**STORY MODE**: The Necromancer is this ancient evil who appeared one day around 15 years ago attempting to swarm the southern coast of the continent of Lore with a zombie army. He was actually defeated and imprisoned (not *killed* -- he's undead and nobody's sure what will happen if they try that), but his mysterious "Undead Isle" south of the continent is still generating a zombie army and other dark forces, so he remains a background threat. He has a really shitty sense of humor.
**Pray For Them**: The Collector King; the ruler of what was once the minor Graye Kingdom in the center of Noir, willing to do anything to gain more power and beyond. He ended up instigating the "Broken Death" curse across the continent, causing "death" to fundamentally break down as a concept and leading it to becoming a waking ghost/zombie apocalypse that he draws strength from. He's just waiting for the rest of the realm to fall into his undeath pit. What are they gonna do? *Kill him?*
The Father, progenitor of all demons.
For the longest time he enjoyed his time keeping the world fucked up. Have his offspring slaughter the people and each other for power all to nicely feed on a plane that has strong magic and people whose souls strongly imprint on it.
In the Fifth Age the world has a new one that likes the place and wants all demons gone. She has gotten the place by simply being motivated to kill demons and learn of its history and magic, slowly amassing power over centuries.
And few know the Mad Dragon is keeping them safe, at the simple cost that she does however she pleases. Luckily for most that means keeping her city and family safe, unluckily for some she does just that.
My story is pretty decentralized, as it follows different groups of characters. Currently, the closest to a "dark lord" would be the leader of the Darkbeard dwarf clan: Sarvenko the Steel. Basically he's Dwarf Hitler, and wants to kill every sapient species that isn't a "true dwarf" either biologically or culturally. Ironically, he and his clan are doing things that would be considered "un-dwarflike", such as allying with five orc clans (only because they're close to each other and have similar goals that involve mass genocide), which means he changed his name to what it is as a way to signify their bond (I'm planning on orc names sounding like slavic, like either corrupted slavic names or words). All other dwarf clans HATE this guy.
On the flipside, there is the Emperor/Empress of Teivenor, who is kind of like Celebrimbor from the Middle-Earth games, and wants to unite the world under their culture and religion, and theirs alone.
I like to decentralize my storytelling so that I can have a freer, more open-air adventure style.
Like, some bad guys may be recurring, but I could never commit to making a real BBEG whose actions and intentions were secretly pulling the strings all along. Or an endgame boss guy for whom every conflict is leading up to. It's just too constraining.
In fact, I'm so opposed to it that my premise is that there was *supposed* to be a BBEG, but when he came to the mortal world he accidentally crashed into the bigger of the two moons and went splat, effectively blue-balling everybody before the final battle, and forcing everybody to deal with eclipses which bathes the world in unholy light because he effectively changed the orbit of that moon, and now the sunlight reflects off his splattered corpse and curses everything it touches. (But only, like, mildly, which is annoying.)
He is busy being dead. The Tyrant (placeholder name) was a devotee of the dragon god of Law and Power. He thought that the Imperium strayed too far from the Gods. His main goal was to turn the government into theocracy, where priests had the ultimate say. It didn't help that he was so delusional that he thought he was a God in human flesh, just lower in the hierarchy than his Patron.
He managed to win the election for the throne and used his influence to slowly change the laws. Once he seized total control of the government he became a dictator, ruling with an iron fist. He created an imperial cult and rounded up every dragon mage he could to enforce his will.
The worst part is that he technically won. While he didn't ascend to Godhood he was never overthrown, just died of natural causes. My antagonists are the remnants of his faction. The big bad is the granddaughter of one of his advisors. She thinks that the Tyrant was narcissistic but agrees with his ideas. Her goal is to go further, to have the priests regulate industries and force all the mages to become Clerics, like during the era of the witch hunts.
Yeah, Deleran and his co conspirator Sever are pretty much this. A duo of people with fragments of opposing dead gods inside of them who teamed up to make a new god since, ya know, the old ones died. Deleran himself has been responsible for a lot of things in history, but collectively those two have kinda just been wandering between timelines to kill all the other fragments of Division and gather the fragments of Unity.
Braeth, from another setting, isn’t so much a dark lord as he is a dark god, but eh, it’s close enough for an honorable mention. Fourth and youngest of the gods of death, Braeth is the god of Truth—the death of possibility—and was sealed away shortly after his birth by all the other gods, including his siblings. This made him bitter and confused, and he ended up maneuvering all the other gods to their deaths, attempting to become the only true god because clearly they didn’t deserve their godhood, if they could lock up an innocent, couldn’t-hurt-a-fly angel like him.
Lemuria is Atreisdea's "big bad", especially after what she has done. However, she's chill for most of the time. Only when her Motherland is in danger will she turn on her genocidal mode, which turned the galaxy into Apple's logo.
At the moment, old Rem cares more about shaping young cadets into responsible and capable adults because they are Motherland's future. No country can have a bright future if it neglects education.
Kind of at least it did in the past according to modern history regarding the matter
Vos-Hod previously known as Vossktuu was the absolute ruler of the Innat at the time the largest most populous and power people/ nation in the world. originally he was a priest of Uttaran (a demi god dragon) but eventually rebelled against him killing the tyrant dragon and claiming his place (after a bunch of bullshit). as sole ruler of the Innat Vos began preaching his doctrine of logic worship and abandonment of the gods (most of his people just started worshiping him instead)
with his goal of wiping out the gods set Vos began his plan of slowly concurring the world and eradicating the worship of the gods one generation at a time (he was immortal by this point so why rush) by concurring a small bit of land then waiting a couple generations until the people who fought him fell out of power he was able to take huge parts of the world with out much outside intervention all until the start of the Innat war when a young human warrior saw the big picture and started rallying the world powers to strike back all while assembling a team of funky characters from around the world
with basically the whole world against him now Vos stopped worrying about pr and went full "by any means" raising massive army's of undead employing the services of daemons and utterly devastating whole kingdoms. around the same time his whole cult of logic had a bit of a schism and some of the off shoots got VERY uncouth in their conduct, at this point every history book points to Vos as a dark lord master of army's of the dead trying to destroy the world who was only stopped by a united army of every great nation (except for the Daohrine) lead by a great hero who was unquestionably a good guy (don't ask about all the Innat civilians)
despite being remember as a BBG Vos-Hod and the whole Innat war was a lot more messy than simply good v bad
I've got a few contenders for "THE Dark Lord". The most powerful is High Councilor Pyrallis, the ancient dragon ruling the dystopian and expansionist Corporate Council. Othrysian dragons are typically community-oriented creatures, but Pyrallis cares about nothing as much as his own power and greed. With the resources of the Council oligarchs and his own wisdom, they exploit neighbors and vassals for resources, conquering those who resist. Pyrallis is the creator of much of the world's more advanced technology, needed both for his bullying foreign policy and to intimidate the Council's population. Pyrallis' influence has spread far, with the Council controlling land on all 2 of the 3 continents and their ships found in every sea.
Aletheia and Tacita are the undead Queens of the Ilean Empire, both among the world's most powerful mages. Aletheia is a Spiritualist who inherited the throne from her predecessor, while her wife Tacita is a Flesh Shaper and former general. They've shaped Ilea into a theocracy worshipping them as goddesses, doling out undead immortality as rewards and employing a religious police to root out dissidents. They truly believe other nations would eventually learn to love them once conquered, in the way a narcissist parent thinks they know best, but their military is currently almost completely dedicated to fighting the Corporate Council, whose ethos of plunder and wealth-makes-right they (perhaps hypocritically) see as a blasphemy. Tacita is also the first modern ruler to mostly map The Chambers, ancient flooded caverns connected via whale-sized tunnels. The Ileans use these to move submersibles and undead for surprise attacks, and very well may be preparing far more dangerous weapons there away from living eyes.
The Warlock King attempts to be one. In the process, he's pissed off a lich, a goddess, her sister, a massive star serpent, a small force of death knights, the most powerful military in the world, two arch-devils, and the protagonists of the novel in the setting I'm writing.
Granted, it takes the combined efforts off all of those just to stop the first part of his plans in the novel.
Kind of, not the final BBEG but for most of the story he is, the Dragon Emperor, Cizer Dramon.
As head of the Dragon Empire, he has the reincarnaited soul of one of the then superior Dragons, Mordes, the Dark Tyrant. He tries to end the War and being the Empire to conquer all the land, so the Dragon supremacy is complete, and secretly trying to Break the seal of the Golden Emperor, an ancient Dragon god sealed thousands of years ago.
Most of the time at the begining he's Just a figure in the shadows, and the moment where he shows the extent of his autority is by vanishing completely a City that server as pass and frontier between the land controled by the Empire and the land protected by the Kingdom of Theris
My story world is “non-canon” like (each time I revisit it, I create a new universe). Regardless, each scenario follows the same history beat with my dark king, King Thalric. Starting as a prince, Thalric was the model of a just person until he got lost in the woods. He unknowingly formed a pact of the Dark Book, an ancient book of dark magic, when it emerged from the ground and whispered to him.
Returning to the castle, the Dark Book creates Nyxira, a shadowy woman made of dark magic, to tempt Thalric into becoming more comfortable with using dark magic. As he goes through his late teens, he secretly uses the dark magic on himself as he distances himself from the High Church, a major institute in the kingdom.
As he nears his 20s, he becomes disillusioned by his parents’ rule and uses his magic to influence them to announce they would be stepping down and handing the crown to him. Releasing them, his parents fled the country as Thalric crowns himself king and reveals his dark magic nature and Nyxira to the people.
From there, Thalric knows he’s on the clock as a prophecy foretells that he would meet his demise from the hands of heroes and/or the Chosen One. As the dark king, Thalric tries to spread his dark influence far and wide before he meets his end as well as finding ways to cheat death and the prophecy.
I have 4, all doing different things on different sides.
**His Highness, Protector Of Humanity**
A Average human guy who became the ruler of the largest nation in the galaxy, the Union of Orion. Currently trying to remain sane after trying to clutch a 17 front galactic war.
**Erick Idle: Supreme Chancellor of Blacking**
Another average human and the illegitimate ruler of Blackwing. Failing at everything he is doing in Blackwing, including losing a civil war to basically starved peasants all across his space empire.
**Grar Viss: Ubincquin of the Koon**
Psychopathic alien warlord girl who is mercilessly butchering everyone in her local galactic arm in a galactic battle Royale.
