Complete Monster/Tabletop Games

"I don't use music to write the Ebon Dragon. I use evil."

- Michael Goodwin, quoted here. Even in the world of tabletop gaming, there still exists some completely despicable villains. Below are some of the worst and most atrocious bastards ever to roam the table top. Hope you roll well.


 * Though most monsters aren't evil (Including the High Octane Nightmare Fuel Devilbirds), there is one creature in Mortasheen that is considered irredeemably and horribly evil even by the twisted standards of Mortasheen's inhabitants, and that is The Dolfury. They are described as utter sadists, so much so that even their vampire creator found them abhorrently evil, and they are implied to reproduce by raping Dolphins and Humans in a parisoidal manner.
 * Note that it's not so much what the Dolfury does that puts it in this category. Many of the monsters do horrible horrible things to their victims. But, they are not truly malicious about it, and usually do it mainly because they need to to survive or reproduce. The Dolfury on the other hand, does the horrible things it does for no good reason at all, and that is what truly frightens the Mortasheen residents.
 * Warhammer 40,000 is a dark and brutal place to live. No side is truly in the right, with most not even remotely in the "good" territory of the Well-Intentioned Extremist. As such, there are multitudes of monstrous men and women, but there are enough genuinely heroic people in the setting to not make this game a non-issue in terms of morality. And yet, in a sea of corruption and evil, there are mainly pawns and incompetent pencil pushers. The nadirs of morality stand out, even here.
 * To start with, we have the Chaos empowered Fabius Bile, Evilutionary Biologist and Mad Scientist extraordinaire. An amoral researcher who proudly wears a lab coat made from flayed human skin, his horrifying experiments with Warp science and genetics can and often will slaughter the populations of entire sub-sectors. On the world of Dimmamar, Bile changed the atomic composition of the air until the population was forced to ingest his transformative serums or slowly suffocate. He earned the name "Manflayer" in the Bray system for skinning those who opposed him to make a lab coat of human skin, the survivors still alive to carry the garment behind him. Bile injects poisonous strands into every gene pool he can, with some experiments wiping out life in entire sectors. A sadist with a god complex and scientific curiosity, Bile is feared and hated by all who know his name and actions. And of course, he wears a lab coat made of human skin.
 * Ezekyle Abaddon the Despoiler, despite his reputation as General Failure, definitely qualifies for this trope. To him, the Black Crusades weren't failures because he got to do what he loves to do the most: kill the lapdogs of the False Emperor. Abaddon's purpose for being revolves around destroying and killing everything in the way of his ultimate goal -- to unite humanity under the dark banner of Chaos -- and with the powers of Chaos backing him up during a Black Crusade, that reach spans the entire galaxy. Now, if he wasn't always blocked at Cadia...
 * Other Chaos champions aren't exactly fluffy bunnies either, made even worse by comparing them to who they once were. Take Lorgar for example, founder of a Religion of Evil and basically the cause of the Horus Heresy, a galaxy-spanning civil war from which it is still feeling the effects ten thousand years later, in stark contrast to his prior devotion of the emperor to the point of trying to depict a diety (which ironically happened after the Horus Heresy put him on the Golden Throne). Or Konrad Curze, essentially Batman if he were pure evil and possessed the powers of a demi-god, dedicated to making entire planets literally die from fear, a far cry from the Vigilante Man who truly cared for his people. Or Angron, an individual of such unrelenting fury and obssession with slaughter that Kharn, famous for shattering two entire Legions in a single night because they dared to stop fighting, was considered a calming influence, perhaps born from the Emperor wisking him away from what would have been his last stand and leaving his army to die instead of helping. There are followers with some sympathy (like Fulgrim and Magnus), but in general Chaos both attracts and creates the worst beings imaginable.
 * And on the subject of Chaos, Tzeentch, god of deception, mutation, manipulaton, magic and hope. This is a being that even the other Chaos Gods are wary around, ganging up on Tzeentch (which is remarkable considering how much they hate each other) when it was at the height of its power because not even they wanted that. Khorne just wants to kill people, Slaanesh is interested more in sensations for itself than inflicting them on others (though the two tend to intersect), and Nurgle genuinely cares about its followers. Tzeentch however constantly screws over everyone, from its most loyal followers to entire civilizations, just because it can, concerned not with motives of goals but with pure, unrestricted change.
 * From the Dawn of War series, Azariah Kyras, Captain and Chief Librarian of the Blood Ravens. He bargained with a Great Unclean One to get off a space hulk, and eventually got talked into going traitor by a daemon of Khorne. He engineered the events in the Aurelia subsector in an attempt to force the hand of the Ordo Malleus to perform Exterminatus on every planet in the system, at which point he would have offered the blood of the victims to Khorne to secure his ascension to daemonhood.
 * Nagash the Undying of Fantasy Battle is an immensely powerful necromancer whose end goal is to kill every living thing in the world and resurrect them all as his undead slaves. The firstborn son of King Khetep of Khemri, Nagash coveted power and immortality right from the beginning. He first learned dark magic from a group of Dark Elf captives he was interrogating. As a reward for this knowledge, he had their leader blinded and her tongue and hands cut off, then buried alive, and the rest executed. When his brother was crowned King after his father’s death instead of him, he took power by entombing him alive. He ruled Khemri through fear and brutality, building a massive pyramid from slave labor. It took an alliance of Kings from other parts of Nehekhara to finally end his reign of terror. Later, he regained his power, and after failing to conquer all of Nehekhara, he decided that if he couldn’t rule it, no one could. He proceeded to wipe out the population by getting the Skaven to pollute its main water source and using his dark magic to cause death and decay across the land. If this wasn’t enough, he planned to resurrect the dead as his slaves, but his plans were thwarted when the Skaven, who feared his power, helped Alcadizaar slay him. Despite his apparent death, Nagash still lives due to his dark magic, and, feared by all who know of him, is arguably the greatest threat to the Old World in existence.
 * Jasper Stone of Deadlands is an example of this trope. He is one of the Harrowed, revenants who came Back from the Dead with a demon using their body as a time-share. Most Harrowed must engage in a constant battle of wills with their demon. Stone has no such conflict, because his demon is afraid of him.
