Heresiarchs and the named campaigns

Many of the 5x5 Fronts naturally would feature a Heresiarch as an archvillain manipulating the scene throughout the campaign. It's not my intention that Heresiarchs can be defeated. They are more like the Elder Evils of Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos; i.e., they can be stopped, slowed down, or put back into torpor, but you don't just shout huzzah and kill them. In reality, you may not even meet or see them; merely the effects of their Machiavellian manipulation of events. 

Anyway, I thought it nice to go and decide which of the Heresiarchs might belong to which of the various campaigns, and how. So far, only DARKNESS IN THE HILL COUNTRY has a confirmed Heresiarch presence; although CULT OF UNDEATH has it's own Elder Evil.

Jairan Neferirkare, the Soulless is explicitly referenced as a background patron of some of the villains here. There's even a chance that reckless PCs will travel to her refuge in the Shadow Realm, an alternate reality much like Stranger Things' Upside-down, or D&D's Plane of Shadow (or Shadowfell as it was rebranded starting with 4e). This could be extremely foolish, especially if it's a head-long assault, but I like the idea, maybe, of a sneaking infiltration of some kind. 

We'll see. Maybe she's just a shadowy (no pun intended) figure in the background, however. In fact, that is probably the best way to use these supervillains in the first place.

I have an AI image of Jairan handy, but not a Hero Forge one, so I'll skip her for now, and tag her as needing an updated Hero Forge approach.

While this was initially going to be more of a "against the vampires" campaign, it's kind of evolved into something else. It does have the Elder Evil Bokrug the Water-lizard in it, but he's probably going to be "downgraded" from Elder Evil to "merely" end-boss monster. However, I want to at least reference a Heresiarch as a vague shadowy threat looming in the background of every campaign. Given that three of the five (or even six, possibly) fronts of Cult of Undeath take the PCs to the Eltdown Fens, a vast bosky wetland where they can rummage around for multiple birds with the one stone that is the visit to the area, I think it interesting to think that one of the hidden dangers deep in the swamp is Amrruk the Ancient. He's in his torpor, as normal, but maybe even Otto von Szell is trying to take advantage of his power while he slumbers, and the threat of him coming awake is maybe more compelling than Bokrug the Water-lizard, who honestly is a little bit forced just for the Lovecraft reference. 

The third of my original three campaigns doesn't have much development yet, other than it will be loosely inspired by The Hangover and will take place in, or at least on the fringes of, Baal Hamazi, with Glittering Simashki, the borderlands wretched hive of scum and villainy city on the bottom of the Rudmont Escarpment. Hutran Kutir, and his machinations in Baal Hamazi is an obvious Heresiarch to be used here, but the Mind-Wizards would include Gothan, the Mind-wizard. Maybe they both have a role? I don't have any of the fronts really developed for this one yeet.

This one will likely be a "small" campaign 5x5, maybe only a 3x5, as it happens. Jairan Neferirkare is an obvious one as the former "Queen" of Hyperborea before its collapse. Arzana, Clad in Black is the alleged weapon of mass destruction that she used, and Seggeir, the Hoarfell King is also an obvious one as a cold-themed Heresiarch. I have no idea what the fronts will look like yet, but those are the ones I think are likely to make a cameo.

This is the one that has privateer action, vampires, undead savages, etc. Although Curse of the Corsair Coast (see below) seems like an obvious one to feature Bernat Haspar de Ruze, I think I want him on this one, actually. The next one will be more based on Freeport stuff. I hadn't actually necessarily meant him to be a ghost pirate, but it just started to be more interesting to me than a lich pirate, and now I've got this Hero Forge model. 

Finally, 

Given that it's specifically meant to be a seriously truncated and modified, yet hopefully still slightly recognizable adaptation of a whole bunch of Freeport modules, I should probably use a Heresiarch that fits that theme. And the one that best does is the one that I said the other day isn't actually one of my heresiarchs, but who should be; some kind of analog to the King in Yellow. I had, in a much earlier version of the setting, called Charon the King in Yellow, but I wonder if Culsans the Judge is a better King in Yellow than Charon. Charun is the Etruscan name for a similar figure, probably borrowed linguistically from the Greeks. I don't know yet. I'll noodle around with that some more for some time. The King in Yellow isn't actually a name, and I want a name. But I don't want Hastur. So, I'll keep poking around with ideas until I find one that I like. 

