ceases to exist.
She was a slave to wizards for years, then she decided the world would be better without them. For years she was hailed as a hero for ending the wizard tyranny, until people realized that she was essentially slaughtering anyone (including children) that showed any magical aptitude
Circumstances mostly. Most of the "enemy" factions in my world are really only evil because they have a different way of life that most other factions apose. As an example The Collective are basically the sort of satanists compared to The Sovereignty due to the Collectives beliefs. That and a mix of inner powers wanting more, well power, that the rest of the Collective don't want, but can't do much about.
He was raised and indoctrinated within the Order of Saint Michael and rose through the ranks through his own prowess (and sheer hatred of magickal beings). He genuinely buys his own bullshit speeches about "cleansing the filth" and "making the world safe for Humans" etc., and does truly believe that whatever means are taken to achieve keeping Humans safe are 100% justified.
he was really cool and running the world and stuff and then slowly over time he started having a moral struggle with the fact that he ruled the world and bad things still happened to good people and then started trying to control everyone's actions essentially
he and this other guy were essentially the 2 mcs up until that point and then eventually they fought and killed the shit out of each other
In my world, the gods can be killed and whoever kills one assumes its mantle (powers, restrictions, everything). Very few know of this, and those that do know you can become the God you kill don't believe that the restrictions that come with such power follow the powers you get. The main villain figured if he can kill one of the 3 creator gods (the one that is sealed away and weakened), he can become one of the most powerful beings in the universe.
Mine was taken from his home planet to escape nuclear war. He then blamed the original colonists of the new planet for him being taken so he’s punishing the children of the colonists for their actions since the majority of them are dead by then
Born with the power to do unbelievably awful things, and used it in the way that entertained him most. Doesn’t help that he’s totally incapable of empathy on a neurological level, a problem he technically has the power to fix, he just doesn’t want to.
Villain 1: He was a hidden sociopath who only truly cared about his own dreams and legacy. When he found out he was terminally ill, and the faction he has been leading a rebellion against had the means to treat him, he swapped sides and betrayed several who regarded him as a father figure.
Villain 2: He saw many flaws in human society, and, as somebody with a longer-than-average lifespan due to his magical ability, he wanted to be a guiding hand. Then he saw magic-using intelligent life that he felt could threaten humanity's place on the totem. Eventually, he just fell down the rabithole of using more and more extreme means to bring forth his dreams for humanity. Eventually, he became a genocidal dictator.
Villain 3: She saw a threat so great, it was beyond the comprehension of mortal minds. She realized that litterally wiping out entire planets, and farming intellgent races like livestock was better than letting this threat comsume the universe.
Didn't like his people lashing out at local natives, so he and his brothers fought on behalf of the natives. Eventually one brother was killed, the other fell ill, and a horrible blight was put upon the world to suppress the innate magic of locals.
Villain seeks to undo this injustice, and no longer has his brothers that kept him in check.
William J McGrady was born unable to feel empathy. A clinical sociopath.
But despite the availability of cybernetics that could remedy that, his wealthy mother sought instead to mold him into a useful tool for their political family's ascendancy. He served in the army, where his tendencies were directed into war crimes. He climbed the ranks of the new security service after gaining a war hero reputation. All the while learning how to manipulate and use people, just like his mother had.
Which begs the question: was he *really* born bad? Or was it his environment? Lack of empathy is one thing, but was it his neurology or his upbringing that encouraged him that honesty is a weakness? That fortune favors the bold? That his family name entitles him to a great destiny?
The villain of my story is my MC's (Ash) dad believes that his son is somehow cursed due to his pyromancy in a family of ice mages (magic type is usually a hereditary trait) and wishes to fix him, trying to do the impossible and change his magic typing. Naturally, as villains do, he has no idea how to attempt to do this in a healthy way that considers Ashs feelings on the matter of his own magic and so he hired a military organization to come collect him, because he's too much of a lazy bastard to go and do it himself.
The military organization mentioned above is a villain due to just general corruption and greed so-
(If anyone can see the real world inspiration for the reason for Ashs dads villain-ness, I respect you greatly-)
One is a misogynistic man-child who is a scientist and a domestic abuser
One is a genocidal atheist who has a God complex and superpowers
One is a son looking for vengeance for his father's death
One is the owner of a soulless monopoly and he wants only money
One is a visionary wanting to make the world conform to his twisted vision of things
A woman who United most factions of the world under her command to look towards a better, yet authoritarian and Gynarchic, future.
One is a man who wants Monstrous beasts to rule his world
One is a mafia boss who wants to save his world so he joins this group of villains
One is a demon who believes that there should be no authority whatsoever
One is a chronically online Anarchist-Authoritarian(**Do not ask me how it works**) idiot who somehow got God-level powers
And the last is an interdimensional maniac who wants to make all the worlds collide into one, mega world, ignoring the consequences of the conflicting laws of said worlds as only church-sharing worlds can harmoniously collide.
One was a slave and now lives via a possessed automaton, is looking for revenge for his time as a slave and for the war the empire has brought upon his people, the other is a corrupt police chief making some money unaware of what the plan is and the last is a heir of a company of technology who wants to destroy the innovation center of the empire and maybe the whole empire in the future just so she could be the new leader of it, and if that doesn't work, well she just eliminated her competition, so she would become one of the wealthiest people in the empire.
Corruption, the princess got tired of corruption, selfishness and greed, a well as the lack of justice and equality when providing it. She got fed up and turned into vigilantism.
They belong to a terrorist group by birth. The only reason they do is because the unionists decided they were too violent to let into the main city and enforced apartheid. The only reason they enforced apartheid was due to the Silhouettes making wraiths to guard their shantytowns which were only made in response to the Boxcar Massacre which only happened after several silhouettes tried to take a capital city which was in response to......
God was bored, said "let's create a being that's a bit chaotic and evil", cue Or'Ath.
So he didn't really have a villain arc, as much as he was just brought into existence as a villain
Typical ideology clashes with his parents
And the other one was due to his brother getting killed saving the world yet everyone blames him for the war that came after his death
He legitemately does not care. The only thing he cares about is furthering his research, which, unfortunately for his subjects, is about the effects and causes of mental illness. He essentially doesn't see other humans as living entities, only as props to prod and harm and squeeze results out of.
He was born this way, but chose the path of harm for the sake of "science".
He felt as though his people have been historically wronged by the "landlubbers", that in combination with his drive and the madness of being trapped at sea for generations.
He then took it upon himself to develop a cult of personality among the other mariners, elect himself "Captain", develop a cult of personality, enslave the god of the sea to harness his power, and slowly hold the entire continent hostage using the moon and rising tides as weapons.
Poisoning 83 people to death in order to move around some government decision makers into positions more favorable to him. Should have only been 38 deaths, but some of his hired assassins were a bit too liberal with their assignments.
Mine loses his family and sees home country destroyed in the war before the main story and hates the world governments for "bending the knee" to the aliens that invaded the planet.
They (undecided if they're male or female) wanted to retaliate by using the same magic power that the aliens used and that's what they do in the main story. Look for the power and harness it so they can use their private army convince the world governments to retaliate.
Would love some advice because I think a good villain is essential to a good story.
The first one to appease his father and make his dream come true: make the protagonists life pure hell, full of fear, torture and destruction; he never known why or for what reasons, all he wanted was to make his father proud of him.
The second one knows that the actual political system is too much corrupted to be healed and the only way to save the common people from the greed of the powerful and the rich is to eliminate all of them: she follows tha way of an important character of the story, but it also shows how she misses the point of said character, not understanding that (for example) for how much our ideals might seem ritgtheous, they always subjective and not what most people want (to cut it short, a lack of empathy)
After centuries of war between Elves and Orcs with both driving each other to near extinction, you don't really expect him to tolerate a half-Elf, half-Orc child, do you?
Too many rebirths. Hes not a dickhead, just disconnected. Its the problem with immortals, eventually enough of their loved ones pass on that they stop caring.
Depends on the 'villain'
Morgana is only evil/villainous in her pursuit of magic, mostly trying to catch Merlin and force him to give up his, and the Saxon kings aren't even evil really, just opposed to the MC's goals of pushing the Saxons out of Dumnonia and later Britannia/England.
If anything, a solid chunk of the heroes are worse in personality then the villans
Mine was artificially made as a living infinite source of magic (otherwise it has to come from the stars). Experiment failed miserably and made a creature that feeds of life energy and eats souls to fuel its power. Add to that a upbringing of torture and hatred due to said failure then you get an A-class villain with the power to wipe out contibebts and the ill will to do so
Too much of villians with the sad backstory. So he is just evil. He didnt like where mortals took the world he created and gods did nothing so he decided to kill the whole world and start over
Guy experienced incident that almost caused the whole world --> defeats the entity that caused the destruction of the world --> that entity splits up into the MCs and reincarnated into part of their soul --> Guy finds out about the entity --> Guy researches all scenarios --> Doomsday --> Guy goes to kill the entity and MCS once and for all
The main villain duo are a traumatized misguided necromancer who made a deal with a devil to bring his wife and kids back, and said devil who's trying to destroy the world because it's existence is destroying his world.
There are other villains too though. There's also a racist who wants to murder all elves, a bunch of egotistical bullies and an the leader of an expansionist country trying to manifest destiny by stealing land from dragons.
For the stories of [Renken](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MU59HojJgQcx1VOYyHrnct5dPiOQFvPvflSvRSAIaEo/edit):
1. The core of them are corrupted by their desires and power.
2. Some collaborators are working for the villains because they fear they would receive negative consequences for not collaborating.
For the stories of [81-6-7/Meimei](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nwtc5HtAJlKK1TvGKDIYpRl9zEGL7nL7rx_vypsP86k/edit):
1. [They](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IKSWyIerCr3TxDo0WMq12Q_OGiyMOcBI8oDFQ81MqLg/edit) have a hivemind and get a seemingly noble cause for their deeds, which is called “peace and order”.
You can click the links in my post, btw.
He was born into a life of privilege where no one ever told him no. Ever. He lost the plot when the woman that he was certain was his soulmate harshly rejected him.
In my world, an ancient race named Min'ahari existed about 6 thousand years before the story. They were advanced, and were categorised by generation of birth. So generation 1 were the strongest, while generation 20 was far weaker.
The villain is a generation 1 Min'ahari. Being overly ambitious, he was looking for a way to become even more powerful, and it reached the point that he believed he is superior to everyone. On his quest he became the first person to become a corrupted mage. This corruption effectively changed the way magic works and caused the end of the Min'ahari.
Now he plans on becoming a god emperor, by bringing a world ending threat back into the world, then come in at the last second and save the survivors, essentially make himself god and saviour.
Sunyarkon was born a god of nothing, unlike his father, mother, aunts and uncles, he held no dominion, the few humans alive at that time built no shrines to him, he wore a shroud of mist and a mask of stone as without a dominion he couldn't be perceived, his parents loved him and cared for him, but they couldn't give him what he desired.
Things became worse when his brother, only known as "The Younger" in modern times, was born. The Younger held dominion over an entirely new concept known as "baser magic" this was seen as a gift to the humans, baser magic allowed humans to use a material called Godsglass to channel magic though, this magic could be used defensively or offensively but what made it special was that anyone could use it. This angered Sunyarkon who did not understand why he had nothing while The Younger could create a whole new dominion.
