#villain cleric

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: The Knights of St. Kazvarin

There's pious and selfless devotion, and then there's whatever these weirdos have going on

Riding forth from their brooding fortress-abbey to do the will of a long dead holy man, these inscrutable warriors have long been the subject of rumour and suspicion. It's not an undeserved reputation, as apart from looting tombs for ancient relics or ominously observing the goings on of the common folk these forboding knights are most often acting as the hired muscle for unscrupulous nobles who have no regard for the legality or virtue of the orders they enforce.

Far more than mercenaries with a patina of piousness, the Knights use these contracts to fund a secret and sinister endeavour that they have undertaken for centuries.

Adventure Hooks:

While delving through a dungeon the party follow a trail of slain monsters to a gravely injured knight and his thoroughly overwhelmed young squire. The boy will introduce them as Tilaen and Ser Darrik respectively and ask for their aid in tending to his master's injuries, before the dour Knight chides him for speaking on his behalf and tells the party to be about their way. Ser Darrik wants no help from "the faithless" and is willing to use the last of his strength to get violent about it. If cooler heads prevail, the party will learn that the two were after a rare manuscript hidden somewhere within the dungeon, and the offer of collaboration might be explored. If the party don't help, they'll find the squire waiting for them at the dungeon's entrance, requesting their help to bury his master and guide him back to their order's abbey. It's only after a few days of travelling together will realize that Squire Tilaen is muchabused by his sect, and that steering the boy away or outright adopting him might be the real kindness.

Acting as a stern and imposing shadow to whatever asshole noble or callous merchant the party have recently pissed off, the towering and always helmed Ser Gelceiras has "Bossfight" written all over him. However when the adventure's final confrontation looms the party find him cleaning off his massive axe, his employer's head in a bloodsoaked bag waiting to be delivered to them. "We got what we wanted from him" he rumbles as he exits, " you can have what's left. no hard feelings."

Just a new threat encroaches on the settlement, a mace wielding bruiser in burnished armour rides up and pledges to fight alongside the party in its defence. Ser Portia's skill as a fighter is sorely needed, perhaps enough to overlook whatever agenda it is that drew her to the settlement in the first place. Shortly after the final battle is fought and the dust clears, the party will realize Portia is nowhere to be seen... having escaped sometime during the aftermath after inexplicably kidnapping one of the locals.

Background: Before he was a sacred corpse, Saint Kazvarin was a necromancer of great talent, having dedicated his life to the study of thanatology and the many loopholes around death. This earned him great renown and wealth in his day, amazing the masses with seances while charging the powerful dearly for cut-rate resurrections. He amassed generous patrons and fanatical followers, only to have it all fall apart when the Raven Queen took an interest.

Kazvarin had and constructed his own bootleg afterlife, a place where his most loyal followers would rest forever in glory before being called back in time of greatest need. Atleast that was the sales pitch, in reality the "saint" had stopped just short of lichdom delving into the shadow to create a demiplane where his own soul would reside undeminished after death, sustained by the faith of his followers as the realm hollowed them out.

Such villainy inevitably created it's own downfall in the form of a young woman who's family were taken in and exploited by Kazvarin's cult. Though her name was not recorded by history, she was marked by the Duskmaven for greatness when she swore to tear down the saint who would conquer death, years later succeeding along with some allies in not only killing the necromancer but cursing him with a most ironic fate. Denying him the afterlife he had so meticulously constructed, the raven queen cursed Kazvarin with reincarnation, forcing his soul to live out a new life where it would forget all he knew and be remade.

It would have been a perfect punishment had the Saint's followers not been so fanatical. Though their organization had been shattered by their "benevolent" leader's apparent assassination, the most loyal of his inner circle poured through his research, finding the spells nessisary to seek out his soul in its new vessel. Thereafter they engaged in a grim hunt, crossing the realms to ritually sacrifice the youth their leader had grown into and pulling free his undigested soul. This is the cycle Kazvarin's followers have been following for generations, spending decades hunting for signs of their leader's return before using murder and necromancy to forcibly deincarnate him. Thereafter Kazvarin has a few months or years to act freely before he is swallowed back up by the tide of souls and the hunt begins again

Future Adventures:

Though they begin as a comparatively minor oddity, the knights become a true threat to the campaign as soon as they figure out who Kazvarin's current incarnation is and manage to wrest his soul out. Ideally this should be someone the party knows, to make it all the more tragic that they were sacrificed to bring about the villain's return.