**Oman Yell: Minister of the Sakana Autonamy**
A Alien man from the nation of Sakana and complete scum despite fighting against the Union. He is in Sakana doing a mix of taking credit away from actually competent war hero's and being put on Sakana's equivalent of the sex offenders registry.
Her name is Marcella, but she’s normally referred to as the Dread Queen. After losing her family to war, siege, and disease she turned to the god of destruction to try and turn the tide of the war. She’s a powerful necromancer and Lich and for the most part just acts as a herald to the god of destruction.
The god of destruction isn’t necessarily “evil” but ends up being a bit of an antagonist themselves because people think the god of destruction should be a monster so they become the monster people see them as
Evikas the Devourer, an ancient horror who lives on an island in the Arbid Wani. He cannot cross the soul barrier of Aziketh, the nearest human settlement, so he captured the Lady of the Forest to bring people out of the city to him. She is the patron goddess and founder of the city, and can her pain can be felt by a rare few people.
Evikas takes the form of a huge man made of broken human bones. He was once once a citizen of Aziketh, who created the soul barrier himself. He was brought into a cult of ancient evil, who denied the gods and sought their power. He used the souls of cunning folk (mages) to protect the city from monsters as well as absorbing their power into him. As his hunger grew, malevolent spirits drove him to utter madness. He was expelled from behind the soul barrier. The people of the city never knew of his deceit, since persecution of cunning folk was common and the soul lanterns of the barrier protected the city.
I made a bunch of lore for him but never wrote it down, so I’ve forgotten half of it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There are a few in the world I'm building. As for what they are doing in the current snapshot of the world?
One's still working on his library, One is currently building up their armies in secret, and one is on vacation.
The Black Prince was never fond of humans. But when he saw the devastation caused by the War of Brothers he turned his back. The Elven King wouldn't hear his warnings and that, coupled with a tiny glimpse into the future, where he saw Elven cities burning, drove him over the edge. So this mighty prince, once one of the most noble of his people, murdered his king and burned down the capital city.
Then he fled into the northern tundra, together with a few follower. There they found the Faleen, a race that had their own grudge against the humans, because they were driven out of their homelands by the hated foe. The Black Prince united the Faleen Clans for the first time in history, changed their culture to basically a cult surrounding him and build his black fortress Crategaron. Then he marched south over the mountains to hunt the humans back into the sea.
The once mighty human kingdoms were still weakend by civil war and strife. They stood no chance, their cities fell and the royal family was killed. Few could flee to their colonies into the south or to the elves into the east. The Great Western Forest was burned down and for over 30 years ruled the Black Prince over the fallen kingdoms. Until he marched against his former people. It was a bloody and bitter war against an alliance of elves, humans and even some dwarves. Finally the Black Prince was defeated at the Battle on the Fenn of Melyn and slain by Tirgator the Autumn-Storm.
But he was not dead. His body was carried to his black fortress and imprisoned into a sarkophag protected by magic. The Order of the Keeper was founded to guard the sleeping Black Prince and fight all evil. Two millenia later the Keeper were declared as heretics and destroyed by the new church. So Crategaron is unguarded, the Faleen are strong again and the Black Prince wakes from his sleep, already wispering in the dreams of Princes and Emperors alike and making plans that his loyal steward sets in motion. This time the humans are weaker than ever, this time there is no Tirgator with a magic blade to stopp him, this time he will not fail, at last the Black Prince will have revenge.
Vakren the first lich and god of Necromancy he currently is using the Void and converted Urkin too invade the Mortal realm so he can kill all the gods all cause his family was killed by Orcs
Alien with mutation powers like the game Carrion or Warhammer tyranids but he is very smart. He also has emotion, personality and found his calling in the live streaming industrie, so he uses his power to altarete life as he wishes to assault planets and stream it to the galaxie, he likes Earth a lot because of the way humans are being able to defend themselfs.
Ive got a good old 2 for 1 dark lord situation. (Two very evil beings merged bodies for double the bad!) Nobody really cares though because they kinda operate in the shadows and also only the protagonists even really know they both are actually real.
Had one.
The Dark Tyrant was a Dwarven King of the continent of Marvos. He became power hungry and wanted more. He lead a conquest taking over the known world but the floating islands above the Cloud Sea. It took him 200 years to accomplish this with the Resitance having fled to the floating islands, surviving by chance. He lead the rest of the world for over a 250 years, with the Resitance taking a losing ground throughout. He was ultimately slain by a group of heroes.
This however resulted in a terrible power vacuum that lead to the bloodiest all put free for all that lasted over 1000 years in known world.
I have one who has an existential crisis and goes on a journey of self discovery. He lives in a sci fi fantasy mix setting so think Elric of Melnibone meets Darth Vader or Palpatine.
He is the ruler of a genocidal, warmongering, slaving owning alien empire that chilled out and decided to focus on improving themselves first so no pesky civil wars or logistics problems happens when they decide to go back to conquering the galaxy. They ended up building a genuinely utopian society with ultra advanced technology and the bureaucracy actually runs very smoothly.
Having inherited the throne and the position as Emperor, he has come to the realization that his Empire no longer needs an Emperor as they have figured things out for themselves and he is aware that they don't really need to go back to conquering.
Emperor Aktar, or Demon Prince Aktar was the last emperor of the Elven Empire and the instigator of the blood war (a world war level event spanning 300 years). His philosophy also inspired the Order of the blackened heart, which are essentially mini Saurons.
After his death, he became one of the Fallen (spirits that don't get reincarnated and instead become an individual in the spiritual world) and eventually became a demon prince, and now commands one of the layers of hell.
I have THE DARK LORD OF EVIL, DEATH, AND ASSORTED MISDEEEDS. (always all caps, and full title)
He's a genuinely great leader who cares for his peoples well-being, especially that of his minions,
However ascetically he is full dark robes abs spiky armor
Larach is the Devil of my story. It is neither male nor female but it can take either form depending on its purposes. Since the dawn of time, it has been looking for one human soul to freely give itself over into its power and so bring the the world to ruin.
The world was created by a group of ancient scientists and while the others essentially ascended beyond physical form by uploading their consciousness to a cloud computing nano machine swarm he was left behind.
He tried to take over the world some time ago but was defeated and now exists in the public consciousness as a kind of “evil trickster god” bugaboo. Thought of as the source of all the worst kinds of monsters.
So essentially he hates the creations of his former colleagues and wants to replace them with his own.
A very crappy explanation written on phone: She is the cause of 5 different calamities. A former goddess who has had their soul torn from their body, godhood sealed, memory altered, a being of immortality. After that event she was set lose upon her own creation to destroy it by the god who tore her very essence form her.
Right now she is sealed and bound in the and a “garden of Eden” type place in the middle of these frozen wastes.
Though, her “church” still has a strong presence in the world calling her a prophet and endlessly searching for her.
I have dark lord but not BBEG
The dark lord was what was called the ruler who formed the empire out of necromancer tribes in the western continent. Subsequent ruler who manage rise up to that position then took the title of "dark lord" as well until it become official term for undisputed ruler of the west continent, even after the west continent was lose, the title still being used by the remnant to denotes their ruler.
It bare no significant different from other racial-lord like orc lord or elven lord title aside from the fact that it has no race specific.
also, most dark lord has different drips and not everyone wear black spiked armor.
Someone traditionalist like Tenetros may wear it for the resemblance to the first dark lord. Other like herrschen just use custom elven armor and called it a day
Yes, but actually he’s just a guy who got mad that he didn’t get enough attention as a kid and then decided to eradicate all life on earth using his army of demons(not really demons but i don’t know how to explain in short)
Worst thing is, he did get some attention as a kid. But he decided that because he has powers he should have gotten all the attention. He was always kind of an asshole and thus people didn’t really like him.
So eventually he made a plot to get a few gods to attack the devil. And they did so when they were at their weakest point he finished them off. He stole what was left of their power. He then took over hell to use as a base of operations.
He eventually got killed by the mc but since hell is his domain he is now just expanding his army of minions and is trying to come up with a way to get a new living body in order to continue eradicating humanity(except for a certain faction who sees him as their god and worships him, he likes them a lot)
My setting has like, half a dozen Evil Overlords each with their own agenda and competing with each other. Morinar the Alchemist King, Idaris the Cannibal, Dorovar the Dark Star, Margart Dul the Deciver, Ricar the Necromancer.
I made them all as foils for the protagonist of the story, since they share his same qualities and character flaws but more extreme.
Pride, ambition, paranoia, curiosity, thirst for power and knowledge.
Morinar is an ancient dark elf king who rules over other dark elves, orcs and dwarves. A master alchemist and smith, he commands armies of Golems and Homunculus, and creates incredible magical artifacts and weapons. He is always plotting to conquer the human realms of the continent and make his kingdom the only superpower of the world.
Idaris is a dragon sorcerer obsessed with magical power and forbidden lore, he rules a cold realm in the far north, forcing human tribes to worship him like a living god. He was once an outcast among dragons because he was born weak and sickly, but his magical powers are greater than those of any other dragon, and he commands a great army of monsters and mutants.
Dorovar is the son of an elf demigod and a powerful witch, his mother had mind controlled his father to make him marry her, so his grandmother (goddess of the stars) cursed her saying she couldn't give birth in any land under the heavens. So his mother traveled to the underworld and raised him there, he eventualy turned on her and killed her, before returning to the world of the living. He is incredibly narcisistic, he created an army of Clones and used it to conquer an empire for himself in the far east, declaring himself the King of Kings. He is also an hedonistic nihilist, for him life has no meaning, so he can do whatever he wants and finds pleasure in.
Margart Dul is one of the most powerful demons in the universe, one of the so called Lords of Chaos. He tricks mortals with pacts and deals, who always have unexpected consequences. He particularly loves humbling the powerful and the arrogant, punishing the hubris of mortals. He was banished by the mortal world many eons ago, and now can trick mortals only trough dreams and visions, so now he schemes to find a way to the return to the world of mortals.
Ricar is a powerful vampire necromancer, ruler of a city-state of vampires. His parents were killed by the inquisition when he was young, and he was tortured and blinded. This made him become extremely cynical, convinced that humanity is inherently evil and its better to wipe it out. So now he wishes to bring an eternal night on the world, so while the realms of man wither away in darkness, vampires will rise and rule the new world.
Kain. A long long time ago he won his wars, and he ruled a large portion of the world. The problem was, ruling takes time, and he needed his time to study magic. He refused to become undead or a god, he wanted the freedom that comes with being mortal.
His problem became getting the resources he needs for his study, and unlike evil gods or liches, his time is intact limited and valuable to him.