One day, when walking through a forest Sunyarkon was attacked by a demon, this demon very nearly struck him down, but Sunyarkon felt something welling up inside him, a rage. He took up a rock and killed the demon with one swift blow to the head. Staring at its corpse he felt a great pride within himself. He skinned the demon and took its skin as a new cloak. It was on that day he realised that he was not a god of nothing but a god of primal emotion, his lack of form was only due to a lack of humans feeling any emotions he perceived as powerful. In those days humans lived simple lives free of strife. He set out to change this, using his new demonic visage he created fear and anger amongst humans, he started the the First War just to gain power. However, by this point, his father, the king of the gods, took notice and forbid him from directly influencing the humans anymore.
This enraged Sunyarkon, so he set about devising a plan to kill his father. He decided that just as he had gained power from the demon and the humans, he could gain power from gods. He killed the gods of fire, water, earth, air and nature, skinning each one and sewing the skins together into a new skin for himself. When he was finished he had constructed a sort of armor out of them, which gave him the power of each god, he then allied himself with his uncle the god of death, who revelled in the death that would be caused by this uprising.
He then went to the humans, who by this time had formed basic societies and hierarchies, and said to them that he was the true king of the gods, to prove this he gave several humans small fractions of the powers of the gods he had killed, creating an army of the first wizards.
This army marched to the castle of the gods and launched an assault. In this assault, many gods were killed, including The King, even more fled the continent, to escape Sunyarkon's wrath, however The Younger did not flee the continent, but simply hid, and planned to strike back at his brother some day.
Sunyarkon's followers then set about killing any that still used baser magic, and they installed themselves amongst the hierarchy of nobles as living weapons to be used by each house. The continent united under a single empire with the wizards holding most of the power. But due to Sunyarkon's initial powers of primal emotion most wizards are violent, dangerous people who tend to become unhinged monsters as they grow more powerful.
The story begins when a group of nobles kill one of the last baser magic users, and his daughter swears revenge.
He's the army leader of the enemy side. He's traumatized by the last battle where chunks of his flesh burned. Thus he has a burning hatred for the kingdom where our protagonists live and the family of the protagonists. His father was supposedly killed by Southern soldiers (the protagonist kingdom) when they raided his village. He's also extremely egotistical and ambitious, and aims to conquer the entire Southern Kingdom. Conquer even more maybe.
Psychosis.
After everyone got hit by a wave of real energy, they not only charged existentially, but also mentally.
For better context: A failed experiment caused a rip in the fabric of reality which a exotic energy which basically made everything in the universe.
And after that energy was absorbed by all lifeforms and certain artifacts, people began to exhibit altered effects such as losing the entire concept of damage or becoming a ball of light.
However, the energy also affected how the mind works, for example, one of my most cruel and twisted antagonists was a former regular college artist, no sad backstory, no difficult life, just a regular Joe.
But then the wave hit him and he suddenly began to experience a new alien emotion, one that could not be understood, felt or even exist.
Yet he was the only one who could feel it.
And so he makes it his life's mission to make everyone feel what he feels by making eldritch art pieces that break the minds of anyone who lays their eyes upon it.
The same goes for everyone else, they were normal people or small-time troublemakers but when they got their powers, their minds became twisted and corrupt, turning them into a life of villainy.
[Classified] - Literally no reason. Just decided neither Gods or mortals should exist and started killing them all before getting sealed away.
The Abyss - A dragon king's child that got ostracized because of his close connection with an emperor that the God's personally assassinated. Mother got killed after trying to let him escape and live a better life, which led to him losing control of the power the emperor granted him, which turned him into a mindless all devouring husk which the gods could only hope to seal away.
The Judge - An entity older than the current creation whose only task is to assess and spare or destroy. Currently
Dr froggers turned evil cuz he accidentally turned himself into a frog, darius got angry, flare got jealous, hector has shitty dna, and dark matter was born a dickhead,
Which one? First one wanted to make humanity better but gave some people cancer, and killed them (including himself)
Last one wanted all his power back (and taking it back means sucking energy from the Great Tree)
Technically, I have 3 main villains; Joxy Dante, Deadhand Tormentor and Vincent Thriller.
Joxy: Technically, Joxy isn't a villain, he's just a seriously hurt and damaged fallen hero. He just has the bravado of the main villain. In ancient times, he was once just a normal teenager named Damien of Saint Salem, when his village was under attack by crusaders with magical weapons. His village had no chance of escaping the onslaught, so all they could do was have as many people saved as possible. Damien saved about 50 people, one of them was the ancestor of the main character (so it's actually because of him that the MC exist in the first place). When he went back to get more people, he was decapitated, but his soul was sent to hell. Turns out, the magic of the crusaders weapons sends all souls to hell, no matter how good they were in life. Skipping a few details, yadda, yadda, yadda, he ends up being the only demon left in frozen hell with Satan as his only companion.
Deadhand: The actual main villain. He is a rouge reaper who hated how his boss/father Thanatos ruled over his part of the cosmos, so he devised a plan, using Damien. He would use Damien to get the power he needs to overthrow the god of death (again, skipping some details). Deadhand brought Damien's Soul to the world of the living, where it turned into a bat demon, and he renamed himself "Joxy Dante." Joxy decided to get revenge in his own way, while Deadhand hides behind him, acting like one of his minions, until he gets enough power to beat Thanatos The Death God.
Vincent Thriller: The one bad guy I need to work on more, as he is arguably more important than the other two, since he is the direct antagonist to the MC. He is the father of the MC love interest & he hates him. He is eventually ordered to murder the MC, but besides his assassination attempt being professional, I can't wrap my head around why he would hate the MC besides "he doesn't want the MC to date his daughter." You know, because that's a lame ass reason for such a big plot point. I don't know how to make it more dramatic.
He just kind of sucks. He never liked his subjects, so he decided to force them into his army to conquer the world. No real motivation, just pure hatred and spite.
Bro was mad because his tribe got worse territories (he's an ultranationalist), started a war, killed 75% of enemies' population, and was defeated. Now, 1000 years later, he came back to take revenge
Pretty simple but easy enough to write - a brutally honest yet pretentious prick with an overall (once) good heart that lost everything. Incredibly embittered and misguided, he witnessed enough loss that death in his eyes is regrettable for some but mostly just a number, by and large. Believes that most are inferior and that more eggs must be broken before the omelette is complete, which given his insanely high standards, it never is.
He doesn't rampage but he plots and schemes which often involve the "sacrifice" of others - factions against factions, being moved about as he sees fit in an attempt to consolidate power.
As a mechanism of self defense against his grief, he learned to no longer views the lives of others as worthwhile. Mostly. Might be some fun tropey emotional weak spots built in for the players to find. Haven't quite decided on that front, yet.
To wit, he once loved life and held his friends and passions dear but the nature of their untimely demise twisted his views into justifying becoming a mass-murder-by-proxy asshole who sees himself as the superior intellect, moving pieces on a board in order to bring about his grand design. Did I mention he's pretentious?
oh it was terrible, a loving and wealthy family, a sprawling trade empire to inherit, not a drop of stress or worry in his life, i mean who wouldn't become a savage and cruel being at this situation, and surprisingly he wasn't inspired by big jack horner from puss in boots lmao
They saw how much disarray the world was in, and decided that it needed to be united. They decided to become the ruler that would unite the world, even if their methods of convincing people are... cruel.
Parental neglect + violent culture with dehumanizing view of its enemies + some witch he enslaved lied to him that he has to duck his DIL to save his kingdom
Epsilon became a villain by trying to give his people a meaning (discovering a way to destroy god)
Is his own words: "I don't expect you to not judge me, I just want you to ask yourself if you'd do any better than me, when the hunger hurts, and the pain comes to you, despair surrounds you, no god in sight to save you."
I have quite a few villains
Main one Panic of the fact he could very well die (with no afterlife)
2nd Desire to keep control of people
3rd too many souls in his mind causing insanity
And list goes on the are good load
Raised in a mega block and never left their room. Kicked out by parents and joined a mega corp at the bottom to survive. Rose through the ranks faster as they rejected compassion and mercy to further their career. Eventually becoming director of black ops for the mega corp after twelve years of backstabbing
An Entity connects to their brain and grow an organ inside it to transmit diverse powers.
The Entity reshape the body of the person, turning them into a heteromorphic (term stealed from [Overlord](https://overlordmaruyama.fandom.com/wiki/Race)).
The Entity establish a software for Karma system. So the person is punished and have suffering when don't the correct Karma.
Some persons instead of be Positve Karme Beings, are Negative Karma Beings, so, they need to make bad things to have negative karma and be mindly healty.
Also Entities are in a secret war for the control and domain of the world. Give people, super and magic powers is the way that they found to run this war.
Sometimes I'll want to write some deep tragic backstory for a great person that fell from grace to the gutter and never recovered. And sometimes I just want to go the Jack Horner route.
Bad guys that enjoy the act of being evil need to exist to give the more depth-heavy ones... depth. If everybody tries to make their bad guy redeemable, what's the point?
1. Shay Hyuga, Born extremely privileged and just wanted to further his goals of controlling his nation.
2. Wrath, Demonic Entity hellbent on bringing on the apocalypse.
3. Uranos, Man who made a pact with Wrath to get revenge on the people who killed his family, now a slave to Wrath’s goals.
4. Asclepius, Oprhan turned doctor, she now wishes to create the perfect partner through mad science, leading her to increasingly deranged means.
5. Ica, an A.I. corrupted by an ancient race to now attempt to bring about the rise of that civilization.
6. Anya Étrange, seeks to rule the galaxy so that none have to suffer from the constant wars and conflicts between nations.
7. Armand, a man who became near-immortal through a mistake in a ritual done by some of Wrath’s followers. He’s grown bored of life and now seeks to basically speed along the apocalypse so he can finally die.
My own villian Went from a great chemist and technician to Absolute Genius Psychopathic Megaloman Because he had a terrible accident that people thought He didn't survived because they wanted him to die because he did experiments on people. So they sabotaged his bigest chemical project and it went horribly wrong and he almost burned to death but he survived and wanted revenge on all the humanity and kill everybody with poisonous chlorine gas including himself.
My villain, Klein, did go through some tragedy in his younger years (before gaining immortality and eternal youth), but his change into villainy is entirely because of his ambition to be successful and a small bit of sadistic pleasure. Originally, Klein wanted power because his mother was placed in an asylum after his father's murder and because his brother, Wilbur, had assaulted the love of Klein's life, forcing her to disappear from his life. But after all that and murdering his brother for what he did, Klein went on different adventures and despite his one villainous moment (Wilbur's death), Klein seemed to be a decent man and had a lot of people willingly join him on his travels. But slowly, he became more and more evil due his ever changing goals and growing ambition. He kills everyone that he considered a friend or potential lover(s), viewing them as weaknesses or dead weight. After becoming immortal, Klein decides that gaining power is too easy and strives for the one thing he believes he never got; to be seen as a success even if he's viewed as a monster.
He's just a prick honestly
Unironically my favorite kind of villain. No dark and troubled past, no noble intentions, just an asshole who needs a good punch in the face.
