The Big Villains Thread

Games Sentinel Comics RPG
501

Villain of the Day:  October 21 (the Pwca)

As Patraig Magonus made his way across what are now the British Isles, he often came across strange creatures who menaced the local Celtic tribes.  While many of these were animalistic creatures, seeking only to devour and defile.  However, others were more than reasonable, if sinister and calculating.  Chief among theses, surely, were known as Pwca.

Small fairy-like creatures standing only about a foot tall, Pwca most often make contact with the humans near them while shapeshifted into some form of livestock animal, such as a goat or sheep.  On rare occasions, Pwca would take on the form of a human, though a shapeshifted Pwca always has some 'tell' that reveals their true nature.  Most times, this appears as a furry tail, vestigial ears atop their head, or a downy coat of fur. 

In most cases, Pwca simply want a taste of the human life.  Provide them with a meal, a fine piece of clothing, or some finished good, and the Pwca may well provide some reward.  Some of the occasions chronicled by Patraig showed the Pwca leaving their benefactor a chalice that magically filled with grain each day at sunrise, a coat that disguised the wearer from creatures they were hunting, or a fishing spear that never misses.  

However, on those occasions where a human comes into confrontation with a Pwca, the fairy becomes a nemesis unlike any other.  The Pwca will ceaselessly, endlessly harass their foe, destroying portions of their home, interfering with their works, and causing minor harm such as migraine headaches and muscle cramps.  Finally, when the foe is at their wits' end, the Pwca joins together with its tribemen, their skin turning from a pale gray to a deep vermillion.  The Pwca then surround the offender, each tearing a fragment of flesh away from the foe, leaving it crippled and bleeding in the forest.  As each Pwca devours their stolen bit of flesh, the target is spiritually sundered, vanishing from the memories of everyone who ever knew it.  When the bloody feast is finished, it is as if the foe has never lived.  The only evidence that they ever existed remain in writing or in pictures.

Modern arcanists, however, have noted that Pwca have become more and more aggressive--their natural habitats have long been stripped away, driving them to the furthest corners of the once-Celtic isles.  And, concurrently, certain people have begun vanishing, if they had never existed...

502

Villain of the Day:  October 22 (The Street Sweeper)

Little Jimmy Holland rose before dawn.  Mom had already been in twice, gently urging him to wake up.  These days when pre-school was still on break, Grace Holland had to wake up a full hour earlier, so that she could drop Jimmy off at her mom's before heading off to work.

Jimmy wolfed down his toast and juice fast enough to give him the 'belchies', as Mom packed up his day pack.  Gramma's house wasn't particularly fun, but Grandpa was always ready to play action figures with Jimmy, as the two clashed together their plastic figures of Legacy, Bunker, and Baron Blade.  Mom zipped up Jimmy's coat, then her own, and the pair headed down the stairs of their townhouse to get in their car.

The Rook City streets seemed louder than usual that morning.  The orange sodium streetlights cast an unhealthsome glow upon the parked cars along McGillis Avenue as the sounds of traffic seemed to snowball into a cacaphony of city sounds.  As Mom slid her briefcase into the back seat and started setting up the car-seat, Jimmy stared absently down the street.  

The headlights of the massive Street Sweeper were already bearing down on them.

Jimmy's eyes gaped, his mouth hung upon wordlessly, as the massive contraption slowly inched its way up McGillis Avenue.  The rumbling whir of its thrashing, spinning wheels slammed into the back of a sedan, pulling the bumper into the sweeper's voracious maw, followed by the trunk, then the whole of the car itself.  Within seconds, the car was gone, and the brushes sprayed out fluids of black and blue behind it as the street sweeper trudged on.

"Mom....mom....mom...."  Jimmy mumbled, dumbfounded.