Hero Forge Heresiarchs

I'm interested in doing all new Heresiarch models. I have no idea what I'm even going to do with some of these, but a few of them are, actually, unique models of my own. Most are not. Here's a new Kadashman, He Who Peers Into the Void, looking more Lovecraftian than my AI images kind of did. It's also an experimentation with kitbashing run amok, so maybe it'll last, and maybe it won't. 

Here's the King in Yellow, who isn't a Heresiarch today, but is essentially the same thing as one.

Two more Heresiarchs; Hutran Kutir (token version) and Master of Vermin. I'll make more in the future.

For the token versions, I'm giving all of the Heresiarchs a starry background. They're all Elder Evils, essentially, and better seen as something like a D&D demon lord or a Call of Cthulhu Great Old One kind of entity than as a monster or NPC exactly.

And finally, one of my favorite of the Heresiarchs; Amrruk the Ancient. Based (loosely) on the name and concept of the Oozemaster, a forgotten early prestige class from Masters of the Wild. 

Where are my Heresiarchs

So, I've been generating AI images for world-building for quite some time now; better part of a year. I have them all nested in a bunch of subfolders. 

I backed them up on my computer, but months ago. It's not completely fully backed up, because I've generated more since then. Curiously, I was looking for some of my files, and for the Heresiarch—and so far I've found this to be true only for the Heresiarchs—my folders that the images were in are all empty. Whisky Tango Foxtrot?! How does that even happen? The folders are all there... but nothing is in them.

For four of the Heresiarchs, I do have backups. For most of them, I do also have a some of the images posted here. But that's just really, really weird. I'm kinda frustrated. I don't know that it's necessarily important that they're missing, but it's weird and frustrating. I need to do another backup today, I think, and restore the ones that I do have backed up, and grab whatever I can find from my blog to fill in the details, and well... yeah. Weird.

I'd post an image, but I don't have any. Instead, here's the cover images I've made for my race deep dive Youtube series. I should do a new one for the orcs & goblins, since it doesn't actually fit this format.

Today's found quote of the day: "We are sinners in the hands of an angry God named Karen from Human Resources."

Porto Liure on the Corsair Coast... and RATS!

I was poking around old posts of mine, and discovered this one, from almost five years ago. The point of it was reimaging past assets that no longer quite fit into the DFX setting (which, at the time, was still at the DH5 level). Porto Liure had been a major asset that I'd done quite a bit with, and with some supplemental help from stuff like the Green Ronin Freeport book or the Privateer Press Five Fingers book (or even a few other products of pirate-like cities in various D&D products over the years), but it really belonged quite strongly to the DH4 version of the setting, and never really completely found any kind of place in DH5, which became the DFX setting after an effort in rebranding. Now that the Corsair Coast is going to be officially "Terassan" in ethnicity, Porto Liure, of course, has a new home in DFX, bringing one of my older assets back into play. I feel like I'm gradually getting there with all kinds of stuff. Baal Hamazi was incorporated as a third region, when DFX was originally supposed to be Timischburg + The Hill Country. Kurushat kinda sorta makes an appearance in the form of Lower Kurushat, although exactly how much of this will actually be renewed details from DH4 is unknown still. The Plateau of Leng has been back, and has some of the Forbidden Lands vibes... and details. Although many of them were shameless pastiches of Lovecraft to begin with.

I do need to spend some time deciding how the various cities of the old Terassan Empire can figure in the new Corsair Coast paradigm. Most of them can be converted to Barbary-style city-states easily enough, by removing any lingering Imperial trappings from them, I suppose. In some ways, this makes them all analogs to Porto Liure, but I want Porto Liure to stand out still. I actually doubt that I'll do too much with the other city-states, or have much interest in utilizing them. Calça was probably the only one that I still had a lot of interest in, and possibly Baix Pallars, but everything interesting from Calça has largely already been pilfered and added to the Hill Country. Baix Pallars as a pseudo-civilized place falling into colonial ruin, like the waning years of the Crusader States or European colonial empires amongst Third World savages could possibly still restore this as an idea, but I'm not entirely sure how. Maybe, as I start to work out exactly how the Terassans are related to the Tarushans, and I'm sure that it is somehow, means that I can sandwich the part of the Terassans between the Hill Country and Timischburg on the southern part of their border, with the Terassans stretching further south from there into the Corsair Coast; and maybe that's where Baix Pallars can still fit. Maybe Eltdown is the northernmost outpost of the Pallarans, even; a kind of Bree farther removed from the more southerly bastions of their distant relatives like the mountainfolk of Gondor or the Dunlendings. 