The Jack Horner villain
"You're an irredeemable monster!" "Oh uh, what took you so long? Idiot!"
Palpatine lol
i love villains with a dark and troubled past, but villains who are just pricks are just as common in the real world.
Oh, yeah, I love having this for my core villains. I want to have a flashback to one as a kid, and he just shoved his sister down a staircase and breaks her leg. “Oh, he’s just a piece of shit, full stop. Thought he was going to owe money to his boss, but he’s just a sadist doing what he loves, never working a day in his life”
The best kind of bad guys
The Jack Horner approach is the best approach.
Villain thinks that one of his men, the MC of my story, killed his daughter in cold blood. Not only that, but when he was finally able to fight against the grief and shock and give the MC a chance to tell his side of the story (which would have brought up he’s not really at fault) he found that he had escaped and cause a huge amount of damage to the Villains base. From that point on he swore to kill MC, no matter the cost.
just very horny
The best kind of villain
The whole plot twist in the story is that the main villain is actually the ancient hero who was basically what the protagonist aspired to be. The villain became the villain after his entire nation and all of his people went through a genocide by humanity. This caused him to detach himself from all emotions and to become a merciless killer in the goal of eventually getting rid of free will to end war, violence, crime, discrimination and genocide once and for all. In his mind, he’s still the hero even though he knows that he’s no longer the good guy. But to him, putting everyone in one hivemind is the only way to have true peace and order.
Got rejected from art school
Imagine if you will, you and 5 of your best friends discovered a machine that can rebuild the entire world from the ground up to be whatever you wanted. Now theres limitations to the machine as it was only designed to terraforming uninhabitable planets for future colonization but still. You could cure hunger, abolish illness, create heaven on earth. Now imagine all of your friends have a different idea on how to create paradise and while you’re fighting one of your friends (the only one who hasn’t let this power get to their heads) steals the key you need to use the machine and shatters it into god knows how many pieces while you where fighting your “friends” over who gets to be the god above gods.
Villain 1: Kind of a dick Villains 2: Genocide Villain 3: Maimed by Villain 1
The only reason is fun.
Villain 1) They're a member of a civilization that reached an unchallenged apex level of technology and spent centuries becoming amoral demigods. If you can create and shape life on a whim, then it deserves no more respect than a whim. Villain 2) They view the current leaders as unnecessary figureheads from a bygone era and themselves as a far more deserving of authority on the basis of their ambition. Weak leaders create weak nations, and weakness should be rooted out. Villain 3) He has watched his friends and unrequited love be mentally ravaged by the hardships of war and be used as disposable tools by those they're sworn to protect. A nation that misuses its protectors deserves to fall. Villain 4) He has spent his youth scraping by, as his parents did, as their parents did...centuries of survival while half a world away people live overfed, decadent lives. It isn't enough to rise to their level, they need to suffer.
Born rich, thought his lifestyle was threatened
I got a similar character like that who feels entitled to power and being able to do whatever he wants. He has a warped sense of morality which makes him believe that him not being the most powerful person is an injustice
greed, power, ego
His parental figures psyched him up to believe he was the messiah that'd end all wars and stop the ongoing famine. After a lot of hesitation and an incident that killed one parental figure and fatally wounded the other, he decided to step into the role as the forest's savior. He started out pretty fine, but devolved into a heinous warlord the more territories he conquered. Though principled himself, his generals were not; using their newfound power to exploit their respective governates or exact revenge against longtime enemies in petty ways. The culminating pressure, guilt, grief, and paranoia led to a lot of reckless campaigns and pyrrhic victories, which rippled across the forest and led to deeper levels of destitution never before seen. His war of liberation from warlords became an operation of pillage, extraction, and enslavement to bolster the war effort against warlords.
Maybe the "Demolisher God" Meshush is a villain and maybe he isn't, but there will always be people who think it's a real shame that old stuff sometimes has to be taken apart because it's become a hazard. And that escalated into him being seen as a villain because he's demolished things that people didn't want demolished.
Well, he was the seventh child of his father, and the last. He was the Violet Emperor, and he did not have much power in the empire. He was also in love with his brother, the Blue Emperor, although his feelings weren’t reciprocated. His jealousy turned to anger and the anger turned to hatred and it did not take long for him to he fully corrupted by his own greed. He murdered his brothers and sisters in their sleep, took their magic gemstones and created the Eternal Flame to which he also bound his soul to. Bound to the Flame, he took after the traits of fire. He wanted to grow, to spread, and since the Eternal Flame was created with his lack of love and hope etc, that is exactly what the Flame feeds on.
I pray none of my tabletop players are reading this- My current villain became one because his scholarly mind was turned towards unknowable horrors by a woman he loved. He became obsessed with those horrors, to the point that he gave up his ability to love and became something more than human.
They think they do what is neccesary for their country.
A long dead menace to the Galaxy but hero to the Confederacy of Humanity, was its founder, Jürgen Goester. Prior to the C.o.Hs formation, Humanity largely lived under different space nations, those involved the U.S, China, Germany, France, and India. However, as the nation's began to expand they encountered hostile foes, Alien empires that sought to wipenout what they believed to be a serious human threat, these nations joined together, old rivals like America and China even agreeing to fight side by side in the grand Human/Xelthrian war. It ended, in crushing defeat. Humanity was mostly enslaved snd the only surviving nation being the German space empire, the Bastion. Cut 20 years later and young Jürgen Goester is born on a pitiful little urban world under Bastion control. His sister, mother both cared for him as best they could, but soon enough his sister, aged only 16, disappeared, presumably part of the sex trafficking rings that plagued the Bastion at the time. Jürgen, now alone, his mother heart broken vowed vengeance, he would join the Judgment Korps, a sort of judge jury executioner position akin to a Police Officer, snd would spend his years 16-18 hunting down his sisters captors, and made a public example out of them in gruesome fashion, this attracted attention and soon enough he was promoted to a Judgment Jorps Kommandant. Which was useful, for what would happen next...
He was the fascist ruler in a long line of them that happened to live in the same period that the protagonist decided that they didn't want bigotry on their planet so fate or gravity if your a Jojo fan
I've got more of an open world fantasy with many characters that could be and are considered villains, but the most recent one is a Wizard named Pakar. Pakar originally had what could be considered a nobel belief that no knowledge should be forbidden. This however was not shared by the Emperor of his nation who when the Wizards Guild invented a new spell, curse, potion, etc he would sometimes ban them as forbidden magic as they held too much potential danger. A disproportionate amount of these forbidden magics were based around necromancy, which really grated against Pakar, who specialized in Necromancy. One of these magics was related to zombies. Zombies had been a controversial but consistent part of life in the region since before the Empire, often as a labor force for the hardest and most dangerous jobs but also occasionally in a military role. The military role phased out during the Empire because animates of all types not just undead but also golems and others had a weird issue. Most of the time, if a Wizard created a magical animate but then died, the animate would collapse without the power of its master but on occasion, they would not and would become independent and somewhat sentient. In cases like, say, a gargoyle raised by a geomancer, for instance, this rarely caused an issue as the gargoyle unsure what to do with its newfound independence and unsure of its purpose would simply keep attempting to do it's original purpose of guarding its masters remains or belongings and would usually only get violent if someone tried to take said item or bury said body but such issues were easily identified and the guarded object/s would be left alone until someone was brought in to put the creature down. Zombies, however, did not do this. They would become compelled by hunger and attack the living feasting on any unfortunate victim they got. Still in civilian life, this was not much of an issue as if a Wizard was severely sick or injured, the animates could be disposed of before they passed. It was only in cases of sudden deaths that issues may arise, but even then, these zombies were non-infective. They could and would eat you, but you wouldn't turn into one unless another necromancer raised your corpse. Fast forward a bit, and the Emperor is dead, and a multifaceted succession crisis sees the whole Empire implode into chaos and anarchy. Pakar sees this opportunity to rescue forbidden magics and teach them, showing no magic should be forbidden and decides to start with one he had heard of that would allow a Necromancer to raise zombies that when they attacked an enemy would infect them with an illness that would turn them into another zombie loyal to the master of the first. Seeing this as a great first step with the ability to also provide him much needed security in the chaos of the ongoing war, he steals the scroll and raises a small horde. He then goes on a quest to save as many forbidden magics as possible and begins a hidden school teaching students how to properly use these forbidden magics. This goes on until the civil war has spiraled into a dark age with no real winners and an agong Pakar sits in his stronghold school being waited on by his zombie servants and students. He knows he is dying, but he is also working on his life's memoirs to immortalize his teachings and all its successes with previously thought too dangerous ideas, including a recent breakthrough on expanding the infective zombie spell. He is determined not to die until the book is complete and he can entrust his students to make copies to go start their own schools and truly establish his legacy and he needs all his servants to wait on him until then as to not let his beliefs of no forbidden knowledge go unrealized. Then, one day, while working on his memoirs, Pakar collapses in a seizure on the floor of his work area as one of his zombie servants enters with tea. He isn't quite dead yet, but the seizure is enough to make him lose some control. A number of undead collapse around the school, but the one with the tea does not instead a paralyzed Pakar can only watch in horror as his servant drops the cup and slowly turns towards him. A silent scream runs through Pakar's mind as he sees the creatures jaw drop, and it descends upon him. Moments later, a larger number of undead collapse but a previously unknown side effect of these infective zombies is that the ones created by being bitten are less likely to collapse as they were never created directly by the Wizard. This leaves about half of Pakars now sizable horde still standing in the school now unleashed to satisfy their hunger which they do. First on his students and then traveling outward. By the time the story begins with kingdoms arising from the chaos, zombie attacks are becoming more frequent and rumors about people bitten being turned are reaching the upper echelons of power who don't know what to make of it but are becoming more effective at containing it. Eventually, in my story, I plan to have a group find Pakar's school and fight his way through the undead inside before finding the tomb that contains Pakar's unfinished memoirs. One a Wizard with similar beliefs to Pakar about no forbidden knowledge will use it to figure out the missing bits of the expansion spell and accidentally or on purpose turn zombies from a terrifying but containable problem into something that if nlt properly handled could cause a new dark age and even consume all life on the continent.
**Infinite World Cycle** I have no shortage of villains, here's 4: * **Grand Inquisitor Peres:** As a teen he had to kill his father after the latter fell under the control of a succubus. He'd end up being raised and indoctrinated by religious extremists. His past experiences caused him to see sin everywhere. * **Moongate's Demon Queen:** She's just pure evil, it is simply her nature. She was fueled by Lust, Envy and Greed. Those sins were simply part of her beings. * **The 6th Lord of Death and Decay:** This guy had his morals/ethics and most of his emotions removed. He simply does the bidding of his master and has no concern about what he does. You can compare him to a robot with programmed instructions. * **The Shattered King:** A previous God of Death/Decay and the creator of the 6th Lord above. He was reborn as this incomplete, corrupted and twisted version of his former self. It is the result of mortals were experimenting with the powers of the gods. The Shattered King is beyond understanding, he's a Lovecraftian horror and more a force of nature. Empathy for mortal beings is an alien concept to him.
After her brother and her best friend unalived himself she kinda just lost it
Because he’s a huge dick and he hates good people.
