How "Evil" is Your Villain?

I once posed the question as to which group is the "Most Evil" in CoH.

Unofficially, the Circle of Thorns (my personal pick) edged out a couple of others, mostly on the basis of their 1) kidnap and murder of children and 2) being in league with Hell itself. It was a pretty close call, and there were some good arguments for other groups. But a number of folks listed at Number One some groups that I would not have categorized as "Evil" per se, but rather misguided good intentions, such as Malta, who sees itself as combatting fire with fire for a "good" cause. I think the Sky Raiders, who are simply high-tech thieves, albeit well-armed and violent when necessary, even got a vote from someone as Most Evil. It was an interesting thread regarding the meaning of "Evil."

Which leads me to my first question, having never played a villain myself:
How evil is "Evil" for your villain? For example:

Are you simply someone who wants wealth and taking it is the easiest way?
Are you looking to amass local power and rule a small empire?
Do you aim to "take over the world?" (Zort!)
Do you enjoy making people suffer?
Are you CoT level Evil? (Kidnap and murder children, openly torture citizens?)

My second question: Are there lines of Evil your villain will not cross?

I am simply curious, as none of the above Evil Options appeals to me personally, even as a "game." I plan on being here for Going Rogue, and while none of my heroes will be crossing over, I may finally get to play a redeemed Mastermind.

My 'main' villain is a psychic orphan who was traumatized as a child...she learned she could eat people's dreams. This heightened her psychic powers, and the life-rich energy of dreams can sustain her physical form. The bad side is that once a person loses their dreams-their hopes, desires, passions-their soul withers into nonexistence in time.

So she doesn't mean to destroy people's eternal souls, she's just hungry.

Is that evil?

None of my characters are evil. I'm sure Hitler didn't think he was evil either.

That depends on which of my villains you pick. None of them are evil for evil's sake, though, and there are too many to get into.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

None of my villains are really evil. Twisted, vengeful, apoplectic with rage, but not evil.

None of my villains finish Westin Phipps' arcs. I always start him up, going, "OK, this time I will force myself not to care!" And I always get alarmingly involved in the story and have to quit because of the terrible, awful things he tells you to do. I think some of my characters would be able to do the dirty work, but I personally can't, so none of them will. :/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

To clarify, one's as heroic as you can be in the Rogue Isles. Not evil at all, just stuck inside the machine.

The other is a researcher that will stop at nothing to save the human race from extinction. Nothing. So he's pretty evil, from a certain point of view.

I think I have maybe three characters who consider themselves evil. One is a demon, and the other two are worshippers of elder gods whose primary ambitions are to be first in line to be eaten. The rest are either doing what it takes to survive or following an ideology they believe in.

My character is the Joker without morality. Imagine the show "Jackass". Now imagine a guy who is a complete sociopath thinking "I bet I could do better". And, completely missing the point of lighting a marshmallow on fire, lights a building on fire instead to see how big of a blaze he can get. Is it the orphanage? A jail for people on death row? Didn't really chec-OH SWEET! There must have been gasoline on that floor!

... Dammit. Some people are screaming for their mommies and it's starting to drown out my iPod. Screw this, I'm gonna go home and see if Cinemax has a skin flick on...

(Julian Drake is a literal sociopath that is the heir of an unbelievable fortune. He also inherited his father's files; enough to blackmail most authorities. As such, he generally lives without any perspective on right or wrong and exists entirely to amuse himself. The above situation is one example.)

Edit: Line my Villain wouldn't cross: Don't worry about morality. It's a very weighty shackle that he was born without. Caring about anything else is exhausting.

Didn't we do this thread recently? Eh, I'll play along. It's a good excuse to gush about my characters.

How evil is "Evil" for your villain?
My main villain would be my Stalker "White-Lie". (Moved server, had to get the hyphenated name.) She's a ninja-for-hire. She's evil in the way that she cares little about the lives of others, and will kill any target she's paid to. Lesser jobs like stealing, kidnapping and reconnaissance is also part of the ninja package.

Are there lines of Evil your villain will not cross?
"A deal is a deal." Once the terms of the contract are agreed on, you will never see White-Lie be the first to break it. She's a professional. You might find her relaxing in Pocket D, being all chatty and friendly, then having her come after you all ninja-style the next day because she was hired to kill you. Nothing personal. Also, Lord Recluse himself has an immunity deal. No acting directly against the Big Spider himself, due to what happens in the final villain arc. She'll happily work for him, if he can pay, of course.

There's actually a funny little tangent to the question here: Is there a line of Good that my villain WILL cross?

