RE: [HOE] BEST Villains

[Patrick Gamblin <b7um@unb.ca>]

Hm, most of the villains I ran in HOE I just don't remember anymore (Party 
tended to kill them and it's been a while since I last ran it). There is the 
Judge in their town, who they know is creepy and probably evil, but have no 
solid evidence on.
   The best villains that come to my mind (not from HOE, but could fit in, I 
suppose)were the long lost brother of a samurai player in Legend of the Five 
Rings who consistently bested the entire party by outsmarting them (leading 
them through a valley, then dropping a rockslide on them that took out their 
horses, making them fight uphill to get at him while he threw poisoned darts, 
that sort of thing) and aligning himself with an evil power. Best scenes were 
early on where he was befriending the brother he hadn't seen in 10 or more 
years, while simultaneously scaring the crap out of another PC (whose family 
he blamed for the loss of his parents). He ended up killing her family, 
slaughtering a village to get the players to chase him onto his own terrain, 
and attempting to become the chief minion of evil in return for the power to 
exact even more retribution. Players still get chills when Kuro's name comes 
up.
   The other one is a bit more humorous, as he wasn't really a villain. In a 
Cybergenerations game, one of the characters was the son of a mob boss. He had 
a bodyguard who was a large, relatively muscular guy in his 50s by the name of 
Salvatore, whose job it was to get him to come back home to dad. The PC 
desperately didn't want to do this, but Salvatore was duty-bound to make him. 
Since Salvatore didn't want to hurt him, the players didn't want to fight 
Salvatore (that and they were utterly convinced that there must be more to him 
than this, maybe he's cybernetically enhanced or something). In the end, after 
actually going back home, then deciding to leave again (and being confronted 
by Salvatore as they left), the son tagged him with a low charge from the 
electro-lines in his arms (this being Cyber Generations). A hideously bad Save 
later, Slavatore died from an electrically-induced heart attack. They were 
utterly stunned and immediately rushed into action to rescusitate Salvatore 
before he was unrecoverable.
   Hm, I suppose in HOE I could count Cobra as a villain, since they were a 
terrorist organization before the War, but the ex-Crimson Guard the PCs have 
worked with isn't actually a villain.

A long and rambling commentary from Marshall Paddy

"As I look back, I see that it had been a mistake to send the letter. If you look far enough back, you will find that everything starts at some minor point. Something small becomes something very big. Something simple becomes complex. A brief moment of time becomes the focus of a tragedy. The letter was the minor point - something of no consequence that became the start of something of... importance." - Paul Thorgrimson, 'River of Blood, Path to Ruin,' October 2001