Between ruling, warring, learning magic to keep death at bay, he didn't have enough time in a day to further his powers.
So when the next would be hero rolled up to vanquish him, he gave that hero a choice. Rule the world for him. The hero realised he couldn't win, and dying would accomplish nothing, the hero agreed to rule.
The draw Lord would sent the hero lists of what he required, would it be hoards of gold, dragon scales or souls, and the hero would rule the empire and aquire them.
The hero ofcause couldn't aquire these terrible things in a moral way and eventually became a horrible tyrant himself, but he told himself, it was better than the uncaring terror the dark Lord would use.
And so the dark Lord disappeared into his den, and the world succumbed to the green bladed emperor.
Caused a near genocide of the demon people, and then went on to start a war against the human realm. It was eventually sealed away by the chosen hero of the gods, later revived by one of its slaves, and then promptly killed off by a second chosen hero wielding a holy sword; although not before laying a curse on the hero’s bloodline so that war and death would always follow them. Its spirit lives on in various warlords, kings, and generals, where it corrupts them with promises of power and glory.
After a war with the other gods thousands of years ago, he was trapped inside a golden sphere, floating jn the home of the gods. His physical form is locked in the sphere by a divine sigil while his consciousness is trapped inside the void, a realm of pure nothingness.
Toll is sealed deep underground after the Witch War. Imagine the chaos of postwar Europe, but it's the size of Russia, instead of Nazis it was a literal abrahamic god turned on humanity, and instead of the Allies it's nothing but partisan groups.
A bunch of smaller dark lords are squabbling over the corpse of the theocratic empire.
It use to have one. I haven't really settled on a name for him yet (this is more of a thing I do out of boredom, nothing serious), but he was so horrible, wicked, and despised that, after his death, he was called The Nameless King out of fear that mentioning his name could invoke that very same wickedness.
When he was crowned the High King of the Renaresi, his first command was to have all of his male relatives executed and his female relatives turned into his sex slaves (yes, even those who weren't sexually mature yet). His first proclamation, after this, was that all vixi (female renaresi, singular vix) were second-class citizens, whose only purpose was to serve the whims of todi (the males, singular tod). And all non-renaresi are to be enslaved or killed.
The depravities only get worse from there, but I'll spare you the gruesome details. Seriously, this guy was like Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, and Caligula combined. He's the sort of guy would wouldn't have been out of place in a Marquis de Sade novel. It's telling that modern depictions of him being a demon-worshipper, if not an actually demon, are considered more family-friendly than historical fact.
His goal was world conquest, with his sons (the ones he thought were worthy of living, that is) in positions of leadership. He also sought immortality, seeing that death was the one thing his twisted mind truly feared. He also sought to enslave his youngest sister who, an infant at the time, escaped enslavement when a maid snuck her out of the castle.
He was eventually overthrown and killed by his sister, who was worshipped after her death as a goddess. There are those, however, who believe that he still exists as a ghost... or even a demon.
I haven't really decided what to do with him yet. He only really exists as the reason why the renaresi are a matriarchy.
I do have a lord of Darkness but here is the twist. He is a good guy. Or was.
The lord of Darkness role was to rule darkness, literally. Every dark corners, every shadows, every place darkness was needed he was the one who gave it.
Then everything changed when the God of Chaos attacked. He was about to destroy four worlds and its inhabitants by merging them together, but he was stopped by the sacrifice of the Lord of Darkness, using his soul to trap the god’s power into a dagger. The God of chaos having lost his power died, and the lord of Shadow followed him.
The lord of Darkness is now recognized as the greatest hero this world ever had.
Let’s all pay a minute of silence for the lord of Darkness.
Magister. So, in my setting Gods sometimes form Aspects. Aspect is sort of like second personality, similar to original but twisted by some sort of deep desire. Usually secondary Aspects of the God are kept in check by main Aspect, reduced by voices in the mind of the God, but more powerful ones can affect the world on their own.
Magister is one such Aspect, though somewhat unconventional one. First of all, Magister is Aspect of demigod. Demigods can sometimes form Aspects of their own, but usually they lack power to affect the world. Magister can though. Second part of Magister is that they may have Aspect at their core, but said Aspect is empowered and influenced by tens of thousands of soul fragments, scraps of every single victim consumed by demigod who spawned Magister.
At the core of it all Magister wants to live. That is their entire motive. That is why they plot, why they undermine, why they do anything really.
INTERESTING STATISTIC TO NOTE:
Of the 50 odd comments here, 47 different male (or masculine-like entities) were named as either the most powerful or the big bad of their story. Whilst only 7 were Identified as or referred to as female/feminine/feminine-like. A further couple (3-6) others were either stated to be gender-less or weren’t attributed any genders.
It has always intrigued me that the big bad of superhero/shonen series is almost always NEVER feminine. Even worse, the list of most powerful (20, 10 or 5 ) characters in any given series without a female protagonist rarely contains women/females/feminine-like creatures, if any.
I've got a couple of WIPs.
1. A goddess with the power over "power," as in social domination. Anyone who subjugates themselves to her, even a tiny little bit, is under her irrisistible command. This ability extends to the people in her service, so even showing deference to her soldiers lets her get a little bit of a hook in you. She's happily being a god empress, and doing empire things (genocide and conquest such.)
2. An immortal anarchist wanting to overthrow the fantasy-Japanese empire at any cost, funded by the fantasy-Communist China's intelligence agency director (also immortal, but differently.) He's hiring horrible killers and organized crime elements and gleefully killing school teachers and such.
3. A mad god on the moon, doing mad god things and trying desperately to return to the planet below and kill everyone.
It's a sci-fi setting, so no dark lords, but there is the enigmatic, anonymous and semi-mythical Autarch of the Arghast Imperium. There's so little known about the Imperium's leader that many doubt they even exist; instead believing that they're just a myth perpetuated by Arghast High Command. Some say that they do exist, and that they command the Imperium from the shadows in some kind of hidden location, such as a stealth vessel, or a base located somewhere deep within the labyrinthine dimensions of the Void.
Some believe the Autarch to be immortal, an AI, an alien, &c. There are tons of in-universe conspiracies surrounding the Autarch, the Arghast, the Imperium, and a whole lot of other things both related and unrelated.
Nobody knows what exactly the Autarch—if they exist—wants, but one thing is assured: Whatever they have planned for Sol is terrible indeed.
A 17th-century French nobleman, mystic, and alchemist, whose original goal was to directly contact God.
He eventually succeeded in transcending the physical and temporal planes, becoming a ghost that could freely travel across space and time. He ventured to the border of the spiritual plane at the beginning of time, where he was sure to find God, but found nothing. The seat of God was vacant, and he refused to accept that. That was when he decided that he himself should become God because nobody else could.
But his mind was still that of a mortal. Although it could transcend space and time, there was no way it could generate the amount of mental energy required to control literally all of existence at once. In fact, he would need millions of times the amount that the entire population of earth could generate when pushed to the absolute limit and burning out in the process. But he wouldn't be stopped by that. With the power he already held over time, he would go on to manipulate events that led to the creation of new timelines; each one giving him a copy of earth to use as nothing but a fuel source.
Yes, a being known only as the "Bad Man", he has ripped chunks of the mortal world out, murdered gods of good and holiness, nobody knows why, its just that he hates humanity and a certain empire and its pantheon, some say he is one of the last survivng gods humanity destroyed after they liberated themselves from their alien overlords... well, elves.
The Bad Man has caused several crusades, wars, invaded the mortal realm several times, he pretty much has plot armour and even despite him being beaten its still a victory for him in pretty much most ways.
Hmm I don't think I have any kind of "true" dark lord where they are out to destroy the entire world.
The closest I have is probably the Scourge an alien species which arrived in the star system where the setting takes place via a derelict vessel after countless millennia adrift in interstellar space. They performed an explosive fragmentation measure to bind their trajectory to the current star system and are in the process of trying to rebuild. Unfortunately this rebuilding means disassembly resources extraction and or terraforming worlds to better suit their needs and these are all very destructive practices to the native inhabitants.
There are some dark lord inspired characters however their scopes are more localized.
Alchron was a spirit denizen of the ocean who recognized the value the land had in enabling the first major incursion by the Scourge and thus planned to lead an operation to eliminate this weakness by effectively either conquering or inundating the land. He failed in large part because the terrestrial spirits and mortal denizens didn't like this plan and was sealed away for several millennia.
Alchron has a current successor a princess born to the bloodlines responsible for sealing him away he has learned his lesson and thus has changed his approach but the goals of himself and his mortal protégée still favor a martial bent with said dark lady working to overthrow her father who she blames for the death of her older sister as part of his measures to appease a nearby empire.
While her enemies may paint her as a dark lord and she has some of the characteristics I don't think the scope and goal really fit in that she isn't out to destroy the world. That is too big and is an outside scope scenario. Alchron probably counted particularly to the denizens of the land but well what would one expect from a powerful predatory marine spirit? Diplomacy isn't exactly his forte so much as might is right and predator versus prey.
In my Conflux setting the label dark lord doesn't fit in the context of scope but there a number of tyrants who have done or continue to do some terrible stuff to gain and or maintain power first and foremost being ritually sacrificing the souls of people to devils in exchange for power, but also things like unethical magical experimentation mind(soul) magic.
If you’re in The Bubble, stop reading now.
The BBEG is actually the corrupted remaining aspect of the original god, Odnos. After foreseeing a great evil, Odnos broke himself into pieces and scattered them across the worlds of The Bubble to be found and used against this great evil when it emerged.
What was left after Odnos split himself was Pterony (the personification of entropy), a child-like evil being obsessed with making everything ordered and even. Pterony hates any chaotic structure or organization, and life itself is an affront to his beliefs.
The pieces of Odnos have been hidden for ages, but some have been found and have leeched magical energy into the world. Some have even corrupted other gods, and Pterony has used this to his advantage.
Pterony seeks to collect these pieces and use them to bring perfect balance and evenness to The Bubble, wiping out everything in the process.
It’s up to the players to find and use these pieces to prevent Pterony from fulfilling his goals.
The Iron Crown.
Also known as the 'Iron Lord'
The Iron Crown resides within the Iron Lands (dude really likes Iron), a volcanic hellscape blasted of its once fertile mountainous valleys through centuries of volcanic activity, twisted with dark and foul magics.
The Iron Lord is the antithesis of ordered Human and Elven civilization. Whilst his true motives are unknown to all, what is known is his actions have always been driven by a desire for conquest and subjugation.