The answer is yes. If the good guys can pay her fee, she has no qualms about rescuing people, taking down bad guys or even saving the world. One of her favorite clients is Vanguard, after all. They pay like everyone else, plus bonuses. She really likes her Vanguard Katana.

So yeah, in Going Rogue, she'll be doing just that.

My main villainess isn't evil so much as she's chaotic: a rogue Amazon who discovered that she didn't mind the company of men all that much. She left chasing her fantasies, and found the reality disappointing, but she had burned too many bridges along the way.

I have villains that are much more evil than she is, though. One's a botanist who amassed a fortune in her youth poisoning her wealthy husbands and taking their stuff. But watching people die from poison is entertaining even without financial gain.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

My Villains are of all kinds. Discounting the ones who are merely holding out to switch sides:

- My "main" one (Buttered Cat, Gravity/Ice Dom) is merely insane, of the Mad Scientist Madly Scientific for Science school of villainy. Chaotic Neutral.

- La Doctora (Mercs/Poison) and A Handful of Dust (Thugs/Dark) are a drug chemist with her own army and a demon-posessed gang leader, respectively. Neither is good, but neither wants to destroy the world, or rule it either really. Small-time evil.

- Shai-Ta the Burning (Axe/Fire Brute) is a demonic barbarian warrior, envisioned as a foe someone like Conan might face. She wants to conquer and rule.

- Gromag Mal'Othar (SS/Will Brute) is basically a thug, of the "Enforcer for the Big Bad" school. Think Pitbull, only more Orcish.

- My Night Widow, Crab Spider, and Stalker are all assassins. Hired murder is pretty evil, but there are worse villains.

- Masrefah (Mind/Fire Dom) basically just likes hurting people. How evil do you consider serial killers who do it for fun?

- Vegan Rage (Plant/Thorn Dom) would join Devouring Earth if she could, humans are a blight.

Incidentally, I happen to be of the opinion that "evil for the sake of it" is perfectly viable. It shouldn't be overused, but frankly the "I'm not evil, I'm just a knight templar" thing is close to being overused too. Denouncing either motivation is a shaky position to take.

My main villain is the CHVian embodiment of a fallen angel hell-bent on the obliteration of the christian god. Apparently that's evil or something.

My brute is more amoral than anything. She's a mercenary, so she'll work for whoever pays. The bad guys seem to outsource their villainy more, so...

Nightshade Legree is an ex-cop, a corrupt New Orleans narcotics officer who relocated to the Rogue Isles when internal affairs started closing in. Taking kickbacks from drug barons, intimidating witnesses, falsifying evidence, probably a murder or two. Sure, that's evil.

Except in the Rogue Isles, you don't call it evil. You call it surviving, because the chances are that almost everyone around you is just as bad, if not worse.

My main villain is a sociopath. She doesn't really care if she's evil.

It varies. I like to think my villains cover a wide variety of evil. Few of them will admit or consider themselves to be evil though. And there are lines my villains won't cross, yes. Two I can think of offhand.

Agonus is a would-be world dictator. He raised an army to take over the world and enforce his vision of a Utopia, and to him, the bulk of that army is comprised of beings that are little more than cannon fodder for his whims. I like to think he's a smooth talker able to get others to do what he wants, but he's more than willing to kill/torture to make a point if someone challenges or disobeys him.

Ahreman the Red/Aaron Tetherson is in it for power. Massacring a cult he started to appease a demon, Ahreman essentially willingly damned his own soul and (unwillingly) cursed his bloodline to get what he wanted.

Tim Tetherson is a misanthropic anarchist, and once he found out he could summon demons and get them to cause destruction, he was more than happy to do so.

Burning-Star has a psychotically insane person as a part of her MPD.

Steelbane is a futuristic AI that hates anything sentient and organic and is willing to do whatever it necessary to wipe out humanity.

Starscourge is an alien that feeds off of human bio-electricity. As such, he views humans as food and little else.

Nix/Johnny/Jane. Johnny and Jane are twin children ghosts who want to become the greatest serial killers in history. Nix is the demonthing that coerces them along.

Shadow Scourge sees no value in existence and wants to destroy everything, pretty much.

Iron Reckoner is one of the few characters I have who's in it for the money as long as it follows his own “noble evil” code of ethics.

good luck D.B.B.

I wouldn't say my villains are evil. . . They are more along the lines of campy villains from the 60's Batman TV show. Now if there was just a way fo angle the floor of my supergroup base, I would be all set.

my main villain is definitly evil, hes a mastermind who loves to manipulate others for his own gain, and he treats his pets as meatbags that he can just spawn more of, his ultimate goal is to amass power and wealth and doesnt care who he has to put down to make things happen

most of my other villains are essentially his leutenants (kind of how lord recluse has the patrons) and they all work towards the same goals