Though it is much deminished, Kazvarin's demiplane (called the Howling Basilica) still traps the souls of those who have sworn their lives to him, acting as a vault from which he can pull rank upon rank of shadow-maddened spirits to his bidding. His most loyal retainers are allowed to keep their skills and individuality while being deprived of their will, meaning he has a backlog of highly skilled Knights just waiting for new bodies to possess no matter how many times the party defeat them on the field. What's worse is that the saint still remembers how to manipulate people with the offer of offbrand immortality, and will likely begin reaching out to powerful individuals shorty after his return.

Art 1

Art 2

#necromancer #knight #villain #villain cleric #villain necromancer #villain noble #camp follower #mid level #undead #lich

[pirateknight]

the fact that Grix is possibly about to be destroyed and presumably Jace Stardiamond is gonna take over Aguefort Academy makes me very suspicious of him, especially considering I don't think they ever addressed why he was seen talking to Kalina and Arianwen by Ragh (who was blackmailed into never telling anyone about it!)

Doreen said "don't trust the faculty"... maybe that's not something that should have been dismissed so quickly after they found Kalvaxis out

#maybe i'm just looking too deep but also there's brennan's willingness to have the cleric teacher talk to jace instead of grix 🤔 #there was no roll for it... jace was just handed the information that theyre snooping around and looking into lucy's death #idk #he's just always been in a position where he could plausibly be helping the villains and IH never question it... i kinda want it to be true #dimension 20 #fantasy high junior year #fhjy spoilers #fantasy high #d20 #jace stardiamond #[me in front of my conspiracy board] he's a SORCERY teacher and sorcery is innate so he Doesn't Really Teach and so has the spare time to-

[leidensygdom]

i've just been thinking about the Onirist a lot. They may be possessed but they gotta slay while they're going through it-

#sketch #doodle #onirist #urion #yxala #drow #dark elf #elf #genasi #sci fi #dnd #dungeons and dragons #cyberpunk #aasimar #cleric #sygdomthings #syg2023 #robot #villain #bbeg

[gornackeaterofworlds]

Warning, NSFW Drawing Below

Was drawing another villain au Donnie already when I read it, and was absolutely chokeslammed with the urge to draw @turtlecleric 's blurb. Here's hoping it isn't taken down

(If ur uncomfortable w ur blurbs being drawn, just let me know and I'll take it down asap)

Three minimally-changed alts:

#rottmnt #rottmnt art #gornack art tag #rottmnt donatello #gornack click to see details tag #rottmnt donnie #gornack cleric tag #turtlecleric #villain au #villain au donnie #just now realizing i misread clipboard as whiteboard fuck

[threshasketch]

I decided to try drawing my Dragonborn clerlock Morv as a human. It's definitely still him, LOL, but he's not a fan of having no tail while in this form.

#ocs #dragonborn #dnd #D&D #dungeons and dragons #cleric #warlock #morv always has the trait of looking older than he is #and also like he could easily be the villain if he was meaner spirited #but he's a nice guy really #and extremely fun to roleplay during D&D games ♥ #threshie #threshasketch

[firstruleofmethclub]

Gimly's D&D 5E Player Characters - #7

Name: Astra Harrowe, the Wolf Spider

Race: Half-Moon Elf

Class: Seeker Warlock x. Whispers Bard

Background: Courtier

Ability Modifiers: +5 Charisma; -2 Strength

Campaign: The Lost Mines of Phandelver campaign I had originally played as Tree in began to spin off into a bigger thing with at least two whole extra campaign books thrown in, and Tree had kind of run her course, so I asked if I could bring in a character of my own creation, and thus, Astra.

Backstory: Astra was a Harper agent who had been installed in a small castle, posing as a courtier to learn its goings on and return information to the Harpers, and ensure that their values are being upheld there.

She was recently reassigned to Phandalin to quietly investigate rumours that the Lords Alliance have seized unwarranted control of the town, and that Order of the Gauntlet agents had also been dispatched there. Her orders were to discover if these other factions intend simply to provide aid the town of Phandalin, as had been suggested, and if so, to assist them as best she could. If however their motives are to use hostility to take Phandalin as their own territory, she is to report back to the Harpers immediately, and co-ordinate their downfall.