 * Darius Hellstromme subverts the trope: he may be the creepiest of the bunch, since he is still at least nominally human--
 * Exalted: The Ebon Dragon. The Ebon Dragon is a Primordial, one of the in-game entities that created the game's setting. While other Primordials presumably introduced things like the concepts of Law, fruit, and gender into Creation, one of the Ebon Dragon's major contributions was the concept of treachery. Why? Because he's a dick. Given his cosmic significance, it's quite accurate to say instead that he is THE Dick, who will sell out anybody and everybody at any moment for personal gain (or sheer amusement). Among his lesser nasty accomplishments is the Phylactery Womb, which houses the Exaltation Shards of the Infernal Exalted when they're not inhabiting humans. The Phylactery Womb, by the way, is a young girl who has been repeatedly violated in every possible sense of the word; at this point she's a bloated demonic monstrosity with occasional flashes of lucidity. It's also said that even if his harebrained scheme to get the Yozis out of Malfeas by making Creation just as bad works, he'll jockey to be the first one out the door just so he can permanently seal it shut behind him, trapping his fellow twisted Primordials there solely for the lulz. At least Desus has the Great Curse as an excuse; the Ebon Dragon is just thoroughly foul, evil and rotten through and through, almost by definition completely, irredeemably evil.
 * Just to clarify: The Primordials were largely described as being pretty nasty already, the Ebon Dragon just likes to go that extra mile.
 * To clarify even more: The Ebon Dragon is actually the literal embodiment of dickishness. According to his Excellencies, he is literally incapable of, for example, "Telling the truth, except to reveal a horrible revelation", or to take any action which will benefit others more then himself.
 * The Ebon Dragon HAS done two things that can probably considered for the best. In his original state, he was vastly powerful, but utterly unable to express that power. He created the Unconquered Sun (the most powerful non-primordial being who is the embodiment of perfection, virtue and, go figure, the sun) to contrast with himself, which gave him a sense of proper definition. Yes, he had to CREATE the most virtuous and good creature of the setting so he could enjoy exactly HOW MUCH of a dick he was. Of course, it was at this stage that he could actually go out and be a dick, so perhaps it wasn't so great. The other, more neutral contribution was the concept of color.
 * The Bodhisattva Anointed By Dark Water: much like the Lunars, he set up a nation (in the Skullstone Archipelago) that fitted with his goals. Then he predicted his own return and faked his own death, before spending 500 years corrupting the country so he would have something to reform when he returned as the Silver Prince. The problem here? One of the central tenets of his New Order is that everyone is given an accelerated path through reincarnation through their faith, except the few who remain as ghosts because they were still needed. What happens instead? They're dragged off to the fifth island of the archipelago, where they are forged into soulsteel and used to build ships. Even the currency is based on soulsteel.
 * Desus, a canonical NPC from the Dreams of the First Age supplement. Hailed by everyone as Creation's greatest wandering martial arts hero, as well as perhaps the most loving and devoted husband among the Solar Deliberative. In reality: the event hailed as his greatest victory of legend was actually him sucker-punching an innocent being while negotiating with them under a parley flag (which, ironically, is exactly what an Eclipse like him is supposed to do-he just lied because he didn't think that was awesome enough); his wife suffered less psychological trauma from being alone in the heart of pure maddening chaos for three thousand years than she did from their marriage; part of his good reputation is his researching a custom magical effect that forces every single person who sees him or hears him talk to rationalize all of his actions as being for the best of intentions, no matter what they actually are; he is stated to be the worst kind of sadistic serial killing rapist, but since his victims for that particular fetish are anonymous mortals they're never missed and he's never suspected; he is one of five members of the 'Faultless Panoply' (who despite their name were the single most corrupt political cabal in the later First Age, which was already legendary for its corruption).
 * Let's not forget the part where his wife Lilith had been so psychologically broken, both by normal and magical brainwashing tactics, that her single deepest core motivation/primal impulse is "Please Desus", that he beats her routinely (causing her to miscarry at least once, which says something when you're a demigoddess whose big theme is survival and toughness), that part of her mental conditioning is to be forced to rationalize reasons why it's her fault for every single cruelty he lays on her, and that anyone attempting to explain any of the above to her will trigger post-hypnotic imperatives in her mind forcing her to kill that person and then blank her memory of the entire incident. The several millenia she spent hiding in the depths of the Wyld, the uttermost depth of purely insane chaos? Was how Lilith regained (some of) her sanity in the millenia after her husband finally died. That's how horrific it was, that the Deep Wyld would be a comparative rest cure.
 * Basically, imagine Angelus, as mentioned above. With the power of a god and 500 extra IQ points. And being right-hand-man to the ruler of the world. And having the entire planet fooled into thinking he's the equivalent of Captain America (comics). And who has had several thousand years in which to have gotten very, very bored... and no epic goals or master plans to occupy himself with, just an epically jaded sadist looking for a good time.
 * The Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils is one of the thirteen Deathlords ghosts, and easily the most vile of the bunch. She hunts people as a hobby, but her real wickedness comes into play with her two pet projects. First is her Orphanage of Fear; she abducts the entire populace of a village, kills everyone over the age of nine, and raises the children in homes furnished with soulsteel made from the children's families. She also takes this opportunity to create the Shoat of the Mire, a psychologically-tortured little girl given the Black Exaltation of a Dusk. But the Dowager's greatest work is the single most catastrophic event in Creation's history, the Great Contagion. Having discovered this virus in the Well of Udr, the Dowager unleashed it upon Creation, where it killed 90% of all living things. The Dowager is the cruelest and most vicious of the Deathlords; she would be Creation's most notorious murderer, if only her role in the Great Contagion were well-known in Creation. Her end goal is to find the opposite of Creation in the Well of Udr, and bring the two worlds together into a matter-antimatter cataclysm.
 * Iron Kingdoms: Toruk is the Monster Progenitor of the dragon race, although he considers his progeny the only thing that might pose a threat to him and desires to destroy them all. To accomplish this he becomes an Omnicidal Maniac against every other race. He turns a whole set of island nations into a mix of undead and mutants to serve as his army, all with the intent of slaughtering as many of the inhabitants of the mainland as possible to make a bigger army.
