Best Reoccuring FH Villains

[Coyotecloudchas]

So what are your best/favorite recurring Fantasy Hero villains?

My best recurring villains have been:

- Qhyjanoth the Necromancer who would gather knowledge (including the heroes' secrets) from the foes they had slain

- Sivitri the Namer, mage who tortured the immortal beings inhabitanting the Flaeness to find the Names of Power that provided her with the power to kill or enslave with a word

- the Cult of Morrigan, a constantly evolving group of warrior priests who cultivated strength to "weak" villages by their constant raiding

- Zarathadin the demon, existed in several bodies that had replaced key members of the Nyrondese ruling nobility, could not be vanguished until the heroes discovered the spell to combine his essences

- Dagmara, deadliest duelist in the Flaeness, who had perfected both her skills and her collection of powerful magical artifacts, and was supported by a sprawling criminal empire

[Curufea]

Mine are here-
http://www.herogames.com/forums/show...90&postcount=5

[Guybow]

Seriandir: started off as a holy-warrior in a competing "good" (read: way too stuck-up) religion who has been embarrassed by the PCs often enough that he let is ego for getting even with the PCs drive him to searching for "darker" methods to get back at them.

In other words, every time they encounter Seriandir he is further down the "path of evil". And every time they get the better of him, it drives him further along...

Because everything came so easily for him before encountering the PCs he is unable to deal with the fact that he might have been wrong about his perceptions of the PCs, etc...

[Lawnmower Boy]

Francesco the Cruel. Actually, all he wants to do is marry the girl next door back home in his Istrian village. He's a good catch --rich, strong, psionically potent and an important member of Louis XIV's inner circle. Who wouldn't want him?
Too bad that she's got some kind of high falutin' mystic destiny and is surrounded by PCs who play incomprehensibly rough every time he makes a move...
Come to think of it, the next time I try to run this plotline, I think he will end up with the girl.

[Killer Shrike]

Brother Saulus: a Scarlet Brother from a Greyhawk campaign (using the HERO System) that started off in the Hold of the Sea Princes and eventually ending up in the "Lost Lands" of Sterich.

Long story short, he was pursuing the PC's Bendyr, Ayden, and a Tritherite rebel whose name I can't quite recall who escaped the Brotherhood's secret police in the capital of the Hold and fled into the swamps. He had three up-bred orc minions as well, a thuggish beater, a thief catcher, and a spirit shaman. He pursued the PC's and later new PC's across the swamps, and the Yeomanry until the group managed to lose him at least temporarily by taking refuge and underground passage from a Dwarven hold to eventually end up in the bottom end of Sterich.

He was a great implacable pursuer villain and the group had several encounters with him and his minions in their headlong journey. I used a Michael Wincott style voiced for him, and just a few words of speech whenever he managed to track the PC's down again served as an immediate sphincter tightening moment for the group. Every encounter was a nail biting and harrowing affair where the group _should_ have been outmatched but somehow managed to inflict damage and escape, usually through the actions of Bendyr du Ryek.

The back story of Bendyr was his father was himself a Scarlet Brother deep plant agent, who had married as part of his cover and sired Bendyr. However, he formed an attachment to his son and secretly trained him in the arts of the Scarlet Brotherhood, though Bendyr himself did not know their origin. To escape Saulus's clutches he repeatedly had to call upon his fathers training, which is what raised Saulus's suspicions in the first place and caused him to continue to hunt Bendyr down as he was convinced that he was a rogue brother or some kind of traitor. After one episode where Saulus succeeded in capturing Bendyr for a time and subjected him to interrogation before he could later escape, Bendyr intuited enough to realize that Saulus for some reason thought he was a brother (though he had no idea why), and eventually turned it to try to convince Saulus that he was undercover and Saulus was messing up his operation. It almost worked, until the player let his mouth run away with him and ran off into the bushes, blowing the con.

Anyway, as I said, there were many Saulus encounters, and they were all very memorable, special things.

[Killer Shrike]

Inspector Captain Elias: In another later Greyhawk campaign based in and around the city of Dyvers, Elias was effectively the main detective for the city watch. Unlike other captains he didn't have a district that he was responsible for; rather all mysteries or unsolvable crimes from across the city and its surrounding area were under his purview. He became involved with the PC's of that time as part of a missing person investigation potentially tied to a series of Black Sail (Slaver) raids along the coast.

He suspected one of the PC's, Syravho Rhasheed, a Rhennee scoundrel and swashbuckler of being involved and arrested him for due cause. Some of the other PC's became involved for complex reasons, and ultimately helped get Rhasheed cleared and released. However thereafter on several occasions the group was involved in questionable things around the city, and Elias would get reintroduced in the aftermath and the PC's would basically "feel the Eye upon their heads" so to speak, being investigated, watched, and on one occasions some of them arrested due to running afoul of Elias.

There was never a violent confrontation w/ Elias; he didn't even carry a weapon. What made him dangerous was his authority, perceptiveness, and ability to twist the PC's in knots via dialog. Players that had ended up on the losing side of verbal sparring with him before learned to just keep their mouths shut -- Syravho went so far as to retain a barrister and thereafter refuse to discuss anything with Elias without his legal representation being present. However, as new players joined the group the madness would be repeatable as they'd fall into the trap anew.

I recall a couple of the veteran players' PC's urgently telling a couple of new player's PC's to stop talking -- I believe one of them said something like this right before an Elias encounter (out of earshot, of course) -- "You think you can talk your way out it, but with Elias you just talk yourself in deeper, so just shut the h**l up and hope he hasn't already decided to detain us on suspicion. But if you p**s him off he's going to lock us up just because he can! So be quiet! Yes, No only, and for Cuthbert's sake don't volunteer anything!". Didn't help of course, the new player's PC tried to pull a Harry Hill on Elias, and most of the PC's ended up in the jail pending trial for a number of crimes (of which they were actually guilty, but which could as easily been non issues). Rhasheed's lawyer finally managed to beat the wrap at the trial through a combination of coersion, bribes, backdated documents, and copious amounts of legal chicanery at his employer's bequest.

I used a Peter Falk voice, and kept a special Elias police style notebook where I accumulated information about the group, things they said in his presence, things he discovered in his investigations into various things going on about the city, and his suspicions as to the group's involvement in things (some accurate, some off base). The players and PC's both were always off balance against this unusual kind of foe, the sort you don't contest with by trading hits.

I'd get actual groans when he entered play, and in the aftermath rueful grins and head shaking. Players would tell Elias stories, and reference him in game as well -- at times doing things specifically as a reaction to Elias's existence in the city. They also had a sense of paranoia that they were being watched by his men, which complicated their responses when they were being watched by the agents of actual enemies -- they were often unsure if their tails or shadows were fair game or undercover city watch detectives and thus couldn't deal with things in the permanent fashion they might otherwise without the risk of basically being cop-killers and having to deal with the fallout from that.

Anyway, I've always had a fond place in my heart for Elias, and consider him to be a great success.