Logan Tithe

The Vespermark’s most powerful villain is Logan Tithe, a vengeful undead gunslinger. The inspiration behind Logan Tithe is extremely simple: do you remember the undead gunslinger that Brom did for the cover of the old Deadlands? That shit rules.

Logan Tithe

Once a celebrated gunslinger of the Knights Labyrinthian, Logan Tithe was slain in a pitched battle with highwaymen. Unable to go to a quiet grave, Logan rose from the dead as a revenant with murder on his mind. After all of the brigands who participated in the ambush that took his life had been killed, he still found that death would not take him. For reasons he does not understand, Logan is cursed to ride the Vespermark, sending others to an eternal rest that has been denied him. He runs down travelers and caravans on a rotting stallion, but he does not ride alone—he is almost always accompanied by a posse of dead-eyed wights.

    • Appearance: Logan Tithe appears to be a worm-riddled corpse clad in a moth-eaten duster and a black wide-brimmed hat; he bears two hellfire-spewing six shooters at his hips. 

    • Personality: Though the embrace of death refuses him, he relishes sending others to their doom. 

    • Motive: He cannot still the Hell that's in his hands.

    • Flaw: Logan fears being hunted down by his compatriots in the Knights Labyrinthian.

Anastasia Elanova and Erasmus Feist

Two NPCs from my campaign setting: Anastasia Elanova and Erasmus Feist. Anastasia is a monster hunter, and also secretly the heir to Krevborna's vacant throne. Erasmus Feist is a loser who was been habitually bullied by various characters in-game, but in the intervening years since he last appeared he's  been delving into alchemy and has a horrible secret of his own.

Anastasia Elanova

Anastasia Elanova is a young monster hunter who travels Krevborna slaying unnatural beasts for coin. She is also of royal blood and the nearest surviving heir of Krevborna’s tsar. Like every scion of her noble lineage, she posses the “Voice of the Tsarina.” When she puts the force of her will behind her commands, her dictates tend to be obeyed.

She knows the secret of her origins, though she would resist any attempt to install her as the land’s sovereign ruler. 

    • Appearance: Anastasia is a young woman who keeps her blonde hair boyishly short; a livid scar mars the sharp angles of her cheek.

    • Personality: She is brash and overeager to prove herself.

    • Motive: She aspires to nothing more than a life of adventure.

    • Flaw: Anastasia avoids responsibility like a plague.

Erasmus Feist and Yosef Wulfson

Erasmus Feist is a dilettante occultist who foolishly experiments with alchemy. Unfortunately, imbibing the wrong chemicals has resulted in an uncontrollable affliction: when he becomes angered, afraid, or otherwise stressed, Erasmus Feist transforms into Yosef Wulfson, a brutish lout given to licentiousness and explosive violence.

    • Appearance: Erasmus is a thin, reedy man with prematurely receding hair; Yosef is a muscular giant of a man who is slovenly in appearance.

    • Personality: Erasmus is an arrogant poseur, but he is timid; Yosef is loud, selfish, and possesses a horrid temper.

    • Motive: Erasmus desires respect he does not deserve; Yosef lives for his own perverse pleasures.

    • Flaw: Erasmus is terrified that the world will learn of his second life as Yosef; Yosef hates that he has to share his life with Erasmus.

Brigid Fane and Bram van Gheist

Two NPCs in Krevborna who couldn't be more different: Brigid Fane, a rage-filled barbarian who approaches all challenges with murder in her eyes and a sword eager in her hands, and Bram van Gheist, a cowardly scholar who has the knowledge necessary to push back the tide of evil, but who is weak of body and resolve.

Brigid Fane

Brigid Fane is a barbarous woman hailing from the tribal lands within the Silent Forest. She was captured by slavers and sold into service at Winterholt in Sibersk, where she fought as a gladiator until her escape during a revolt in the fighting pits. She frequently travels with Cassie Mabcrowe and Anastasia Elanova, serving as their swornsword. Also known as the Red Fury due to her fearsome and unstoppable berserker rage, her skill with a greatsword is terrifying to behold, as is the sound of her savage war cry. 

    • Appearance: Brigid is a hulking woman with bulging muscles and a messy crop of red hair.

    • Personality: Brigid is loud, boastful, and generally jovial.

    • Motive: She is a simple creature who loves fighting, fucking, and drinking.

    • Flaw: Brigid believes that violence solves most problems.

Bram van Gheist

Bram van Gheist is the foremost scholar of the occult currently active in Krevborna, even though he was dismissed from his post at Creedhall University. Too physically infirm to fight against supernatural evil directly, he is overeager to share his accumulation of lore with those who battle against darkness.

    • Appearance: Bram van Gheist is an elderly gentleman with wizened features and a shock of white hair.