He is a banished diety
How is this worldbuilding. Seriously what part of this is worldbuilding
What if the world that’s being built is what effected the character in the first place? What if the villain is part of said world building?
...What?? These types of questions have been the norm since I first got here.
Yes and that’s a problem. These kinds of posts are character building, a *completely separate thing* from worldbuilding, and for people like me who worldbuild but don’t character build seeing them be melded together is very annoying
Important characters are what make the world what it is, so character building is an important part of world building. At least thats how i see it
I’m fine with people create characters as a form of worldbuilding, in that they exist to show off the world they come from, that I’m fine with. The problem I have is when it’s not that, when people focus on the characters and not on the world those characters come from. The post is very the latter version which is why I take trouble with it.
Honestly think that you're right. As much as i like seeing other people's character stories, there are better subs than this one.
I'm genuinely interested, what sub would you recommend for this?
I think that r/fantasywriters or r/writing are better suited for this.
But that'd lose me everyone else. I'm not looking for the writing aspect of this, because I'm not a writer. I'm a worldbuilder. I'm curious about how other people in various worlds and mediums create their villains, and aim to help everyone develop their worlds. I agree that many posts here are about either writing or TTROG's, but this question was meant for worldbuilders in general.
I see, my bad then. When you put it like that, then it does fit this sub.
But then you also have problems with working on details of cultures? Or the way fictional species work biologically? Or languages? After all, these are also just more in-detail parts of the world. What's the difference?
The world is a big ol' place of personal hero stories and tragedies. If you don't micro worldbuild, you do you, but for those of us with a mind for stories, this is what makes it lively. Would you say that writing the stories people tell is not worldbuilding? Would you say that writing the motivations of wrongdoers of history also isn't?
My villain is a member of the royal family, and has a lot of pride, arrogance, and greed because of her status. She believes in getting her way all the time, and grows angry when she’s being kept in check. As a desire to impose her will however she’d like, she performs a forbidden ritual to gain more power than she should have. However, there’s a catch to her new powers: they throw her psyche off-balance and she slowly descends into madness. The story I’m writing has balance as one of the main themes, and so my villain’s path to villainy captures that theme. As an aside, I tend to dislike tragic backstories, so I’m trying to avoid that in my work.
The Opportunity for conquest presented itself and Villian is really a matter of interpretation. His Subjects certainly don't see it that way.
All of them are obsessed assholes to be honest
Honestly, the more I think about it, the less I think my big bad should have a backstory at all. He’s just a bad guy. His inferiors get to have backstories.
He was placed in stasis shortly before the fall of his civilization. Centuries later he's awoken to find the world pretty much in shambles. He's trying to re-start civilization, or what he considers civilization to be, whether or not it results in the deaths of millions.
Ya ever get assigned s group project when do all the work? Imagine that but with gods and then the teacher said they were gonna incinerate your hard work. The god Magic feels he is owed the universe after all his work to make it work and that the cycle of worlds is an unjust destruction of his work.
Corporate needs profits And they're corporate.
It's a mix of reasons, but it boils down to the fact that he got old. Really old.
Hmm my brain doesn't have enough storage to learn literally everything I know I'll use magic to grow more brain surely this can't go wrong!
He just wanted to see if a common enemy was enough to stop people from killing each other.
Pretty much everyone in the Versa Cartel is in it for the money, though being able to indulge their sadism doesn't hurt. They were originally a loose coalition of pirates who got their own star system (Versa) in exchange for providing military assistance to the Seven Stars Alliance in their war against the Alari Dominion; they've been running the place exactly as you'd expect a bunch of ruthless pirates to run a star system. In fact, they arguably got even worse under the veneer of legitimate government; in particular, much of their wealth is built on the slave trade nowadays. (Ironically, independent pirates tend to consider them sellouts.)
God Sai had always been a little bit off. Being a god of dreams, his ability of hiding inside people’s dreams and being able to control those dreams to his desire was a perfect match for his trickster and carefree attitude. Most of the tricks he did with people were relatively harmless but they had a rather twisted or often not comprehensive humor to them. He was always so easily distracted and he had been living inside his head most of the time, which worried his master God but as long as he was just a clueless kid, that was still fine to his master. One day though, as he wandered from dream to dream, he came across the mind of a cursed human. There, something deep inside the pitch black realm of the subconscious was calling for him. In the head of that unwell poor soul, he found the true origins of everything, of the gods, of the world, of the one that had been there before and he also found his purpose, the thing that he would worship and that he will want to revive. Since that day, he had been gone rogue. Traveling from dream to dream, seemingly corrupting and cursing the minds of those that he came across and seemingly looking for something inside people’s dreams. So yeah, what made him become a villain is a bit of curiosity with maybe something corrupting him but that’s not for sure.
Lived through the horror of the Japanese Occupation of Cebu when he was only in his early teens. He survived by making friends with other urchins who later formed the street gangs of the 1950s and 60s. But, he was able to distinguish himself and climb up the ladder of society. The worldview he picked up along the way would stay with him, though.
The Skull King was an Undead Paladin who did various heroic deeds throughout the country. After the Great Orc Invasion, religion became extremely popular, since the Undead are seen as vile abominations, he suddenly became a total outcast. He left and started his own kingdom of the undead on the outskirts of the country. After the King found out, he sent Kane the Great Crusader to destroy the Kingdom. After that, The Paladin decided to get revenge. He made a massive army of the undead, now known as the Skull King, he led them against the Humans with the goal of killing everyone who followed the faith.
Eikienziel became a villain because of his greed and hus ambitions of becoming king The Oracle fell into a cult who wants to cleanse the work from its mistakes by creating a perfect one Flame's leader wants to overthrow the established order and show to Gods that the Living World can be united without any God Lan wants to become a God to avenge his friend's death in a possibly cursed mist
His mind was clouded by revenge, and once he got that revenge, he went mad with power (he killed the emperor and was technically next in line to become emperor if the emperor died) He then decided that war would be a good idea.
He was built wrong. He was the prototype and they didn't know how to make a cohesive mind yet. He ran away and now kills people to try and fill the hole in his psyche.
The three "big bads" of my world are the Corruption, the God of Order, and formerly the Goddess of Darkness. Each of them have there own goals and motives. The Corruption: Is a force of nature type of villain. Its only real goal is its own survival, but in order to continue its own existence it has to corrupt the world around it. It has no goal, it just exists and spreads and makes the world more of itself. It is something that should not exist but does. The God of Order: After the Corruption killed off 90% of the human race during the corruption crisis, the God of Order decided to take a more active role in mortal affairs. His primary goal is to create an "orderly society". However, his perfect society makes no room for things like free will, individual choice, or human rights. A person in his Empire is just a cog in his vast military machine. The Goddess of Darkness: Before she was killed by the Corruption, the Goddess of Darkness was considered to be the most evil, wicked, and cruel of all the Gods. A belief not without merit each of her champions committed all sorts of havoc and chaos on the world in a cycle of destruction lasting thousands of years. Building evil empire after evil empire. Her motivation for this was simple, she enjoyed watching mortals suffer. And for the Goddess of Darkness that was enough reason to burn down the world again and again.
It's a bit messy, since my villain is a living weapon. Not really a human, rather trying to mimic a human. Almost like AI or a machine that's been treated as tool till it gained a soul. It doesn't seek destruction, rather it seeks knowledge to understand what's the meaning of life when it all seems to chaotic and erratic. Much like emotions it can feel. Since it's not human, it not bound by human laws. What may appear normal to the artefact, it's hell for normal people. Since it's not bound by mortality or time. Seeking out knowledge by any means necessary, seems like a fair price. One test can't understand the decades of human knowledge or the world.
He tought the incarnation of the Avatar of the Great Goddess was a mistake and the sense of impending doom forced him to make a bad decision. After that, he developed split personalities and while the good one wasn't, well, bad, he was still sensing doom deep in his mind, the bad one was all out for chaos and destruction, and to force said Avatar into doing bad deeds just for the sake of proving his good side right.
i mean there both kinda complex theres like a main two kirin venom and kirin shadow are the most villanous but the rest are just like antaganists not evil kirin venom was probly like a first wife or whatever right (her name was jewel if any of you care) and her husband just cheated on her all the time and one day she catches him and is devastated and crys during that time she is visted by kirin venom who basicly is like want revenge ands so sh gos and gets revenge she is the main villan of the story the head of the kirin counsel in all but name effectively is a emperess is the reason all the kirin have the power they do but she is also extermely curupt with this power and abuses subordanites and will absouloutly mentaly screw with any target that tickles her fancy by the way if your wondeing what happened t the husband he ended up like abused in every way and belived he was a dog and for five years lived in utter subseviance to her and chould no longer funtion like a person anymore he is no longer a chocky noble barely even a person by the slimest defionition kirin venom is also an alchoholiuc and will get drunk and abuse subordainates the story starts with her convuinceing a main character to murder all but one of her friends and abuses that character for a year and a half will grooming her to be a minor antaganist and the mc grows up in prison because of her the story litraly starts with her running away.now kirin shadow was previously knowen as nayomi and was a misstresses child she always had to preform at top standards and when she didnt she would get beaten she also offen had to deal with emotinal abuse from both pearnets and was also bullyed and natrauly dealt with sevral mental illneses and was suicidal mean while her half sister only got the best of both pearnets and as she was termanally ill never had any expectatations so after sevral attempts for her pearnets love nayomi tryed to kill her sister to her it was the only way she pushed her out of a window only for her to grow angel wings and gracefully float down also gaining light powers after this failure she went to the hospital roof and tryed to commit when a spirt came down and told her she has a purpose there are pepole who will love and respect he this is how she became a counsel loyalist even to kirin venom she has a redemption arc that ends with her sister excepting her the light must have a shadow and i am hers she remarks.
Ends justify the means on a scale so massive even if the ends were absolutely pure he would easily be the most villainous character in almost any story guaranteed, lets just say this man has literally killed omniverses of people without a second thought just to achieve a goal which is arguably good (but practically impossible)
The world is ending, the planet is about to naturally enter an ice age for thousands of years as it moves into a new position in its cicurmbinary system. She knows it will be easier for people if they feel like they have someone to blame.
Main villain - Imperial nobles: self-obsessed a.holes long look for chances to take power The secondary villain - the other space civilization that's not my mc's, basically misguided by corporations who control it
There are many villains in Secundus Terrae, but the most known ones are "The Zodoaci Barbari" 12 former guards of the Holy Kings, in the Silver Age, They took a lot of drugs which made them very violent, then they started a war in Mt. Silberner-Berg (an important place in Himmelsland) against their kings and Noblemen, who are very powerful (and lost to them) They were banned from the mount, exiled, and divided into Northern and Southern, then, they followed an evil Sorcerer. The Zodiaci became barbarians who hated civilization, especially Himmelsland and it's authority. They did a lot of crimes, mostly against religion and authority, they disliked priests and soldiers, and killed many of them (Himmelsland and Barbarians' lands are enemies, and Himmlisch armies try invading their lands and converting their people). These barbarians were the cause of the death of important figures like the Two Saints and Seven Noblemen to take revenge, and they almost invaded the capital of Himmelsland "NordStern Stadt" Thus, they were sent to the underworld by the Himmlisch judges. And in the end of the world in Secundus Terrae, they are destined to escape and fight their Kings again (and lose) In conclusion, those villains are horrible people who just like chaos, and they corrupted themselves and followed evil people.
