riddick as an intelligent khornate?

Lorcus said:

You're looking for:

Light and L

and now I'm blanking on who I was going to add.

CaptainSabutai said:

The killer from the Saw movies, did what he did because he was dying of cancer.

One of the players in my group is always saying he wants to run a chaos campaign for WFRP (2nd edition using the rules in Tome of Corruption). I don't know if he's seen this yet or not, I think I'm going to have to mention it...

Never mind, move along

I think this is one of the best threads I have read in a while.  A whole lot of ideas that go beyond the Warhammer novelizations of Chaos and Heretics.  Hope it keeps going.

-Cynr

a good magister style chr is  Lord Blackwood from the latest sherlock homes movie 

raislin majere, from the dragonlance novels?

a psykrer/sorcerer who is so consumed with attaining power, he will even sacrifice his own brother; yet, at the end of the trilogy, he proves himself to be more amoral than evil

This will sound weird but it's not actually hard to play unstable characters when you've been mentally unstable quite a few times in your life.

Just sayin'

 From Black Library material alone there are a number of great chaos villians who can be used for inspiration. (spoilers included for those who haven't read the books). For the most part, the unplayable hack and slash, psychotic chaos followers are generally those that are in the bottom rung of the hierarchy, the base troopers/cultists/traitor marines etc.

[spoiler]Gaunts Ghosts:

The main bad guy Urlock Gaur - A psychotic follower of Khorne. Yet he decides to stay back and manage his violent empire, using his Blood Pact to keep his rule cemented.  While Khorne is a god that demands death, Urlock uses his position of power to send the armies under his command to kill people in the billions, causing much more death and many more souls to go to the brass keep than if he simply waded into combat killing all he saw.

Ettogaur Mabbon - A follower of chaos and a high ranking member of the Blood Pact before he defects to the Sons of Sek.  Is the opposite of a stereotypical Blood Pact officer, hating the fact that Gaur seems to send members of his army to die needlessly, and tries to change that as the general of Sek. Later is helping the Imperium for simple sake of survival, almost earning the respect of Gaunt.

Sek - A violent, but cunning chaos leader who uses the planets he conquers to train and raise up regiments of his own elite troops. Uses the native population for slave labour and converts who he can, rather than slaughtering them all.

From Gotrek and Felix (Warhammer fantasy, but still applies)

Villem/Halek - The duke of Praag's younger brother, who in search of more knowledge accidentally joins a secret cult, and when he is initiated far enough and in too deep to escape finds out its true purpose in serving Tzeench, he regrets it, but desires the power that is promised him. Most of the character's thoughts and actions show this split as he fights against and gives in to his corruption and the worship of Chaos

Justine - Chaos champion of Khorne. Was brutally raped and impregnated by a local noble and escaped, swearing vengeance.  Was soon found near death by beastmen who took her in (after being told to by a demon patron of knorne) and cared for her. She slowly turned to Khorne, seeing it as the only way for revenge against what happened to her, and bit by bit lost her humanity, culminating with her trying to kill her own child (from the rape)

[/spoiler]

From other sources of fiction, non GW related:

-The heads of the federation in the later Shannara series by Terry Brooke. Most of them see what they are doing as good, and come across very imperial like with their bigotry, warmongers, scheming and murdering

-The valheru from the Midkemia series. A bunch of near demi-gods who act more like a force of nature, destroying all that isn't theirs, taking what they want and generally doing things that are on the genocide/tyrant level

-Again from the Midkemian Series, nearly the whole Dasati race.  A race of warlike uber-men who are corrupted by what is essentially a greater demon that uses the sacrificed bodies and life energy of the dasati's enemies and their own women and children to grow in power.  Slowly turns them from a expansionist empire into something that Khorne and Tzeentch would be damn proud of, embarrasing most of their champions.

- Clyde Shelton from Law abiding citizen for a Tzeentch follower

-From early Heroes, Sylar. Killing and even trying to destroy the whole of humanity, simply from a feeling of neglectedness and trying to see what makes him and all mutants/humans tick.  Easily the search for perfection/knowledge gone wrong on a chaos level.

For the most part, what allows a good "evil" campaign of any sort to survive for long is a level headed GM, and a mature group of Players who are dedicated to playing their parts convincingly and to furthering the plot of the game.  I see most evil games being on a similiar, sand box level as Rogue Trader, with the characters furthering evil agendas on a more massive scale than simply hack, slash and make kitten kabobs.  All 3 of the past games could even be represented in this one.  For Dark Heresy's feel, you could if you want go and make cults, infiltrate other cults to subvert them, chase down inquisitors and undo all the work that has been done in the emperors name.  For RT, you can go and take over planets, turn natives to the worship of Chaos, set up trade routes to keep your empire of chaos alive, create/steal ships, have naval battles as your armadas grow and expande the stars.  While for DW you could possible be a traitor Marine (not sure if they are in the game or not) or even just a chaos infused bad-ass who uses warp power and his own legion of supermutants to kill waves of civilians in glee. It is really endless what you can do in a evil campaign, aslong as the players and GM are up for it.

Hell, my last non PbP game of Rogue Trader I was in ended up with all of us players joining chaos, with a core of powerful planets pumping out ships (well as close to pumping out as is possible in 40k), taking slaves, with PF being used aswell as influence and a favour track to keep score of what we have done for Chaos and the gods we chose, in any.  By the end of the twice a week campaign, my RT was a full demonprince, and the other characters were nearly there as we finished our conquest of the Expanse and were moving into the Empire proper.  Was easily the best game I had been a part of for years.

