Natural Fantasy Villains

When you create a natural fantasy antagonist, the information on page 254 of the Core Rulebook is an excellent starting point, but there are a few extra things to remember, just as there are for Player Characters.

Basic Principles

The natural fantasy genre presents a significant variety of archetypal Villains, but we can still infer some common key traits:

• A link to the past. These antagonists have one or more elements that link them to the past of the setting: some are obsessed by ancient legends; others crave power and authority lent by millennia-old magics and technologies, or want to wipe out every last trace of them; finally, some are entities who survived an ancient calamity or were created in the distant past.
• Familiar concepts. A natural fantasy antagonist’s motivations and origin are often linked to needs, feelings, doubts, or emergencies that you might have had a brush with at least once in your personal life. As much as this might unsettle you, a part of you should be able to understand, perhaps at an instinctual level, what these Villains represent.
• Catastrophic results. When a natural fantasy Villain reaches their goals, the consequences are devastating: be it the awakening of a truly ancient danger, a permanent alteration to the ecosystem, or the extermination of entire communities, the Villain’s victory will tear open a wound in this world.

The Game Master is given three main tools for introducing these Villains into the narrative and diving deep into their origins and objectives:

• Stories, relics and traditions. If a Villain is the incarnation of an ancient danger, references to their existence should gradually appear during the campaign: these sources are often vague or partly contradictory – fertile ground for studies and speculations.
• Game Master scenes. Above all else, these scenes are useful to add depth to the antagonists, revealing their doubts and hesitations. When dealing with Villains that are closer in nature to a cataclysm or a supernatural presence, these scenes can show omens of their arrival and a growing sense of foreboding.
• Conflicts. During conflicts, natural fantasy Villains tend to fully embrace one of two extremes: some speak openly with the protagonists, explaining their reasons, while others march forward, undeterred and silent, toward their objective.