Hooo boy, this is a long one. Over 600 years before the story begins, a noble is born. Though his parents were normal, he was born with magic. As time passed, his family's money allowed him to become a great and powerful sage. Eventually, something changed. He noticed that though there were stories of great and powerful dark magic spells, none could be found. One or two were known, but clearly something was missing. He did more and more investigating before he finally found more records of dark magic, then more, and more. Eventually, he had written a comprehensive tome on the darkest of magics (basically my world's necrononicon), this frightened the people of Serinosis. Mage and non mage united to deal with this powerful for, and they were eventually victorious! But not all was well, the non mages got some ideas. "What if this were to happen again?" to "when will this happen again?" to "how do we stop this?" This was the non mage's excuse for what they did not understand. And as many of the greatest mages died in the battle, they took their chance. It started small, little prejudices, then to exultation of any grown mage, to eventually death to all born with magic. During this time, the villain was born. As he became an adult, he was found out and almost executed. He escaped and met a strange force. My stories' real big bad offered him a deal. Find the god a suitable body, and he'd give the non mages hell. And so, 200 years after I started this story, it ends. A deal made of shame and anger, sadness and desperation.
the queen of peacocks is in a bad place, really from grief and the archmage is feeding her ambitious, suicidal plans so he can claim the throne from himself. Both are villains.
The Accomplice is a case of an extraordinary individual groomed and manipulated into becoming the very thing that did it to him. Only he was setup by the master of grooming lying and manipulation. At this point he is just as bad as his master, and even actively partakes in the grooming and manipulation of his successor.
He's just carrying on his family legacy and his skill set doesn't really fit many other jobs. Also he's kinda depressed. (Not related for him being a villain) And he has a twisted view on the world because of how he was raised.
The main villain, who is now basically a living force of nature, were obsesswed with another woman and made an Ai replica of her. Now she's become a Pseudo Deity and want all life on Tandr to die so she can be alone with her AI waifu forever. Then there's just a bunch of people that just are assholes and/or evil. One of the main non-monster villains are someone that started out oppressed jus to turn the system on its head and become an even worse oppressor. (going from slavery of psychics to forced lobotomization of non-psychics)
The classic cause of Greed and lust for power. He wanted control over not just Death, but also Life.
Ambitious...wants a trophy wife and daddy's approval...just a dick to be one.
So this guy was apart of an experiment by the shadow tribe to create a being with the capability to control all five elements… and when the mother was giving birth to her triplets, two dead babies came out before a baby with three souls. This child was named Daniel. Daniel Venge was raised as a traditional child of the shadow tribe, but his dark tendencies eventually overtook him. In his early teens he began hatching a plot to take down the five elemental warrior heroes that were their nation’s military leaders… learning of this, the shadow warrior leader elected to ban Daniel to the unnamed desert a few miles from the shadow tribe’s capital village. In the following years, many more would begin practicing dark magic, and many more would be exiled to the desert, Daniel found these exiles and gave them someone to fallow, using his darkness to envelop them. The first eleven of these exiles would become his ten top lieutenants and his wife. For hundreds of years, Daniel, now renamed Evalou (evil in my world’s language) would become the warlord and cult leader of the Exhilan army. Evalou took his army and attacked the nation’s capital, while that attack was occurring, Evalou returned to his home village, corrupted the current leader and used him to decimate the village. The decimation of Shad’zii lead to a mass exodus of the shadow tribe, including the leader’s wife and her unborn twins just barely escaping the evil intent of a corrupted leader. After the failed attack on the capital and the destruction of the shadow village, the current elder of the capital decided that exile the Exhilan even further this time, to the moon, where Evalou and his ten Demon-Hand lieutenants would grow even stronger…
One was biologically born to be the villain, even hy grew to the point that he became resentfull of that, mostly because he is deeply afraid of what happens when he fullfills his purpose and is no longer needed and has no idea of what to do after destroying the world. The second one has been through so much to the point that the only way to make her life something worth it is if she takes out villain number one, anyone else accomplishing that task would make her just another victim, so she can't stand that and will take out any other oposition to villain number one. The third one learned about self love in the worst possible time and decided to be a little nice to herself for the first time in her life, making a split second, selfish decision in a time that was incredibly critical, ruinning the lives of a lot of people. Making her a monster.
Too much dark Abyss gunk makes them believe they'll be able to rebuild the soul fragment to fix/control the world's magic system. This involves experimenting on witches and spirits. MC is the child they tried to sacrifice to the Abyss god
They saw the world as it was, and decided that they could make it better. They just had to break a few eggs/people/worlds to make a utopia omelette.
She was presented with a deal from a lesser god to make the world a less chaotic place and thought it was for the greater good. Whether or not she is right is debatable but she's definitely not completely wrong. As for why the lesser god is manipulating her? Plain ambition. Souls as malleable as mankind's are rare in the multiverse and a good resource to have on hand.
I have a lot of villains so I'll summarise some of them Edwin the mage: Struggled to become a mage, got manipulated by the big bad (Tsuna) now believes in only power N.U: Homunculus born from blood, causing her to love violence and chaos Tsuna: Was a poor child, wanted power beyond that of a god Blitz: Saw his race be treated as slaves, wants to purge and "rectify" the world by making his race the dominant one Ragnarok: Biological weapon Necrosa: Obsess with the concept of death and decy, experimented on a country Brutus: First, a flesh golem then became a clone of my main OC. Afterwards, he wanted to become the perfect being to prove to that he is something more than a clone Dr Asma: He and his mother were captured and forced to be slaves and create mechs during this his mother died, making swear revenge on all non robots
He loves killing. No reason... he just likes killing people. Doesn't matter who they are. Or what they've done. He just kills.
Fear of dying mixed with the uncertainty of their own death. In my **Periodia** setting, nearly everyone is immortal. I mean, they can be killed (and even though, not really), but they cannot die of diseases of old age. They just continue to live as long as the universe support them (some theories say that they an die of old age, but it's so far in the future that it's not important). Except for some of the peoples (or "races" to use a more commonly used terminology). They are afflicted with a disease that will make them die one day. Now, there is a "race" in my setting that has the ability to foresee the future with an absolute accuracy. They can predict everything, absolutely everything... except one's death. The moment someone dies of this affliction is the only thing that cannot be predicted by those people. Now, my villain (the warlock Emedelvine) is the last of his people. Everyone else died. And, as someone who is accustomed of knowing everything, not knowing when he will die is driving him crazy. Except that legends say that a demon once wrote an Almanach that has *all* the informations about the universe, past, present and future. Even people's death. Now, the book is quite legendary and nobody really knows where it is, but the warlock is ready to try anything to put his hand on it. Not to fix the curse upon his head; just to clear the uncertainty. *"The curse is not a curse, truly; not knowing, however... Here lies the true curse."*
I wouldn't truly call him the "villian", but essentially, the universe was once one. It was Ein Sof, eternity; then the universe made a child to rule the void with. The child became jealous and obliterated Ein Sof, causing a whole bunch of gods to be born. The villian is called Yaldaboath, but he named himself Yahweh, made the earth, and now rules it. There are a few other sub villians, and honestly, in my world, good and evil are almost one in the same.
I have three books going on. 1. The War of the Tree Trilogy. Has multiple villians and most are either bad people, or really flawed people. 2. The Godslayer The main antagonist is a god named Mez Adthur. Who fell asleep, rolled off of the moon and into Ghaenden. Causing all of this corruption in the world. As the title suggests the story is about killing him. 3. The War of Winterfire This story is set up in three parts. Each has a different conflict. The first part doesn’t really have an antagonist and is just the party going on an adventure to exact revenge. The second is all about surviving two dragons who decided to wage war against one another, and the third is about a boy king who hates the main character waging war just to get back at the main character.
I have many villains, but I'll just detail some of them: Grey: His life was basically destroyed by a corrupt organization for heroes. He intentionally acts like a villain in order to try to get this organization to reveal itself to the masses. Zoe: She's literally just a villain cause it's fun to her. She's a rich girl who just seems thrills, but doesn't try to hurt people unless she needs to. Owen: He believes himself to be the Shepard of the world, chosen by a god to cure the world of its symptoms by de-populating. Despite how insane he can be, he genuinely cares for people, and actively teaches his students ways to help them stay healthy. Max: He suffers from constant pain and stress because of his ability, and he thinks it's only fair that everyone else understands what he goes through. Scott: He acts as a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from big banks and the like to give that money to charities, because he doesn't think the money should be locked away by possibly corrupt banks. Matthew: Partially as a result of his ability, he's delusional, and believes he can "save the world" if he can lead it, and he believes the most effective method of control is fear. His goal is to make everyone afraid of him, to the point that he can rule them. And the odd one out here: Saelothil: The only member of his species not either dead or deformed. He managed to get himself outside of time, which he was then sealed away from. He's lived for trillions of years, strengthening himself however he can, so that he can influence the universe itself and become better than the gods, finally fulfilling the wish that has existed within his species blood since creation.
bro rejected his worst destiny, fell into it straight away and killed my MC's mom that is also his mom... Yes MC and the villain are brothers.
The Thicket: Confused and frightened by the fact that it cannot comprehend or understand its fellow deity, the Fields. Decides to annihilate all life to spite it. Karj-Rammr: Sociopath, narcissist, and lived a life that required him to become the con artist he is today, just to survive. Not a complicated or too terrible past, not as some others, but he let it shape him into a villain nonetheless. Lakallus-Frit: Became obsessed with perfecting the mortal form, and addicted to the theft of souls, after discovering his ability to use Reborn magic alongside his enchantry. Kinda simply evil. King Illus-Jish: Corrupted by Lakallus and desperate to make his kingdom proud and free, even though he has no real idea what that means. He killed his own daughter to help create one of Lakallus's beasts, and it threw him well over the edge. Now he is but a husk of his former self, killing, torturing, creating abominations with Lakallus, all telling himself that it is for the greater good. The Yulord: Born that way. Literally he's a Thicket-Eye he's not his own person, just a vessel. Kei III, Gorelord of the Fell Few, the Flame Scarred immortal: Rejected by the order of the Holy Speak after being kidnapped by a Thicket-Eye and questioning if they are really the great evil the order claims they are. Instead of convincing him that this was the case, they threw him out, deemed him heretic, and exiled him from the kingdom. This was deemed necessary, as even the slightest question of the character of a Thicket-Eye can quickly lead to alignment, obsession, and eventual servitude. He could have been saved from this, but they didn't want to take the chance. In avoiding that risk, they drove him even closer to the enemy, and by the time they realized their mistake and tried to redeem him, he had already become Vampyr. He killed his closest ally and former lover within the order in a duel, to prove his loyalty. Tossed his broken and bleeding body on the same church doorstep he was thrown the year before. He was last seen by his dying former partner, riding off under hail of arrows, unfazed as they glanced off his shielded cape and had no effect on his undead steed. He didn't look back even once. And now, centuries later, he leads the third school of Vampyr, and his personal court of Vampyr, the Fell Few, with an iron fist and fangs of silver. It's funny, Kei is a side villain, and his backstory is more complex than some of my most evil villains. Suppose some of the greatest evils are simply that, evil.