Anyway more to come on that. But speaking of shameless pastiches of Lovecraft (and Warhammer) I want to discuss briefly the Master of Vermin, one of the more notorious Heresiarchs of my setting, and his greatest (or worst) creations in the setting, which seethe outwards from Leng at times, the ratmen. Starting with wererats, an already rare monster in the setting, Master of Vermin experimented on ways to "mass produce" more of them. This didn't work out exactly as planned, but from his perspective, it no doubt is actually better. In trying to create "mass produced" wererats, he got, instead, two varieties of man-rat hybrids, as noted below:

Ratmen are about four feet tall, and look like hunched humanoids with rat tails, rat heads, rat fur and clawed hands and feet. For those of you familiar with skaven, they are basically exactly that, except without some of the specifically skaven clan politics and stuff. But there was an unusual side-effect of the creation of the ratmen; whereas the ratmen are mostly human-like with rat heads, for each ratman created, there was also a rat thing, ratling, or brown jenkin, named after (allegedly) the first one. These are like large rats who have human-like faces and hands. Not really intelligent, ratlings or rat things, are, at best, somewhere between smart dogs and toddlers at their most intelligent; they can understand simple commands and even communicate extremely simple concepts, but they aren't really able to rise much above that. They do have their uses, however, as spies, and as familiars. And even, to the ratmen, as a food source. Mostly ratlings, if they can do so, like to leave the communities of ratmen, and create their own packs somewhere else, but they are still rare and horrifying when found in human or near human lands. 

I don't think that I actually have rat thing or ratling stats in the game, although I did find them on a blog post, where I think I just took regular giant rat stats, maybe made a minor modification or two, and called them nuzzle rats, based on H. P. Lovecraft's own repeated description of Brown Jenkin "nuzzling horribly". I don't like that name anymore, so I won't reuse it, but giant rat stats are good. Even though giant rats are described as the size of a large dog, the stats are still fine for a rat-sized, but more dangerous than a rat like creature. 

Speaking of familiars, I do briefly talk about the animal companion player feat as a way to get familiars, but that doesn't really explain much of what they are. I imagine that the player (and only the player) that has a familiar or animal companion can communicate with it, more or less like a person, although simpler (unless the GM allows you to take, say, a person as an animal companion) and it acts kinda sorta like an NPC that's semi under the control of the player that has it as a class feature. From a "cosmological" perspective, familiars aren't exactly just the animal that they were before they were picked as a familiar; they get "augmented" by some kind of spirit from beyond which is what makes them familiars.

Keep in mind; I don't have cozy, nice wizards in DFX. Magic is witchcraft, pure and simple, or transhuman scary sorcery. Familiar spirits that take over and possess the bodies of some animal are evil creatures, and for the most part, people who use magic are evil as well. Occasionally there is a "good" sorcerer who tries to use the tools of the enemy against him, which is where PCs using magic comes in, but that's usually a pretty iffy bargain to make, and the sorcerers who do this are usually biding their time, using it as little as possible, hoping to get through life before corruption catches up to them. 

But given that PCs are often reckless or desperate or both, I imagine that plenty of characters can use magic and even have familiars without being "evil"... but it's a slippery slope and they're already sliding on it.

Heresiarchs

In the DFX game, there can be many potential supervillains. I have monster stats for Cthulhu, fer cryin' out loud. Vampires and liches are classic supervillains in a fantasy sense. So are some of the powerful daemons. But Heresiarchs are explicitly envisioned as fantasy supervillains. I specifically, actually, envisioned them as the Ten Who Were Taken. If you've never read the ten (or maybe it's eleven now; I think he may have added a recent book) Black Company books by Glen Cook, you should. They not only foreshadow the rise of grimdark, without being explicitly as nihilistic and derpy as grimdark itself often is, but they're just quite clever and interesting. The main narrator, Croaker, is one of the most unique voices in fantasy fiction. The Heresiarchs are deliberately meant to be a "body" of individuals that are similar to the Ten Who Were Taken. Like them, they have many of the aspects of a lich, but without necessarily their weaknesses. Many of them have enough vanity to perpetuate a beautiful, charismatic appearance, while others simply don't care that they look like walking corpses, such as the Hanged Man or the Limper from the Ten. They are undead, or at least undying, and have many of the strengths of both vampires and liches, but few of either of their weaknesses.

