The Nature of Evil 3

Vile Races and Cultures

Vasharan

There is a legend that few tell of a race known as the Vashar. Intelligent beings do not speak of the legend not only because of the darkness involved but also because of the shame.
When the gods set out to create humanity, they formed the first man and gave him life. According to the legend of the Vasharan, the first man immediately began hunting in the wilderness while the gods watched their new creation with curiosity. The man found an animal and killed it with his bare hands. The gods were surprised by the brutality, but they continued to watch. The man ate the animal’s flesh and tore away at its guts until he found some large bones.
It lashed these bones together with tendons and sinew, demonstrating a cleverness that further surprised the deities. Then the man broke one of the bones so that it had a sharp point, creating a weapon. He immediately turned upon his creators and attempted to kill them, snarling his first words—curses and death-oaths. The deities were in no danger, of course, but they were disgusted by what they had wrought. They destroyed the man and left. They would return in later eons to create humanity, learning from the mistakes made in their first attempt.
After they left, a demon gathered the remains of the first man and spirited them away to a hidden location—an impossibly high plateau accessible only through a series of underground catacombs filled with foul corruptions of nature. There, the demon resurrected the man and created a woman. The demon bestowed upon them the ability to procreate, then disappeared back to the Abyss with an evil grin.
Many versions of the legend name the demon Graz’zt, before he became a demon lord, as the one whose dark hand fashioned these two. A few others call the fiend an ultroloth. One version describes the demon as a succubus who actually gives birth to the man’s children, imbuing the race with demonic blood.
This, it is said, is the origin of the Vasharan people. Vasharans are humans, but they are to other humans as drow are to elves. In a normal human society, evil individuals. are mixed amid the neutral and good people, but Vasharans are evil as a race. Vasharans rarely call themselves evil, but they do not object to others putting that label on them. They claim to be beyond such terms.
All Vasharans are born out of rage, anger, and pain. They understand only hate, selfishness, and greed. Yet as much as they love to kill and maim, one goal fuels their souls even more strongly: deicide. The Vasharans want to kill the deities that created them. This burning hunger for god death keeps them bound together as a reluctant society.
While Vasharans sometimes kill other Vasharans, it is a rare act despite their bloodthirsty, destructive, and utterly immoral nature.

The Original Book of Darkness

The original book of vile darkness was a scroll penned by a Vasharan spellcaster millennia ago. It contained his wicked thoughts and the terrible knowledge that he had gained through experimentation and study. In just a few thousand words, he recorded malevolent ideas and concepts so vile that to this day they have never occurred to another, not even the foulest soul. Years later, the scroll was discovered by a cleric of Nerull. She added to it, tripling its length by recording her knowledge of dark gods, sacrifice, and evil divine magic.
Many other evil priests learned from her scrolls (for the manuscript soon became too long for just one scroll), adding bits of knowledge from their own polluted minds and abominable experiments. Some writers even asked questions of summoned fiends and recorded their words directly.
Eventually the collected works fell into the hands of a genocidal wizard and warlord named Vecna. He took the scrolls and added some of his own discoveries to them. After he died and rose as a lich, Vecna transcribed the scrolls into a bound book, creating its cover from the flesh of a human face and the bones of a demon, magically transformed into a dull metal binding.
  It is said that the strange symbols on the cover are understandable only by those who have read the book in its entirety, and that the sudden realization of the utter wickedness that they represent—a darkness so deep that it shames hell itself—is why the book is so highly prized.
Cultists loyal to Maisin Maw held the book in a dim vault for many years, using it as a final initiation into their innermost circle. A few copies were made during this time, although most of them were incomplete or flawed in some way. The errors contained in these lesser copies usually caused the reader to be drawn onto one of the Lower Planes, never to be seen again.
Thieves stole the original during a great war, and the book passed through many hands after that. According to some records, the demon lord Baalzebul kept the book in his personal library for a time, adding a few pages of his own.
Six complete copies are known to exist, at least one of which was made after Baalzebul’s alteration. At least three times that number of flawed copies or outright fakes also exist. These books are often found in evil temples, dark libraries, and the hands of wicked collectors. Vecna’s original still exists as well, and it is a prize coveted by almost every priest of a dark god.
The book is a fantastic reference work of evil deities, black magic, sacrifice, and forbidden secrets. Its lore is so potent and so dark that nonevil creatures that read its contents are often corrupted to evil through defilement rather than temptation. Once a mind has absorbed the knowledge in this book, the attached soul is so polluted that there is no recourse other than to turn to evil.
Unlike its good counterpart, the book of exalted deeds, the book of vile darkness does not mysteriously disappear after it is read. An evil character is likely to keep it around for reference, although not even the darkest-hearted villain peruses its pages haphazardly. Powerful fiends watch over the book, because where it goes, evil power grows...

