I write these articles under the perhaps naive assumption that no human being is innately evil. Selfish, amoral, perhaps misguided, but never evil, as such gamers and actors who wish to accurately portray evil often look toward the work of others to help them. Heath Ledger (R.I.P.) was given a copy of The Killing Joke. The results vary depending on who you ask about the Dark Knight but most would agree that his portrayal of the clownish psychopath was disturbing, accurate, and terrifying. Thus Mr. Ledger was given sources so shall I give you some of the best sources for villainous inspiration. While there are certainly many more then I can possibly provide in the space of one article I whittled them down to a select few that I consider musts for anyone.

Army of Darkness

“Good…Evil…I’m the one with the gun.” ~Ash

A cult classic instantly recognizable by just about any game who’s ever heard of the actor Bruce Campbell. It’s any fantasy gamers wet dream of being magically transported by magical evil books to a worn torn landscape with a dark and menacing shadow of a greater evil looming over it. Ash gets to bed a hot princess, shoot zombies, wield a chainsaw hand in anger and otherwise being an asshole to people he ignorantly calls primitive. So, he’s like every other character we’ve played as well as at least once in our lives. For our own purposes we turn to the main antagonist and dark twin of our hero Evil Ash. The only notable difference between the two is Evil Ash’s flair for the dramatic and choice of wardrobe. Beyond the awkwardness of sticking a modern action hero into an epic fantasy it teaches us that being evil is as difficult as being ourselves with even less motivation to be good guys. Conscience is a matter of convenience.

Hannibal(the book not the movie)

“Could you help me bring these down? These bags are as heavy as bodies.” ~Dr. Lectre

In Silence of The Lambs and Red Dragon the author took us into the minds of a pair of demented serial killers. Each with their own motives, their own methods of killing and their own protagonists attempting to stop them. The only common link between these two books is the inclusion of one Dr. Hannibal Lectre. In these books he served as something of a dark advisor, a window into a world that normal human beings wished no part of. Readers were fascinated, here we had nothing less then a chained demon throwing out equal parts advice, insults, and horrible epiphanies that made mad men swallow their own tongues and die. He was the proverbial tiger in a cage, constantly pacing and glaring out with predatory zeal at those who observed him, his memory is long and his grudges many. In Hannibal, we let the tiger loose.

Hannibal shows us what we’ve been craving since Silence of The Lambs, a glimpse into a man so thoroughly evil and twisted that ferocious attack dogs shy away from him in fear. He taught us that ray guns and flashy costumes were great gimmicks for children and immature adults, but true evil eats it’s victims with a side of fava beans. He’s a character who’s not only portrayed as a brilliant and manipulative but with an unholy amount of speed and strength born from a life of predation on his fellow man. There’s certainly a lot more to this book then I can begin to speak about, but needless to say Hannibal is a book any potential villain should read to see how a truly terrible villain thinks.

Pitch Black

“You aren’t afraid of the dark are ya?”~Riddick

For all my love of Dr. Lectre if we stuck Riddick and Hannibal Lectre in a jar and shook it up I’m afraid the good doctor would have his jugular torn out before we ever set the jar back down. Riddick represents the epitome of the anti-hero. While Dr. Lectre is heroic purely based upon circumstance and lustful desire Riddick is heroic based upon choice. He chooses to save people against his better instincts to survive at all costs. He is an unrepentant killer who takes joy in his work and would not hesitate to gut you in the blink of an eye. Riddick is not a brooding dark character who mourns his monstrosity nor a jaded knight whose constant exposure to the dark side has colored his view on the world. Rather, he begins right away as a man people rightly fear and leaves the other characters questioning the entire movie whether or not he is simply going to turn around and slaughter them all in an orgy of bloodshed that would make all the nastier parts of the movie seem family entertainment. In the end he makes a few faithful decisions based on what he considers weakness and opposed to his very nature that leads him to becoming heroic. Vin Diesel does an impeccable job portraying the character.

Riddick showed us that being an anti-hero is not about being the good guy with dark overtones but being the bad guy with moments of conscience that forces him to do things eh would otherwise never consider. Riddick leaves those he saves wondering if he’s simply not saving them for some necessary sacrifice later and leaves his enemies lying face down in a pool of their own arterial blood.

H. P. Lovecraft's collected works.

“Hastur! Hastur! HAHCHOO!”~myself watching a Call of Cthulhu game and scaring the pants off everyone.

There is hardly a piece of fantasy literature or game today that cannot trace it’s roots back to the short stories and novels of this eccentric author and the mythos they spawned. In a time when evil was as mundane as an evil human dictator or foreign invader, where science and discovery was viewed as a new and shining frontier filled with wonder Lovecraft told us tat some things should remain unearthed and some discoveries may very well have nothing but malevolent intentions for mankind. In the Cthulu Mythos we learned to fear strange books and to look to the stars with a certain amount of anxiety and fear.