 * Dragonstar: Mezzenbone, an ancient and powerful red wyrm, is The Emperor of the Dragon Empire, the first chromatic dragon to hold that position after five millennia of good metallic emperors. Like most other reds he's cruel and regards the "lesser races" as cattle at best, but even among his Always Chaotic Evil kin he stands out for both his deranged mentality and catastrophic plans for the galaxy. During the great Dragon War between chromatic and metallic dragons that cost billions of lives and left countless worlds devastated in its wake Mezzenbone was first an important wyrm in the chromatic Asamet Kingdom and then its leader after the first king died under unclear circumstances that he may or may not have orchestrated, and while most rational beings abhorred the enormous tragedy of the War Mezzenbone, as a Blood Knight in the service of the Destroyer, reveled in the slaughter, planning not only the annihilation of his enemies but also that of his own kind and setting himself up to rule the scorched remains of a lifeless universe as a god. He only changed his mind when he realized the War would claim his own life as well if it escalated further, and agreed to the truce that would form the Dragon Empire only because he knew he needed the 5000 years until his guaranteed ascension to the throne in order to ensure his apocalyptic scheme would unfold flawlessly. In the present day of the setting, forty years after his coronation, he has introduced a number of controversial acts including forming an evil Secret Police of dark elves, supporting open worship of his patron deity, and vastly increasing the rate at which his armies conquer and assimilate new worlds into the Empire, all secretly for the purpose of finally bringing destruction to all that is not him. When he believes the time is right, Mezzenbone will unleash everything at his disposal (which includes systems-destroying superweapons and magical artifacts of untold power) and in a matter of minutes completely shatter all possible opposition to his scheduled omnicide.
 * In Dungeons & Dragons, the supplement Book of Vile Darkness, explores and defines the nature of evil in the game quite thoroughly, inevitably going far beyond the Moral Event Horizon, including many grisly options for evil PCs like power derived from cannibalism, sacrifice of sentient beings to evil gods, necrophilia, sadomasochism, and more. Among other things, it introduces The Dread Emperor, who lives up to his grandiose name. His armour has four children chained to it at all times, and he can transfer any damage that he takes to the children. The Emperor uses these children as a bait for any heroes foolish enough to take him on and will often destroy entire city blocks when he's a mind to. When a hero challenges him, the Dread Emperor feels no compunction slaying hundreds simply to kill a target or mentally enslaving any civilians nearby and using them to attack his opponent for him.
 * Going back to the 1st edition, one has to mention the two most famous of the original Mystara villains: Baron Ludwig "the Black Eagle" Von Hendriks, a mad tyrant who cruelly oppresses his people and takes pleasure in the Cold-Blooded Torture of his prisoners (to the point where he doesn't even care if the victim is guilty or not, only that he/she screams as much as possible); and his right-hand-man, the aptly-named Bargle the Infamous, a sadistic wizard whose criminal record encompasses the murders of his mentor (all in order to steal his magic books and gain more power) and of Aleena, a female cleric who was the complete inversion of this trope.
 * Several of the Darklords in Ravenloft are only prevented from living in this trope by the fact that they can't leave their domains.
 * A few manage to live this trope regardless, like Vlad Drakov - he's basically what you get by fusing Adolf Hitler and Vlad the Impaler into a single maniac.
 * In the 3.0 adventure The Bastion Of Broken Souls, we have Ashardalon, an incredibly ancient, powerful and wicked red dragon. Already a cruel and rapacious creature in his own right, after having been mortally injured by a powerful druidess who didn't live long enough to celebrate the deed, he managed to sustain himself by substituting his own failing heart with a denizen of the Abyss - a Balor, no less! Of course, the demon was not enthusiastic about this, and Ashardalon had to search for another way to extend his lifespan... hitting the jackpot when he discovered an Eldritch Location deep inside the Plane of Positive Energy where the souls of every living creature are born and reside before getting a body. There, he settled down with a few of his servants and began devouring pre-incarnated souls in order to live forever. This act is causing countless being across the universe to be born without a soul, horribly alive and at the same utterly dead... but if the PCs call the dragon out on his crimes, his answer is that he doesn't care if he fucks up the multiverse, as long as he gets to enjoy eternity as the self-styled "ultimate predator".
 * The book Elder Evils adds a few more. Atropus, the World Born Dead, is the afterbirth of the universe and wants only one thing: everything, everywhere, dead. Zargon the Returner was the original ruler of the Nine Hells before Asmodeus and the modern-day devils arrived, and is just as nasty - the devils are flat-out terrified of this guy. Soelma Nilaenish, a grade-A Nietzsche Wannabe who desires to awaken The Hulks of Zoretha for no better reason then "a desire to go out with a bang." Then there's Edwin Tolstoff, whose first action in the given campaign scenario is to force his grandchildren to murder their own mother. Yeah, Elder Evil might as well be called "The Complete Monster Compendium.
 * In Greyhawk there is Iuz the Evil. A merciless, megalomaniacal, thoroughly sadistic tyrant who has made a long road leading up to his capital from the skulls of his enemies. And that's only an example. In his early career, Iuz rallied an army and launched a series of brutal campaigns that gave him the name 'Lord Of Pain'; that or the atrocities he committed on innocents. Eventually, Iuz gathered powerful sorcerers and drained them of life to add their powers to his in a path to godhood. Eventually becoming a demigod, Iuz ended up feared by all those who knew him, with no care towards either of his parents or any in his way. He eventually resorted to murdering his formerly loyal servants and replacing them with Fiends solely for convenience and power.