On the steps down the street, slept Mister Billy.  Mom often warned Jimmy of talking Mister Billy on her own, but he was always kind to Jimmy and Mom would occasionally hand Mister Billy a $20 bill, telling him to go grab something hot to eat.  Mister Billy was oblivious to the noise, as the street sweeper rumbled up onto the sidewalk, mowing down a tree as it went, the autumn leaves spraying out from the back of the terrible machine in an orange-yellow mist.

Mister Billy didn't wake up until the sweeper was nearly on him, his left leg sucked into the whirling brushes.  He had time to scream once--just another noise in the Rook City morning--before the spray of red emerged from the rear of the street sweeper.

Jimmy shook, trembling like the last leaf on a frost-covered tree.  "Mom, go!  Wanna go!  Go now!"  Jimmy started crawling up into the car, even as Grace fumbled with the seatbelt clasp.

"Jimmy, wait!  I need to finish getting it ready."  As Mom lifted him up and buckled him in, Jimmy arched his neck, watching the massive machine bear slowly down the street.  Mister Billy was nowhere to be seen. 

"Go, Mom!  Wanna go!"

"Okay, Jimmy, okay...give me one minute.  You stay here; I left my cell phone in the kitchen.  I'll be right back.

Jimmy's face grew red with tears and screaming as he howled his protest, "No, Mom!  Go!   Wanna go!"

But Mom jogged swiftly up the stairs, keyed in the lock, and disappeared behind the front door.  Strapped into his car seat, little Jimmy couldn't see how close the street sweeper had come.  He could only hear the sounds of the city, growing louder and cacaphonous around him...

503

Villain of the Day:  October 23 (Blast Shadows)

Any welder could tell you; don't look into the light.  

Blast Shadows are what happens when people don't heed that advice.

Originally referring to the shadows left burned into the ground following a nuclear explosion, the term blast shadows were first applied to creatures that arose in Mexico City following the detonation of Borr the Unstable, one of the numerous cions of OblivAeon.  Borr's explosion devastated the city proper, though without the intervention of several heroes, the whole of the region may have been immolated.  Despite this, the explosion of Borr resulted in the deaths of at least 35 individuals, with hundreds of others injured.

Fernanda Oliveira was one of those 35.  Attempting to flee home from her office, she was caught in Borr's blast radius when the creature detonated, presumably vaporizing her near-instantly.  However, in the long days of recovery following the OblivAeon event, something strange began to occur.  

Something had started to relive Fernanda's life.

Each day, individuals familiar with her daily routines started to note a fleeting, human-shaped shadow following the same paths that Fernanda herself would follow.  Her daily jog, her stop for coffee and breakfast, her commute to her office job--this strange being seemed to be following the basic impressions of Fernanda's life, step by step.  

As it turned out, those individuals who were within a certain radius of Borr's explosion were subject to overwhelming exposure to cosmic energy.  However, those who happened to be staring directly at Borr as he exploded felt that cosmic power radiate up their optic nerves, directly into their brain, even as their eyes melted under the intense heat.  That cosmic power reacted with the individuals' natural biochemistry, resulting in a residual energy-based being, imprinted with the vague memories of that individual.  As such the newly formed 'blast shadow' was left believing that it was, in fact, the long-dead individual, following their routines and acting out some semblance of the life they left behind.

While blast shadows can be frightening, they truly only become dangerous when kept from their routines or if confronted with the fact that they are, in fact, not the individual they believe themselves to be.  If arrested in such a manner, blast shadows can prove to be particularly menacing foes, as their incorporeal nature makes them impervious to most attacks.  Blast shadows most often retaliate with blasts of cosmic energy released from where their eyes would have been.  To date, the preferred method to deal with blast shadows has simply been to let them roam and avoid interference at all cost...

504

Villain of the Day:  October 24 (The Lord of the Bees)

Dr. Brent Kernan was always fascinated by the lowliest creatures of the Earth.  Now, he stands on the verge of becoming one of them.