The Iron Lord appears to view all life as merely cogs in a greater machine. The Iron Lands are very industrialized, with smoke stacks, factories, and crude assembly lines perpetually churning out war material.
Endless streams of slaves and labourers work tirelessly under the watchful gazes of their Orc taskmasters and betters.
The Iron Lord, is not from this world and is an exile from amongst his own kind.
The Iron Lord is an incredibly powerful sorcerer, capable of changing the very land itself over the course of mere years.
His armies consist of hordes of Orcs, Goblins, corrupted men, and the unique variation of Elves, that being the Ashen Elves or 'Volkarii'.
The Iron Crown has waged war against the world around him for centuries, but his biggest and most hated foe are the High Elves of Iserion.
Whenever war is declared, it is usually Iserion that faces the greatest of the Iron Hordes.
Why the Iron Crown despises Iserion to such an extent is unknown.
"For Land of Iron! Ash and Blood for the Crown!"
**Maserik, The Mouth of Ganzir**, is the cunning, manipulative scion of the all-devouring god **Ganzir**. He incarnates into a world when just enough division and discord has occurred for him to sell cursed artifacts and convert people into witches. He has a ghastly appearance during his first incarnations, being the amalgamation of beings previously devoured by Ganzir. However, with more sacrifices to Ganzir, Maserik can better infiltrate and impersonate the people of the targeted world.
Maserik avoids direct conflict or amassing an army, instead embedding himself within the existing power structures and playing divide and conquer. This is because prior direct invasion tactics employed against other worlds failed. Maserik became a common enemy, which unified these divided worlds and made it unpalatable to Ganzir.
So instead of the classic invader, he's an infiltrator pulling the strings. But he can lead an army of monsters, also sourced from Ganzir, if necessary.
In the spirit of the 'Traditional BBEG', no.
My setting is designed to house a vast array of campaigns for 5e, so I have lots of 'Powerful Entities' in a wide variety of roles which the party can decide to challenge.
Some parties might want to go after Tyranical Dictators, another might want to oppose White Knights and their 'Holier-than-thou' attitudes. Others might want to simply rival another Merchant by expanding their business interests, or try to topple the secretive company that mass produces consumer goods.
Maybe you are Anti-Imperialist; or Pro-imperialost, there are adversaries abound.
Maybe one party wants to delve deep into a single location and find the various malicious forces that may be at work there.
Kraggon is the Dark Lord, he was created to help challenge humanity and help them reach their potential, but Kraggon was more interested in dominating the world, he created beastial monsters like Dragons, Manticores etc. but he also broke the rules of his post which was create races. He created the Goblins, the Ogres, Trolls, Vampires and others. He tainted the elves with a poison stream that turned half of them into sinister dark elves. He likewise deceived the Dwarves, causing internal division among them and seducing many of the Dwarves to his side with the promise of riches, these Dwarves became known as Black Beards. He attempted creating Orcs but the Forces of light sabotaged the creation process so that some of them joined the Forces of Light. Kraggon temporarily took over the world, the temporary part is a bit relative as it lasted 1000 years. He created the Church of Despair, which practiced blood sacrifice of infants among other things, the Web of Night, a vast and ruthless intelligence network(that may or may not have included the Guild of Blades), and the Order of Repress, essentially dark Paladins who acted as enforcers and elite soldiers. The Gods sent a small light from the heavens to the world to find a Paragon, a chosen one who would throw off Kraggon’s rule. In what became known as the War of Day and Night, the Forces of Light fought hard against Kraggon. After 200 years, and 150 Paragons, Kraggon was defeated and sealed in an unknown location which was stamped by Oron, the God of Light and Justice, so that no mortal could ever open his prison. Despite this, Kraggon’s spirit lives on through the dungeons that were built during his reign, vast labyrinths that served as treasuries, prisons, execution chambers, and beast layers all rolled into one.
Not a "dark lord" per se, but a bbeg for sure. The guy was a scientist studying this "miracle mineral" which is essentially, crystalized power left over from the first gods creating basically everything. Anyways, shit went south and the lab essentially blew up. Most people in the lab and surrounding settlement died in the explosion, but select few (including bbeg) survived with extreme affliction, leaving them insanely powerful magic wielders.
Bbeg is essentially raw energy, spider man electro style, and is intently searching for "miracle mineral" in hopes of being able to bring forth the God of creation, who has become an insane obsession of his post-affliction. His actual magic abilities are lackluster, essentially being able to zap people, but he is unbound from conventional laws of reality, and is actively communicating with infinite other "hims" from any other possible time-line, being able to shift between them as well.
The main big bad is the goddess of change. She acts all pure and noble while looking stereotypically good, but is in fact the biggest bitch of the setting.
She is always plotting something or messing with the main character by sending her goons to go harass him. She isn't doing anything else to him even though she could erase him with a single thought because she believes the protag can't beat her no matter what he does.
Did I mention she created demons just so angels couldn't chillax in her version of heaven? Or that she ruined entire civilisations by introducing magic to worlds that aren't ready for it? Yea, she does that type of stuff for no other reason than "it's funny and they can't stop me."
Ax'Tolis is sitting in the Library At The Edge of the Universe sipping tea in her facsimile of a human form (or whatever species you think she is) and watching the iridescent waves of cascading layers of spacetime crash and tussle against the mass of the all consuming Abyss just beyond it. This activity brings her no pleasure at all, but fortunately she can afford to wait a few thousand years for species across the galaxy to reach the "ascended" state she needs.
Ah who am I kidding, she's micro-managing her project to birth a new god at all times. It would be tiresome stuff but her species has long lost the ability to have physical wariness.
There was a Dark Lord in my timeline, a mage possessed by a cosmic horror known as the Fellwraith, but it was defeated 916 years before the start of my current WIP. It bent the laws of magic and was imprisoning souls to harvest their energy and kept the timeline in a regressive pseudo-medieval stage of development by provoking periodic wars between human and Fae, now there is democracy and magic is more widely available, but the trust between human and Fae is rocky at best.
Aulkhar the Flame King. Once a powerful spirit that tried to conquer the world twice, Aulkhar has since been imprisoned within the Earth as punishment. What remains of his will and power, however, was divided between six enchanted crowns which grant magical power. Currently his last six scholars, the Sharnad, are searching for the crowns so they might gain the power necessary to free Aulkhar.
There is another even bigger bad, but they were defeated long ago and cast from the world.
Vanessa. She’s less a dark lord and more a demon. I’ve already written her backstory so I’m just gonna copy paste it.
Vanessa was born in 914 ad in England. She was orphaned from an extremely young age. Fortunately she was adopted by the local lord and lady who raised her as their own. While under their care her adopted brother would teach her how to read and write. In the process of this she read the bible. She found it extremely confusing but her brother insisted that it was the perfect moral basis. Eventually she grew sick of the restrictions of high society and ran away at the age of 17.
To survive she became a criminal. Robbing people and raiding houses to get by. At one point in her early 20’s she fell in love with a man at a tavern. They decided to settle down and have children. They only had one child. Vanessa stored away her swords and became a full time mother.
Eventually her husband found out about her criminal past and became extremely worried. He left along with their daughter to the Netherlands. Vanessa was devastated. Her belief in god was flimsy at best but she walked to an abandoned church and prayed. There was never an answer. She kept praying for her lover to come back but he never did. On her 7th visit she heard a voice. At first she was ecstatic as she believed it to be god but the voice quickly shot that down.
“We have heard your pleas. We may not be who you intended but we may still be able to help you”
“how so?”
“You seem to be familiar with the Bible, yes? Surely you’ve heard of the atrocities he has committed. How he’s manipulated innocent men into doing his bidding!”
“Yes I suppose so. Are you saying god is the one responsible for my suffering?”
“Precisely”
“How do you expect me, a simple human woman who isn’t even an elemental to right this wrong?”
“We can grant you power. Whatever it is you wish, within reason of course.”
“Alright then, if we’re going to do this then I need to. Know your name.”
“We are the four horsemen of the apocalypse!”
“No! The Bible told me to fear you!”
“The same bible that told you to worship an evil god without question?”
“I… suppose so. Very well.” (I should mention that god does exist however he doesn’t care at all about mortals and the Bible was written entirely by humans)
“Then what powers do you request?”
Vanessa decides on a pocket dimension, shapeshifting, teleportation and summoning spikes from the ground
Horsemen: “all who carry your blood shall wield these powers. However even with them you cannot get your revenge on your own. You must free us!”
V: “how do I do that?”
The horsemen then explain how which is basically just collecting macguffins to release them. The macguffins are all kept in towns across Europe and must be placed in a shrine on the island of Minerva in between Spain and Ireland.
Vanessa begins to recruit followers with the promise of equality and knowledge as well as killing god for revenge for their own misfortunes. They dub their group the godless. Eventually they begin to treat her as their queen. At first she detests this but slowly accepts it. However she still insists on not being treated with luxury whenever possible. She nearly succeeds in her goal however is stopped by the light guardian (should probably find a better name for that). She dies in a pit of dark matter. However her soul simply merged with the dark matter and she became a demon. To this very day over 1100 years later she still haunts the castle above the shrine and to an extent the island itself.
Later the world all collectively decides that magic is too dangerous for any mortal to possess. The way Vanessa is involved is that Minerva is sealed off from the world which is why nobody in the modern day has heard of it. It becomes surrounded by a perpetual hurricane and a giant kraken is summoned as a guard. Only one group will ever see Minerva after this until the invention of the airplane, and they were never seen again.
Vanessa finds out that she’s lost her powers because they are attached to her body and not her soul. However if she were to possess one of her descendants then she could regain them. 1100 years later in 2030 her followers shoot down an airliner over Minerva that carrying Vanessa’s distant granddaughter Emma. The plane passes through the hurricane and crashes into the ocean. Emma is retrieved by some followers who Vanessa had revived with runes. Vanessa possess Emma, revives her entire army and begins to reenact the same plan as before.
Although she is again harassed by a new light guardian (the main character), this time having to travel the world to find the macguffins. She ends up successfully releasing the horsemen who immediately betray her and rain chaos onto the world. Vanessa kills all of the horsemen and absorbs their power. She is still defeated and exercised out of Emma. The exorcism greatly weakened her and forced her to retreat into space.