I've come up with fifteen unique Heresiarchs. Few know of them in the setting, and much of what is known about them is garbled by deliberate lies, or has passed into dubious legend. There's also a Heresiarch monster stat block in the monster section of my game. In reality, each of these should use the Heresiarch stat block as a starting point and then add at least a couple of additional abilities and other minor changes, so that they're all a little unique. But this post isn't for that. I don't really imagine that my PCs would ever be likely to be sitting around fighting Heresiarchs in a straight up fight anyway. They're more like behind the scenes Fu Manchu or Moriarty manipulators. Stats are just there for reference in their cases.

Anyway, this is just a summary of the Heresiarchs I've identified and named so far (which may end up being all of them, of course) and I'll probably use this blog post as a starting point for a YouTube video that I've been planning on making for some time.

Amrruk the Ancient

In frightened and blasphemous whispers, there is a rumor that before the First Man, there was another race of men. One that had fallen so far that God wiped them all out, without even leaving the equivalent of Noah to replenish the Earth. He then started completely over with the current race of men. But Amrruk, against all odds, is a survival from this strange, alien race of men before men; who endured by turning himself into a creature of slime and protoplasm. Underneath the slime, his original skeleton still survives, given life by his ancient, cursed will. But he spends most of his time in torpor, usually unconcerned with the affairs of this "new" race of Men, lingering in blighted swamps, now having more in common with other creatures of slime and mud than anything else.

Arzana, Clad in Black

Taking the form of a young feral girl, running wildly through the waste places of the world unharmed by any vagary of climate or weather, Arzana is one of the most fiercely anti-social of the heresiarchs and rarely interacts with any of them either as enemy or ally. Nobody knows for sure what her agenda is, but she seems to delight in perverting and corrupting the natural world. Some believe that the environmental catastrophe that befell Hyperborea was caused by her, although manipulated by Jairan Neferirkare, as punishment on the grislings for rejecting her cult. Arzana frequently runs clad only a few rags and smeared with dirt and mud through the cold, wild wilderness, screaming her fury and casting powerful bolts of lightning from her hands and from the sky to blight and destroy the landscape about her. It is also believed that wendigos and other strange cannibal spirits of the cold and inhospitable wilderness are either her creation, or somehow a reflection of her malevolent will.

Bartolomeo the Many-angled

Based on his name, he may have originally been from the Corsair Coast, or perhaps he spent some time there and adapted a local name, but nobody really knows from whence Bartolomeo really came. His explorations and perambulations of worlds beyond our own have warped and destroyed much of his body, which he was replaced with forged and crafted replacements, powered by his sorcery. Although rumors also abound that it's less about his exploration of the Void and as much about past feuds with other heresiarchs that caused this physical damage to him. Bartolomeo is another one of the heresiarchs who's private pursuits into other matters thankfully brings him into conflict with mankind infrequently, and he can go many decades, or even centuries, without passing under the familiar skies of the world of Man.

Bernat Haspar de Ruze

The Ghost Pirate of the Kell Sea, Bernat Haspar de Ruze is a "young" heresiarch, and therefore one that the rest of the club looks with a wary eye. He has, however, been cursed to be tied to his ship so far. Although he's working diligently to remove that particular aspect of his heresiarch curse, and he is secretly closer than many think, it has spared him attention from his evil peers, who see his captive state and believe that that neutralizes him as a player in their occasionally catastrophic power plays and strategic moves against each other. Once de Ruze finds himself freed of his ship, however, he will immediately be seen as either a potential ally, pawn or threat by the rest of the Heresiarchs, not to mention any number of other liches, daemons or vampires, or other evil sorcerers who covet his power and forbidden knowledge. In the meantime, he and his dread ship, The Flying Longshoreman, search the territory off the coasts of Timischburg, the Corsair Coast and Nizrekh, searching for clues for his reprieve from the curse that holds him captive, and woe betide any other ship that crosses his foul path while doing so.