 * Likely the most dreaded and feared villain ever to grace the face of Oerth is Vecna, currently the God of Secrets and Lichdom. A once-human wizard who became the most feared of liches, Vecna's evil deeds could - and have - filled volumes. To give a notable example: in his conquest of the city of Fleeth, shortly after becoming a lich, the city officials begged for their lives, offering the whole city and their wealth in exchange for mercy. When Vecna wasn't satisfied with that offer, they offered their own lives. Vecna considered this, and gave one of them, Artau, and his family, to his lieutenant Kas, who tortured them to death in front of the other officials in an ordeal that lasted a day. Vecna then said he was still unsatisfied, and had every citizen in the city slaughtered except the remaining officials, forcing them to watch as he did, then had every victims' head stacked, with those belonging to the friends and families of the officials prominent. He never killed the surviving officials, claiming he was satisfied then, and allowed them to leave the city, saying they'd be under his protection for the rest of their lives - simply so they would live it with the horror they had seen. What truly sets Vecna apart from other evil gods is that no matter how powerful he becomes, he desires more, and like Lolth, cares nothing for anybody but himself. Unlike Lolth, he thinks on a far greater scale, and would unmake and consume reality (killing billions in the process) simply to remake it with himself as the only true god. (This was his actual plan in the epic module Die Vecna Die, but while he failed, the ramifications caused changes in the universe that explained the differences between the 2nd and 3rd editions of Dungeons & Dragons.)
 * Forgotten Realms has several:
 * Myrkul, the old god of death before Kelemvor. Unlike Kelemvor, who has a firm set of morals and only tolerates the Wall of the Faithless because it's necessary for the continued existence of the other gods, Myrkul was an utter sadist who took gleeful joy in witnessing the agony and suffering the Wall caused. He is stated to have ruled his faith with an iron fist, purposefully leading his followers through sheer fear of his retribution, and executing anyone who defied him, be they man, woman or child, in sadistically brutal fashions, such as burning them alive in a giant furnace. His greatest atrocity, however, was what he did to one of his best priests, who had had enough of the injustice of the Wall and attempted to destroy it. Initially, he just left the priest to rot on the Wall, but just before the priest fully merged with the Wall and attained some measure of peace, Myrkul decides that he hasn't suffered enough, and transforms the priest into a mindless being of pure, unbridled hunger that feeds on souls, then sets it loose upon the world, knowing full well the chaos it will surely cause.
 * Cyric is commonly referred to as the mad god, and it shows. Already an inhumanely cruel mercenary as a mortal, when he ascended to godhood, he became truly monstrous. During the Time of Troubles, he slaughtered countless other gods purely For the Evulz, the absorption of their portfolios being a secondary goal. It Got Worse in 4th edition, where he orchestrates the death of Helm, and then personally brutally murders Mystra, unleashing the devastating Spell Plague, again purely For the Evulz. By this point, the other gods had had enough of Cyric's atrocities and sentenced him to a Fate Worse Than Death, which is still better than he deserves.
 * What do you expect? The dude created an enchanted book that turns anyone who reads it into a fanatically devoted worshipper of Cyric, then read it himself.
 * Lolth, the (Demon) Queen of Spiders, is the goddess of the Drow, of spiders and of chaos. Once a member of the Elven pantheon, the Seldarine, and named Araunshee, Lolth betrayed the Seldarine out of growing malice, discontent, and lust for power. She betrayed her husband, the chief elven God Corellon Larethian to his enemy, the Orc God Gruumsh and tried to help the destruction of the Seldarine. When she failed, Lolth fled to the Demonweb Pits and led her chosen race, the Drow, into the Underdark, becoming a twisted and cruel goddess. Lolth would soon trick her own grandson into absorbing the essence of a demon lord to corrupt him into serving Lolth as her champion forever. Lolth had the Drow establish a society absolutely built on sadism and backstabbing, solely for her own pleasure, with cruel edicts consisting of demands for the sacrifice of every newborn male child at birth and demands for her priestesses to carve out the hearts of males they grow too fond of. What sets Lolth apart from other evil Gods is that she cares nothing for her race or her worshipers, viewing them as merely tools for power. For her own amusement, she will capriciously withhold her favor from loyal Drow just for the pleasure of seeing them die. Lolth has nothing less than genocidal fury towards all surface elves and routinely directs her followers to murder them. After becoming more powerful, Lolth proceeded to purge the Drow pantheon of other deities, ending her victory by destroying her own daughter, Eilistraee with savage glee.
 * Rivalen Tanthul, one of the 12 Princes of Shade, the remnant of the empire of Netheril, is the most powerful of his brothers. While his father and siblings are certainly ruthless, they genuinely love one another. Rivalen is the Nightseer, high priest, of the Dark Goddess Shar and murdered his own mother to instill his family with the loss needed to turn them to Shar's worship. Rivalen mentally tortures his younger brother Brennus with the vision of the murder and mocks his father, High Prince Telamont, about loving Rivalen too much to stop his mad plans. In the vision, Rivalen's dying mother simply asked Rivalen to hold her hand so she wouldn't be alone, to which Rivalen calmly denied her request to savor her suffering. Rivalen engineers massive casualties and Shade's takeover of the lands of Sembia, savoring the bitterness and pain of those he betrays. A century after Sembia's takeover, Rivalen attempts to finish Shar's manifestation, revealing his ultimate goal: to die and take all that exists in Toril with him. Defined by his cruel nihilism and utter lack of regard for any living being, Rivalen sought deaths on scales that not even Gods such as Cyric would attempt.
 * Kymil Nimesin is a Sun Elf who utterly despises Moon Elves and views the reign of the Moon Elf Moonflower dynasty as the worst atrocity to ever befall Elvenkind. Kymil organizes a conspiracy and begins to have the Moonflower family murdered one by one, including the goodhearted King Zaor and many of his children. Manipulating the half-elf daughter of one victim, Kymil plans to use her abilities to destroy the remaining Moonflower dynasty, and even murders the assassin who killed Zaor to keep the secret. After his initial defeat, Kymil sells out to the Gods who are elvenkind's worst enemies, including the aforementioned Lolth herself. Kymil assists in an attack on the elven kingdom of Evermeet where he even allows the monstrous Elf-Eater to be summoned, caring nothing for the genocide of his own people as long as he can fulfill his megalomaniac fury.
 * Dark Sun dishes Borys 'The Butcher' of Ebe: a former member of the Champions of Rajaat, a cult of genocidal lunatics who attempted the complete extermination of all non-human sentient races (and SUCCEEDED with many of them) by using the environment-raping defiling magic and turning the world of Athas into a warped desert dying world... this before going Starscream on the Champions and their master, absorbing them (and killing an entire city in the process) and turning into a draconic Eldritch Abomination.