An entomologist specializing in apiary science, Kernan was stripped of his doctoral degrees and any sort of respect in the scientific community, following the reveal of the controversial Acarapis project.  While working for one MoniGen, of the Big Six agribusiness firms, Kernan spearheaded Acarapis as a method to systematically elminate the world's native populations of honeybees, with the intent to replace them with a proprietary, company-owned species.  Kernan took the fall for his employer, who proceeded to rebrand and remarket their "super-bees" to America's farmers, implying that a yearly contract with them would result in increased pollenation rates and much stronger crop production rates.

However, what MoniGen did not realize was the depth and breath of Kernan's fascination.  And, for that matter, how much research Kernan held in his own, private servers.  

Once a member of TALOS, before that organization cut him loose on account of his psychotic nature, Kernan seeded his 'super-bees' with a number of self-replicating nanites, allowing him to utilize a specially-designed helmet to telekinetically control the swarm.  However, Kernan's ambitions have not stopped there:  rather, he has begun working to splice his own DNA with that of his own bees, utilizing their own perfected genetics to enhance his own.  That genetic tampering has come with a number of massive drawbacks, of course.  Not the least of these has been the hideous transmutations Kernan has undergone:  his eyes crystallizing and compounding, the slow sprouting of gossamer wings from Kernan's back, and more.

Even as Kernan slowly transforms into a Cronenberg-esque horror, the self-styled Lord of the Bees continues his designs in secret, utilizing a remote family haunt deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia to breed and develop his ants.  Utilizing some TALOS-proprietary growth tech, Kernan secures his compound with giant-sized drones linked directly to his own neural network.  To a casual observer, Kernan even seems to 'dance' across his laboratory, often preferring gesture and intonation to even words. Though, truth be told, anyone who dares try to converse with Kernan at this point may only result in sorrow.

505

Thin veils are thin. :V

But does he have a briefcase full of bees?

506

If not, he should.  Bees everywhere. 

507

I don’t remember…

508

Also, Bees.

509

Villain of the Day: October 25 (The Stairwell Man)

 

Wait for day; turn on the light 

The Stairwell Man can wait tonight.

He stands a-waiting, shadow-still 

Upon the landing with his kill.

 

The body drips upon the stair 

The Stairwell Man is waiting there.

Bloody shears glint in his hand:

A snik-snak blade at his command.

 

Light drifts in from window cracked /

The Stairwell Man is dressed in black.

Caked in gore with gloves of red, 

If he grabs you, you'll be dead.

 

A broken lightbulb slowly swings 

The Stairwell Man in silence brings 

a grisly fate for any daring

climb the stair where he is staring.

 

Light the candle, fire the torch.

The Stairwell Man is on the watch.

In darkness black does evil dwell

Bodies lying where they fell.

 

He waits for you upon the landing,

The Stairwell Man with crimson banding.

Pray he stays upon the flight 

and will not descend tonight...

510

Bravo! Though I got the feeling you were looking down at him the whole time, so wouldn't that be 'ascend' at the end?

511

Urban legend, so it's likely been sung both ways...

512

Villain of the Day:  October 26 (Yateveo)

Edmund Spenser once mentioned the Yateveo, in a version of The Faerie Queene known only to the most learned occult scholars.  That once-mentioned horror, however, has been the downfall of so many explorers in the hidden parts of the world.

A form of massive plant known to be native to legendary Thule, the Yateveo tree has gone by many names over the years.  Within modern record, it has been known as the kulamtu, vampire vine, the Madagascar tree, the Judas tree, and the devil's snare.  One of Spenser's sorcerous contemporaries, the German phisosopher Karl Liche, described the being's attack as vicious, "The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey."  Another occult biologist noted that the Yateveo almost appeared as "many huge serpents in an angry discussion, occasionally darting from side to side as if striking at an imaginary foe" which seize and pierce any creature coming within reach."

Yateveo seem to gravitate to the forbidden, forgotten areas of the world.  They tend to thrive in tropical island climes, so they are most often found on Madagascar (hence the name), Indonesia, and Insula Primalis.  While they are capable of eating any sort of mammalian prey, yateveo seem to decidely prefer intelligent prey, actively seeking out sentient life forms for consumption.  Being plants, yateveo do not move particularly quickly, but unwary explorers have been known to rest in areas frequented by yateveo, never arising again as the plant creature devoured them as they slept.