Dommik Sébastien, He of the Beast Aspect

When the Charnel God Tarush fell from the sky in the territory that later became Grozavest, capital of Timischburg, long before the arrival of the Timischers, seven knights of old Kinzassál went to confront the horror that fell from the sky. They were able to seal up Tarush under the Great Chains, but in the process became sealed with him in his sorcerous prison. Perverted and warped by his dark necrotic power while exposed to him, they became the Primeval vampires, the fathers of the entire cursed race. Dommik Sébastien is one such, who has somehow managed to escape the sealing, at least at times, although it is not clear that his freedom is complete and total. Bearing the most overtly vampiric appearance of all heresiarchs because of his origin as such, his primary goal seems to be the release of Tarush and the other Primevals from their prison, but it is no secret amongst the other heresiarchs that he's quite mad. Even by their standards.

Esmeraude, She Who Ushers the Apocalypse

A beautiful and serene woman of the far north, associated with the earliest of the Elementalists, Esmeraude, in spite of her Terassan name, has been living near and around the surturs since nearly the inception of that race. Some believe that she actually caused the magical rift that turned some of the early primitive humans into the elementalists in the first place, by causing magical leaks that changed the genetic matrix of the people living there. She allegedly lives inside an active volcano with a persistent lava lake. Her serenity can be rather easily undone, however, and her fiery temper when roused is a major part of the legend of her for any who know of the heresiarchy at all. Prophecies exist that claim she will be a significant component of the final destruction of the earth, when its time comes, and that she and her fiery elemental daemons will purge the entire earth of life in an orgy of fire and flame. In the meantime, she is content to slowly yet inexorably marshal her forces in the wilderness beyond the earth, beyond even the City of Brass, so her appearances here are rare and greatly to be feared.

Hutran Kutir, the Hex-king

Another "young" heresiarch, Hutran Kutir is the semi-legendary "first kemling", the father of the entire race, and the founder of the nation of Baal Hamazi. He was killed many centuries ago, and his heirs ruled his kingdom until relatively recently, when the nation of Baal Hamazi fell apart into squabbling city-states and tribes. However, garbled rumors of his return from the dead have spread from deep within Baal Hamazi. These rumors do not paint an optimistic picture of his attitude at the failure of his nation, and the the rumored marshalling of dark forces in the north to retake and reforge it by force are starting to seep outwards. Some, even, of the other heresiarchs have taken note.

Jairan Neferirkare, the Soulless

This darkly beautiful and yet inhuman and completely soulless evil queen once ruled as the undisputed goddess of old Hyperborea. Her yoke, however, was heavy, and rebellion was a constant threat, especially as the early humans who lived there learned enough sorcery to collectively threaten her. She abandoned her aim to rule a kingdom on earth in Hyperborea, and fled to the Shadow Realm, a dark and twisted reflection of the world of Men that suited her temperament well. However, she did not do so without a parting shot of spite and hatred, cursing the men of Hyperborea to become the grisling race, subject to the cannibal curse, and Hyperborea was ruined, forever becoming a frozen wasteland. Although only marginally able to support the life of a greatly reduced population of grislings, even those were then threatened by the invading Inutos, and those that survived fled the area, mostly for good.

Kadashman, He Who Peers Into the Void

Among the most disquieting and least human of the heresiarchs, Kadashman, like Bartolomeo, appears to be more concerned with the Voids beyond the world than with gathering power or influence here. Often accompanied by servitors that will shred the sanity at a glance of any normal person, Kadashman is thankfully infrequently involved in anything in the world of mankind. Nobody is entirely clear if he is a rival or ally of Bartolomeo, but there are at least some rumors that the inhuman appearance and aspect of the two are the results less of their explorations of the Void and more of their hostile encounters with each other. But other rumors suggest that they do at times work together. Kadashman is one of the most mysterious of the heresiarchs, and some claim that not only is he no longer human, but that possibly he never was to begin with.