 * Dragonlance:
 * Takhisis, Queen of Darkness, is the head of the Pantheon of evil deities. Unlike her fellow evil gods, who may have people they care for, Takhisis cares only for her lusts, greed and power. After mothering the second generation of Chromatic dragons, Takhisis brutally killed two of them solely to make a point to the others. Takhisis threatened the world multiple times, ending her armies out to commit a host of atrocities with her servants enslaving whole countries in living nightmares. Takhisis betrayed all her gods by stealing the world of Krynn at the conclusion of the Chaos Wars against Father Chaos after she abandoned her followers and forced every soul of those who died into an army of the dead.
 * Maladar the Faceless is the cruel emperor of Taladas. When the series begins, Maladar has been dead for centuries and is remembered in terrifying legends. Flashbacks reveal Maladar was The Caligula of the old empire who conducted ethnic cleansing, invented torturous deaths for thousands (he was particularly fond of impalement) and kept a slave boy he molested until the boy managed to poison him. After death, Maladar's influence lived on, as his soul was trapped into a small statue of his likeness. After he's revived he spreads his influence to modern Taladas, inciting brutal wars to create enough bloodshed to prepare his resurrection. His initial choice of vessel is an innocent boy, but he simply bodyjacks the boy's father instead and enslaves goblin races to send them to their deaths as a cover for him to awaken his army and conquer Taladas anew.
 * Malystryx, one of the first and mightiest dragon overlords, is a titanic and brutal monster who carved out territory by simply incinerating anything in her way. After settling in Krynn, Malystryx hunted down and murdered other dragons, taking their skulls and inciting a dragon purge . Using the skulls as a sinister totem, she mutated the land around her into a hellish wasteland and allied with barbarians and ogres to destroy and enslave any innocents left. Malystryx killed her own mate to complete her totem and proceeded with a genocide of the Plucky Comic Relief race, the kender, only prevented by the Heroic Sacrifice of the warrior Riverwind. Establishing herself as a brutal tyrant, Malys would occasionally attack random targets for her own amusement, delighting in the instinctive fear she spread. Without doubt, Malys was the most evil dragon ever to set foot in Krynn.
 * BattleTech is not without its share of Complete Monsters. Chronologically speaking, first there's Stefan Amaris, the Usurper. He's the lovely bundle of joy who overthrew the Star League, executed everyone in the Star League Court, killed everyone in the Vatican before burning the place down, and a whole laundry list of deeds including genocide and sterilizing planets. Later on, there's Jinjiro Kurita, Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, who arranged the Kentares Massacre (an attempt to eradicate the entire population of the planet Kentares IV during the First Succession War). Because a Davion military sniper assassinated his father as a legitimate military target. As a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming of sorts, a good number of his troops refused the order. And then there's Katherine Steiner-Davion. Arguably a fine politician when first presented, a combination of author fiat and other factors led up to the revelation that she'd hired an assassin to kill her own mother, her brother, her other brother's girlfriend, and her own boyfriend. All for political gain.
 * And that's just scratching the surface. With the exception of Candace (and possibly Sun-Tzu), you don't become a Liao without being a Complete Monster. Then there was the Kurita commander who demanded the massacre of the Eridani Light Horse's families and non-combatants in retaliation for the ELH not renewing their contract with Kurita- when ELH units came gunning for him in revenge, the usually ruthless Draconis Combine High Command retired its troops and forbade ANYONE from trying to help him, with predictable results. The Mechwarrior Brotherhoods in Davion Territory strayed onto this path also, looting, raping and murdering -- because they were Mech Warriors, and therefore automatically better than the people they were victimizing. Hanse Davion too has skirted this line, but is just so damn awesome he's been able to avoid the tag.
 * Oh, and after the rest of humanity started catching on to her game, Katherine Steiner-Davion became the focal point of a civil war that wrecked both of the nations she ruled, sold out the nation she had the most loyalty with to the Clans (in an attempt to kill her brother and some mercenary outfits that weren't on her team) and finally - after being deposed - escaped with her Clan allies and created a test tube baby with her rival brother's DNA and her own who would hopefully go on to cause more havok in the Inner Sphere at a later date.
 * Even her aforementioned son couldn't take it.
 * An even earlier example is Star League General Amos Forlough, who helped conquer the Periphery during the Reunification War. While his actions against the Taurian Concordat, which included saturation level orbital bombardment and WMD deployment, may have been justified due to the fact that they were doing the same things; his actions on the Outworlds Alliance front went way too far. The Alliance barely had a regular military and so they used irregular militia to fight back with bombings and sniper attacks against his troops. He responded by killing 10% of the population of every planet that resisted (roughly 12 million people across the Outworlds), left many more without homes or shelter and sentenced his own subordinates to death and hard labor if they refused to carry out these atrocities. Little wonder why he is known as "The Butcher" and "The Baby Killer". The worst part is that he was never brought to justice and received some of the Star League's highest rewards for the victories he won.
 * Feng Shui: Curtis Boatman, one-man reason that the Architects of the Flesh are unplayable, is the source of basically everything wrong with the 2056 juncture that isn't his ostensible boss's fault, from Abominations to the surveillance state. Unlike his boss, he is about as far from sympathetic as possible-he's described in-game as a bloated, corrupt, and utterly selfish jerk whose own motive is his own profit, and is personally responsible for several sadistic experiments. His laundry list of crimes included the Uber-kids, tricking normal people into accepting The Corruption of Arcanotech and then accelerating it deliberately so he can have perfectly loyal Super Soldiers, keeps an entire greenhousse complex of Black Market Produce for himself (even his boss, Bonengel, puts his money where his mouth is and buys real food honestly), plans to betray Bonengel because Boatman likes the Crapsack World with himself at the top of the pyramid as it is (and Bonengel had a Heel Realization a few years before and has become Necessarily Evil), and despite the Buro wanting equality at all costs, he's a huge bigot responsible for the rampant homophobia in the 2056 juncture. Most damming of all is the Fisher Kingdom aspect of chi mastery over a juncture-2056 under Architect rulership is his ideal world. Look at the utterly dystopian future and realize what that says about him.
