Complete Monster/The Elder Scrolls


 * The very first Big Bad of the series, Jagar Tharn from Arena. He betrays countless people, traps the Emperor in another dimension, and sells out the Empire to Mehrunes Dagon and the Daedra. All out of pure selfish and evil ambition.
 * Daggerfall has more of these types than pretty much any game in the series. One of the worst offenders, though, are the former (deceased) king and the then-current queen . Long story short, their designated-heir son was chronically ill and fairly uninterested in invading neighboring countries for their land, the latter of which was the kind of thing his parents liked doing when they could get away with it. Not only did they produce some more children and partially disinherited him, his interest in scholarly pursuits.
 * How Dagoth U'r of Morrowind became what he is, is questionable, but the moral nature of what he does is undebatable. He betrayed the wishes of his best friend and tapped the powers of the Heart of Lorkhan for godhood -- he invented the Corprus disease, which warps the bodies of its victims and shatters their psyche, to produce his soldiers -- he blighted the land of his own people with endless storms of volcanic ash and foul sickness -- he is in the process of recreating Numidium, an originally Dwemer-created machine that is responsible for destroying an entire race of people -- and he plans to spread the Corprus plague across the entire continent of Tamriel and invade all of its nations, so that he can commit complete genocide against all non-Dunmer races. In a world of Black and Grey Morality, Dagoth Ur is the pitch void.
 * Then there's Umaril the Unfeathered, the immortal half-Ayleid demigod sorcerer-king, who made a deal with one of the Daedra (admittedly one of the Chaotic Good/Neutral ones), then, after being temporarily killed, returned to destroy the gods who had empowered his killer. He brutally murdered at least a dozen members of the clergy and then wrote messages on the floor with their blood. As a taunt.
 * Kurdan gro-Dragol starts off as a particularly brutal loan shark, until you discover that . And then, as if to rub salt in the wound, . Needless to say, taking this bastard down is very satisfying. Delivering the news to the recent widow, less so. At least Kurdan will no longer hurt anyone.
 * Big Bad Mankar Camoran of Oblivion is a Magnificent Bastard who gives epically impressive speeches that you have to admire, but he still created a pocket dimension in which he locks people in gibbets and sinks them into lava, but not before making them immortal. And the kicker? These were his followers. During Oblivion, Mankar’s goal is to summon his master into Tamriel so Dagon may destroy the world and create a new one in its place, one that coheres with Camoran’s Social Darwinist beliefs. Not only does Mankar aide Dagon’s Daedra in attacking the mortal world, he also orchestrates the assassination of Emperor Uriel Septim, as well as his children. He even had the city of Kvatch completely destroyed in a failed attempt to kill Uriel’s bastard son, Martin. While Mankor lures in his followers with promises of a paradise for their faithful service, this turns out to be a lie. Seemingly idyllic on the surface, Dawn’s Beauty, Mankar’s “paradise,” is really a hell where his followers are constantly killed by monsters, only to be resurrected and killed over and over again. His promise to allow any follower who loses faith to leave his paradise also proves false, as the grotto, which is said to be an exit from the afterlife, really leads to a torture chamber where the unfaithful are made immortal, locked into gibbets, and then dumped into lava. One follower who lost faith was forced by Camoran into inflicting this punishment on his friends over and over again. Dawn’s Beauty is said to be Mankar’s vision of how he believes the world will be once Dagon takes over.
 * An example who spans over several games, the dreaded necromancer Mannimarco is one of the series' most stand-out examples of pure unadulterated evil. A power-hungry Altmer mage who wasn't content with simply amassing a huge wealth of magical knowledge, Mannimarco grew to despise all life and turned to the dark arts of Necromancy after becoming obsessed with enslaving people's souls, soon starting up a coven of necromancers that became infamous for their cruelty and brutality. During the time of The Elder Scrolls Online, Mannimarco tricked a group of mages into weakening the boundaries between Nirn and Oblivion, allowing the absolutely savage and brutal Daedric Prince Molag Bal to spread his influence to Nirn, and gleefully assisted him in laying waste to the world as his Dragon. However, After this, a millennia passed as he ended up accumulating enough power to basically become a god and ended up leaving a mortal form of himself behind that became hell-bent on destroying the powerful Mage's Guild. To this end, he began to research on Black Soul gems, horrible items that can be used to trap the souls of sentient beings for use in his necromancy. Horrifyingly enough, a person whose soul is trapped in a gem doesn't truly die and is completely aware of where they are. When a gem has been used, the soul is transported to a hellish dimension called the Soul Cairn, where they are kept in brutal agonizing pain for all eternity, a horrifying fate he had in store for Guildmaster Hannibal Traven.  His reason for his needlessly ruthless vendetta against the guild is incredibly infuriating: he wants to destroy it as a way to spite an old enemy of his despite the fact that said enemy is long dead, which means that he has no real reason to be doing this. Thankfully, he can meet a karmic death of hilarious proportions should the player trap him in one of the Black Soul Gems he loves oh so much, an appropriate fate for this monster of an Altmer.