Kefte Taran, Mistress of Forgotten Secrets

An exotically beautiful young woman, at least to appearances, this vile necromancer has an unnatural affinity for—and some say, perverse attraction to—the dead.  Her association with the long dead and restless spirits has, however, granted her access to a wealth of knowledge that her colleagues can only dream about. Kefte Taran frequently spends time in haunted locations, where the line between the mortal world and the world of shadows is thin, surrounded by the restless spirits of the most evil and depraved of the dead. She stirs so infrequently from these haunts, that some have even supposed that perhaps she is trapped in a haunted palace, much like the Ghost Pirate is trapped on his ship.

Master of Vermin

Although he's often considered—by those few who know of him—as unconcerned with mortal affairs and either above (or beneath) them, this is a dangerous affectation to hold.  A common conceit of many of the heresiarchs is that they are the true "gods" of this earth, and deserve to be worshipped as such. Master of Vermin, who's name is unknown, possibly even to him, certainly believes this, and perhaps more than any other of the heresiarchs, has taken action to ensure that when that time comes, he's ready to step directly into that role. This is not good news for humanity, since the vermin lord has no use for them.  Master of Vermin is a champion of numerous other repugnant forms of life—rats and spiders being among his favorite.  His most foul creation are the ratlings.  Large varieties of filthy rats, fed on human carrion and blasted with foul magicks, have over generations of shepherding at the Master of Vermin's hand become vaguely anthropomorphic.  Walking on two legs and using their front paws as hands, the ratlings are as intelligent as humans, and as inventive, but they know nothing but filth, hatred, and cruelty.  Master of Vermin has clearly set them up to replace humanity when the time is right.  In the meantime, they spread in small groups from their home in Leng, feeding on carrion and rotting flesh—human when they can get it—and hiding in the sewers and midden heaps of mankind's cities, poised to spread their plagues and diseases like the rats from which they were engineered by this mad sorcerer.

Gothan, the Mind-wizard

In ancient times before the rise of any of the modern races of mankind on the continent, the world was ruled by the might of ancient Atlantis, and the ancestors of the ancestors of the current races of the Three Realms were hunted, sacrificed and enslaved by this evil empire. Atlantis was so vile that it finally was cursed with destruction, and sank under the sea. The rump island chain of Nizrekh is all that remains, although these small islands were blasted lifeless at the time, and life has only slowly reclaimed them. The current Nizrekhi people are not descended from the Atlanteans at all, but more recent interlopers on the territory. Rather the cursed and degenerate grendlings or Wendaks are the distant descendants of Atlanteans who were on the continent during the wreck of Atlantis and so survived its sinking, but which were cursed to devolve eventually into cunning yet non-intelligent man-apes. Even now, they can no longer even use metal without sickening and dying, keeping what's left of them in a savage stone-age existence. However, some of the worst and most powerful Atlantean sorcerers, the first heresiarchs, as they style themselves, took last minute steps to preserve themselves, sealing themselves in lacquered caskets so they could "survive;" if their living death can be called survival, the sinking of their lands. Gothan, the Mind-wizard is one such, who's underwater lacquered wooden sarcophagus freed itself from the depths, floated to the surface, and was finally fished out of the sea by doomed and unfortunate fisherman, who paid for their rescue of the evil heresiarch with their lives and more. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Gothan, however, is the idea that he is not singular; nobody knows how many more Mind-wizards of ancient Atlantis may yet linger on the bottom of the sea, waiting for tides and seismic shifts that will cause them to also float to the surface and plague the world of Mankind yet again.

Shimut the Flesheater

The Undying Emperor of a now undead Empire, the best thing about Shimut the Flesheater is his relative distance from the Three Realms. His lands border the Corsair Coast to the south, in the cursed and shunned Dead Lands desert, once known as the Empire of Taremu-Atum. Today this area is only the province of the most desperate and foolhardy of outlaws and treasure-hunters, and few survive the sands of that blasted land for long. Those that do return are often not right in the head ever-after. Although Shimut is the undisputed lord of this land, he rules with a light touch, allowing the numerous restless dead or the foolish mortal to wander freely. When he does venture out of his black pyramid made of obsidian deep in the desert, the region shakes in fear... but he spends most of his time in contemplative torpor.

