Scary hot women

For some reason, I've always been drawn in fantasy fiction to the notion of a very powerful, very beautiful, yet very evil woman. Maybe it goes back to my life-long love of Disney's Sleeping Beauty and the well-done prototype of--not a Dark Lord, but a Dark Empress--Maleficent. She's the real deal---a self-proclaimed "Mistress of All Evil" and, apparently, viewed as "the most powerful and sinister of the Disney villains" and the end scenes of Sleeping Beauty are amongst the darkest and grimmest that Disney ever produced (with the possible exception of The Black Cauldron which was otherwise a very silly movie, sadly.)

More recently I've been captivated by the fictional character of Dorotea Senjak, i.e., "The Lady" of Glen Cook's Black Company fame. Although in her case, her kinda sorta reformation was a key character development issue away from many of the very traits that made her so fascinating. Although the fact that it was--at best--a kinda sorta reformation makes her merely more human rather than less interesting. I mean, she still massacred the priests of Taglios because they stood in political opposition to her, after all. Hardly the actions of a "hero."

The reason I bring this up is that I was browsing the Pathfinder blog recently, and snagged this image; the young Queen of Cheliax, a powerful kingdom that is, essentially, a devil-worshipping theocracy (at least as I understand it; the more detailed book isn't out yet.) In part because I'm fascinated with the concept of an overtly evil-themed society and the adventure possibilities inherent therein, and in part because of a superficial resemblance to some of those earlier Dark Lady archetypes that I've liked so much in the past, I've been more excited about the release of the Cheliax book than I have been about many of the Pathfinder Companion books, as well as being a little disappointed that it's being covered in the shorter Companion line rather than the Chronicles line, which would be twice as big. Although, plenty of other Cheliax themed source material has come out from Paizo, albeit in disconnected form, in other products as well.