 * Ming I, the worst of the Four Monarchs is a user of warped shadow magic who willingly replaced her arm with an Artifact of Doom to hurt people more, knowing full well she'd effective be urged to render people Deader Than Dead. In her native timeline, she ruled over the Aztecs and then took the Human Sacrifice thing to heights even they found abhorrent, learning how to use the blood of virgins to extend her youth, only being allowed to remain because she cowed them into believing she was a god who killed or enslaved all of theirs. What puts her in the rank of Boatman up above, however, is three little words: Industrialized Mind Rape.
 * Magic: The Gathering has Yawgmoth. Take the philosophy of Adolf Hitler with the methods of Josef Mengele, add generous doses of A God Am I, Bio Augmentation, Evilutionary Biologist and Hollywood Cyborg (a kind where Cybernetics Eat Your Soul, too), and garnish with Body Horror. Then go somewhere far, far away.
 * The World of Darkness has the Nephandi, for instance - knowingly working to make the world worse than it already is, with the eventual goal of destroying it entirely. "Mere" infernalist mages are considered a far lesser and less vile threat than Nephandi, whose evil goes far enough to willingly invert their very souls, so that their magic becomes inherently geared towards despoiling and corrupting the world (a transformation that not even death and reincarnation can fix). A number of them intend to eventually double-cross their Eldritch Abomination patrons and take the world for themselves. Which is by no means a blessing for those who might survive their possible ascension to power.
 * Even in the world of darkness, the Nephandi stand out for being the vilest monsters one could imagine. If you can think of an act of depravity, they will do it, plus quite a lot of things that you wouldn't be capable of imagining. This is signified by the fact that the two already dubious warring factions will immediately drop their 800 year old secret war for world domination and team up if there is a Nephandi threat. They absolutely sicken everyone, with even the most "good" and pacifistic traditions telling their members to stay far away or kill them on sight, and even the most ruthless and sadistic members of the Technocracy considering them an abomination. Hell, even the above mentioned infernalists, who deal with and sell (parts of) their souls to demons in return for power, fear and loathe the Nephandi. Why? Because they do the same thing, but explicitly just to make the world a worse place.
 * Vampire: The Masquerade: Sascha Vykos probably deserves a special mention here. A centuries old, genderless Tzimisce with a weird kind of god complex, he is described as making all the furniture in his mansion out of LIVING PEOPLE who are being kept alive through the power of Vicissitude, torture-raping people for shits and giggles and throwing them out when they go mad from too many disfigurements and generally being a massive dick (despite not having one). It's telling when most write-ups for his character quite frankly list his demeanor flat out as 'monster'. It's also no surprise that the rest of the Sabbat look to this nutter as a role-model.
 * Andrei the Tzimisce in Bloodlines, as Archbishop of the L.A. branch of the Sabbat, takes the Sabbat’s ideals of embracing their inner Beast and renouncing their humanity to a whole new level. Andrei lives in a house that he has decorated with body parts in order to make it resemble his ancestral estate. The walls are coated with bloodied human flesh and the furniture is made from bones and organs. Equal parts Evil Sorcerer and Mad Scientist, Andrei uses live people and vampires as materials in his construction of the monstrous abominations that serve as his soldiers. He then tests the killing capacity of these monsters by unleashing them on defenseless mortals, with his ultimate goal being to use them to wage war against the Camarilla. In particular he plans on wiping out the Nosferatu in order to "gouge out the eyes of the Camarilla." Also, should the player not send away their ghoul friend/lover, Heather Poe, then, upon reaching the Sabbat’s lair, the player will arrive just in time see Heather brutally murdered by Andrei’s goons.
 * Promethean: The Created: Most evil Prometheans are motivated by years of torment they have received at the hands of regular mortals. Not so Oleg Wormwood, Ukrainian mobster, Zeka (Russian for "prisoner"), and would-be bringer of the Apocalypse. Created at the time of the Chernobyl disaster, Oleg witnessed the meltdown, and, despite having a relatively good life by Promethean standards, desired to replicate it across the face of the world. Joining the Ukrainian, and then Russian branches of The Mafiya, Oleg killed numerous men (and gave large numbers of prostitutes cancer) in the process of making a name for himself, all while building up the connections and resources he would need to achieve his dream. He has purchased plutonium for terrorist causes, stirred up trouble between India and Pakistan, and otherwise done everything he can to manipulate the world's leaders into creating the nuclear holocaust that he so desperately craves. Emotionally hollow, and incapable of remorse, Oleg has no desire to ever be human, viewing mortals as nothing but tools to aid him in triggering The End of the World as We Know It.
 * In Hunter: The Vigil you can expect to deal with the very worst that the supernatural world can throw at you. Yet as the following slashers and cultists establish, sometimes you don't need to be a vampire or a werewolf to be truly heinous:
 * Larry Meeks, alias Captain Hook, is a small, pudgy, uninspiring man who runs a bait shop, dresses like he's going on a fishing expedition and has a fanatical hatred of anybody he thinks is better looking, more successful, or stronger then he is. A murderer since the age of fifteen, when he first determined to "prove himself", Larry baits in his victims with kindness, playing the role of the favorite neighbor or kindly uncle. Once he's won their confidence, he then subdues them with a gaffhook, and hangs them up in his fishing shack with thousands of tiny fish hooks embedded in their skin. Slowly draining his victims of blood over the course of several days, Larry then guts and cleans them "just like a pretty trout." Active for years, a recent invitation from the Subtle Collectors' Association (a cabal of like-minded killers) has convinced Larry that it is time to up his game, and he plans to move onto still bigger and better targets in the hopes of impressing upon his compatriots the is the best. Totally consumed by his need to hurt people, Larry spends most of his off time talking to his customers about his murders, using fishing metaphors to obscure what he's really going on about.