 * Skyrim has more than it's fair share of these, with the biggest, most stand-out example being the Thalmor. Given that they're essentially the High Elven Gestapo, they enforce the ban on Talos worship by dragging away religious Nords and torture them to death for the fun of it. Why do they do this? A lot of it is due to arrogance and an inflated sense of superiority, but a lot of it also has to do with the fact that a human such as Tiber Septim ascended to godhood whenever their people were cast down from being gods themselves. Their ultimate plan is to essentially kill Talos, and because of him holding the fabric of reality together, all humans and other races will die out with the world which in turn would allow them to ascend to godhood. As heinous as this goal is, their other deeds are no less vile, such as instigating the civil war by utterly breaking Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak, wiping out each and every Blade (The Emperor of Tamriel's spymasters and personal bodyguards) in their territory and delivering their heads to the Emperor as a birthday gift, violently dominating the country of Valenwood and forcing the native Bosmer to serve them, getting the Khajiit of Elsweyr to join them by tricking them into thinking that they're the true saviors of the Oblivion Crisis, and to a larger extent rewriting history making it appear that they put an end to the Oblivion Crisis and not Martin Septim and the Hero of Kvatch. It's no surprise that everyone from the Stormcloaks, Imperials, and even other Altmer loathe them to no end. It's worth noting that even in Imperial territory, that point-blank murdering Thalmor members nets you the tiny bounty of forty septims, which is what you normally get for assault (In Stormcloak territory, you more or less get off scot-free).
 * Even among the ranks of the Thalmor, there are a few standout examples. There's Elenwen, the Thalmor ambassador to Skyrim who was such an efficient Torture Technician even among the torture-loving Thalmor, she got promoted to her current station. And the whole thing with Jarl Ulfric? SHE was the one who broke him and planted the seeds for the Skyrim Civil War, putting all blood shed in the war ultimately on her hands. There's also Ancano, who goes to the College of Winterhold in order to get his hands on the Eye of Magnus, which would essentially kickstart the plot to unmake reality itself, and he left quite a few bodies in his wake such as Archmage Savos Aren and Master Wizard Mirabelle Ervine.
 * Skyrim is also home to more than a few particularly nasty mages, one example being Sild the Warlock. Making his home in an Ancient Nordic crypt, he lures in explorers with tales of treasure and the like, only to trap them in his lair so he can torture them to death. He also raises their spirits and forces them to patrol the crypt and fight off anyone who could put up a fight against him, with the ghosts being aware of the whole thing. And making things worse, giving his journal a look reveals that he wishes to find slower, more painful ways to kill people simply because he finds it very sweet to take the life of an innocent person.
 * Another example would be Arondil, a necromancer who murders women and uses their ghosts as sex slaves while they're fully aware of what's going on.
 * of the Thieves Guild.
 * Thonar Silver-Blood uses the prisoners gathered in Cidna Mine as free slave labor in order to run his silver empire, which already makes him a pretty amoral douche. But the full extent of his evil is revealed when you do some digging into why Forsworn attacks are happening in the streets of Markarth. While his Imperial-aligned counterpart Maven Black-Briar of Riften is certainly an awful person, Thonar makes her look like a saint in comparison due to how far his corruption runs!
 * The Dragon Priests in general are pretty evil beings, but there are two even among their ranks who qualify for this trope. There's Rahgot, who was a coward that forced his cult to commit mass-suicide, even the children in order to dissuade an approaching army from searching his lair, allowing him to live while he could be able to raise them from the dead later to serve as his soldiers. When one of his followers questioned him about this deed, he had her violently killed for defying him. There's also Hevnoraak, who had such mastery over his voice and magic in general that he amassed a following of people who were forced to obey him against their will. He'd regularly violently torture them, knowing that they'd be unable to fight back due to the strength of his voice.
 * Potema Septim is considered in-universe to be one of Tamriel's few completely evil historical figures, and for good reason. She was a ruthless tyrant who indulged in things like necromancy who was behind quite a brutal war campaign on several neighboring kingdoms. To give you the proper insight as to how bad of a person she was, she's been quoted as saying that she'd happily sacrifice all of her subjects in order to get a bit of comfort for herself. Yeah. There's also the fact that she was an incredibly petty bitch, driving her own nephew insane with a cursed necklace just to spite his father. It's no surprise that after she's been resurrected by a cult of necromancers (And she's no less monstrous after raising from the dead after thousands of years), Solitude's steward Falk Fire-Beard is absolutely terrified of the prospect that due to her lineage, she could very well be the legitimate heir to the Empire.