In most of these types of games I always preferred to run them or play in them drawing on the inspiration of Pat Mills, 2000AD and Heavy Metal comics, plus the required reading for all sci-fi fans of Morecock, Herbert and Asimov from my teens when I got into RPG's.
Rather than a case of pure black and white, good vs evil, its more of a case of Authority and Anti-Authority elements which were views ranging from the 70s Gen-X counter-culture movements of the time like Punk, Goth and Anarchists that rejected very strongly the previous culture and society of their parents and grandparents. The music, fashion and attitude would later go on through to the late 80's and 90's spawning other sub-cultures like cyberpunk and industrial movements with the ever present heavy metal spanning throughout the last 4 decades, refusing to die, regardless of how "uncool" everyone thinks it is.

40K had a go at emulating some aspects of those comic books, writers and stories, but never quite had the finesse to capture the whole culture and "shades of grey" that define the difference between a "hero and villain"... instead in its current format seems to have given up and gone for the herp-a-derp, dumb as a brick Chaos Bad, Law Good. Not necessarily a bad thing as it introduces younger people to some interesting aspects of science fiction they may otherwise be ignoring and go on to read more expanded writings on the subject.

But I digress, its all a matter of perspectives-

Judge Dredd, the quintessential Arbitrator is forever battling the forces of anarchy and mutation on his doorstep. He'll never truly win, but he's too damn tough and uncompromising to die either! In the process he'll be judge and executioner to anyone who gets in his way, because if he takes even so much as a step backwards then there's a chance all the order he attempts to maintain will be overrun.

The Strontium Dogs, all mutants with some truly strange (and unholy) abilities, a writ to operate in the world of normal people as bounty hunters wiping out, capturing the worst aspects of humanity regardless of which side they're on. Their motivation is that if they don't continue to fight, they disappear back into the underclass of mutants with little to no rights.

People have already mentioned Nemesis and the ABC warriors having to go head on with the despicable and brutal Torquemada, the grand master of the totalitarian Terran Empire (Think Spanish Inquisition meets KKK)... in between all the ultra-violence that goes on, there is some seriously black and biting satire

So, when you do decide to play or run Black Crusade, it can be as simple or complicated as you want it, the above characters I mentioned are all representatives of their various factions that have some similar traits.
They all-
Belong to a cultural foundation that sees the others as "bad/evil"
Are uncompromising in their fight for their faction
Have involved themselves to such a level that the enemy would never accept them switching sides
Damned if they do, damned if they don't
 

MKX said:

The character of Dredd changed quite a bit over the years. At the beginning he was all for authority, the law and doing things by the book (and not really giving a damn why the perps are commiting the crimes they commit). He still is, up to a point, but story arcs like Democracy Now and America had him questioning some of his early, strongly-held beliefs, and if anything he became a wee bit "softer" and "humanitarian" (that's relative when considering someone who has killed half a billion people) in his old age. Some good points made about old 40k though; I really got the idea that the ridiculous nature and excesses of the Imperium were being rightly satirised back then - much in the manner that 2000 AD writers pointed out the absurdities of a heavy handed, authoritarian outlook. Modern 40k is rather po faced by comparison. I tend to include quite a bit of satire in my Dark Heresy games though.

Just finished Dragon age 2, lets see

The head of the circle and Meredith - archetypes of corruption at work.

Oh and that party member... lah lah freedom for mages, lah lah templers bad.....BOOM very much a fall from grace through doing 'the right thing'

 Now that I think about it... Naked Snake/Big Boss from the Metal Gear series would make a fitting and intelligent follower of Khorne. The state of perpetual war isn't exactly hard to achieve in 40k, but right now the Imperium sends its men off to be killed by the flick of a quill, with bureaucrats deciding how and when they should die.

I just watched Hellraiser and Pinhead would be such an excellent example for a Slaaneshi (-> pleasure), maybe Tzeentchite (-> curiosity) ...

Lynata said:

Indeed, though the Tzeentchein aspect is really just the natural curiosity any good Slaanishi would posses ;-)

The Lament Configuration (puzzle box), it's legend, and Frank's life were explained in more depth in the book, The Hell Bound Heart, then in the movie which makes the Slaanish connection a bit stronger. In the book, and latter elaborated on in the Hellraiser mythose, the box is only ever pursued by jaded hedonists who need to experience "something more" -the most obsessed, perverse, and guilt ridden of which will eventually be transformed into Cenobites by the torturous pleasures inflicted on them beyond the Schism. Frank was one such hedonist, a man who pursued every pleasure, extreme experience, and perversion known to man, compelled each time to seek out something that would top the last experience. Eventually he had "exhausted the trivial delights of the human condition" which led him to seek out the Lament Configuration in order to summon beings who experimented "in the higher reaches of pleasure" bringing about "conditions of the nerve endings the like of which [one's] imagination, however fevered, could not hope to evoke." Of course, Frank wasn't quite ready to transcend the meager boundaries of the flesh and the fallacy of a divide between pleasure and pain and seized on an opportunity to escape the Order of the Gash's ministrations when presented.

Very Slaanish, no?