 * Harvey Ecks, known variously as The Rest Stop Killer, The Torso Maker, and (his preferred sobriquet) The Driver, had a dream when he was still in the womb. In it, he learned that by understanding the Dream Pattern, he would be able to gain total control over all reality. In his quest to achieve this goal, Harvey discovered that by forcing people to watch their limbs being amputated, he could make them reveal pieces of the Pattern. Once a roving killer who left headless torsos at rest stops, Harvey decided that this was too inefficient. Staking out a patch of the interstate highway, Harvey brainwashed diner waitresses, gas station attendants, and state troopers into blindly serving him, then installed video surveillance cameras on billboards. When he sights a likely victim, he forces his servants (who know him only as The Driver) to help him capture that person, whom he then tortures to death in the hopes that they will reveal more of the Pattern.
 * Thomas Salvatore, the head chef and owner of the Epicurean Club, is leader of the Pate de Fois Gras cult. A would-be chef, and gourmand, Salvatore was never able to get his restaurants to work. At least not until he'd visited Papua New Guinea and gained a taste for "long pig". Returning home, Salvatore recruited a gang of equally amoral chefs, purchased Briarwood Farms, and used it to raise his food of choice—human children. Keeping the kids locked in filthy cages, Salvatore and his compatriots force the children to bulk up on food and stimulants, before cutting out their livers and serving them to their patrons, none of whom have a clue what they are eating. Determined that he will be known as one of the world's greatest chefs, Salvatore plans to ride his new-found success all the way to the top—no matter how many children he has to butcher in the process.
 * Carman Skiric in Battle Machines. He destroys communities on planets he wants to capture because, in his eyes, people exist only as a resource, somewhere below energy and metal. The only reason the Earth and Sol governments have him as the commander of their armies is that he is so utterly terrifying that many foes just give up, rather than have him come down and fight. He's also Ax Crazy and his personal mech wields four chainsaws, he uses them because, quote, "I like to see the expression of dawning realization on their faces, right before I tear them apart".
 * In Tribe 8 there are the Z'bri, mad spirits who came to the post-apocalyptic Earth to teach humans about the lost spiritual ways. Instead, intoxicated with flesh, they enslaved them in concentration camps and set up to do lovely things such as buildings made of still living human flesh. Even being supernaturally insane was not an excuse for the likes of the Baron. Many humans were eventually freed and a truce was made, but the Z'bri still wish to conquer all. The beautiful things they would do to us...
 * The Freedom City setting of Mutants and Masterminds is home to some fairly repellent villains, but none quite as bad as Wilhelm Kantor or Omega.
 * Wilhelm Kantor, alias Overshadow, is a Nazi warcriminal and Evil Sorcerer turned international terrorist. As a member of the SS and the Thule Society, Kantor learned that he was the reincarnation of Tan-Aktor, a Treacherous Advisor to the Egyptian Pharoah Heru-Ra. Sacrificing twelve of his men, Kantor regained his past memories and powers, then went onto become the true mastermind behind the Nazi Ubersoldaten program. When Schwartzpanzer was crippled in combat, Kantor sacrificed him to increase the power of his own personal assassin, Nacht-Krieger; when the war ended Kantor would use the ritual suicides of his SS and Thule Society colleagues to further empower himself and Nacht-Krieger. Kantor went onto kill almost the entire roster of the Allies of Freedom, left Nacht-Krieger to take the fall, and set up the terrorist group SHADOW. He has since attacked world capitals with armies of clones, tried to get the USA and USSR to nuke one another, poisoned municipal water supplies, and attempted to use ** Omega's power to take control of space/time. In the meantime, he has kept himself alive, first by bodyjacking clones of himself, and later trying to take over the body of his own son, Ragnarok. Evil on a grand scale and a petty one (once using a terrorist attack just to ruin an enemy's retirement party), and with a bad habit of throwing his "friends" under the bus when it suits him, Kantor is out only for himself, and is as bad as even a Nazi can get.
 * Omega is the setting's resident Omnicidal Maniac. Once the heroic king of the first race of mortals, Omega realized that entropy was going to destroy the multiverse, and decided that he wanted to be on the winning side. Turning on Unus The Creator, Omega stole the Doom-Coil (the very device Unus had designed to fight against entropy) and reprogrammed it to spread entropy, feeding his own universe into it as fuel. In the process he defeated Unus, slew most of the other gods, and completely surrendered to his own hatred. Omega now travels universe to universe, corrupting and recruiting the greatest heroes of each 'verse into his army, before annihilating their home dimensions. He transformed the greatest physician of one universe into the sadistic Physician Friendly, promised to spare another hero's people only to turn them into mindless drones, and not only destroyed The Centurion's homeworld, but then tracked him to Earth-Prime, killing him and nearly wiping out Freedom City in the process. Concerned only with expanding his own dead realm (the so-called Terminus), Omega's goal in the extinction of all life across the multiverse.
 * Pathfinder: The followers of Zon-Kuthon, God of Envy, Darkness, and Loss tend to be a nasty bunch, with a penchant for torture and self-mutilation. Yet not a one of them--including quite possibly Zon-Kuthon himself--has ever come close to the level of atrocity perpetrated by Kazavon, Zon-Kuthon's one-time Champion. Essentially Vlad the Impaler in the form of a sixty foot Blue Dragon, Kazavon disguised himself as a human mercenary and offered to help the nation of Ustalav drive out the invading Orc hordes. Upon his victory, Kazavon set himself up as the dictator of the borderlands area, where he ruled with an iron fist, torturing to death all those who disagreed with him, including many of the soldiers who had served him faithfully up to that point. When his employer tried to reign him in, Kazavon flayed the man alive. He would go on to achieve truly special heights of depravity, holding torture parties, and orgies involving the undead, spreading his influence throughout the entire area. Kazavon was eventually killed by a party of heroes, but the madness didn't stop there. The Pure Evil of his soul contaminated his skeleton and threatened to resurrect him. The bones were crafted into seven Artifacts Of Doom and hidden throughout the country; contact with even one of them is enough to drive the wearer down a path of madness, murder, and ultimate self-destruction (as happens in the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Module where Kazavon is the Bigger Bad).