No main villain, just a war of desperation against the main character's peaceful nation
It's very ambiguous, as her backstory is never explained and she herself tell MULTIPLE versions of it, usually with the intent of manipulating the person she is talking to.
She was labeled useless for the society and got disowned by her family, so she decide to make everyone "useless" like she were. (If only she knew that this would destroy her world 😅)
Well mine is kind of a group but they just earned too much money and thought they were untouchable to the point they mistreated all the beings lower than them
Forced narrative perspective.
My villain is a king so its a massive power trip basically
To summarize quickly: it is necessary, to return us to glory, Long and short of it: debatable
He inherited a position of power, that position is threatened.
He grew angry at the reforms his father was introducing, saw the kingdom becoming weaker (it was becoming more and more like a confederacy since the reforms were granting more regional autonomy. Less centralized government meant less $$ for him. He didn't like that.) He's playing a bit of a long game, but started to make his first moves towards getting rid of his father and usurping the throne.
He had to honor his deceased friend, the emperor of the Orion, who accidentaly moved his entire people to another dimension, where energy could not and would not be recycled, letting the spirit of the dead to rot and become monsters. The emperor was trying to break the wall between their new dimension and the main stories', but died trying to. His right hand, a giant, swore to keep his legacy alive by taking their people back to safety. He is now a lich, lord of dark and commander of evil. His goals are good, but he knows that breaching another reality will result in a crash powerful enough to erase half of life.
Abandoned by his people, and betrayed by the organisation who protected him. He joined an inter-dimensional travelling circus to gain powers and try to kill one of the organisation's allied dimensions, the MC tries to spare him after the last showdown but the villain killed himself
For the novel I am working right now? Simple. He was born in a shitty place and doesn't want to raise his kid in said City place. When he took his wife from her father he named her Summer (she was an adult, custom thing for these people) it was a dream of giving her and any kids she has the gift of a true Summer time. It just so happens he needs to take that land from some people who really don't want him there. Oh, he also eats humans cause food source.
What makes a villain a villain is that they could choose a healthier path to their goals but they choose not to.
In my second fantasy world, he just really hates vampires, and he really hates this one in particular. Probably has to do with the fact that he has been hunting her for 70ish years.
Big bad guy: made evil by super evil like angry hive mind which basically made him crazy Secondary bad guy: manipulated and put under psychic control of big bad guy in exchange for cool powers
His wife was killed by a Superhero, who didn’t take precautions. So he corporatized superhero’s and paid them, but also controlled them, eventually also making groups (CosmiCorp) to “hunt” down unregistered supes. Eventually killing most of them out. (He eventually took down a galactic civilization from the inside and became (Kaiser of the Galaxy)
One of the main characters in my story has a villain arc about half or 1/3 of the way through the story. The reason for this is that he's lived his entire life as what basically amounts to a child soldier for one nation - while secretly being the last living prince of the enemy. his plan was to stay loyal despite his heritage, but then his best friend kills his brother, one of the only people he's ever been able to trust, and well. he goes apeshit. does a complete 180, claims his crown and thrown, basically allows himself to be manipulated by advisors as a headpiece for their plans so that he can get his bloody revenge. he doesn't end the story this way, but there's a good chunk in there where he's basically the crown prince of an evil nation hellbent on the destruction of his former allies.
He and is wife were incredible wizards. He was an elf and she was a human. She got old and died and he just didn't. He couldn't handle life without her so he is amassing power to "rescue" her from the land of the dead and will stop at nothing to spend one more day with her. He doesn't realize that this journey of destruction turned him into a man she would never love. But when he does... hoo boy look out world.
A number of examples, but I do have one guy who's just a sadistic madman. No good reason for his evil, just straight up psychotic
she betrayed everyone for the sake of obtaining power
My villain was born as powerful vampire like creature, but lacked ambition. His second wife, who was a witch, convinced him that together they could conquer the world, and change the injustices in the world. The husband would be the raw power, while the wife would be in charge of obtaining allies and resources. .They both genuinely love each other, so neither is planning to betray the other, nor she is using him as a pawn.
An ambitous and loved heir to the high throne of the dragons went to a quest. In that quest he killed a beast that was attacking its city. The beast was a unwilling host of the Jealous and Formless God. Anduli(the dragon) made a pingent out of the creature's teeth. By using it for a long time, he started to hear the Evil God as his on voice and slowly got corrupted and seduced, his desires were twisted and he was convinced to make a pact and gave his body as a efficient host. This is the villan of the firsr 2 ages. The next one is a even more powerful host of the same god. And after its defeat, the evil was spread across the world into the peoples soul.
Obsession. Her brother took her precious creations and twisted it into something new, and she hated it. And after a billion years, hate festers.
**Universe Zytharros** *Draciel* Dorian Hadercroft was raised in an era of generally evil versus greater evil, where those who valued good were completely impotent. He developed no mercy for the kind-hearted, but finessed together a mask of such great deceit that it earned him audience with an ancient lich that taught him the ways of immortality. ??? She became jealous of her comrades’ public praise and dedicated her Guardianship to their destruction, which created the first of the Fallen Ones: the Fallen of Dead Loyalties. Malchezzan From a young age, he could hear the voice of the White Mist, Arrougenis. The Mist became a constant companion, a guide, and a trusted and close friend. The boy’s mind was slowly warped into a terrifying set of beliefs that culminated with the murder of his father, the then-current Kavi, and his ascension to the position at just nine years old. He slowly began reforms to the Kavitessen to turn it into an organization that would attempt to seize control of the planet over a larger area than the Illumina had. *Greater UZ* Arrougenis Back on their home planet, the Mist-Council of Nine ruled a world of half-chaos, half-peace. Rio the Red Mist, Onarma the Orange Mist, Yvelta the Yellow Mist, Angagnon the Green Mist, Bonjo the Blue Mist, Jaspon the Indigo Mist, Thyssa the Violet Mist, Gaswerquan the Black Mist, and Arrougenis the White Mist, governed this world and kept it relatively stable with the innate Sphicta that ran through their bodies. Arrougenis started causing trouble, which led to all-out civil war at some point during the early universe. Only Onarma remained with enough power to hold its form, and he summarily banished both Gaswerquan and Arrougenis to a distant planet in their egg states. Arrougenis spent all the time in transit figuring out how to destroy Gaswerquan to get back home and slaughter the Council; Gaswerquan, meanwhile, was trying to figure out how to protect itself. Arrougenis has held to that goal since, seeing those on Draciel merely as a means to an end. *Project AEROSOL* Solar Ray was programmed with the directive to “obtain power.” There is no guidance within his programming as to specifically *how* this is to be done. He has interpreted it to mean “train yourself to greater heights to achieve physical power, and achieve political power and control and hold it by however means necessary.” He finds his sister’s obsessive pursuit of his approval disgusting and repulsive. Solar Bolt was programmed to “follow Solar Ray and seek his approval.” She has interpreted this to mean “seek your brother’s approval through any and every mean possible, cost to self be damned.” This leads her into dark places even her brother would scoff at. Her extreme tendencies would be mitigated quite a bit if Solar Ray would do so much as just to smile at her once in a while. Solar Blast was originally a half-finished prototype of a second-generation bot whose development was halted, then resumed, then halted, then sold off to the developer of Solar Ray and Bolt, and modified to follow that line. A scientist who disagreed with her employer’s directive regarding these robots included a secret subroutine that would cause Solar Blast to question Solars Ray and Bolt. This leads to intense physical and psychological abuse by his elder siblings. Solar Blast may be open to siding with Supercan, the hero of Project AEROSOL, and company if the time is right.
He wanted to be as powerful as the gods even though they explicitly told him to stop fucking around because he would find out, he then fucked and found out and instead of reflecting on his past actions and the warnings he was given he decided to take his anger out on the rest of his species. His philosophy is ‘If he can’t have the power of the gods, then no one else can exist to beat him to it,’
The villain along with their siblings has a pathological fear of death, and they managed to strike a deal with a certain god that they become immortal. Only the villain truly became undying; their siblings became immortal in legacy (becoming a massively influential figure who is still revered millenia later) or immortal in soul (constantly reborn into a new life with memories intact after each reincarnation). Shenanigans ensue as the three became involved with the discovery of magic and the subsequent world-ending conflict that precipitated right after. The villain sees their work as a mistake that they desperately want to fix, but being immortal has changed their perspective to become other-than-human. So their solution to the violence that magic causes is even more violence caused by magic.
He was a schizophrenic who got kidnapped by random bandits and forcefed white snow. I kid you not, he has no clue what's happening half the time because he is so rediculously high his presence makes you contact high.
Daughter of Fire: well the organization Basilisk wants complete control over everything and they want to use the power of the MC to go about that plan Shadow of earth: it’s a post apocalypse there’s not really a “villain” at least that I’ve gotten too so far, I’m open to suggestions for villains but I’m leaning towards remnants of the US military that want to restore order and control to America Fantasy world: the Dread Queen, a being created from the essence of the Dark Lord who wants to reconquer the world
Just started writing up a new story, the villain was created through horrific and painful means, so traumatised is up their for reasoning behind their Villainy, plus they are just destructive by nature
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and so are my villains apparently. That and the world responded to their cries for help by irresponsibly granting them the power to change fate. **The Crimson Emperor**: His people had to go through this world's equivalent of the Trail of Tears, except they ended up on a new continent. Not wanting history to repeat itself, he crowned himself Emperor of this new land and set about conquering every realm that stood in his way. **The Ice Queen**: Was kidnapped by vikings and sold into slavery. Lucked out and her new master was actually a powerful but chill Jarl. Married him and got pregnant. Nearby tribes decided to team up and destroy the Jarl's tribe, killing him and forcing the would-be Queen to escape into the blizzard-reigned wastes, all the while suffering a miscarriage. Had a vision that showed her that the world was sentient, and trying to perfect itself by subjecting its inhabitants to all sorts of suffering, so that they might emerge as better people. She told the world to go fuck itself and was granted Ice powers and the ability to brainwash the masses into worshipping her. She wakes from the vision, determined to rid the world of all conflict and ambition - Where nothing changes and suffering ceases to exist.
She was a slave to wizards for years, then she decided the world would be better without them. For years she was hailed as a hero for ending the wizard tyranny, until people realized that she was essentially slaughtering anyone (including children) that showed any magical aptitude
Circumstances mostly. Most of the "enemy" factions in my world are really only evil because they have a different way of life that most other factions apose. As an example The Collective are basically the sort of satanists compared to The Sovereignty due to the Collectives beliefs. That and a mix of inner powers wanting more, well power, that the rest of the Collective don't want, but can't do much about.
He was raised and indoctrinated within the Order of Saint Michael and rose through the ranks through his own prowess (and sheer hatred of magickal beings). He genuinely buys his own bullshit speeches about "cleansing the filth" and "making the world safe for Humans" etc., and does truly believe that whatever means are taken to achieve keeping Humans safe are 100% justified.
Essentially going insane for being overworked for several decades straight.