Djemma Mennefer, the Gnomic

The cautious Fate Spinner who spends her time plotting massive webs of conspiracy that last for centuries at a time, Djemma Mennefer is driven by fear; fear of eventual death, fear of loss of control. Her lack of overt action has often led others to under-estimate her power, but it really is only due to her extremely cautious and patient nature. Djemma is also famous as a seer of sorts, and she is consulted on occasion by the other heresiarchs, and will even entertain petitions by mortals for her wisdom, although the cost of her consultation is often more than most can pay. In this sense, she can serve in the setting a role not unlike the Graeae of Greek mythology, portrayed as the Stygian Witches in the classic Clash of the Titans movie.

Seggeir the Hoarfell King

A rival of sorts of Arzana because of their common interest in destroying the world with weather, Seggeir is a truculent and combative heresiarch, who doesn't get along well with his colleagues, and has seen his plans suffer as a result of his frequent clashes with them. His preferred state for the world would be frozen and trapped forever in ice. He mostly maintains a presence far to the north, in the land of Thule, beyond the Wolfwood and even the Iron Mountains that rise to the north of them, but he has agents in the south frequently during the winter, and occasionally even travels on errands of his own. Many legends of spirits of the winter stalking outside of towns and settlements in the north are probably attributable, when they are real, to either Seggeir or his wight lieutenants and servants.

Heresiarchs and other DFX "supervillains"

I’m not a huge redditer, but I’ve spent a little bit of time there lately. I had a weird warning, that my account had been flagged for breaking Rule 1; threatening physical violence. This is, of course, absurd, but there was no link that worked to where I supposedly did this. I can only imagine that they think my “threat” to PLONK someone was a threat of physical violence, which is course ridiculous, because PLONKing is old Usenet slang for “adding to my ignore list.” On top of that, my most recent Youtube video, where I just rambled on about worldbuilding changes in my setting got a few rando comments; one guy asked what this was for, and another guy answered him saying that he hadn’t watched the video, but he imagined that it was beginner worldbuilding advice. This of course is not true; I’m actually doing my worldbuilding via my blog and Youtube channel sometimes. It’s a rambly exposition of my actual worldbuilding, not a discussion on worldbuilding generally. 

The biggest takeaway here is to reinforce my beliefs that 1) most people are idiots, 2) people are the worst, and 3) I’m entirely justified in posting on my blog and channel entirely for my own benefit and my own benefit alone and ignoring everyone else. I shouldn’t even post on reddit at all, because it’s full of idiots and snowflakes. Especially in r/DnD which literally has a gayed up version of the D&D logo as its group banner, but r/osr is only marginally better. And I’m not even going to address those dumb youtuber comments. Just watch the video if you wonder what its about! Or don’t, I don’t care. If you’re asking whether or not you should watch the video: I don’t care! I’m not going to spend time explaining what it is for you. Yes, yes… I probably should have put an actual description in the description field, which I couldn’t be bothered with this time around. That may have contributed. But again; this is really just for my own benefit. Stream of consciousness rambling about my worldbuilding activities isn’t really meant for anyone else, and I put it out there in public just because that way its easier for me to find and reference. Plus, at least my son-in-law watches those. Although I don’t know for sure how interested he is either, honestly.

Anyway, that slight venting out of the way, let me come up with a quick and dirty outline for what I want to do with my “supervillains”. These mostly used to be the Heresiarchs of good ole Dark•Heritage Mk. IV, heavily based on Glen Cook’s The Ten Who Were Taken from The Black Company series of novels. However, there isn’t really any significant difference between them and iconic D&D villains like Vecna or Strahd or Acererak or even Iggwilv. However, rather than being singular villains, as those guys tend to be, I presume that there’s a complicated web of relationships between these guys. Unlike D&D villains, however, the PCs will never get into the league where they can face them in a fair one on one fight. These guys will always be in a completely different league to the PCs, who only can rise to tenth level in my game at most. Plus, they’re lower power anyway. Why have villains that the PCs can’t fight, you may ask? Well, again, you should read The Black Company books. I mentioned that already, but it’s the perfect model for them. These villains are powerful, but they’re also paranoid and sociopathic. They can be outmaneuvered and defeated, but not in a straight up fair fight. There’s a careful balance between them and the rest of their crowd; if someone new comes along, then they usually want to stop him from joining their club, so to speak.