Most distressing, however, may well be the introduction of yateveo into the Northm American continent.  Agribusiness firm XyloFrond has made a concerted effort to study and cultivate yateveo at its California-based farming compounds, with their botany specialists often accompanied by armed guards as they make their way through the grounds.  If those sprouts were to spread, the devastation unleashed upon California would be catastrophic.

513

Villain of the Day:  October 27 (The Russian Remnant)

Alexander Tsarev steeled himself.  

He knew the ritual would make him into a soldier capable of taking on the corruption of the decadent West, but this?  The use of strange sorceries culled from Nazi bunkers?  Discordian rites stolen from ancient Thule?  This was over his head.  But, to preserve the glorious Soviet state, he was ready to try anything.  He had put his trust in his superiors--Major General Piotr Staurakios seemed to understand this much more than Alexander himself did--and he knew that trust would be rewarded.

Initially, the results were a success beyond measure.  Tsarev found that he could create clones of himself with but a thought.  He had become a one-man-army, a single man capable of taking on an entire regiment of trained troops.  

That was before The Russian Remnant began to appear.

Tsarev knew that there was no way for him to recover each of the arcanely-created clones that he had left across the battlefields of Southeast Asia, of South America, of Eastern Europe.  He was sure that he had left countless bodies, all identical copies of himself, in bunkers and in military bases the world over.  Both he and his superiors were sure that these were just bodies; just meat and bone and sinew left to rot in the wake of the expansion of the Soviet state.  They surely weren't anything more.  They surely weren't true people.  They had no consciousness, no self-awareness, no true personality beyond Tsarev himself.

They couldn't have a soul, could they?

As World War III raged on, as Tsarev brought his talents to battlefields the world over, spectral forms of his fallen bodies began to rise, haunting the places where they fell.  Ghastly forms, bearing the ragged wounds of their deathblows, floated spectrally through the blasted No Man's Land, terrifying any who dared gaze upon them.  With each mission Tsarev was assigned, more and more of the Russian Remnant began to appear, forever fighting a battle that none would ever win. 

And, of course, as the OblivAen crisis raged on, the legends of Alexander Tsarev, the 'super-soldier' reached the ears of the ever-wandering Haka, who brought Tsarev through to our realm.  And, while Tsarev himself managed to return to his war-torn world, a part of the Russian Remnant remains...

514

Villain of the Day: October 28 (The Devil's Own Herd)

There's a legend out in the southwest.  As the storm rolls in across the Texas plains, the devil himself rides out to take his herd to pasture.  A herd of red eyed steers thunder across the dusty prairie, their hooves burning like molten steel and brimstone streaming from their maws.

As it turns out, there might just be some truth to that tall tale. Just not in the way an old cattle-puncher might have you believe. 

The first sighting of The Devil's Own Herd was actually made by a series of volcanologists, indicating a fissure in the earth near the Balcones Fault in southern Texas.  Finding that the fissure led to deepest Magmaria was a shock unto itself, but what the researchers found within defied sanity. 

There, in the heart of the Earth, was a twisted mockery of a fully operational cattle ranch, south the bodies of both humans and Magmarians staked out as if to ward away any interlopers.  Within, a series of the most vicious Crystalloid Behemoths that any of the researchers had come across.  Worse, their natural claws and teeth had been filed to razor shards, their maws still stained with the blood and ichor of the recently devoured. 

However, the most dire horror there beneath the earth was surely the figure in black.  A mockery of some American cowboy, he strode out, shouting in a language none of the researchers could recognize.  Shouting threats and weaving lava through his fingers, he commanded the Behemoths to charge...