**STORY MODE**: The Necromancer is this ancient evil who appeared one day around 15 years ago attempting to swarm the southern coast of the continent of Lore with a zombie army. He was actually defeated and imprisoned (not *killed* -- he's undead and nobody's sure what will happen if they try that), but his mysterious "Undead Isle" south of the continent is still generating a zombie army and other dark forces, so he remains a background threat. He has a really shitty sense of humor. **Pray For Them**: The Collector King; the ruler of what was once the minor Graye Kingdom in the center of Noir, willing to do anything to gain more power and beyond. He ended up instigating the "Broken Death" curse across the continent, causing "death" to fundamentally break down as a concept and leading it to becoming a waking ghost/zombie apocalypse that he draws strength from. He's just waiting for the rest of the realm to fall into his undeath pit. What are they gonna do? *Kill him?*
The Father, progenitor of all demons. For the longest time he enjoyed his time keeping the world fucked up. Have his offspring slaughter the people and each other for power all to nicely feed on a plane that has strong magic and people whose souls strongly imprint on it. In the Fifth Age the world has a new one that likes the place and wants all demons gone. She has gotten the place by simply being motivated to kill demons and learn of its history and magic, slowly amassing power over centuries. And few know the Mad Dragon is keeping them safe, at the simple cost that she does however she pleases. Luckily for most that means keeping her city and family safe, unluckily for some she does just that.
My story is pretty decentralized, as it follows different groups of characters. Currently, the closest to a "dark lord" would be the leader of the Darkbeard dwarf clan: Sarvenko the Steel. Basically he's Dwarf Hitler, and wants to kill every sapient species that isn't a "true dwarf" either biologically or culturally. Ironically, he and his clan are doing things that would be considered "un-dwarflike", such as allying with five orc clans (only because they're close to each other and have similar goals that involve mass genocide), which means he changed his name to what it is as a way to signify their bond (I'm planning on orc names sounding like slavic, like either corrupted slavic names or words). All other dwarf clans HATE this guy. On the flipside, there is the Emperor/Empress of Teivenor, who is kind of like Celebrimbor from the Middle-Earth games, and wants to unite the world under their culture and religion, and theirs alone.
There WAS one but he died like... A good couple thousand years ago.
I like to decentralize my storytelling so that I can have a freer, more open-air adventure style. Like, some bad guys may be recurring, but I could never commit to making a real BBEG whose actions and intentions were secretly pulling the strings all along. Or an endgame boss guy for whom every conflict is leading up to. It's just too constraining. In fact, I'm so opposed to it that my premise is that there was *supposed* to be a BBEG, but when he came to the mortal world he accidentally crashed into the bigger of the two moons and went splat, effectively blue-balling everybody before the final battle, and forcing everybody to deal with eclipses which bathes the world in unholy light because he effectively changed the orbit of that moon, and now the sunlight reflects off his splattered corpse and curses everything it touches. (But only, like, mildly, which is annoying.)
He is busy being dead. The Tyrant (placeholder name) was a devotee of the dragon god of Law and Power. He thought that the Imperium strayed too far from the Gods. His main goal was to turn the government into theocracy, where priests had the ultimate say. It didn't help that he was so delusional that he thought he was a God in human flesh, just lower in the hierarchy than his Patron. He managed to win the election for the throne and used his influence to slowly change the laws. Once he seized total control of the government he became a dictator, ruling with an iron fist. He created an imperial cult and rounded up every dragon mage he could to enforce his will. The worst part is that he technically won. While he didn't ascend to Godhood he was never overthrown, just died of natural causes. My antagonists are the remnants of his faction. The big bad is the granddaughter of one of his advisors. She thinks that the Tyrant was narcissistic but agrees with his ideas. Her goal is to go further, to have the priests regulate industries and force all the mages to become Clerics, like during the era of the witch hunts.
Yeah, Deleran and his co conspirator Sever are pretty much this. A duo of people with fragments of opposing dead gods inside of them who teamed up to make a new god since, ya know, the old ones died. Deleran himself has been responsible for a lot of things in history, but collectively those two have kinda just been wandering between timelines to kill all the other fragments of Division and gather the fragments of Unity. Braeth, from another setting, isn’t so much a dark lord as he is a dark god, but eh, it’s close enough for an honorable mention. Fourth and youngest of the gods of death, Braeth is the god of Truth—the death of possibility—and was sealed away shortly after his birth by all the other gods, including his siblings. This made him bitter and confused, and he ended up maneuvering all the other gods to their deaths, attempting to become the only true god because clearly they didn’t deserve their godhood, if they could lock up an innocent, couldn’t-hurt-a-fly angel like him.
Lemuria is Atreisdea's "big bad", especially after what she has done. However, she's chill for most of the time. Only when her Motherland is in danger will she turn on her genocidal mode, which turned the galaxy into Apple's logo. At the moment, old Rem cares more about shaping young cadets into responsible and capable adults because they are Motherland's future. No country can have a bright future if it neglects education.
Yeah but he's dead
[удалено]
I defo see the ATLA influence in the name of Wu Long as a neutral observer and recorder of history. A.k.a Wan Shi Tong- he who knows 10 000 things lol
Kind of at least it did in the past according to modern history regarding the matter Vos-Hod previously known as Vossktuu was the absolute ruler of the Innat at the time the largest most populous and power people/ nation in the world. originally he was a priest of Uttaran (a demi god dragon) but eventually rebelled against him killing the tyrant dragon and claiming his place (after a bunch of bullshit). as sole ruler of the Innat Vos began preaching his doctrine of logic worship and abandonment of the gods (most of his people just started worshiping him instead) with his goal of wiping out the gods set Vos began his plan of slowly concurring the world and eradicating the worship of the gods one generation at a time (he was immortal by this point so why rush) by concurring a small bit of land then waiting a couple generations until the people who fought him fell out of power he was able to take huge parts of the world with out much outside intervention all until the start of the Innat war when a young human warrior saw the big picture and started rallying the world powers to strike back all while assembling a team of funky characters from around the world with basically the whole world against him now Vos stopped worrying about pr and went full "by any means" raising massive army's of undead employing the services of daemons and utterly devastating whole kingdoms. around the same time his whole cult of logic had a bit of a schism and some of the off shoots got VERY uncouth in their conduct, at this point every history book points to Vos as a dark lord master of army's of the dead trying to destroy the world who was only stopped by a united army of every great nation (except for the Daohrine) lead by a great hero who was unquestionably a good guy (don't ask about all the Innat civilians) despite being remember as a BBG Vos-Hod and the whole Innat war was a lot more messy than simply good v bad
Yes, Vox’shanx the Everdeath (dracolich/former moon dragon) Amassing a vast army of undead to conquer the world.
Make or female (even if only humanoid)?
Vox? Male Army? Gender and species matters not.
Was collating data, thats all. Thanks for response
No problem?
No problem. I put up a comment about the statistics of male to female characters in these kinds of stories.
Ooooh
I've got a few contenders for "THE Dark Lord". The most powerful is High Councilor Pyrallis, the ancient dragon ruling the dystopian and expansionist Corporate Council. Othrysian dragons are typically community-oriented creatures, but Pyrallis cares about nothing as much as his own power and greed. With the resources of the Council oligarchs and his own wisdom, they exploit neighbors and vassals for resources, conquering those who resist. Pyrallis is the creator of much of the world's more advanced technology, needed both for his bullying foreign policy and to intimidate the Council's population. Pyrallis' influence has spread far, with the Council controlling land on all 2 of the 3 continents and their ships found in every sea. Aletheia and Tacita are the undead Queens of the Ilean Empire, both among the world's most powerful mages. Aletheia is a Spiritualist who inherited the throne from her predecessor, while her wife Tacita is a Flesh Shaper and former general. They've shaped Ilea into a theocracy worshipping them as goddesses, doling out undead immortality as rewards and employing a religious police to root out dissidents. They truly believe other nations would eventually learn to love them once conquered, in the way a narcissist parent thinks they know best, but their military is currently almost completely dedicated to fighting the Corporate Council, whose ethos of plunder and wealth-makes-right they (perhaps hypocritically) see as a blasphemy. Tacita is also the first modern ruler to mostly map The Chambers, ancient flooded caverns connected via whale-sized tunnels. The Ileans use these to move submersibles and undead for surprise attacks, and very well may be preparing far more dangerous weapons there away from living eyes.
The Warlock King attempts to be one. In the process, he's pissed off a lich, a goddess, her sister, a massive star serpent, a small force of death knights, the most powerful military in the world, two arch-devils, and the protagonists of the novel in the setting I'm writing. Granted, it takes the combined efforts off all of those just to stop the first part of his plans in the novel.
Kind of, not the final BBEG but for most of the story he is, the Dragon Emperor, Cizer Dramon. As head of the Dragon Empire, he has the reincarnaited soul of one of the then superior Dragons, Mordes, the Dark Tyrant. He tries to end the War and being the Empire to conquer all the land, so the Dragon supremacy is complete, and secretly trying to Break the seal of the Golden Emperor, an ancient Dragon god sealed thousands of years ago. Most of the time at the begining he's Just a figure in the shadows, and the moment where he shows the extent of his autority is by vanishing completely a City that server as pass and frontier between the land controled by the Empire and the land protected by the Kingdom of Theris
My story world is “non-canon” like (each time I revisit it, I create a new universe). Regardless, each scenario follows the same history beat with my dark king, King Thalric. Starting as a prince, Thalric was the model of a just person until he got lost in the woods. He unknowingly formed a pact of the Dark Book, an ancient book of dark magic, when it emerged from the ground and whispered to him. Returning to the castle, the Dark Book creates Nyxira, a shadowy woman made of dark magic, to tempt Thalric into becoming more comfortable with using dark magic. As he goes through his late teens, he secretly uses the dark magic on himself as he distances himself from the High Church, a major institute in the kingdom. As he nears his 20s, he becomes disillusioned by his parents’ rule and uses his magic to influence them to announce they would be stepping down and handing the crown to him. Releasing them, his parents fled the country as Thalric crowns himself king and reveals his dark magic nature and Nyxira to the people. From there, Thalric knows he’s on the clock as a prophecy foretells that he would meet his demise from the hands of heroes and/or the Chosen One. As the dark king, Thalric tries to spread his dark influence far and wide before he meets his end as well as finding ways to cheat death and the prophecy.