    • Personality: There is something undeniably impish about van Gheist’s behavior despite his academic demeanor, and he often laughs at inappropriate times.

    • Motive: He wishes to aid those able of making war against demons, the Unseelie fey, and the undead.

    • Flaw: Deep in his heart, Bram van Gheist knows himself to be a coward who uses others as proxies to fight evil.

Sonja Barbarez

Veil’s most powerful villain is Sonja Barbarez, a demoness who gathers an army at Hell’s behest. My thought with Sonja Barbarez was that the setting needed a) a major villain who is a demon and b) a major villain who is militaristic and warlike. The notion of a monstrous army sweeping out of the north, which is where Veil is located on the map, is a classic campaign framework--and Sonja Barbarez and her Storm of Malebolge will get you there if you'd like that to be the flavor of your Krevborna campaign.

Sonja Barbarez

Sonja Barbarez is a diabolic soldier serving the demon lord known as Ilkhan. She has come to Veil to recruit warriors to her army, the Storm of Malkyus, in hopes of creating a fighting force capable of subjugating the land and uniting it under Ilkhan’s banner. Sonja keeps a close eye on Veil’s gangs and the most violent members of its outcast population, always looking for promising conscripts. To Sonja, “promising” means a combination of discipline and brutality. 

Sonja has taken the ruins of a former army barracks in Veil as the Storm of Malkyus’s headquarters. Once their numbers are sufficient, they will seize Veil as their own and begin to build larger battalions—ranks Sonja hopes to swell with summoned devils and other enslaved monstrosities who will march in Ilkhan’s name.

    • Appearance: Broad-shouldered and imposing, Sonja is demon wearing the guise of an amazonian warrior woman only a fool would trifle with. 

    • Personality: She is a conqueror who brooks no dissent, which is why her fastness is surrounded by a forest of impaled corpses.

    • Motive: She wishes to see all of Krevborna annexed by the tide of her diabolic army.

    • Flaw: Sonja would rather die in battle rather than retreat.

Konrad Draghul and Kassidy Durango

Two NPCs in Krevborna. First up is a take on the classic "dhampir vampire hunter"--my variation is, "make him a vengeful twink." (Happy Pride Month, everyone.) And then we've got everyone's favorite boots and leather cowgirl. (Happy Pride Month, everyone.) Seriously, I've written short stories about Kassidy.

Konrad Draghul

Konrad Draghul is the bastard child of Count Magnus Draghul. Konrad was sired upon a serf in Myrkrania; he was born a dhampir. Before his mother succumbed to a disease hastened by their poverty, she told her son the secret of his heritage. Enraged that his father had abandoned them after a loveless affair with his mother—a dalliance that Count Magnus soon forgot—Konrad vowed to become the sworn enemy of all vampires.

    • Appearance: His features have a feminine cast, especially his head of unruly blonde curls, and he radiates physical prowess.

    • Personality: Despite his desire to be different from his father, he can be snide and stereotypically aristocratic.

    • Motive: The only thought that brings him joy is imagining what it will feel like when he plunges a stake into his father’s heart.

    • Flaw: A particularly handsome man can distract him from his quest—but only momentarily.

Kassidy “Deathshot” Durango

Kassidy “Deathshot” Durango hails from a long line of members of the Knights Labyrinthian; her mother, in particular, was a famed gunslinger and High Warden of Fort Gilead. The last of her line, Kassidy Durango continues the family trade of protecting pilgrims traveling the wilds and righting wrongs where she can.

    • Appearance: Kassidy is a freckled woman with long brown hair and a crooked smile.

    • Personality: Despite the bloody-mindedness with which she pursues her mission, Kassidy is quite philosophical and loves to discuss the great mysteries of life. 

    • Motive: Kassidy feels evil is likely to triumph in the world, but she feels compelled to fatalistically wage war against darkness regardless of the eventual outcome.

    • Flaw: Kassidy is plagued by an infirmity called blisterlung that sometimes causes her to be monetarily incapacitated as she coughs up blood.

Lubek Crodescu and Winter D'Averoan

My philosophy for creating NPCs for Krevborna is simple: I want them to be streamlined, boiled down to an essential thrust that lets a prospective GM know exactly what these people are about and how they can be used in a game, without an excess of history and detail. Plug-and-play NPCs, so to speak. You can't need to know Winter's favorite color, for example.

Below, you will find a plague doctor turned plague spreader and a fortune teller trying to find an heir to Krevborna's vacant throne to please her father.

Lubek Crodescu

Once a selfless plague doctor who worked tirelessly to cure and comfort the afflicted, Lubek Crodescu’s worldview changed when he contracted a fatal illness that began to slowly kill him. In his desperation, he turned to an evil power to save his own life—he prayed to the demon Pazuzu, and his prayers were answered. He now acts as Pazuzu’s agent of destruction, spreading pestilence throughout Krevborna. 