#Astra was far and away my most powerful character #in terms of like raw level she made it to 9 which was 5 levels higher than i'd ever gotten a character before #and 4 levels higher than i've gotten one since #but also the build was great and she got more magic items than i think every other character i've played combined #also fit the party dynamic really well #was playing with a fighter/barbarian multiclass and a cleric/ranger multiclass #i think the best show of just how fuckin' undefeatable that trio was was holding a bridge with just 1 NPC cleric helping us out #against a literal army #for like 30 rounds or something #while the army is also getting into boats to cross the river without using the bridge and stuff and we're simultaneously wrecking the boats #it was like well over 100 hobgoblins but also some villain characters with magic and stuff AND a bunch of ogres #she became known as The Wolf Spider once we beat the Black Spider and she took his armour and repainted it #started using villain stuff to try and scare other villains #Also she became a wererat but pretended to be a werewolf #but a were-anything makes you immune to like 90% of damage #gimly #dandy #noticemequannaix

[sirmicothesilly]

The holy beast of god

#fantasy #dark fantasy #fantasy worldbuilding #fantasy world building #villain #villain oc #elf #cleric

[hartsvale]

llarin having such a high charisma score means that she can look the way that she does and still convince good-aligned people that she's on their side. and it's been so much fun to indulge in that with this fic. she is truly such a repellant character, someone who is capable of doing such heartless shit, but if she rolls at 30+ in deception (which happens all of the time with her in-game), there's nothing you can do about it, bud. you're besties now!

#📢.txt #oc: llarin solavar #her closest companion is a cleric of cyric and she's lowkey worse than him so like take that how you will #i love writing villains 🥹🥹🖤 i love writing villains as main characters 🥹🥹🖤

[dailyadventureprompts]

Deity: Heironeous, The Vindicator

Let our hands never falter, sparing evil the sword Let our hearts never waiver, letting weakness take root Let our march never end, lest the task be left undone

Champions, zealots, fools. All these words describe the followers of Heironeous; patron god of those blinded by duty and self righteousness. From the guards who rough up vagrants for the sake of social order, to the patriotic songs sung by soldiers on the way to invade a land they've never seen, to the teacher who’s convinced they can instruct through pain, because sparing the rod really does spoil the child.

It is a terrifying thing after all to be in the wrong, to have no easy answers, to be filled with doubt, and so the Archpaladin and his clergy intercede to provide the fearful populace with direction, with easy answers, and with scapegoats when necessary.

Adventure Hooks:

The party are asked by some troubled parents to look in on the local chapterhouse of the Invincible Vanguard, who took over for the town's royal garrison some years ago. A number of youths, bored of life in their sleepy little town decided to sign up with the Vanguard a few months past and have not been seen since. The Heironeian are cagey to say the least, but through their investigation the party might stumble across the same awful secret the kids did during their initiation, as well as their ultimate fate.

A beast rampages through the countryside, sowing fear, destruction, and rumour wherever it goes. Defeating it is no easy task, but one of the local lords is willing to pay a high price should the party bring him its head as proof. Imagine their surprise when a few days later a group of Heironeian paladins are paraded through the street carrying THEIR trophy aloft, claiming all the credit and with that same lord backing their claims. It seems the party has been part of a cruel PR stunt, however will they make this right?

A series of inexplicable mishaps and borderline disasters that plague a frontier village have come to a head with one of the Vindicator's itinerant preachers convinces the locals that devilry is the source of their woes, pointing the blacksmith's tiefling apprentice. It's up to the party to prevent the kid from getting strung up, and make the villagers see reason before there's an out and out witchhunt on their hands.

Setup: From the outside, with the perspective of history, it’s easy enough to see that there’s something wrong with faith of Heironeous, how their temples and icons venerate violence, whether it be martial glory or the suffering of martyrs that needed to be avenged. How their liturgy teaches the faithful that sympathy to outsiders, questions to authority, even the smallest of doubts are weaknesses to be overcome.

But the Heironeans are the ones fighting off the monsters encroaching on your village when the baron won’t pay for garrisons or adventurers, and it’s their priests who come to hand out food to the hungry and say there’s work the town over building their new fortress, and it’s their inquisitors who stand in the market square telling the crowd that all the awful things that happened these past few years is the fault of sinful, faithless rulers, and if only they could be led by righteous men (and it is always men) and expel the social parasites then truly this realm could be one beloved by the gods. 