Creating a Villain

If you understand evil, you can create villains with appropriate personalities and motives. The following examples detail some villains whose activities reflect the aspects of evil described above.

The Boorish Thug

Perhaps the simplest sort of villain is the crude, selfish oaf who just takes what he wants. His desires rarely go beyond simple wealth or privilege, although he might crave something as significant as respect. Driven by basic needs and desires, this villain does not employ subtle or sophisticated methods. He is straightforward, and the only weapon he employs is brute force. If he has assistance or allies, they are likely to be just like him, since companions who are not like him cannot long tolerate his presence.
Example: Allioto Kilman (Neutral Evil Human Fighter 2 /Rogue 4) is a criminal who has lived all his life in the big city. Since his youth, Allioto has run a small gang of other young toughs. None of them seek gainful employment—they would rather waylay visitors to the city or steal from the drunks in the alleyways behind Tavern Row. Allitoto is cowardly, lazy, and crude. He isn’t even particularly skilled at fighting, but he knows how to crack people on the back of the head with a club when they aren’t looking.

The Tyrant

The classic power-mad villain craves domination over all that he sees—lands, people, and magic. He can be a ruler, a would-be ruler, or a loner who desires physical domination more than political power. A tyrant villain might be a powerful cleric leading legions of fanatic soldiers or a scheming crime lord who runs all manner of illegal operations in the heart of a city. Other tyrants include the petty megalomaniac ruler who wishes to expand her holdings and isn’t afraid to tax her people to death to do so, and the bookish wizard who studies alone, cloistered in a library for years, so that he can learn the spells that will let him take over the world. The tyrant generally uses minions to accomplish what he wants. He believes that he is superior to others and thus should not have to sully himself with minor deeds. He orders paid mercenaries around and manipulates others with magic. Some tyrants create their own minions, ranging from constructs to slaves to blackmail victims coerced into working for him. A tyrant’s schemes are usually fairly sophisticated, although not all tyrants are smart. Sometimes a tyrant is nothing more than a power-hungry simpleton, dangerous only because he was born into a position of favor.

Example: Ystan the Graylord (Chaotic Evil Drow Elf Wizard 15) seeks to take over the area around Mount Exalt through the use of his undead minions. However, he does not yet possess the might to animate an army large enough to assault the walled city of Kachel alone, so he has spent years questing for a magic artifact that can dominate the wills of others. With undead and mentally enslaved soldiers, Ystan can launch his assault. Thus begins Ystan’s dream of a vast and terrible empire.

The Scheming Liar

The slippery weasel, the cunning thief, the silver-tongued rogue—these villains present different dangers than brutes and psychopaths do, but they are dangerous foes nonetheless. These enemies are far more likely to slip a dagger in someone’s ribs while he sleeps than fight him face to face. Or better yet, thinks the schemer, she’ll just frame someone for murder and let the authorities hang him in the public square. Such diabolic malefactors spin a web of deceit wherever they go. Schemers know just what to say and who to say it to in order to get what they want. Scheming liars can be political manipulators who use others to accomplish their goals. They do not go against the laws and rules; they make laws and rules work for them, bending and twisting the words as needed. They don’t truly respect the law, but they want to avoid the appearance of breaking it. Such villains are difficult to defeat, and it’s even harder to prove that they are villains in the first place.
Example: Narma Glitterhome (CE Stout Halfling Sorcerer 8) serves as a butler to Lord Feddin Spritestar, a powerful and influential gnome. What most people do not realize is that Narma has the lord’s ear and frequently gives him advice about the rulership of his demesne. But Lord Spritestar does not know that Narma is manipulating him into a war against the nearby kobold tribes of Bloodwall. Narma is an illusionist who frequently travels to Bloodwall in the guise of a male kobold to manipulate the council of chieftains there. If war breaks out, Narma is poised to assume a third identity: the long-lost halfling queen Halli Guttenstone, who will save the gnomes from the kobolds and become ruler of the land.

The Psychopathic Maniac

Some villains focus on the act of evil itself, rather than on the goals an evil act helps them reach. They revel in killing, inflicting pain, and spreading misery. The motives and methods of psychopaths vary greatly. Some creatures are born psychopathic—lamias, lemures, beholders, and black dragons, for example. These monsters are evil through and through, and they delight in death and misery. Their love of killing for its own sake makes them far more dangerous than monsters that simply kill to eat, such as the ankheg or the remorhaz. Human, elf, dwarf, halfling, and gnome psychopaths are no less varied. Some are clean and efficient at what they do. They sneak up on their victims quietly and make sure that when they are finished, no evidence ties the murderer to the murder. Other psychopaths are far more blatant and direct. They do not care who knows of their activities, and they relish their victims’ fear of death almost as much as they enjoy the pain and the killing itself. Often, such psychopaths have positions of power that keep anyone from easily putting a stop to their terrible activities.

