Life got rather away from me, and you might think that killed the project, but I am back! Only four sets of villains to go, and I will get them all up. As we run down the list, here comes our solo villain for History’s Mysteries.
Step 1: Decide on Approach and Archetype
We’re opening our Approach with a bunt, with a 1 and 2 giving us access to Ancient and Generalist. Let’s take an Ancient, they’re always interesting.
For our Archetype, 4 and 1 gives us Bruiser or Loner, and… well, I have some feelings about using Loner for a villain who literally appears alone, which I’ll discuss when I get to that villain (next time, actually, I’m almost out of choices.)
Step 2: Decide on Qualities and Powers
So, what does our Ancient Bruiser like to do with their time?
A Quality result of 2 and a Power result of 10 mean that, after cascades, we’re looking at a Social Quality and a Mobility Power. Our only remaining Social is Banter, and there’s one choice on the Suggested list that we don’t have yet, so we’re looking at Banter d12, History d12. For Powers, I’m going to take Teleportation d12 and Presence d10 (every Suggested option is taken, so I’m free to do whatever.)
We still have a d10 and d8 Quality, and a d10 and d8 Power, because Ancient is wild. I’m going to go with Close Combat d10 and Investigation d8, along with Postcognition d10 and Vitality d8. This is a villain with an array of tricks; strong social skills, the ability to delve into dark areas, and some solid punching to fall back on.
Step 3: Abilities, Status Dice, and Health
The Ancient can use teleportation to attack and hinder someone in a bad way, or take basic actions with their History and use their Max Die. They can move to the defensive, putting together a big Defend action that also Recovers to buy time, and use attacks against them to Boost.
Our buddy has 65 Health, and that’s adjusted for a three-person team so they’re actually decently beefy.
Step 4: Upgrades and Masteries
In their upgraded form, our Ancient gets a Quality Upgrade, pushing even more dice to d12 and giving another Ability. In this form, the Ancient has a massive area-effect Hinder and Attack move. They also become a Master of Total Chaos, remaining unflappable as everything collapses around them.
Step 5: Background
So hey, meet Curator Varras. Curator Varras is an ancient member of an alien species known as the Cal’Tarn, who have watched civilizations rise and fall. Varras is an admirer of the art and culture of a thousand worlds, and believes that rare and inspiring works belong in a museum. A private museum, in a different star system. And Earth has so many rare and inspiring works.
Sometimes Varras works on commission, and sometimes he works for himself, but his goal is always the same – acquire Earth’s unique treasures to prevent them from being damaged or misused by the primitive humans who don’t know what they’ve got. He’s had several run-ins with different groups of heroes who feel differently, and he would like them all to go away and leave him to his work.
Varras gets the RP Quality of “Alien Archaeologist”, which works a bit like his History but over a much broader scope of civilizations and technologies, giving him a bit of deep space knowledge and technology when it’s in his field.
Step 6: Tactics
Curator Varras is a hell of an enemy to try to face directly; he starts off effective and only gets more dangerous the more he’s attacked. Fortunately, facing him directly isn’t usually the goal. He generally appears in situations that also involve complicated environmental challenges and goals that need to be dealt with, and fighting him is a race against time to recover whatever he’s try to steal before he can, or before the situation gets so bad that everyone loses.
In combat, Varras uses his teleportation to evade obstacles and deal with environmental problems, and does his best to knock heroes out of the running, but tends not to focus on taking them out entirely. His Ideal Actions are often used for Overcomes, while if someone gets in his way he’ll teleport them into danger and hurt them in the process. When he gets punched, he gets stronger, and if he gets too badly hurt he’ll take a moment to defend himself and heal up, giving his enemies a chance to get ahead.
Villain: Curator Varras
Approach: Ancient, Archetype: Bruiser
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10
Health: 65 (adjusted for 3-player team) [Green 65-45, Yellow 44-18, Red 17-1]
Qualities:
• Banter d12
• History d12
• Close Combat d10
• Investigation d8
• Alien Archaeologist d8
Powers:
• Teleportation d12
• Presence d10
• Postcognition d10
• Vitality d8
Abilities:
• The Classic Methodology (A): Take a Basic Action using History and use your Max die.
• Out Of My Way (A): Attack using Teleportation and use your Max die. Hinder a target dealt damage in this way using your Max + Min dice.
• Fall Back (A): Defend using Banter and use your Mid + Min dice. Recover using your Max die.
• You Made Me Bleed ®: When Attacked, use the damage taken by the attack to Boost yourself.
Upgrade:
• Quality Upgrade: Increase Close Combat to d12 and Investigation to d10. Add +20 Health when using this upgrade.
• Devastating Monologue (A): Hinder using Presence against multiple targets and use your Max die. Attack each using your Mid + Min dice.
• Master of Total Chaos (I): If you are in a situation in which everything is spiraling out of control, automatically succeed at an Overcome to accomplish a task by throwing out the rules.
Aftermath:
My only regret is not actually getting an Ability called “It Belongs In A Museum!”
In all seriousness, Evil Alien Indiana Jones seemed like an obvious choice for History’s Mysteries to face off against. He embodies some of their ideals, but in all the wrong ways, and he might be persuaded to help out against bigger threats in order to keep cultural artifacts from being destroyed, even if he will definitely try to steal them afterwards.
Ancient remains wildly powerful compared to most other Villain Approaches, and because of that Varras is routinely rolling two d12s as part of his die sets. It’s encouragement to put him into situations where he’s not just pummeling heroes, because that would be a bit unfair.
One thing that I’ve been noticing while building villains is that I don’t think it would be hard for an inexperienced GM to grab a set of powers that look really powerful, and to accidentally end up with a villain who is not fun to fight. For example, if the Devastating Monologue was Varras’s primary trick without upgrades, and he had damage reduction instead of that “fall back and heal” trick, you could easily build a loop where he gives everyone a nasty penalty, hurts the whole party, and then uses that penalty to impede attacks and hinders against himself while also reducing any damage they can deal, making it so that he is hurting the players faster than they are hurting him while also having more health. If the goal of a scene was to actually knock him out, that could get frustrating in a real hurry.