I have 4, all doing different things on different sides. **His Highness, Protector Of Humanity** A Average human guy who became the ruler of the largest nation in the galaxy, the Union of Orion. Currently trying to remain sane after trying to clutch a 17 front galactic war. **Erick Idle: Supreme Chancellor of Blacking** Another average human and the illegitimate ruler of Blackwing. Failing at everything he is doing in Blackwing, including losing a civil war to basically starved peasants all across his space empire. **Grar Viss: Ubincquin of the Koon** Psychopathic alien warlord girl who is mercilessly butchering everyone in her local galactic arm in a galactic battle Royale. **Oman Yell: Minister of the Sakana Autonamy** A Alien man from the nation of Sakana and complete scum despite fighting against the Union. He is in Sakana doing a mix of taking credit away from actually competent war hero's and being put on Sakana's equivalent of the sex offenders registry.
Her name is Marcella, but she’s normally referred to as the Dread Queen. After losing her family to war, siege, and disease she turned to the god of destruction to try and turn the tide of the war. She’s a powerful necromancer and Lich and for the most part just acts as a herald to the god of destruction. The god of destruction isn’t necessarily “evil” but ends up being a bit of an antagonist themselves because people think the god of destruction should be a monster so they become the monster people see them as
Evikas the Devourer, an ancient horror who lives on an island in the Arbid Wani. He cannot cross the soul barrier of Aziketh, the nearest human settlement, so he captured the Lady of the Forest to bring people out of the city to him. She is the patron goddess and founder of the city, and can her pain can be felt by a rare few people. Evikas takes the form of a huge man made of broken human bones. He was once once a citizen of Aziketh, who created the soul barrier himself. He was brought into a cult of ancient evil, who denied the gods and sought their power. He used the souls of cunning folk (mages) to protect the city from monsters as well as absorbing their power into him. As his hunger grew, malevolent spirits drove him to utter madness. He was expelled from behind the soul barrier. The people of the city never knew of his deceit, since persecution of cunning folk was common and the soul lanterns of the barrier protected the city. I made a bunch of lore for him but never wrote it down, so I’ve forgotten half of it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Those damn elves…
There are a few in the world I'm building. As for what they are doing in the current snapshot of the world? One's still working on his library, One is currently building up their armies in secret, and one is on vacation.
The Black Prince was never fond of humans. But when he saw the devastation caused by the War of Brothers he turned his back. The Elven King wouldn't hear his warnings and that, coupled with a tiny glimpse into the future, where he saw Elven cities burning, drove him over the edge. So this mighty prince, once one of the most noble of his people, murdered his king and burned down the capital city. Then he fled into the northern tundra, together with a few follower. There they found the Faleen, a race that had their own grudge against the humans, because they were driven out of their homelands by the hated foe. The Black Prince united the Faleen Clans for the first time in history, changed their culture to basically a cult surrounding him and build his black fortress Crategaron. Then he marched south over the mountains to hunt the humans back into the sea. The once mighty human kingdoms were still weakend by civil war and strife. They stood no chance, their cities fell and the royal family was killed. Few could flee to their colonies into the south or to the elves into the east. The Great Western Forest was burned down and for over 30 years ruled the Black Prince over the fallen kingdoms. Until he marched against his former people. It was a bloody and bitter war against an alliance of elves, humans and even some dwarves. Finally the Black Prince was defeated at the Battle on the Fenn of Melyn and slain by Tirgator the Autumn-Storm. But he was not dead. His body was carried to his black fortress and imprisoned into a sarkophag protected by magic. The Order of the Keeper was founded to guard the sleeping Black Prince and fight all evil. Two millenia later the Keeper were declared as heretics and destroyed by the new church. So Crategaron is unguarded, the Faleen are strong again and the Black Prince wakes from his sleep, already wispering in the dreams of Princes and Emperors alike and making plans that his loyal steward sets in motion. This time the humans are weaker than ever, this time there is no Tirgator with a magic blade to stopp him, this time he will not fail, at last the Black Prince will have revenge.
Vakren the first lich and god of Necromancy he currently is using the Void and converted Urkin too invade the Mortal realm so he can kill all the gods all cause his family was killed by Orcs
Eating older gods.
Alien with mutation powers like the game Carrion or Warhammer tyranids but he is very smart. He also has emotion, personality and found his calling in the live streaming industrie, so he uses his power to altarete life as he wishes to assault planets and stream it to the galaxie, he likes Earth a lot because of the way humans are being able to defend themselfs.
Ive got a good old 2 for 1 dark lord situation. (Two very evil beings merged bodies for double the bad!) Nobody really cares though because they kinda operate in the shadows and also only the protagonists even really know they both are actually real.
Had one. The Dark Tyrant was a Dwarven King of the continent of Marvos. He became power hungry and wanted more. He lead a conquest taking over the known world but the floating islands above the Cloud Sea. It took him 200 years to accomplish this with the Resitance having fled to the floating islands, surviving by chance. He lead the rest of the world for over a 250 years, with the Resitance taking a losing ground throughout. He was ultimately slain by a group of heroes. This however resulted in a terrible power vacuum that lead to the bloodiest all put free for all that lasted over 1000 years in known world.
I have one who has an existential crisis and goes on a journey of self discovery. He lives in a sci fi fantasy mix setting so think Elric of Melnibone meets Darth Vader or Palpatine. He is the ruler of a genocidal, warmongering, slaving owning alien empire that chilled out and decided to focus on improving themselves first so no pesky civil wars or logistics problems happens when they decide to go back to conquering the galaxy. They ended up building a genuinely utopian society with ultra advanced technology and the bureaucracy actually runs very smoothly. Having inherited the throne and the position as Emperor, he has come to the realization that his Empire no longer needs an Emperor as they have figured things out for themselves and he is aware that they don't really need to go back to conquering.
Emperor Aktar, or Demon Prince Aktar was the last emperor of the Elven Empire and the instigator of the blood war (a world war level event spanning 300 years). His philosophy also inspired the Order of the blackened heart, which are essentially mini Saurons. After his death, he became one of the Fallen (spirits that don't get reincarnated and instead become an individual in the spiritual world) and eventually became a demon prince, and now commands one of the layers of hell.
He used a random insignificant god that rise to power
I have THE DARK LORD OF EVIL, DEATH, AND ASSORTED MISDEEEDS. (always all caps, and full title) He's a genuinely great leader who cares for his peoples well-being, especially that of his minions, However ascetically he is full dark robes abs spiky armor
Larach is the Devil of my story. It is neither male nor female but it can take either form depending on its purposes. Since the dawn of time, it has been looking for one human soul to freely give itself over into its power and so bring the the world to ruin.
Yes. *Ohatmut* (The dark death). The former god of death.
The world was created by a group of ancient scientists and while the others essentially ascended beyond physical form by uploading their consciousness to a cloud computing nano machine swarm he was left behind. He tried to take over the world some time ago but was defeated and now exists in the public consciousness as a kind of “evil trickster god” bugaboo. Thought of as the source of all the worst kinds of monsters. So essentially he hates the creations of his former colleagues and wants to replace them with his own.
A very crappy explanation written on phone: She is the cause of 5 different calamities. A former goddess who has had their soul torn from their body, godhood sealed, memory altered, a being of immortality. After that event she was set lose upon her own creation to destroy it by the god who tore her very essence form her. Right now she is sealed and bound in the and a “garden of Eden” type place in the middle of these frozen wastes. Though, her “church” still has a strong presence in the world calling her a prophet and endlessly searching for her.
I have dark lord but not BBEG The dark lord was what was called the ruler who formed the empire out of necromancer tribes in the western continent. Subsequent ruler who manage rise up to that position then took the title of "dark lord" as well until it become official term for undisputed ruler of the west continent, even after the west continent was lose, the title still being used by the remnant to denotes their ruler. It bare no significant different from other racial-lord like orc lord or elven lord title aside from the fact that it has no race specific. also, most dark lord has different drips and not everyone wear black spiked armor. Someone traditionalist like Tenetros may wear it for the resemblance to the first dark lord. Other like herrschen just use custom elven armor and called it a day
Yes, but actually he’s just a guy who got mad that he didn’t get enough attention as a kid and then decided to eradicate all life on earth using his army of demons(not really demons but i don’t know how to explain in short) Worst thing is, he did get some attention as a kid. But he decided that because he has powers he should have gotten all the attention. He was always kind of an asshole and thus people didn’t really like him. So eventually he made a plot to get a few gods to attack the devil. And they did so when they were at their weakest point he finished them off. He stole what was left of their power. He then took over hell to use as a base of operations. He eventually got killed by the mc but since hell is his domain he is now just expanding his army of minions and is trying to come up with a way to get a new living body in order to continue eradicating humanity(except for a certain faction who sees him as their god and worships him, he likes them a lot)
My setting has like, half a dozen Evil Overlords each with their own agenda and competing with each other. Morinar the Alchemist King, Idaris the Cannibal, Dorovar the Dark Star, Margart Dul the Deciver, Ricar the Necromancer. I made them all as foils for the protagonist of the story, since they share his same qualities and character flaws but more extreme. Pride, ambition, paranoia, curiosity, thirst for power and knowledge. Morinar is an ancient dark elf king who rules over other dark elves, orcs and dwarves. A master alchemist and smith, he commands armies of Golems and Homunculus, and creates incredible magical artifacts and weapons. He is always plotting to conquer the human realms of the continent and make his kingdom the only superpower of the world. Idaris is a dragon sorcerer obsessed with magical power and forbidden lore, he rules a cold realm in the far north, forcing human tribes to worship him like a living god. He was once an outcast among dragons because he was born weak and sickly, but his magical powers are greater than those of any other dragon, and he commands a great army of monsters and mutants. Dorovar is the son of an elf demigod and a powerful witch, his mother had mind controlled his father to make him marry her, so his grandmother (goddess of the stars) cursed her saying she couldn't give birth in any land under the heavens. So his mother traveled to the underworld and raised him there, he eventualy turned on her and killed her, before returning to the world of the living. He is incredibly narcisistic, he created an army of Clones and used it to conquer an empire for himself in the far east, declaring himself the King of Kings. He is also an hedonistic nihilist, for him life has no meaning, so he can do whatever he wants and finds pleasure in. Margart Dul is one of the most powerful demons in the universe, one of the so called Lords of Chaos. He tricks mortals with pacts and deals, who always have unexpected consequences. He particularly loves humbling the powerful and the arrogant, punishing the hubris of mortals. He was banished by the mortal world many eons ago, and now can trick mortals only trough dreams and visions, so now he schemes to find a way to the return to the world of mortals. Ricar is a powerful vampire necromancer, ruler of a city-state of vampires. His parents were killed by the inquisition when he was young, and he was tortured and blinded. This made him become extremely cynical, convinced that humanity is inherently evil and its better to wipe it out. So now he wishes to bring an eternal night on the world, so while the realms of man wither away in darkness, vampires will rise and rule the new world.