Many years ago, a gaming friend of mine wrote something that I think resonates quite well. I was able to find it with a Google search, so here it is:

My PCs recently had a sit-down with nasty old [supervillain] and in getting tidbits of information about assorted bad guys they asked, "What do these guys want?" [Her] answer: "They want to save the world. We all want to save the world. From each other."

My thinking is that when you perceive a threat, and you want to counter it, you need to increase your own power to the point where you can face that threat. And of course, in doing so, you become perceived as a threat by others. So many of my "bad guys" became bad in order to defeat something terrible -- and in the process became terrible themselves. So now there's a variety of individuals who are near demi-gods in power, all of whom consider (and rightly, it seems) each other to be terrible threats to the world. So now they're all jockeying for position, trying to eliminate each other.

They don't see themselves as bad guys -- they think they're saving the world. Which they are, because unless these other nasties are stopped, things are going to be very uncomfortable. The problem is that they're just as nasty as the others.

I don't know that I accept that literally. These villains probably know quite well that they're terrible. But now they're just spiteful, miserable pricks who think burning the world down is preferable to just being miserable on their own. 

Anyway, the rest of this post will be fairly art heavy, because I’ll highlight some of my supervillains with a very brief description, and then have them also illustrated via DALL-E 3. Exactly their role in the setting NOW and where they are is usually TBD.

Amrruk the Ancient was based on an old prestige class from an early 3e splatbook, the Oozemaster. To be honest, he’s more based on the word “oozemaster” than on any details of the prestige class, which I probably haven’t read in the better part of twenty years. He’s a lich, covered in slime; a kind of slightly humanoid Juiblex, maybe, or a combination of a lich and a shoggoth. Curiously, I haven’t yet determined if Juiblex is the typo or Jubilex, since I see both versions out there in the wild. 

Bernat Haspar de Ruze is a more “normal” lich, associated with traveling on the Flying Dutchman-like haunted ship. He’s been bound to the ship, which from the perspective of the other big bad guys keeps him more or less neutralized, but that doesn’t mean that he still isn’t amazingly dangerous to anyone else out there sailing that he comes across. And secretly, of course, he’s working on releasing himself from being bound to his ship, and is quite close to that goal.

Hutran Kutir is the Hex-King and founder of Baal Hamazi; the semi-mythical father of all kemlings. He was killed many generations ago, but he yet lingers, because like The Ten Who Were Taken and the rest of these bad guys, death isn’t necessarily as final as one would like to hope. There are rumors of his stirring in Baal Hamazi from a long slumber (or death) which is causing waves among the other bad guys.

Jairan Neferirkare is a dark, Gothic necromancer and daemonologist; unlike many of these bad guys, she retains a human-like beauty. She’s more of a super-vampire than a lich, perhaps, although for these guys, the distinction is usually more cosmetic rather than significant.

Kadashman, He Who Peers Into the Void. Another character who’s concept was taken from an old 3e splatbook prestige class, in this case the original printing of the Alienist. If Kadashman was once human, he certainly isn’t anymore.

Kefte Taran, the Fate-spinner, the Witch-Lich. I think the Fatespinner might also have been an early 3e prestige class, but if so, I remember nothing about it anymore. The most cautious, the most paranoid, and with Madame Web (the original, not the stupid newer movie from a couple of years ago) of the entire bunch.

Master of Vermin. I know for sure that the Verminlord was an old prestige class, but I doubt that anything other than the name and my own interpretation of what the concept would be based on that name survive. I see him as the patron and maybe even creator (via corruption and chaos warping, not ex nihilo, of course) of the ratling race and a plague themed villain. Almost like Nurgle (Nergal) from Warhammer and The Horned Rat… except that he looks more humanoid still.

Seggeir Sherihum is Kathulos from Robert E. Howard’s Skull-face. Please; if you read this, be sure you find an original unedited and unexpurgated copy. There’s a lot of bowdlerized for woke political correct nonsense masquerading as this original story. Anyway, Kathulos was himself a somewhat derivative villain; an undead, Atlantean Fu Manchu, with all of the Yellow Peril themes incorporated, but made much more fantastic and much more exotic. Although not actually confirmed, it seems pretty obvious that Kathulos was at least somewhat based on Cthulhu; he’s a specifically undersea menace, dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, and the name is almost identical. Plus, Howard and Lovecraft of course wrote back and forth and Howard is on record as calling “Call of Cthulhu” a masterpiece.