 * Allevrah Azinrae was once an Elven cleric of Nethys, God of Magic, and a hero in the nation of Kyonin. That was before she, with the aid of the Demon Lord Abraxas, conceived of a plan to exterminate the drow. When the fellow members of her Government Conspiracy refused to go through with the plot, Allevrah murdered her critics, let her rage transform her into a drow, and fled to the drow capital of Zirnakayinn, where she murdered the matron of House Azinrae and took it over. Desiring revenge on Kyonin, Allevrah plans to drop a meteor on the capital; if successful this plan will wipe out Kyonin and trigger an ice age that will kill most life on the planet. After a failed attempt at using the city of Riddleport as a test target, Allevrah retreats to the Land of Black Blood below Kyonin, where she prepares to summon her meteor. She also allows her lover (who is terrified of her) to perform hideous experiments that reduce the victims to masses of screaming black liquid, cuts deals with an aboleth mind rapist and a neothelid, feeds prisoners to ropers, and orders her troglodyte henchman, Ornn, to eat a charda colony's children if they do not cooperate with her. Driven solely by hate, Allevrah shows just how far even the best person can fall.
 * Pathfinder's evil deities can be a bad lot, but none are quite as horrible as archdaemon and Horsewoman of War Szuriel. A former paladin, Szuriel became a conquering empress who had every member of her former faith crucified in revenge for her excommunication. Following her death, she became a daemon, and murdered her way to the top of Abaddon's hierarchy, eventually slaying the previous Horseman of War and taking his title. In her new rank, Szuriel represents war at its most terrible, celebrating societal breakdowns, scorched earth campaigns, and ethnic cleansing, and counting Insane Admirals, General Rippers, and Sociopathic Soldiers galore among her most devoted followers. Hiring out her daemons to those who pay the most, Szuriel inevitably turns on her employers, after forcing the campaign to degenerate to the point where mutual genocide is the only way it can end. Forging weapons in the heat of burning human souls, and revelling in violent excess, Szuriel demonstrates what happens when a Physical God adopts the mentality of the most sadistic Psycho for Hire.
 * Genius: The Transgression: Walking-Man is the most infamous of the Clockstoppers and one of the most powerful. Targeting small, isolated communities, Walking-Man uses his Compelling Voice to take control of the town, has mobs eliminate anyone who might object, and then disposes of the town's leaders, taking on that role himself. Forcing people to abandon their modern conveniences, Walking-Man drives the communities he rules farther and farther back in time, finally sending them into the wilderness, unclothed and unarmed, to die, while he searches for his next target. Having driven communities in Idaho, Nebraska, and Colorado to suicide, Walking-Man continues to ply his trade across all three states, preaching his anti-technology gospel to any who are susceptible—though his relationship with Lemuria would indicate his hatred of technology does not go as deep as he might pretend.
 * Legend of the Five Rings: Hantei XVI, known as Otomo Okucheo before his ascension and also known as the Steel Chrysanthemum, is the most violent and tyrannical Emperor that Rokugan ever had. He was ambitious even as a young child, when he arranged for the murder of his brother to prevent him from being made Emperor. His atrocities ranged from the disastrously grand, such as creating a Secret Police force to hunt down traitors and political dissidents; to the disturbingly petty, such as torturing a woman to death for protesting his widespread use of torture, and then naming her as a minor goddess of Torture. He ruined a political opponent's reputation and career, just so he could claim the man's daughter as a concubine. When that daughter refused to bear Hantei XVI a child, he had her imprisoned in her own room and forced the matter. The final straw, however, was ordering the execution of his own mother, because she dared to protest him killing all of his siblings so they couldn't contest his claim to the throne. This final act was enough to make his entire guard, horrified by what he had done, turn on him, assassinating him in spite of the fact that they would all need to commit seppuku afterwards. Back from the Dead more than 500 years later, Hantei engineered the 12-year-long War of Spirits in order to try taking back the throne. After the War, as one of the conditions of the treaty, Hantei tutors the son of an opponent. Planning to attack his student in order to cause the treaty to be broken and war to break out again, Hantei, while beating this student, is killed by his own fiancé, who has grown to care for this student.
 * Sentinels of the Multiverse: Spite originally started out as Jack "Maniac Jack" Donovan, a petty delinquent and minor member of the Wraith's street-level Rogues Gallery in Rook City. After getting stopped by the Wraith one too many times, he became a Serial Killer, and after finding out the Wraith's secret identity, he dropped her two best friends off a skyscraper in front of her. After finally being captured, he avoided execution by agreeing to secret drug testing. When the drugs granted him Super Strength and other abilities, he broke out of prison and went back to his murderous ways, while also using any drugs he could get his hands on to fuel his new addictions. His villain card deck reflects all this by often forcing the players to make sadistic choices between saving victims or themselves, and his potential victims include a teenage wanna-be sidekick, an innocent priest in a soup kitchen, and a trusting little girl. Even the heroes deciding to just kill him this time didn't faze him, as when a demon god offered him a chance to be resurrected in exchange for killing lots and lots of people to spread enough fear and misery to allow the demon god to be summoned to our reality, Spite saw it as a win-win sucker's bet where he got to live again—even though resurrection is normally a very unpleasant occurrence in this universe—in exchange for doing the mayhem he wanted to do anyway. While nowhere near as powerful as other beings in the universe, Spite is as bad as it gets for a street-level villain.
 * In the Unknown Regions supplement to the tabletop game Star Wars d20, Mnggal-Mnggal is a bizarre alien intelligence taking the form of a sapient ocean of grey slime, and by far the most feared being in the Galaxy's turbulent Unknown Regions. The being operates by possessing the bodies of unwary beings, something for which a mere drop will suffice, and then painfully hollows out their insides and wears the unfortunate being's ever-rotting carcass as a puppet. Far from a mindless beast that needs to do this to eat or reproduce, Mnggal-Mnggal is quite intelligent and is believed to perform these actions simply because it enjoys them. It has been known to possess the bodies of small children just to watch their parents' horror, and keeps a "collection" of starships whose crews it has massacred in orbit around its home planet. Its reputation is such that all other powers in the Unknown Regions, even mortal enemies, will band together to fight it should it make its presence known, and should it ever gain complete hold of a planet it is believed that all life on it will be wiped clean.