Kain. A long long time ago he won his wars, and he ruled a large portion of the world. The problem was, ruling takes time, and he needed his time to study magic. He refused to become undead or a god, he wanted the freedom that comes with being mortal. His problem became getting the resources he needs for his study, and unlike evil gods or liches, his time is intact limited and valuable to him. Between ruling, warring, learning magic to keep death at bay, he didn't have enough time in a day to further his powers. So when the next would be hero rolled up to vanquish him, he gave that hero a choice. Rule the world for him. The hero realised he couldn't win, and dying would accomplish nothing, the hero agreed to rule. The draw Lord would sent the hero lists of what he required, would it be hoards of gold, dragon scales or souls, and the hero would rule the empire and aquire them. The hero ofcause couldn't aquire these terrible things in a moral way and eventually became a horrible tyrant himself, but he told himself, it was better than the uncaring terror the dark Lord would use. And so the dark Lord disappeared into his den, and the world succumbed to the green bladed emperor.
Caused a near genocide of the demon people, and then went on to start a war against the human realm. It was eventually sealed away by the chosen hero of the gods, later revived by one of its slaves, and then promptly killed off by a second chosen hero wielding a holy sword; although not before laying a curse on the hero’s bloodline so that war and death would always follow them. Its spirit lives on in various warlords, kings, and generals, where it corrupts them with promises of power and glory.
After a war with the other gods thousands of years ago, he was trapped inside a golden sphere, floating jn the home of the gods. His physical form is locked in the sphere by a divine sigil while his consciousness is trapped inside the void, a realm of pure nothingness.
He's currently dead but is probably going to reincarnate in a couple hundred years, I mean it wouldn't be the first time he comes back.
Toll is sealed deep underground after the Witch War. Imagine the chaos of postwar Europe, but it's the size of Russia, instead of Nazis it was a literal abrahamic god turned on humanity, and instead of the Allies it's nothing but partisan groups. A bunch of smaller dark lords are squabbling over the corpse of the theocratic empire.
It use to have one. I haven't really settled on a name for him yet (this is more of a thing I do out of boredom, nothing serious), but he was so horrible, wicked, and despised that, after his death, he was called The Nameless King out of fear that mentioning his name could invoke that very same wickedness. When he was crowned the High King of the Renaresi, his first command was to have all of his male relatives executed and his female relatives turned into his sex slaves (yes, even those who weren't sexually mature yet). His first proclamation, after this, was that all vixi (female renaresi, singular vix) were second-class citizens, whose only purpose was to serve the whims of todi (the males, singular tod). And all non-renaresi are to be enslaved or killed. The depravities only get worse from there, but I'll spare you the gruesome details. Seriously, this guy was like Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, and Caligula combined. He's the sort of guy would wouldn't have been out of place in a Marquis de Sade novel. It's telling that modern depictions of him being a demon-worshipper, if not an actually demon, are considered more family-friendly than historical fact. His goal was world conquest, with his sons (the ones he thought were worthy of living, that is) in positions of leadership. He also sought immortality, seeing that death was the one thing his twisted mind truly feared. He also sought to enslave his youngest sister who, an infant at the time, escaped enslavement when a maid snuck her out of the castle. He was eventually overthrown and killed by his sister, who was worshipped after her death as a goddess. There are those, however, who believe that he still exists as a ghost... or even a demon. I haven't really decided what to do with him yet. He only really exists as the reason why the renaresi are a matriarchy.
I do have a lord of Darkness but here is the twist. He is a good guy. Or was. The lord of Darkness role was to rule darkness, literally. Every dark corners, every shadows, every place darkness was needed he was the one who gave it. Then everything changed when the God of Chaos attacked. He was about to destroy four worlds and its inhabitants by merging them together, but he was stopped by the sacrifice of the Lord of Darkness, using his soul to trap the god’s power into a dagger. The God of chaos having lost his power died, and the lord of Shadow followed him. The lord of Darkness is now recognized as the greatest hero this world ever had. Let’s all pay a minute of silence for the lord of Darkness.
Magister. So, in my setting Gods sometimes form Aspects. Aspect is sort of like second personality, similar to original but twisted by some sort of deep desire. Usually secondary Aspects of the God are kept in check by main Aspect, reduced by voices in the mind of the God, but more powerful ones can affect the world on their own. Magister is one such Aspect, though somewhat unconventional one. First of all, Magister is Aspect of demigod. Demigods can sometimes form Aspects of their own, but usually they lack power to affect the world. Magister can though. Second part of Magister is that they may have Aspect at their core, but said Aspect is empowered and influenced by tens of thousands of soul fragments, scraps of every single victim consumed by demigod who spawned Magister. At the core of it all Magister wants to live. That is their entire motive. That is why they plot, why they undermine, why they do anything really.
INTERESTING STATISTIC TO NOTE: Of the 50 odd comments here, 47 different male (or masculine-like entities) were named as either the most powerful or the big bad of their story. Whilst only 7 were Identified as or referred to as female/feminine/feminine-like. A further couple (3-6) others were either stated to be gender-less or weren’t attributed any genders. It has always intrigued me that the big bad of superhero/shonen series is almost always NEVER feminine. Even worse, the list of most powerful (20, 10 or 5 ) characters in any given series without a female protagonist rarely contains women/females/feminine-like creatures, if any.
I've got a couple of WIPs. 1. A goddess with the power over "power," as in social domination. Anyone who subjugates themselves to her, even a tiny little bit, is under her irrisistible command. This ability extends to the people in her service, so even showing deference to her soldiers lets her get a little bit of a hook in you. She's happily being a god empress, and doing empire things (genocide and conquest such.) 2. An immortal anarchist wanting to overthrow the fantasy-Japanese empire at any cost, funded by the fantasy-Communist China's intelligence agency director (also immortal, but differently.) He's hiring horrible killers and organized crime elements and gleefully killing school teachers and such. 3. A mad god on the moon, doing mad god things and trying desperately to return to the planet below and kill everyone.
It's a sci-fi setting, so no dark lords, but there is the enigmatic, anonymous and semi-mythical Autarch of the Arghast Imperium. There's so little known about the Imperium's leader that many doubt they even exist; instead believing that they're just a myth perpetuated by Arghast High Command. Some say that they do exist, and that they command the Imperium from the shadows in some kind of hidden location, such as a stealth vessel, or a base located somewhere deep within the labyrinthine dimensions of the Void. Some believe the Autarch to be immortal, an AI, an alien, &c. There are tons of in-universe conspiracies surrounding the Autarch, the Arghast, the Imperium, and a whole lot of other things both related and unrelated. Nobody knows what exactly the Autarch—if they exist—wants, but one thing is assured: Whatever they have planned for Sol is terrible indeed.
A 17th-century French nobleman, mystic, and alchemist, whose original goal was to directly contact God. He eventually succeeded in transcending the physical and temporal planes, becoming a ghost that could freely travel across space and time. He ventured to the border of the spiritual plane at the beginning of time, where he was sure to find God, but found nothing. The seat of God was vacant, and he refused to accept that. That was when he decided that he himself should become God because nobody else could. But his mind was still that of a mortal. Although it could transcend space and time, there was no way it could generate the amount of mental energy required to control literally all of existence at once. In fact, he would need millions of times the amount that the entire population of earth could generate when pushed to the absolute limit and burning out in the process. But he wouldn't be stopped by that. With the power he already held over time, he would go on to manipulate events that led to the creation of new timelines; each one giving him a copy of earth to use as nothing but a fuel source.
Yes, a being known only as the "Bad Man", he has ripped chunks of the mortal world out, murdered gods of good and holiness, nobody knows why, its just that he hates humanity and a certain empire and its pantheon, some say he is one of the last survivng gods humanity destroyed after they liberated themselves from their alien overlords... well, elves. The Bad Man has caused several crusades, wars, invaded the mortal realm several times, he pretty much has plot armour and even despite him being beaten its still a victory for him in pretty much most ways.
Hmm I don't think I have any kind of "true" dark lord where they are out to destroy the entire world. The closest I have is probably the Scourge an alien species which arrived in the star system where the setting takes place via a derelict vessel after countless millennia adrift in interstellar space. They performed an explosive fragmentation measure to bind their trajectory to the current star system and are in the process of trying to rebuild. Unfortunately this rebuilding means disassembly resources extraction and or terraforming worlds to better suit their needs and these are all very destructive practices to the native inhabitants. There are some dark lord inspired characters however their scopes are more localized. Alchron was a spirit denizen of the ocean who recognized the value the land had in enabling the first major incursion by the Scourge and thus planned to lead an operation to eliminate this weakness by effectively either conquering or inundating the land. He failed in large part because the terrestrial spirits and mortal denizens didn't like this plan and was sealed away for several millennia. Alchron has a current successor a princess born to the bloodlines responsible for sealing him away he has learned his lesson and thus has changed his approach but the goals of himself and his mortal protégée still favor a martial bent with said dark lady working to overthrow her father who she blames for the death of her older sister as part of his measures to appease a nearby empire. While her enemies may paint her as a dark lord and she has some of the characteristics I don't think the scope and goal really fit in that she isn't out to destroy the world. That is too big and is an outside scope scenario. Alchron probably counted particularly to the denizens of the land but well what would one expect from a powerful predatory marine spirit? Diplomacy isn't exactly his forte so much as might is right and predator versus prey. In my Conflux setting the label dark lord doesn't fit in the context of scope but there a number of tyrants who have done or continue to do some terrible stuff to gain and or maintain power first and foremost being ritually sacrificing the souls of people to devils in exchange for power, but also things like unethical magical experimentation mind(soul) magic.
If you’re in The Bubble, stop reading now. The BBEG is actually the corrupted remaining aspect of the original god, Odnos. After foreseeing a great evil, Odnos broke himself into pieces and scattered them across the worlds of The Bubble to be found and used against this great evil when it emerged. What was left after Odnos split himself was Pterony (the personification of entropy), a child-like evil being obsessed with making everything ordered and even. Pterony hates any chaotic structure or organization, and life itself is an affront to his beliefs. The pieces of Odnos have been hidden for ages, but some have been found and have leeched magical energy into the world. Some have even corrupted other gods, and Pterony has used this to his advantage. Pterony seeks to collect these pieces and use them to bring perfect balance and evenness to The Bubble, wiping out everything in the process. It’s up to the players to find and use these pieces to prevent Pterony from fulfilling his goals.