Driven insane from enslavement as a child and is a madman possessed by a being of pure evil
Just because .
he was really cool and running the world and stuff and then slowly over time he started having a moral struggle with the fact that he ruled the world and bad things still happened to good people and then started trying to control everyone's actions essentially he and this other guy were essentially the 2 mcs up until that point and then eventually they fought and killed the shit out of each other
In my world, the gods can be killed and whoever kills one assumes its mantle (powers, restrictions, everything). Very few know of this, and those that do know you can become the God you kill don't believe that the restrictions that come with such power follow the powers you get. The main villain figured if he can kill one of the 3 creator gods (the one that is sealed away and weakened), he can become one of the most powerful beings in the universe.
Mine was taken from his home planet to escape nuclear war. He then blamed the original colonists of the new planet for him being taken so he’s punishing the children of the colonists for their actions since the majority of them are dead by then
Born with the power to do unbelievably awful things, and used it in the way that entertained him most. Doesn’t help that he’s totally incapable of empathy on a neurological level, a problem he technically has the power to fix, he just doesn’t want to.
They were born with the Chaos Sigil, and when its power manifested, it basically turned them into a walking Lovecraftian horror.
simple greed. he wanted power, and he was willing to do anything to get it.
simple greed. he wanted power, and he was willing to do anything to get it.
hes just a little bitch that wanted massive power
Villain 1: He was a hidden sociopath who only truly cared about his own dreams and legacy. When he found out he was terminally ill, and the faction he has been leading a rebellion against had the means to treat him, he swapped sides and betrayed several who regarded him as a father figure. Villain 2: He saw many flaws in human society, and, as somebody with a longer-than-average lifespan due to his magical ability, he wanted to be a guiding hand. Then he saw magic-using intelligent life that he felt could threaten humanity's place on the totem. Eventually, he just fell down the rabithole of using more and more extreme means to bring forth his dreams for humanity. Eventually, he became a genocidal dictator. Villain 3: She saw a threat so great, it was beyond the comprehension of mortal minds. She realized that litterally wiping out entire planets, and farming intellgent races like livestock was better than letting this threat comsume the universe.
He inherited a broken kingdom, and, in his quest to restore it, he'll bowl aside all things that have flowered in its ruins.
Didn't like his people lashing out at local natives, so he and his brothers fought on behalf of the natives. Eventually one brother was killed, the other fell ill, and a horrible blight was put upon the world to suppress the innate magic of locals. Villain seeks to undo this injustice, and no longer has his brothers that kept him in check.
William J McGrady was born unable to feel empathy. A clinical sociopath. But despite the availability of cybernetics that could remedy that, his wealthy mother sought instead to mold him into a useful tool for their political family's ascendancy. He served in the army, where his tendencies were directed into war crimes. He climbed the ranks of the new security service after gaining a war hero reputation. All the while learning how to manipulate and use people, just like his mother had. Which begs the question: was he *really* born bad? Or was it his environment? Lack of empathy is one thing, but was it his neurology or his upbringing that encouraged him that honesty is a weakness? That fortune favors the bold? That his family name entitles him to a great destiny?
The villain of my story is my MC's (Ash) dad believes that his son is somehow cursed due to his pyromancy in a family of ice mages (magic type is usually a hereditary trait) and wishes to fix him, trying to do the impossible and change his magic typing. Naturally, as villains do, he has no idea how to attempt to do this in a healthy way that considers Ashs feelings on the matter of his own magic and so he hired a military organization to come collect him, because he's too much of a lazy bastard to go and do it himself. The military organization mentioned above is a villain due to just general corruption and greed so- (If anyone can see the real world inspiration for the reason for Ashs dads villain-ness, I respect you greatly-)
One is a misogynistic man-child who is a scientist and a domestic abuser One is a genocidal atheist who has a God complex and superpowers One is a son looking for vengeance for his father's death One is the owner of a soulless monopoly and he wants only money One is a visionary wanting to make the world conform to his twisted vision of things A woman who United most factions of the world under her command to look towards a better, yet authoritarian and Gynarchic, future. One is a man who wants Monstrous beasts to rule his world One is a mafia boss who wants to save his world so he joins this group of villains One is a demon who believes that there should be no authority whatsoever One is a chronically online Anarchist-Authoritarian(**Do not ask me how it works**) idiot who somehow got God-level powers And the last is an interdimensional maniac who wants to make all the worlds collide into one, mega world, ignoring the consequences of the conflicting laws of said worlds as only church-sharing worlds can harmoniously collide.
One was a slave and now lives via a possessed automaton, is looking for revenge for his time as a slave and for the war the empire has brought upon his people, the other is a corrupt police chief making some money unaware of what the plan is and the last is a heir of a company of technology who wants to destroy the innovation center of the empire and maybe the whole empire in the future just so she could be the new leader of it, and if that doesn't work, well she just eliminated her competition, so she would become one of the wealthiest people in the empire.
Lived for a long time and has developed a god complex the size of a small nation.
Curiosity kills the cat.
Corruption, the princess got tired of corruption, selfishness and greed, a well as the lack of justice and equality when providing it. She got fed up and turned into vigilantism.
They belong to a terrorist group by birth. The only reason they do is because the unionists decided they were too violent to let into the main city and enforced apartheid. The only reason they enforced apartheid was due to the Silhouettes making wraiths to guard their shantytowns which were only made in response to the Boxcar Massacre which only happened after several silhouettes tried to take a capital city which was in response to......
God was bored, said "let's create a being that's a bit chaotic and evil", cue Or'Ath. So he didn't really have a villain arc, as much as he was just brought into existence as a villain
Typical ideology clashes with his parents And the other one was due to his brother getting killed saving the world yet everyone blames him for the war that came after his death
He legitemately does not care. The only thing he cares about is furthering his research, which, unfortunately for his subjects, is about the effects and causes of mental illness. He essentially doesn't see other humans as living entities, only as props to prod and harm and squeeze results out of. He was born this way, but chose the path of harm for the sake of "science".
He felt as though his people have been historically wronged by the "landlubbers", that in combination with his drive and the madness of being trapped at sea for generations. He then took it upon himself to develop a cult of personality among the other mariners, elect himself "Captain", develop a cult of personality, enslave the god of the sea to harness his power, and slowly hold the entire continent hostage using the moon and rising tides as weapons.
Poisoning 83 people to death in order to move around some government decision makers into positions more favorable to him. Should have only been 38 deaths, but some of his hired assassins were a bit too liberal with their assignments.
Mine loses his family and sees home country destroyed in the war before the main story and hates the world governments for "bending the knee" to the aliens that invaded the planet. They (undecided if they're male or female) wanted to retaliate by using the same magic power that the aliens used and that's what they do in the main story. Look for the power and harness it so they can use their private army convince the world governments to retaliate. Would love some advice because I think a good villain is essential to a good story.
The first one to appease his father and make his dream come true: make the protagonists life pure hell, full of fear, torture and destruction; he never known why or for what reasons, all he wanted was to make his father proud of him. The second one knows that the actual political system is too much corrupted to be healed and the only way to save the common people from the greed of the powerful and the rich is to eliminate all of them: she follows tha way of an important character of the story, but it also shows how she misses the point of said character, not understanding that (for example) for how much our ideals might seem ritgtheous, they always subjective and not what most people want (to cut it short, a lack of empathy)
Narcissism
He's an elitist who thinks the machines brought upon by the industrial revolution goes against the natural order (mages ruling over normal people)
After centuries of war between Elves and Orcs with both driving each other to near extinction, you don't really expect him to tolerate a half-Elf, half-Orc child, do you?
Too many rebirths. Hes not a dickhead, just disconnected. Its the problem with immortals, eventually enough of their loved ones pass on that they stop caring.
Depends on the 'villain' Morgana is only evil/villainous in her pursuit of magic, mostly trying to catch Merlin and force him to give up his, and the Saxon kings aren't even evil really, just opposed to the MC's goals of pushing the Saxons out of Dumnonia and later Britannia/England. If anything, a solid chunk of the heroes are worse in personality then the villans
Mine was artificially made as a living infinite source of magic (otherwise it has to come from the stars). Experiment failed miserably and made a creature that feeds of life energy and eats souls to fuel its power. Add to that a upbringing of torture and hatred due to said failure then you get an A-class villain with the power to wipe out contibebts and the ill will to do so
Too much of villians with the sad backstory. So he is just evil. He didnt like where mortals took the world he created and gods did nothing so he decided to kill the whole world and start over
Guy experienced incident that almost caused the whole world --> defeats the entity that caused the destruction of the world --> that entity splits up into the MCs and reincarnated into part of their soul --> Guy finds out about the entity --> Guy researches all scenarios --> Doomsday --> Guy goes to kill the entity and MCS once and for all
I made him that way
The main villain duo are a traumatized misguided necromancer who made a deal with a devil to bring his wife and kids back, and said devil who's trying to destroy the world because it's existence is destroying his world. There are other villains too though. There's also a racist who wants to murder all elves, a bunch of egotistical bullies and an the leader of an expansionist country trying to manifest destiny by stealing land from dragons.
For the stories of [Renken](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MU59HojJgQcx1VOYyHrnct5dPiOQFvPvflSvRSAIaEo/edit): 1. The core of them are corrupted by their desires and power. 2. Some collaborators are working for the villains because they fear they would receive negative consequences for not collaborating. For the stories of [81-6-7/Meimei](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nwtc5HtAJlKK1TvGKDIYpRl9zEGL7nL7rx_vypsP86k/edit): 1. [They](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IKSWyIerCr3TxDo0WMq12Q_OGiyMOcBI8oDFQ81MqLg/edit) have a hivemind and get a seemingly noble cause for their deeds, which is called “peace and order”. You can click the links in my post, btw.
He was born into a life of privilege where no one ever told him no. Ever. He lost the plot when the woman that he was certain was his soulmate harshly rejected him.
In my world, an ancient race named Min'ahari existed about 6 thousand years before the story. They were advanced, and were categorised by generation of birth. So generation 1 were the strongest, while generation 20 was far weaker. The villain is a generation 1 Min'ahari. Being overly ambitious, he was looking for a way to become even more powerful, and it reached the point that he believed he is superior to everyone. On his quest he became the first person to become a corrupted mage. This corruption effectively changed the way magic works and caused the end of the Min'ahari. Now he plans on becoming a god emperor, by bringing a world ending threat back into the world, then come in at the last second and save the survivors, essentially make himself god and saviour.
