One of my favourites was from an aberrant game. Diverging from the vanilla setting, in this campaign the characters were erupted by an accident at a partical accelerator (they were all guards). The professor running the accelerator became their mentor and helped them develop their powers while also seeking to understand how they work.

Eventually he recreated the explosion that erupted them to grant himself powers and from here slowly snk into believing that only by exposing everyone in the world to these powers could he avert a war againt humanity. Sadly 95% of people exposed to the type of radiation he used turned into horrific and mad monsters. Still, we went from mentor to evil genius. Perhaps his crowning acheivement was turning his science on the new york yankee stadium and turning the whole crowd into novas (5%) and monsters (95%). The betrayal by their old friend and mentor made capturing him so much important.

Good NPC. Very enjoyable to GM.

Bryan: I love the flavor of Stoneheart, the mad dwarven lord. That’s exactly the kind of story flavor 4E needs.

My 4E campaign is just getting started now, so I’m still in the world building (and villain building) stages. The main villains have all been more or less detailed:

Jamneiros Stoneheart a dwarven lord who was driven insane by reading some artifact runes he had cast. These runes had effectively opened up a channel to Rhannon, who will come later. The process had drained the color from his eyes, a characteristic of a magical plague that had attacked the homeland of one of the players and forced her to flee. The madness caused him to lose the ability to distinguish friend from foe, and he subsequently invited kobolds in to his halls and killed his fellow dwarves in the process. He was killed in the last game session, but could return as a future undead villain.

King of Telos, as yet unnamed, has become a servant of Rhannon in an as-of-yet undetermined way (was thinking that he ate too much conjured food, but that sounds a bit silly). Mainly created the villain for the opportunity for the shock value when the PCs finally meet the king and see the colorless eyes, connecting the events with the dwarven lord and the plague. He is planned as the climax villain of the heroic tier and will be introduced right when the PCs are going to him for help/to bring a lesser villain to justice.

Rhannon, an ancient mad god that was imprisoned under the ocean by his brother. Long since forgotten, he was accidentally released by an intrepid group of adventurers. However since gods operate on different levels as mortals, his release from imprisonment is taking place on a geological time scale and is taken the form of fragments of Rhannon infiltrating themselves into mortal life. The dwarven runes are one fragment of Rhannon, and the players will find other fragments as the game goes on.

Sadly, the players have not yet attempted to read the future using the newly discovered dwarven runes, but I’m crossing my fingers!

The party has recently killed Tayce, a shadowy assassin who was one of those bad-penny foes who kept popping up and running away. however, they have unleashed the psychotic shadow spirit that gave him his powers. The spirit has the same general type of abilities (mobile lurker with darkness powers) but a wildly different personality and divergent goals. The PCs will still have the same sort of goal when facing him: protect whoever his target happens to be, while searching for a way to end his threat.

Tayce’s former mistress, Mistress Mai’ali Nightwound, is one of several incarnations of a slain goddess. She got some of the more insane bits of the goddess’s soul, which turned her into a grade-A whackjob. Her main goal is seducing the head of a local temple to gain access to its extensive library and gain leads on where the rest of the goddess’ peices might be, so she can put them back together and become all-powerful. One problem hampering her is that one of the piece of the souls she already found, is rebelling against her control, giving her a split personality. Naturally, this personality is a member of the party.

Gerard LeVaine is a vampire lord who is posing as a doctor. Using this guise he “heals” the poor, turning them into spawn and building an army right under the nose of the town watch. He has corrupted the local church of the Raven Lord, which now serves him and his goals. His plan is to ruin the names of the churches around town, in order to shake the faith of people in their gods, and thus weaken the gods themselves to a point they can be destroyed.

Our Lady Wynowill is an Eladrin queen who is planning a genocidal war of conquest against the country the campaign is set in. Her forces are marshaling in the Feywild, and her agents are working to weaken the government of the country under the guise of a secret society of rebellious do-gooders known as The White Fox Society.

Her main minions, the Wild Hunt, are an elite cadre of eladrin soldiers and wizards. They help her hunt down and destroy “fetch,” a derogatory term for doppelgangers, supposedly due to a genocidal race hatred stemming from the use of doppelgangers to topple a formerly vibrant Eladrin empire in the Feywild. In reality, Lady Wynowill destroys the doppelgangers because she fears that a prophetic dream that she had, in which a “faceless one” is instrumental in destroying all she has worked for, will come true.

My best villians have always been the ones the players have chosen as enemies. In a Vampire: Dark Ages game, I set the players up in Prague during a very big split between the four factions vying for control, as well as other interested parties.

The party was stuck between alienating one faction (the Tremere) because the Prince of the City (Brujah) was “in love” with a murderer (Tzimsce diabolist). Or doing there job and potentially uncovering a plot by the Gangrel, Toreador and Nosferatu to overthrow the Prince and disgrace the Tremere… All the while, the party was seeking alliances with the Tremere.

