Complete Monster/Table Top 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 40000 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. His horrifying experiments with Warp science and genetics can and often will slaughter the populations of entire sub-sectors.
 * And of course, he wears a lab coat made of human skin.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * The list can be made longer; Ezekiah Grimme and Raven both qualify. Darius Hellstromme subverts the trope: he may be the creepiest of the bunch, since he is still at least nominally human--
 * 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 Solar Deliberative (the single most corrupt political cabal in the later First Age) with access to a world-spanning weapon of devastation.
 * 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. 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.
 * In Dungeons and 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.
 * 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,
 * 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.
 * 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
 * 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.
 * Weird thing is he didn't start that way. In a bad bit of writing, he suddenly went from a decent, if somewhat quiet heroic figure (good or neutral), to suddenly being a generic villain out for Godhood. And then later books continued it by making hi Captain Evilpants McCrazy, for some reason. And he is still more effective and less cruel than most other evil gods, as his actions have a habit (which amuses him) of killing off evil people as much as good ones.
 * Dark Sun dishes Borys '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.
 * BattleTech's 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.
 * The Word of Blake leadership and its elite units fit the bill as well. The Shadow Divisions in particular became notorious for destroying the populations and even biospheres of planets where they were defeated via WMDs. This is especially horrifying considering that all the other major factions rejected total war centuries ago due to fear of social collapse and (further) technological regression. The Word really pushes the envelope as they want to cause these things to happen so they can remake human society in their own vision.
 * 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 achieved.
 * 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.
 * Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The heads of the corporations making up Pentex definately count. All of them originally were normal, untainted humans who knowingly joined with the Wyrm for power, gladly helping to destroy the planet in return for becoming rulers of whatever husk is left when they're done.
 * In most of the WoD games: have you hit Insert Appropriate Morality Stat Here 0? Then you're a Complete Monster. Considering that in most cases even reaching the lower levels of aforesaid stat requires you to have engaged in behaviour that would appall an Ansem Retort character, this should come as no surprise.
 * At least in the new WoD the system cripples you horribly for that (generally making the character unplayable if it ever hits 0) for that. In the old WoD, most of the evil factions ignore such pesky problems. Evil vampires, such as Sabbat (vampire supremacists) or Baali (demon worshipers) generally have twisted Karma Meters that pretty much reward them for following their personal brand of inhumanity, and the rest of the gamelines just don't have a Morality Stat that punishes evildoers.
 * The current page photo depicts The Hunt Club, from Hunter: The Vigil. They're what happens when a bunch of rich people with a whole lot of connections decide that fox hunting has gotten a little bit stale and they want to try something a little different. Their members also have a very good chance of becoming slashers, which means whatever fleeting morals they might have left get burned at the altar of murder.
 * Consider that the Hunt Club are the worse version of Ashwood Abbey, who hunt, rape, torture and murder supernatural creatures for kicks.
 * Slashers (mentioned above under the Hunt Club) are this trope personified. Quite literally the book is a guide on how to make complete monsters, designed only to better kill off anyone they target. While some could fall short of being C Ms themselves, the average Slasher is an irredemable monster whose only goal in life is to kill people.
 * 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 realisation 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 that they would do to us...
 * 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).