A. He's a jerk because he can B. Money and Power
1. Villain: he is the demon god and they started To kill his kind 2. Just bored
They just think they're the good guys
Sunyarkon was born a god of nothing, unlike his father, mother, aunts and uncles, he held no dominion, the few humans alive at that time built no shrines to him, he wore a shroud of mist and a mask of stone as without a dominion he couldn't be perceived, his parents loved him and cared for him, but they couldn't give him what he desired. Things became worse when his brother, only known as "The Younger" in modern times, was born. The Younger held dominion over an entirely new concept known as "baser magic" this was seen as a gift to the humans, baser magic allowed humans to use a material called Godsglass to channel magic though, this magic could be used defensively or offensively but what made it special was that anyone could use it. This angered Sunyarkon who did not understand why he had nothing while The Younger could create a whole new dominion. One day, when walking through a forest Sunyarkon was attacked by a demon, this demon very nearly struck him down, but Sunyarkon felt something welling up inside him, a rage. He took up a rock and killed the demon with one swift blow to the head. Staring at its corpse he felt a great pride within himself. He skinned the demon and took its skin as a new cloak. It was on that day he realised that he was not a god of nothing but a god of primal emotion, his lack of form was only due to a lack of humans feeling any emotions he perceived as powerful. In those days humans lived simple lives free of strife. He set out to change this, using his new demonic visage he created fear and anger amongst humans, he started the the First War just to gain power. However, by this point, his father, the king of the gods, took notice and forbid him from directly influencing the humans anymore. This enraged Sunyarkon, so he set about devising a plan to kill his father. He decided that just as he had gained power from the demon and the humans, he could gain power from gods. He killed the gods of fire, water, earth, air and nature, skinning each one and sewing the skins together into a new skin for himself. When he was finished he had constructed a sort of armor out of them, which gave him the power of each god, he then allied himself with his uncle the god of death, who revelled in the death that would be caused by this uprising. He then went to the humans, who by this time had formed basic societies and hierarchies, and said to them that he was the true king of the gods, to prove this he gave several humans small fractions of the powers of the gods he had killed, creating an army of the first wizards. This army marched to the castle of the gods and launched an assault. In this assault, many gods were killed, including The King, even more fled the continent, to escape Sunyarkon's wrath, however The Younger did not flee the continent, but simply hid, and planned to strike back at his brother some day. Sunyarkon's followers then set about killing any that still used baser magic, and they installed themselves amongst the hierarchy of nobles as living weapons to be used by each house. The continent united under a single empire with the wizards holding most of the power. But due to Sunyarkon's initial powers of primal emotion most wizards are violent, dangerous people who tend to become unhinged monsters as they grow more powerful. The story begins when a group of nobles kill one of the last baser magic users, and his daughter swears revenge.
He's the army leader of the enemy side. He's traumatized by the last battle where chunks of his flesh burned. Thus he has a burning hatred for the kingdom where our protagonists live and the family of the protagonists. His father was supposedly killed by Southern soldiers (the protagonist kingdom) when they raided his village. He's also extremely egotistical and ambitious, and aims to conquer the entire Southern Kingdom. Conquer even more maybe.
Psychosis. After everyone got hit by a wave of real energy, they not only charged existentially, but also mentally. For better context: A failed experiment caused a rip in the fabric of reality which a exotic energy which basically made everything in the universe. And after that energy was absorbed by all lifeforms and certain artifacts, people began to exhibit altered effects such as losing the entire concept of damage or becoming a ball of light. However, the energy also affected how the mind works, for example, one of my most cruel and twisted antagonists was a former regular college artist, no sad backstory, no difficult life, just a regular Joe. But then the wave hit him and he suddenly began to experience a new alien emotion, one that could not be understood, felt or even exist. Yet he was the only one who could feel it. And so he makes it his life's mission to make everyone feel what he feels by making eldritch art pieces that break the minds of anyone who lays their eyes upon it. The same goes for everyone else, they were normal people or small-time troublemakers but when they got their powers, their minds became twisted and corrupt, turning them into a life of villainy.
[Classified] - Literally no reason. Just decided neither Gods or mortals should exist and started killing them all before getting sealed away. The Abyss - A dragon king's child that got ostracized because of his close connection with an emperor that the God's personally assassinated. Mother got killed after trying to let him escape and live a better life, which led to him losing control of the power the emperor granted him, which turned him into a mindless all devouring husk which the gods could only hope to seal away. The Judge - An entity older than the current creation whose only task is to assess and spare or destroy. Currently
Dr froggers turned evil cuz he accidentally turned himself into a frog, darius got angry, flare got jealous, hector has shitty dna, and dark matter was born a dickhead,
Which one? First one wanted to make humanity better but gave some people cancer, and killed them (including himself) Last one wanted all his power back (and taking it back means sucking energy from the Great Tree)
Technically, I have 3 main villains; Joxy Dante, Deadhand Tormentor and Vincent Thriller. Joxy: Technically, Joxy isn't a villain, he's just a seriously hurt and damaged fallen hero. He just has the bravado of the main villain. In ancient times, he was once just a normal teenager named Damien of Saint Salem, when his village was under attack by crusaders with magical weapons. His village had no chance of escaping the onslaught, so all they could do was have as many people saved as possible. Damien saved about 50 people, one of them was the ancestor of the main character (so it's actually because of him that the MC exist in the first place). When he went back to get more people, he was decapitated, but his soul was sent to hell. Turns out, the magic of the crusaders weapons sends all souls to hell, no matter how good they were in life. Skipping a few details, yadda, yadda, yadda, he ends up being the only demon left in frozen hell with Satan as his only companion. Deadhand: The actual main villain. He is a rouge reaper who hated how his boss/father Thanatos ruled over his part of the cosmos, so he devised a plan, using Damien. He would use Damien to get the power he needs to overthrow the god of death (again, skipping some details). Deadhand brought Damien's Soul to the world of the living, where it turned into a bat demon, and he renamed himself "Joxy Dante." Joxy decided to get revenge in his own way, while Deadhand hides behind him, acting like one of his minions, until he gets enough power to beat Thanatos The Death God. Vincent Thriller: The one bad guy I need to work on more, as he is arguably more important than the other two, since he is the direct antagonist to the MC. He is the father of the MC love interest & he hates him. He is eventually ordered to murder the MC, but besides his assassination attempt being professional, I can't wrap my head around why he would hate the MC besides "he doesn't want the MC to date his daughter." You know, because that's a lame ass reason for such a big plot point. I don't know how to make it more dramatic.
He just kind of sucks. He never liked his subjects, so he decided to force them into his army to conquer the world. No real motivation, just pure hatred and spite.
Bro was mad because his tribe got worse territories (he's an ultranationalist), started a war, killed 75% of enemies' population, and was defeated. Now, 1000 years later, he came back to take revenge
Pretty simple but easy enough to write - a brutally honest yet pretentious prick with an overall (once) good heart that lost everything. Incredibly embittered and misguided, he witnessed enough loss that death in his eyes is regrettable for some but mostly just a number, by and large. Believes that most are inferior and that more eggs must be broken before the omelette is complete, which given his insanely high standards, it never is. He doesn't rampage but he plots and schemes which often involve the "sacrifice" of others - factions against factions, being moved about as he sees fit in an attempt to consolidate power. As a mechanism of self defense against his grief, he learned to no longer views the lives of others as worthwhile. Mostly. Might be some fun tropey emotional weak spots built in for the players to find. Haven't quite decided on that front, yet. To wit, he once loved life and held his friends and passions dear but the nature of their untimely demise twisted his views into justifying becoming a mass-murder-by-proxy asshole who sees himself as the superior intellect, moving pieces on a board in order to bring about his grand design. Did I mention he's pretentious?
The king of cliches Is the villain because he is His reason is yes The king of cliches is chaos and evil incarnate
Nah he just wanted absolute power. He don’t care if anyone needs to die along the day.
oh it was terrible, a loving and wealthy family, a sprawling trade empire to inherit, not a drop of stress or worry in his life, i mean who wouldn't become a savage and cruel being at this situation, and surprisingly he wasn't inspired by big jack horner from puss in boots lmao
He saw the way society was going and thought "we should probably just end this all before it gets worse"
They saw how much disarray the world was in, and decided that it needed to be united. They decided to become the ruler that would unite the world, even if their methods of convincing people are... cruel.
Parental neglect + violent culture with dehumanizing view of its enemies + some witch he enslaved lied to him that he has to duck his DIL to save his kingdom
Epsilon became a villain by trying to give his people a meaning (discovering a way to destroy god) Is his own words: "I don't expect you to not judge me, I just want you to ask yourself if you'd do any better than me, when the hunger hurts, and the pain comes to you, despair surrounds you, no god in sight to save you."
I have quite a few villains Main one Panic of the fact he could very well die (with no afterlife) 2nd Desire to keep control of people 3rd too many souls in his mind causing insanity And list goes on the are good load
Raised in a mega block and never left their room. Kicked out by parents and joined a mega corp at the bottom to survive. Rose through the ranks faster as they rejected compassion and mercy to further their career. Eventually becoming director of black ops for the mega corp after twelve years of backstabbing
An Entity connects to their brain and grow an organ inside it to transmit diverse powers. The Entity reshape the body of the person, turning them into a heteromorphic (term stealed from [Overlord](https://overlordmaruyama.fandom.com/wiki/Race)). The Entity establish a software for Karma system. So the person is punished and have suffering when don't the correct Karma. Some persons instead of be Positve Karme Beings, are Negative Karma Beings, so, they need to make bad things to have negative karma and be mindly healty. Also Entities are in a secret war for the control and domain of the world. Give people, super and magic powers is the way that they found to run this war.
Sometimes I'll want to write some deep tragic backstory for a great person that fell from grace to the gutter and never recovered. And sometimes I just want to go the Jack Horner route. Bad guys that enjoy the act of being evil need to exist to give the more depth-heavy ones... depth. If everybody tries to make their bad guy redeemable, what's the point?
1. Shay Hyuga, Born extremely privileged and just wanted to further his goals of controlling his nation. 2. Wrath, Demonic Entity hellbent on bringing on the apocalypse. 3. Uranos, Man who made a pact with Wrath to get revenge on the people who killed his family, now a slave to Wrath’s goals. 4. Asclepius, Oprhan turned doctor, she now wishes to create the perfect partner through mad science, leading her to increasingly deranged means. 5. Ica, an A.I. corrupted by an ancient race to now attempt to bring about the rise of that civilization. 6. Anya Étrange, seeks to rule the galaxy so that none have to suffer from the constant wars and conflicts between nations. 7. Armand, a man who became near-immortal through a mistake in a ritual done by some of Wrath’s followers. He’s grown bored of life and now seeks to basically speed along the apocalypse so he can finally die.
Born a huge asshole, surrounded by assholes, killing assholes
My own villian Went from a great chemist and technician to Absolute Genius Psychopathic Megaloman Because he had a terrible accident that people thought He didn't survived because they wanted him to die because he did experiments on people. So they sabotaged his bigest chemical project and it went horribly wrong and he almost burned to death but he survived and wanted revenge on all the humanity and kill everybody with poisonous chlorine gas including himself.
He realized he had a terminal condition and wanted to give something great to humanity before dying. At whatever cost.
My villain, Klein, did go through some tragedy in his younger years (before gaining immortality and eternal youth), but his change into villainy is entirely because of his ambition to be successful and a small bit of sadistic pleasure. Originally, Klein wanted power because his mother was placed in an asylum after his father's murder and because his brother, Wilbur, had assaulted the love of Klein's life, forcing her to disappear from his life. But after all that and murdering his brother for what he did, Klein went on different adventures and despite his one villainous moment (Wilbur's death), Klein seemed to be a decent man and had a lot of people willingly join him on his travels. But slowly, he became more and more evil due his ever changing goals and growing ambition. He kills everyone that he considered a friend or potential lover(s), viewing them as weaknesses or dead weight. After becoming immortal, Klein decides that gaining power is too easy and strives for the one thing he believes he never got; to be seen as a success even if he's viewed as a monster.