That’s the grift, the Heironeans seize on a crisis or a fear and offer to put your life on a better track, nevermind that it’s a permanent war footing where you and your family and neighbours are conscripted to roles based on how you’d be most useful, and disagreement amounts to insubordination.

Heironeans say they’re justified of course because evil is always out there, the one true evil, Hextor, the grotesque, six armed lord of bloodshed and suffering who wishes to make slaves or corpses of all the world and the heavens besides. He is jealous of Heironeous you see, his twin brother, who is propheciesed to be the only one who can defeat him. Hextor never rests, always spawning more evil in the world, and anyone could be his follower without even knowing it... all they’d need to do is work to subvert the will of the archpaladin and they’d be abetting the scourge.  You don’t want to be an agent of evil do you? Then tithe to the church, enlist in the vanguard, obey your betters, marry early and within your kind and have more children to carry on the fight when you are too week, raise them up right, kneel when you are told, submit. Do all these things and the Vindicator will know you are good, and worth fighting for, and will forgive your mortal failings. 

There is a deeper lore, behind even what the faithful or even most of their leaders know:  that Heironeous and Hextor are the same being. Sometimes it is the monster wearing the golden hero like a mask, sometimes it is the bright and radiant warrior casting a most wicked shadow, sometimes it is simply that the god of war and slaughter has two faces, fair and foul, both righteous, both tyrannical, both hungering for blood.

The cult of Hextor is a secret order within the faith, membership offered only to those chosen by their god or those that see the worship of the archpaladin for what it really is: Violence for the sake of power, power for the sake of violence. They are secretive, deflecting rumours of their existence onto puppets and figureheads that they manipulate, going so far as to create false-cults to the Scourge to draw the faithful’s attention and ire. Any fault in the church can be blamed on Hextorian infiltration, any opponent that challenges them is but an agent of the Scourge.

  Titles:  The invincible, the vindicator, the archpaladin / the scourge, the herald of hells

Signs:  Oddly serene visions of violence and pain, wounds or blood on the image or relics of martyrs or weapons of champions, prophetic nightmares about the victory of Hextor.

Symbols:  A white hand or clapsed around a silver lightning bolt/ a black gauntlet clutched around six red arrows

Inspiration: Cruelty cloaked in the guise of righteousness is not an original concept but after writing  about how d&d has weird habit of using a frankly childlike view of morality in order to justify its violence  the same way that IRL hategroups do, I wanted to play around with the concept. 

Likewise, I felt my campaigns needed a solid “badguy with the aesthetic of goodguy” villain and I was tired of using overzealous followers of the dawnfather or bahamut to fill out the roster.  Specifically, rather than bad people in service to an ostensibly good god (who are objectively real in the setting and thus would try to oust the bad apples), I wanted to create an evil god that used the trappings of goodness to dupe average people into doing bad, the same way that has happened over and over again historically in our own world.

 I ended up choosing Heironeous for this villain makeover because like a lot of other default d&d deities I find the base form of him painfully one note, he’s the paladin god of paladins and he has hero IN HIS NAME. That said, he has a twin brother Hextor, god of war and tyrants that serves as his dark mirror and there’s thematic meat in that... Merging the two into one god gives us this delicious setup where the theology of Heironeous creates the problem and sells the solution, benefiting no matter who wins in the supposed cosmic power struggle.

Art

#deity #divinity: war #heironeous #hextor #monsters reimagined #villain #villain cleric #Cultists #villain cult #paladin #fighter #Monk #Cleric

[lesbian-thespian-paladin]

The serotonin hangover after dnd night is unreal

#have to study for finals. can only think about how I’m gonna reveal to my party who my patron is #last night we killed a dragon and also summoned the spirit of Clint Eastwood using a cursed book #but it was the ‘season finale’ because we won’t get to play for at least another month :( #AND we ended on the reveal of our next villain a mean holier-than-though angel girl with an army of clerics #who Cora is going to hate because a.) this town ain’t big enough for two mean pretty aasimars b.) warlock religious trauma

[leidensygdom]

The stone cold gaze painted in Urion's face revealed that something was deeply wrong with them. Gone was that politeness, that gentle demeanour. Their words were now stone-cold and anti-natural, as if it was something much more inhumane talking for the first time. "I am sorry," they spoke, "But free will is only going to get you hurt. Let me help- I can keep you safe. I must keep you safe."

