The Best Villain in any of my D&D games was never an NPC, but a player character named Elona. Elona was an elven Druid with a cute and cuddly wolf companion. She was played by my long-time friend, and the character herself had been a long time friend to the party, stretching almost a year’s worth of games. Needless to say we all trusted her 100%.
As in almost all of our D&D games, there was some sort of over-arching war plot that our DM was reusing that had escalated to a point where the NPC’s were pulling out weapons of mass destruction. Both sides wielding every magic and relic one can think of (short of a wish spell) to destroy their enemies, and our party was somehow trying to find a balance.
I think it may have been around this time that Elona had switched sides. My DM had been hanging out with Elona’s player on non-gaming days. The rest of the party and I figured that they were dating or something, but turns out that Elona and the DM have been having secret gaming sessions behind our backs where she was raising armies of her own.
Let me drop some stats on you. Elona’s top stats were Dexterity, Charisma, and Wisdom. She was usually known for being our Tank-like striker class, only using her charisma for minor conversations with NPCs (our bard was the voice of the group most of the time). And her wisdom seemed only useful for her spell work every now and then. The thing that the group didn’t know was that Elona had taken up the leadership feat, the awaken spell, and a sudden un-friendly disposition to the rest of the world.
It all started when the Cleric-heavy side of the war was starting to summon forth angels to the battle field and the Mage-heavy side retaliated with Demons. Our party had just got done setting up agreements with the neutral kingdoms to the south when we found ourselves caught between the fury of heaven and hell. Strobes of holy and unholy power flickered around us as the best champions of both sides claimed the forest that we were in as their arena. We all prepared ourselves for a long fight when suddenly it was over without us even swinging a sword.
We stood there confused, waiting for something to come at us through the trees; the meat-shield dwarf cursing obscenities to the wind trying to goad on something to come at him. We didn’t see or hear anything for several hours so we figured it was safe to set up camp for the night and call the game there. When we woke up in the morning however we were no longer in a forest, but in what looked to be the middle of a battle scared field. More confusion prevailed as we tried to figure out what happened.
The confusion didn’t last long though. A game session later we had finally made it to the Cleric-heavy empire. Their whole town had been overrun with vegetation and wild animals had moved in. Elona had been awakening the forests of our planet to end war and bring peace to the world. When I say peace, I mean a world without the people to war with.
The game had completely turned around by the end of that session. It was no longer one faction warring against another, but every living thing trying to survive against a constant onslaught of sentient plants and animals. Three games later, Elona had accomplished her task of cleansing the planet, leading to a total reboot of our gaming sessions. From this whole ordeal, I learned that sometimes the worst villains are the ones trying to do the most good.
Image by Anna Christensen
Michael Blaney