Today, the Mythos has outlived it’s creator and has continued to evolve, inspiring countless works of literature and gaming. Cthulu, for his part, has shown his ineffable face in several gaming books as well as his own insanity inducing plush toy, a favorite of his cultists everywhere. Call of Cthulu introduced gamers to a game where good endings meant you were playing it wrong while Cthulutech shows us that the only thing an elder god has to fear is a fifteen year old kid with major father issues piloting a 50 foot tall walking tank powered by magic and angst. Cthulu endure and will likely continue to endure until the sunken city of R’lyeh rises again and Cthulu awakens to devour us all for breakfast, including the ones that bought his plush toy.

Villains by Necessity

“Besides, marching in daylight is for the heroes. If we're going to do this, we may as well go all out."~Sam(alander)

Good has triumphed, the great heroes of old have pushed the darkness back into the very black worlds from which they came. Now, the world is filled with joy and democracy, and justices, and happiness, and loads of boredom. The young heroes of the day are bored for lack of things to crusade against and evil is bored because theres not much one can do when the world doesn’t require your services. This is the backdrop of one of the funniest and cleverest books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Essentially one could re title it the DnD Players Guide to playing an evil game. It’s gaming roots are obvious but do nothing to detract from the enjoyment of this novel. Anyone who is considering running an evil game of any sort should consider reading this book.

The Coldfire Trilogy

“My specialty is analysis.”~Gerald Tarrant

If you’ve been following my articles you know that I refer to this series over and over again for various reasons. It is a speculative fiction story written on a planet where a force called the fae causes human emotion and desire to come to life. Nightmares and dreams manifest to feast on living beings and gods are merely a sacrifice and prayer away from being created. No mother jokes to her son about there being no monster in the closet for they might very well have been manifested by the child's fear. The actual plot to the story is inconsequential, the true plot, and the one relevant to us, is the interaction between two men. Damien Vryce is a rugged, strong, and lethal monster slayer who serves the church of the one true god, an organization with the impossible dream of one day taming the fae and allowing mankind to regain it’s technological legacy and reclaim it’s birthright in the stars. Gerald Tarrant is a brilliant, vain, and powerful sorcerer who brutally sacrificed his entire family to extend his own existence and become a creature not unlike a vampire, who feeds on fear and despair.

These two men could not be more opposite of one another if they tried. The series teaches us that notions of good and evil are delusions shaped and created by the human mind, far deeper, and far more intriguing is humanity’s stubborn habit of surviving against any odd and how any two humans can unite under a common cause. Most importantly it shows that the only way, the only true way, to become evil as a human being is to remove ourselves of our humanity entirely. Caring for one another is one of our greatest survival instincts, to remove that is to remove the very foundation that makes us human. It’s the absence or appearance is the mark of true evil and it takes true effort to completely void ourselves of it. In the end there is no such thing as good or evil, only what is right and what is wrong and even these two concepts are fluid by nature.

The Legacy of Kain Series

“Vae Victus!”~Kain

Eidos interactive has an obvious hard on for one busty, gun toting adventurer. It’s unfortunate, for the most complex, and best character development of any video game series belongs to their Legacy of Kain series (Blood Omen, Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, Defiance). Over five games it chronicles the tales of one vampire Kain, who begins life as a petty, arrogant noble cut down in the prime of his life. However, he is resurrected as a horrible blood sucking vampire and sent on a quest to restore balance to the world of Nozgoth. In the end when he is the last vampire left in the world there is but one final choice, to destroy himself and save the world, or spit on destiny and rule the decaying world as it’s vampiric overlord. HE chose the latter. This by itself should end the tale, and should make you angry for having me spoil it without so much as a warning. I have good news, this is where the story begins. Those going into the series need to remember two things: question everything and assume nothing.

This is a series that is not about heroes. Heroes are little more then tools for those with a better sense and greater ambition. Even when Kain appears heroic it should be noted that he serves only selfish ends and only wants to rule over the world as it’s eternal master. Rather, this is a story of very bad people doing very bad things for the sake of a vision of a better world ruled by them. It is a clash of immortals, a battle of gods so profound and violent that the mortal heroes caught between are merely light snacks, energy for the next mass slaughter.

In the end the character of Kain is an evolution of an evil character that should serve as the model of any evil character we choose to play. He is charismatic, deadly, and suspicious to a fault, he feeds on human beings for the enjoyment and revels in slaughter like no other. Yet, at the same time he is complex and serves a cause any DM of a good game could get behind. Still, Kain is a villain, alliances are temporary conveniences and friends are simply those waiting for your inevitable betrayal. Kain wants to rule the world, and if he must climb a mountain of your blood drenched corpses, so be it.

Of course, there are certainly many more sources of dark inspiration out there. Here I’ve simply listed those works that are either so timeless that to ignore them is folly, or so useful in the shaping of evil characters or settings that there is always something to learn from them. I encourage anyone to look into these works and do your own research., Trawl fro your own inspiration, there’s a wealth of useful tools out there. And please remember to say the incantation correctly before picking up the Necronomicon.