Villainous

Kiel over at the awesome Dungeons & Donuts blog came up with a pretty interesting villain questionnaire. He said it was more D&D focused but I found it fairly system agnostic which is good because that's not what I've been running recently.

My campaign has a couple of villains I'm fairly proud of. Many of them more of a threat and possible more interesting than the guy I talk about below, but he's coming up sooner so I've thought about it more recently.

1. What's her/his name?

Nicholas R. Nero

2. What's her/his race and class?

He's a human CEO of the Nero Corporation. A New York based company with ties in all sorts of black market magic. He's also a Wanderer, a wizard with time and space magic who collects realities to use as weapons.

3. What, if anything, inspired you to create said villain?

I knew I wanted a power hungry corporation for the players to deal with. I wanted the leader to represent everything about the corporation: ambitious, strange magic, eccentric, and a little sadistic.

4. What was her/his main goal? Did she/he accomplish it?

To awaken a group of extra-dimensional titans called the Slumberers. But that's really just a side effect of summoning  and attempting to enslave Eschaton

5. What in their history made them pursue "evil"?

Most people look at everything the worlds have to offer and are filled with awe, Nero looked at it all and got greedy.

6. What was their relationship like with the PCs?

They've yet to actually meet him but he's going to be their opposition. Probably for a while too since he's much more powerful than they are. It could be interesting though if they manage to kill him.

7. What, if any, was one of their fiendish plots that stands out in your mind? Also, how did the PCs overcome it?

Again this hasn't happened yet, but the players are planning to break into his corporations main headquarters while they are having a fancy masquerade party. He's going to turn the building itself into a Slumberer while they are in it.

8. How did your villain dress/talk/present themselves?

Nero is well dressed, but flashy and kind of tacky. He's so full of himself and fairly crazy that his fashion sense is a bit extreme. Think like a brightly colored suite and wearing a lot of rings. He speaks loudly and moves with purpose

9. What was your villain's greatest secret or weakness?

There are definitely ways to exploit his insanity and his magic is rather unstable. The players can find ways to make it all backfire if they seek them out.

10. If applicable, how did your villain die?

The players blow stuff up a lot so that seems likely.