Ambar Grimwind has lived for centuries. He’s not undead, not exactly, but he sustains himself on the lifeblood of others as surely as any vampire. By killing the most powerful threats to Vol, Ambar also sustains himself, each bloody murder granting him another year of life and renewed vigor [10 levels in the Thief of Life prestige class from Faiths of Eberron. Rules can inspire too, sometimes.] He tends to work alone, and to strike quickly and repeatedly in close combat, then hiding again before anyone can react; but his authority is such that he can command almost any resources he requires from the Blood of Vol. [Scout levels and a few bent rules to up his threat level. He's as close to a 'Solo' encounter for a party as a 3rd Edition humanoid can manage.]

Ambar is one of Vol’s best assassins, and (quite disturbingly) her lover as well; the dark gifts the lich queen has granted him make him immune to her deadly flesh. Ambar’s unnatural favor is such that he can safely weather Vol’s fury after one of his rare failures. Ultimately, he endures in his position because he is competent, yet irrevocably dependent upon Vol – he cannot betray her without seeing his peculiarly extended lifespan cease. Because he is still a living mortal, however, he is guileful in ways most undead – even Vol – cannot be. Ambar may be personally responsible for the dearth of epic-level characters in Khorvaire: His powers require that he slay the most powerful of Vol’s foes, and he quickly cuts down any who rise too high above the masses.

Ambar is frightening to a player group largely because he’s a living, breathing human who wields great power and authority amongst the undead, without any visible necromantic power of his own. He’s unpredictable, being both extremely clever and without motivation of his own – attempts to guess what he might do are invariably wrong, because the real question is “What would Vol have him do?”. Ambar wouldn’t be the ultimate villain of a Blood of Vol-centered campaign, but there’s no question my group would cheer when they finally cut him down for good.

Karrnath is in some ways even trickier. Sharn: City of Towers had a great sidebar on the Blood of Vol as a religion, suggesting a very complex religion for most of its lay followers. (Seriously, go read it. It’s really, really good.) They believe their religion truly offers some sort of existence after death – and that’s something the Nine can’t offer. The undead servitors of Vol are in some ways less complicated – they often don’t really believe Vol a goddess, and the religion they work within is in many ways simply a scam for blood, flesh and fresh bodies. Yet Karrnath’s ruler, Kaius III (a vampire himself), ruthlessly opposes Vol, creating an interesting division between secular and religious power in Karrnath. It’s a strange, dark parallel to the Reformation, at least as it happened in England.

Saragon/Peter: I was never truly certain, in reading the Eberron campaign book, whether the Lord of Blades was really the villain everyone thinks he is. Certainly, he is a bad act on the battlefield — no doubt about that — but he seems to be an adversary with a worthy goal: personal freedom for the warforged. That alone would make an interesting campaign, to be sure, but I wavered on classifying him as a villain. (Now, the entire nation of Karrnath, on the other hand …)

Scott: Evil dwarf. Speaking as a gnome myself, I can only say, of course the dwarf is the villain. The whole lot are covetous little bastards. Sounds like a great concept.

Kurt: Using the Scarlet Brotherhood, means, I assume, that your campaign is not rated PG.

Oh, sorry. Can’t tell you that part.

The campaign was in the Yeomanry, and borrowed a bit from the Living Greyhawk development of the country (although not from the adventures). The recurring BBEGs were the Scarlet Brotherhood (who wanted many of the artifacts their ancestors left in the Yeomanry) and Tharizdun (the God of Entropy, who is imprisoned and cannot act directly, but embraces all of those who seek to destroy things, or are a bit touched in the head).

Next campaign: I’m not entirely sure. I tend to like having multiple BBEGs, so we’ll see where it goes.

the main villain in my eberron campaign is the blood of vol and their schemes to try controlling a daelkyr.

the blood of vol is a secret organization, lead by the lich Vol, that also poses as a religion.
the daelkyr are the rullers of the plane of madness.

This threw the existing gods into disarray, and Torog went from becoming a lawful good god of oaths and protection to the a torn, insane god of torture and imprisonment. One of the party is a paladin of Torog, who is striving to bring his god back to the side of good while following his new, evil directives. The villain is a paladin of Torog who is taking the opposite approach – stealing his power, and seeking to turn him even more evil as she raises an army of fanatical goblins.

So, that should be fun. Our paladin got a royal beatdown in the last encounter when he, not knowing the nature of the goblins’ leader, declared, “I am a Paladin of Torog and you will serve me!” The ranger had known all along about the villain, but hadn’t told anyone, because she assumed the paladin knew, and didn’t want him to know that she knew that he knew, because “That’s exactly the kind of thing he wouldn’t tell us!”

I love my party. Who needs enemies when you have friends like those?

For those unfamiliar with Eberron, these two entities are absolutely fascinating. The Lord of Blades is, depending on who you talk to: A madman claiming absolute and near-religious loyalty from his followers; a freedom fighter creating a new home for the warforged; a dangerously charismatic general building an army; or a monstrous murderer who’s spent too much time in the Mournland. In reality, he’s all of these – a delightfully complicated villain with goals the PCs might sympathize with, but whose methods are abhorrent.

The Dreaming Dark is the collective consciousness of another plane that has conquered one part of Eberron already, essentially holding an entire continent in psychic thralldom. Yet their ambassadors to their neighbors are welcome in all courts, bringing gifts and assistance – they are masters of the insidious, slow, careful subversion of the powerful.