So hello! Here's the updated very-villain-looking portrait for Urion! Through some lore-intensive stuff that I can't quite explain, the massive ancient meat supercomputer they were working with regained its consciousness, and with it, it remembered its purpose: To protect humanity from everything, including itself. And Urion just happened to be the perfect face to accomplish that, so uh-- They're now possessed.

Anyways, as always, reblogs are much appreciated!! 

#drow #dark elf #cleric #elf #urban fantasy #dnd #dnd art #dungeons and dragons #villain #mad scientist #drowcember #pathfinder #digital art #original character #character art #character design #urion #the onirist #sygdomthings #syg2022

[danwhobrowses]

Stress. Pain. Sam.

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #c3e91 #bell's hells #fresh cut grass #fcg #otohan thull #sam riegel #godspeed you damn robot #he's with the changebringer now #So uh Nanna Mori about that deal? #this is gonna really tear up Ashton their MO from the beginning was to try and keep them alive #the crew needs a cleric again now too #let history show however that the Merchant of Death that was Otohan Thull was felled by a Cleric who valued Life #let him be remembered and her forgotten #seriously Matt why Otohan? Could've just left the moon but no you had to throw in a fight with the one villain everyone fears #and then MAKE HER MORE FUCKING POWERFUL TO BOOT?? #also fuck off Zathuda her name is Fearne Calloway! #Liliana if this is your redemption arc you better do some big moves istg #you do this to me right after X-Men 97??

[avinox]

A new player is joining the Arán campaign, a cleric, and I'm so hyped to know them

#we're playing this weekend #we're a bard. druid. fighter. rogue. and now cleric #also Arán is fighting his ex boyfriend to the death next session #and something fucked up is going to happen to Lilith that will (maybe) make her become a villain #one of our former companions is in league with the bad guy due to a revelation about their purpose #but they're still chill about it

[me-myself-and-my-fos]

#crush: 🔨 #my protector 🐺 #ex villain husband #my warrior #cleric bf #stretchy hubby #lieutenant beefcake 💖 #techie ❤️

[the-twisted-tales-tavern]

Punishing Sex 8A: After Vox Machina failed to defeat him in the Kill Box, Pike had no choice but to accept her new purpose as Kedvak’s personal gnome cocksleeve…

She should've let him kill her.

It was a horrid thought to have, but she couldn't deny it—as she felt her jaw growing sore from the relentless abuse, and as the tears rolled down her cheeks from unspoken cries, it was the only thought that rang through her mind. A swift death, like the ones his horde had given to half of her friends in the heat of that turbulent battle, would've been better than the long, slow, agonizing torture that was to be her new life.

A firm hand came down on the back of her head and Pike let out a choking gurgle as she was forced further down. Apparently, her solemn thoughts had distracted her enough away from the gargantuan member that was forcing itself down her esophagus that the goliath war chief had seen fit to take action—she gagged harder as she felt his rough fingers tangle in her hair and press down, forcing her past the midway point and making her whole body jerk.

"Oi, you little brat, something on yer mind~?" the harsh and demeaning tone of Kevdak Thunderlord rolled over her and made her quiver, and she jerked again as he bucked his hips closer to her face. "Well'n, let me take care uv that~! 'Cause the only thing yeh should worry 'bout is this~! Keep at it, yeh little cocksucker~!"

Pike groaned, and if she'd been in a better state she would've leveled a glare at Kevdak that would've killed him on the spot—instead, her body jerked as she felt another inch force itself down her throat, her eyes rolling back as she struggled not to pass out. Her lips were stretched so far around his shaft, her spit and throat slime drooling down the length she couldn't fit down her throat—she was in no place to fight, no state to resist.

All she could do was let her eyes roll back, relax her throat...and pray. Pray to her goddess—pray for mercy, for peace, for salvation, but most of all, pray that the nightmare would end. That the chief would grow tired of her and throw her away, or that he'd push her too hard and she'd find relief at last in the breaking of her body. She cried and pleaded, silent in her mind, begging for help—as her throat was abused over and over again.

It wasn't until her lips finally met the base of Kevdak's cock that she realized she wasn't going anywhere...and her faith gave way as her body finally thrashed with a mind-numbing climax.

#pike trickfoot (gnome cleric) #exandria is for lovers (critical role snippet) #a twisted snippet (not sft snippet) #adventurers in peril (bad ending) #kevdak thunderlord (goliath barbarian villain) #born of the mountain (goliaths) #dungeon master’s snippet