Only three of those researchers managed to return to the surface; surely the remainder was slain and eaten by the mysterious rancher.  But since that day, when the storm is about to roll in, that herd of behemoths, led by the dark ranchhand, can still be seen thundering across the surface world.  Woe betide any who cross their trail...

515

Villain of the Day:  October 28 (Ol' Stitch)

They say 'the clothes make the man'.  The being known as Ol' Stitch would be just as happy pursing the man to make the clothes.

Often masquerading as human, Ol' Stitch is expert in the art of anthropodermic bibliopegy--the art of utilizing human skin  in the binding of books.  However, its true passion was not for bookbinding, but rather than the art of shaping flesh and skin into articles of clothing and armor.  For decades, Ol' Stitch has stalked the darker corners of this world, collecting the indigent and forgotten to craft masterpieces of horror, all the while thwarting the numerous efforts of intrepid investigators to capture it.  In all actuality, however, Ol' Stitch is a demonic being with teeth resembling rotten needles and lengthy fingers and nails that 

Only two known villainous groups have ever managed to make contact with Ol' Stitch on any sort of 'friendly' basis:  the now-destroyed Kingsport sect of the Cult of Gloom, and that enigmatic madman known as Biomancer.

In documents recovered by the occult huinter known as The Redblade, there seemed to be a long-standing relationship between one of the cult leaders in Kingsport and Ol' Stitch.  Ol' Stitch had apparently provided the cultists there with a large number of ensorcelled armor and bracers, all made from the flesh of those sacrificed by the cult themselves.  The cult leader, one Merritt Olney, noted a single reference in his journal, insinuating that Ol' Stitch may have, in fact, been the creature who bound the Grimoire of Curses and affixed the head of the Drum of Despair.  In both cases, occult scholars have posited, this would insinuate that Ol' Stitch seems to not only be centuries (not decades) old, and that it may have been among the ancient forbearers of Gloomweaver's cult.  What Ol' Stitch had been doing in the meanwhile, however, is anyone's guess.

Somewhat strangely, where Ol' Stitch has proved to be an ally to Gloomweaver and the Cult of Gloom, the demon seems to be friends with Biomancer.  While Ol' Stitch has not actually been seen with Biomancer--really, who has?--comparisons between Biomancer's flesh-children and Ol' Stitche techniques abound.  Further, Ol' Stitch has often been encountered with numerous flesh-children, who defend it to the last.  Whether Biomancer gave Ol' Stitch these creatures or if Ol' Stitch created these on its own remains to be seen, though Ol' Stitch has shown no indications of creating flesh-children on any occasion. 

Most recently, Ol' Stitch has been sighted around some of the ruins of San Alonzo, picking over the remains of the devastated city.  One could only imagine what the vile creature may make from the bodies collected in such a disaster.

516

It strangely warms my heart to think that even a gross weirdo like Biomancer has friends. That he didn't make himself. Who are also gross and weird. :B What can ya do?

517

Between Ol' Stitch and Madame Mittermeier, Zosimos sure does make the rounds.  Wonder if he has a FleshBook account?

518

Villain of the Day:  October 30 (The Melting Man)

Don't ever pick up hitchhikers, friends and neighbors.  Especially if they start dripping their way through your passenger seat.

A long-time urban legend, The Melting Man most often features in stories of long-haul truckers and those who do a lot of highway traveling.  In near all cases, the story goes the same.  The lone driver picks up a non-descript man on the side of the road late at night.  The man is dressed in a rumpled suit, and claims to be able to pay for a trip to the next closest city.  If invited in, he takes a seat, introduces himself, and engages his host in thankful, polite conversation.

That's when the weirdness starts.  As the trip continues, the hitchhiker slowly becomes less and less cogent.  As conversation continues, His grip on language and cogent thought begins breaking down.  He grows increasingly frustrated at seemingly random items--"No, that's not right!  That exit isn't there!  You're in the wrong lane!"--sweating profusely all the while.  However, an astute driver, who takes their eyes off the road for just a second, will surely notice that the passenger isn't sweating.  Rather, he is liquifying.  As the trip continues, the hitchhiker slumps down in his seat, as his spine loses cohesion, eventually becoming a dripping horror of molten skin and flapping sinew.