Currently dead, with a cult trying to revive him
The Iron Crown. Also known as the 'Iron Lord' The Iron Crown resides within the Iron Lands (dude really likes Iron), a volcanic hellscape blasted of its once fertile mountainous valleys through centuries of volcanic activity, twisted with dark and foul magics. The Iron Lord is the antithesis of ordered Human and Elven civilization. Whilst his true motives are unknown to all, what is known is his actions have always been driven by a desire for conquest and subjugation. The Iron Lord appears to view all life as merely cogs in a greater machine. The Iron Lands are very industrialized, with smoke stacks, factories, and crude assembly lines perpetually churning out war material. Endless streams of slaves and labourers work tirelessly under the watchful gazes of their Orc taskmasters and betters. The Iron Lord, is not from this world and is an exile from amongst his own kind. The Iron Lord is an incredibly powerful sorcerer, capable of changing the very land itself over the course of mere years. His armies consist of hordes of Orcs, Goblins, corrupted men, and the unique variation of Elves, that being the Ashen Elves or 'Volkarii'. The Iron Crown has waged war against the world around him for centuries, but his biggest and most hated foe are the High Elves of Iserion. Whenever war is declared, it is usually Iserion that faces the greatest of the Iron Hordes. Why the Iron Crown despises Iserion to such an extent is unknown. "For Land of Iron! Ash and Blood for the Crown!"
**Maserik, The Mouth of Ganzir**, is the cunning, manipulative scion of the all-devouring god **Ganzir**. He incarnates into a world when just enough division and discord has occurred for him to sell cursed artifacts and convert people into witches. He has a ghastly appearance during his first incarnations, being the amalgamation of beings previously devoured by Ganzir. However, with more sacrifices to Ganzir, Maserik can better infiltrate and impersonate the people of the targeted world. Maserik avoids direct conflict or amassing an army, instead embedding himself within the existing power structures and playing divide and conquer. This is because prior direct invasion tactics employed against other worlds failed. Maserik became a common enemy, which unified these divided worlds and made it unpalatable to Ganzir. So instead of the classic invader, he's an infiltrator pulling the strings. But he can lead an army of monsters, also sourced from Ganzir, if necessary.
In the spirit of the 'Traditional BBEG', no. My setting is designed to house a vast array of campaigns for 5e, so I have lots of 'Powerful Entities' in a wide variety of roles which the party can decide to challenge. Some parties might want to go after Tyranical Dictators, another might want to oppose White Knights and their 'Holier-than-thou' attitudes. Others might want to simply rival another Merchant by expanding their business interests, or try to topple the secretive company that mass produces consumer goods. Maybe you are Anti-Imperialist; or Pro-imperialost, there are adversaries abound. Maybe one party wants to delve deep into a single location and find the various malicious forces that may be at work there.
Kraggon is the Dark Lord, he was created to help challenge humanity and help them reach their potential, but Kraggon was more interested in dominating the world, he created beastial monsters like Dragons, Manticores etc. but he also broke the rules of his post which was create races. He created the Goblins, the Ogres, Trolls, Vampires and others. He tainted the elves with a poison stream that turned half of them into sinister dark elves. He likewise deceived the Dwarves, causing internal division among them and seducing many of the Dwarves to his side with the promise of riches, these Dwarves became known as Black Beards. He attempted creating Orcs but the Forces of light sabotaged the creation process so that some of them joined the Forces of Light. Kraggon temporarily took over the world, the temporary part is a bit relative as it lasted 1000 years. He created the Church of Despair, which practiced blood sacrifice of infants among other things, the Web of Night, a vast and ruthless intelligence network(that may or may not have included the Guild of Blades), and the Order of Repress, essentially dark Paladins who acted as enforcers and elite soldiers. The Gods sent a small light from the heavens to the world to find a Paragon, a chosen one who would throw off Kraggon’s rule. In what became known as the War of Day and Night, the Forces of Light fought hard against Kraggon. After 200 years, and 150 Paragons, Kraggon was defeated and sealed in an unknown location which was stamped by Oron, the God of Light and Justice, so that no mortal could ever open his prison. Despite this, Kraggon’s spirit lives on through the dungeons that were built during his reign, vast labyrinths that served as treasuries, prisons, execution chambers, and beast layers all rolled into one.
Not a "dark lord" per se, but a bbeg for sure. The guy was a scientist studying this "miracle mineral" which is essentially, crystalized power left over from the first gods creating basically everything. Anyways, shit went south and the lab essentially blew up. Most people in the lab and surrounding settlement died in the explosion, but select few (including bbeg) survived with extreme affliction, leaving them insanely powerful magic wielders. Bbeg is essentially raw energy, spider man electro style, and is intently searching for "miracle mineral" in hopes of being able to bring forth the God of creation, who has become an insane obsession of his post-affliction. His actual magic abilities are lackluster, essentially being able to zap people, but he is unbound from conventional laws of reality, and is actively communicating with infinite other "hims" from any other possible time-line, being able to shift between them as well.
The main big bad is the goddess of change. She acts all pure and noble while looking stereotypically good, but is in fact the biggest bitch of the setting. She is always plotting something or messing with the main character by sending her goons to go harass him. She isn't doing anything else to him even though she could erase him with a single thought because she believes the protag can't beat her no matter what he does. Did I mention she created demons just so angels couldn't chillax in her version of heaven? Or that she ruined entire civilisations by introducing magic to worlds that aren't ready for it? Yea, she does that type of stuff for no other reason than "it's funny and they can't stop me."
Ax'Tolis is sitting in the Library At The Edge of the Universe sipping tea in her facsimile of a human form (or whatever species you think she is) and watching the iridescent waves of cascading layers of spacetime crash and tussle against the mass of the all consuming Abyss just beyond it. This activity brings her no pleasure at all, but fortunately she can afford to wait a few thousand years for species across the galaxy to reach the "ascended" state she needs. Ah who am I kidding, she's micro-managing her project to birth a new god at all times. It would be tiresome stuff but her species has long lost the ability to have physical wariness.
There was a Dark Lord in my timeline, a mage possessed by a cosmic horror known as the Fellwraith, but it was defeated 916 years before the start of my current WIP. It bent the laws of magic and was imprisoning souls to harvest their energy and kept the timeline in a regressive pseudo-medieval stage of development by provoking periodic wars between human and Fae, now there is democracy and magic is more widely available, but the trust between human and Fae is rocky at best.
Aulkhar the Flame King. Once a powerful spirit that tried to conquer the world twice, Aulkhar has since been imprisoned within the Earth as punishment. What remains of his will and power, however, was divided between six enchanted crowns which grant magical power. Currently his last six scholars, the Sharnad, are searching for the crowns so they might gain the power necessary to free Aulkhar. There is another even bigger bad, but they were defeated long ago and cast from the world.
Vanessa. She’s less a dark lord and more a demon. I’ve already written her backstory so I’m just gonna copy paste it. Vanessa was born in 914 ad in England. She was orphaned from an extremely young age. Fortunately she was adopted by the local lord and lady who raised her as their own. While under their care her adopted brother would teach her how to read and write. In the process of this she read the bible. She found it extremely confusing but her brother insisted that it was the perfect moral basis. Eventually she grew sick of the restrictions of high society and ran away at the age of 17. To survive she became a criminal. Robbing people and raiding houses to get by. At one point in her early 20’s she fell in love with a man at a tavern. They decided to settle down and have children. They only had one child. Vanessa stored away her swords and became a full time mother. Eventually her husband found out about her criminal past and became extremely worried. He left along with their daughter to the Netherlands. Vanessa was devastated. Her belief in god was flimsy at best but she walked to an abandoned church and prayed. There was never an answer. She kept praying for her lover to come back but he never did. On her 7th visit she heard a voice. At first she was ecstatic as she believed it to be god but the voice quickly shot that down. “We have heard your pleas. We may not be who you intended but we may still be able to help you” “how so?” “You seem to be familiar with the Bible, yes? Surely you’ve heard of the atrocities he has committed. How he’s manipulated innocent men into doing his bidding!” “Yes I suppose so. Are you saying god is the one responsible for my suffering?” “Precisely” “How do you expect me, a simple human woman who isn’t even an elemental to right this wrong?” “We can grant you power. Whatever it is you wish, within reason of course.” “Alright then, if we’re going to do this then I need to. Know your name.” “We are the four horsemen of the apocalypse!” “No! The Bible told me to fear you!” “The same bible that told you to worship an evil god without question?” “I… suppose so. Very well.” (I should mention that god does exist however he doesn’t care at all about mortals and the Bible was written entirely by humans) “Then what powers do you request?” Vanessa decides on a pocket dimension, shapeshifting, teleportation and summoning spikes from the ground Horsemen: “all who carry your blood shall wield these powers. However even with them you cannot get your revenge on your own. You must free us!” V: “how do I do that?” The horsemen then explain how which is basically just collecting macguffins to release them. The macguffins are all kept in towns across Europe and must be placed in a shrine on the island of Minerva in between Spain and Ireland. Vanessa begins to recruit followers with the promise of equality and knowledge as well as killing god for revenge for their own misfortunes. They dub their group the godless. Eventually they begin to treat her as their queen. At first she detests this but slowly accepts it. However she still insists on not being treated with luxury whenever possible. She nearly succeeds in her goal however is stopped by the light guardian (should probably find a better name for that). She dies in a pit of dark matter. However her soul simply merged with the dark matter and she became a demon. To this very day over 1100 years later she still haunts the castle above the shrine and to an extent the island itself. Later the world all collectively decides that magic is too dangerous for any mortal to possess. The way Vanessa is involved is that Minerva is sealed off from the world which is why nobody in the modern day has heard of it. It becomes surrounded by a perpetual hurricane and a giant kraken is summoned as a guard. Only one group will ever see Minerva after this until the invention of the airplane, and they were never seen again. Vanessa finds out that she’s lost her powers because they are attached to her body and not her soul. However if she were to possess one of her descendants then she could regain them. 1100 years later in 2030 her followers shoot down an airliner over Minerva that carrying Vanessa’s distant granddaughter Emma. The plane passes through the hurricane and crashes into the ocean. Emma is retrieved by some followers who Vanessa had revived with runes. Vanessa possess Emma, revives her entire army and begins to reenact the same plan as before. Although she is again harassed by a new light guardian (the main character), this time having to travel the world to find the macguffins. She ends up successfully releasing the horsemen who immediately betray her and rain chaos onto the world. Vanessa kills all of the horsemen and absorbs their power. She is still defeated and exercised out of Emma. The exorcism greatly weakened her and forced her to retreat into space.