Example: Reynod Slezak (Neutral Evil male human vampire Rogue 10) is the henchman of a powerful criminal overlord. Most of the crime lord’s other henchmen expect a bonus when they eliminate one of the syndicate’s enemies. After all, killing is a dangerous and dirty business. Not so with Reynod, who delights in killing. In fact, the crime lord worries about what might happen if he didn’t give Reynod someone to kill every so often. Reynod loves the use of knives; he owns a collection of them that numbers more than three hundred. He is sneaky, subtle, and sly. Reynod’s victims rarely know what is coming because he is so efficient at shadowing, then approaching his prey. Not even Reynod’s criminal employer knows that he is actually a vampire. Reynod wears an amulet he calls father’s tooth. The fang-shaped tooth grants Reynod an additional resistance to radiant, acid, and force damage.

The Sophisticate

A villain can be a horrible murderer or a lying cheat and yet still retain a veneer of sophistication. This type of villain can be a foppish rogue without a conscience or a dispassionate overlord who enjoys a sampling of fine elven wines while watching the execution of prisoners. Sophisticated villains are sometimes the evildoers that no one suspects. Only a thorough investigation can prove their terrible deeds. Urbane villains are able to convince most people that they are noble, civilized individuals. In other cases, these villains are known for what they truly are, but they still believe themselves to be cultured and sophisticated, and they conduct themselves accordingly—even as they commit atrocities.
Example: Duchess Winsone D’Artreda (Lawful Evil human Paladin 13) rules over a vast, wooded realm. All know her as a beautiful, well-mannered, and sophisticated woman. Unknown to most, however, she is also a sadist and a cold-blooded killer. She has a secret set of chambers in the dungeons below her castle where she keeps her victims. Winsone has a strange code of honour: She preys only upon the lower class or upon intelligent nonhumanoid creatures. Her secret hunters make raids upon outlying villages or scour the woods for pixies, dryads, and even the occasional centaur.

The Misguidance

Some villains do not even know that they are villains. Deluded through insanity, religious belief, or just stupidity, they commit horrible acts and never realize what it is that they do. A foolish villain might suspect that his acts and thoughts are tainted, but he’s too apathetic to try to uncover the truth. Blindly committing evil acts because it is just easier that way, the misguided fool can easily become a truly sinister villain over time, continuing his evil deeds while his own perceptions veer ever farther from reality. A young king introduced to evil by his malevolent vizier, the fanatic demon worshiper seeking sacrificial victims for his god, and the radical racial purist are all examples of the misguided fool.
Example: Nerence Unger (Neutral Evil Orc Warlock 5) is the leader of a school for young boys. Every few months, two men come to Nerence’s office and give him a large bag of gold. At the same time, one of the boys—one whom Nerence has recently put on record as a troublemaker—disappears. Nerence says nothing. He just counts his gold. He tells himself that he did not do anything wrong

The Monstrosity amongst Men

The monster villain craves killing, lives in filth, and seeks to destroy everything that he encounters. More depraved than psychopaths or sadists, this creature is beyond redemption. This villain is practically a demon or a devil in his own right. He drinks the blood of his enemies and allows it to run down his chin and over his chest. No act is too distasteful for him.

Example: Like many evil warlords, Agrattanath (LE male hobgoblin Barbarian9) kills his foes with impunity. But what Agrattanath really enjoys is killing the family of his dead foes slowly and then feasting on their quivering hearts. When he goes into battle, he leads troops into combat with what appears to be bravery but is actually blood lust. Even Agrattanath’s own tribe is afraid of him, for it is clear that he would just as willingly kill them and devour their children’s hearts if he did not have enemies to kill.

The One You did not Expect

Sometimes, evil doesn’t show up where your players expect it. A trusted servant can abuse his position to steal and gather secrets for blackmail. A cleric of Elfar might actually be a werewolf. The drug-addicted farmer’s wife will do anything to feed her addiction—even kill. The respected healer in town is in the pay of the local slavers’ ring. The unexpected villain usually also belongs to one of the other villainous categories. Sometimes the villain is obviously evil, but there is more to him than first appears. A mind flayer might be possessed by a devil, for example, or an evil wizard could really be a polymorphed dragon.
Example: Once every six hundred years, an elf child is born with supernatural talent and intelligence. Known as the shadowchild, this being has the mind of a dispassionate killer and many special powers. To all outward appearances, however, the shadowchild is a normal elf child. In the elf village of Daerthane, young Taetra Featherfall (Chaotic Evil half-fiend Warlock 7) seems like all the other children scampering about the village and the surrounding woods. She is not. She is the shadowchild, and the disappearances near Daerthane of late are because of her, not the nearby clutch of owlbears currently being tracked by the village’s rangers. Taetra is extremely careful when she abducts and sacrifices other children. She has no desire to expose herself before she is old enough to reveal her true nature.