Inevitably, the story ends with the driver's car being found on the side of the road.  The driver there sits bolt upright, dead from drowning.

While the story of The Melting Man has gone down in urban legend, there is a kernal of truth behind it.  Jason Markham, once a hired hand and occasional vagrant in the Rockies, took a job as a human test subject for a government health project.  Little did he know that he had actually signed up for testing as part of Black Site 515-Tango's ongoing efforts to decode Grand Warlord Voss's gene-binding technology.  Splicing Jason's DNA with an alien creature with a fluid form made him into an ideal blend of human and Gene Bound Pursalian...for about fifteen minutes, before his body discorporated and was swept up into a biohazard tank.

However, awash with biohazard waste and chemicals, Jason's consciousness began to pull together his form.  He can hold his human form for approximately half an hour, though the longer he stays in his human form, the more his mental state degrades.  As he slowly liquifies, he descends into a confused madness, often ending up in violent argument.  By the time that Jason totally liquifies, he becomes no more than an enraged, homocidal glop of humanoid water, leaving anyone in the vicinity seemingly "drowned".  

To date, Jason has wandered throughout the American West, giving rise to the legend of The Melting Man...

519

Now that’s a horrifyingly original take on the phantom hitchhiker…

520

Villain of the Day:  October 31 (Typhon)

It was only a fish.  A seahorse, to be more specific.  Now, it's so much more.

That enigmatic chemical, Isoflux Alpha, has left an indelible impact upon the universe, with hundreds (if not thousands) of Omegas emerging across the world, bearing untold powers derived from that strange, cosmic radiation.  Overwhelmingly, those Omegas have been humans, resulting in the emergence of the wholly new biomedical field of metabiology.  However, astute biologists have noted that, on rare occasions, animals have been subject to the Isoflux Alpha particle, most notably the man-sized Komodo that serves as a bodyguard to Dr. Emershan Laurent.

The creature designated Typhon is the first known "naturally-occuring" animal Omega.  And, if not checked, it certainly will not be the last.

Scientists currently believe that the titanic Typhon was once merely a Severn's pygmy seahorse:  a creature no bigger than an inch.  However, after exposure to an Isoflux Alpha particle, the seahorse grew to titanic size, sprouting additional snouts and tails until it resembled nothing so much as a massive tentacular splay with a gigantic sea-horse head sprouting from the central trunk.  Typhon has been particularly destructive, having made landfall in Sri Lanka and nearly crushing the city entire as it smashed and devoured its way across the island.  The greatest damage, however, came from expulsions of irradiated sea slime which Typhon was capable of spitting to a distance of half a mile.

Some have questioned, however, how could such a thing come to be?  In the case of Komodo, the Isoflux Alpha particle came from the creature devouring a portion of an already-identified Omega.  However, for a coral-dwelling, plankton-eating seahorse, this could simply not possibly be the case for Typhon.  Some have noted that larger seahorses are capable of eating small crustaceans, implying a carnivorous diet; these researchers have concluded that even amongst its diminuitive species, Typhon may have already been a mutant of some sort, which may have made it suceptible to the Isoflux Alpha radiation.

It was during that Sri Lanka event that Typhon was first named and identified, and whereupon its true terror comes from.  You see, Typhon appears to have mutated from a male seahorse....meaning that it currently bears a whole brood of giant-sized young.  Typhon is, if nothing else, the father of monsters.  If not found and destroyed, it may mean that an entire legion of Omega-powered sea monsters await the world's seas, to say nothing of the tremendous Typhon itself.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

As Halloween falls, we've reached the end of our Monster Mash October.  Starting tomorrow, we begin No-Powers November:  a legion of foes who rely on their wits and cunning rather than superhuman abilities, occult sorceries, or strange devices.  

Just two months to go!