    • Appearance: Lubek was formerly judged a handsome man, but his face is marred by pustules and buboes; he hides his visage behind a plague doctor’s mask.

    • Personality: He is a deeply embittered man.

    • Motive: Lubek has been hollowed of any recognizable human wants or goals; he merely seeks to spread contagion.

    • Flaw: Part of him wants to die to end his misery; his death wish could be exploited. 

Winter D’Averoan

Winter D’Averoan is a young half-Polnezna woman who is the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman named Jeremiah de Cote. The de Cote family is pledged to the cause of the Hounds of Velun. When her father realized that her oracular abilities could be harnessed to find a true heir to Krevborna’s vacant throne, he brought her into his household and set her to the task. 

Winter is never without her velvet-edged deck of tarot cards. She uses them as a focus for divination and can conjure strange magics from the occult imagery depicted on the cards.

    • Appearance: Winter’s mess of dark curls frame a face that is perpetually caught in a scowl.

    • Personality: She is only loyal to those who are loyal to her; she is protective of her half-brother Jean de Cote.

    • Motive: She hopes that if she finds an heir for the Hounds her father will formally recognize her as his daughter.

    • Flaw: She views the Church as a hopelessly corrupt institution and is not shy in her criticisms of it.

Ivahn Katavarg

The Silent Forest’s most powerful villain is Ivahn Katavarg, a feral lycanthrope bandit.

Ivahn Katavarg and his clan were inspired by the crimes attributed to Sawney Bean. Plus, I knew I wanted a werewolf villain available in Krevborna, so this is how I fit that in--perhaps in a semi-novel way.

Ivahn Katavarg

Ivahn Katavarg is the patriarch of a clan of inbred werebeasts who prey upon travelers of Krevborna’s roads. The Katavarg clan’s victims are robbed and often eaten. Some are taken back to the Katavarg’s lair, a primitive haven within a trap-laden cave complex in the Silent Forest, to serve as slaves and future meals.

Each member of the Katavarg family bears a curse that makes them transform into a werebeast a night. The curse takes a variety of forms; werebears, wereboars, and wererats all number among the clan. In his bestial form, Ivahn is a gray-furred werewolf.

Among his family, Ivahn Katavarg lives like a king. He keeps the choicest riches taken from the family’s victims for himself, and treats his many wives and children as servants and playthings. His base desires and sensual appetites are both colossal and monstrous.  

    • Appearance: He is a slovenly man, stout as a barrel but as strong as a beast—even in his human form.

    • Personality: His manners are coarse and he spares little thought for the wants and needs of others. 

    • Motive: He believes that growing fat upon what be pried from the fingers of others is preferable to honest work. 

    • Flaw: His love of secrecy is contested by his desire to be infamous and feared.

Sir Edvard Hawley

Piskaro's most powerful villain is Sir Edvard Hawley, a spectral serial killer.

Sir Edvard Hawley

For the past thirteen years, Madchapel—a borough of impoverished slums mostly inhabited by destitute immigrants—has been the site of a series of brutal murders that are believed to have occult significance due to the ritualistic nature of the slayings. Sir Edvard Hawley, a fraudulent “gentleman surgeon” with an interest in black magic, was suspected by the Rooks as being the Madchapel Slasher, but those conjectures ended with Hawley’s death five years ago.

The truth is that Edvard Hawley was the killer all along and continues to stalk the residents of Madchapel after death as a murderous wraith. He prowls by night, sometimes driven in a spectral black coach lit by baleful green lanterns, to hunt for victims. Anyone slain by Sir Edvard Hawley’s ghostly postmortem knife rises from the grave as an unquiet spirit under his control.

    • Appearance: Edvard Hawley appears as a grinning spectral man wearing a long overcoat and a top hat.

    • Personality: He does not even attempt to repress his murderous impulses.

    • Motive: He plans on branching out from Madchapel, adding unfortunate souls to his army of ghosts, until all of Krevborna is a spectral empire under his rule.

    • Flaw: Sir Edvard Hawley relishes the thought of possessing a body to continue his murders in the flesh.

Thronzeker

One common complaint about fantasy games is that they don't feature enough dragons, even if the game has "dragon" in its name. Well, here's one from Krevbrona.

The Karthax Mountain’s most powerful villain is Thronzeker, a regicidal undead dragon.

Thronzeker

Thronzeker is an undead dragon obsessed with regicide. Indeed, it was Thronzeker who whispered of treason in the dreams of the conspirators who overthrew and executed Krevborna’s royal family. Without a tsar on which to focus his bloody ire, Thronzeker has grown restless over the intervening years. As the Church of Holy Blood has grown in secular power, his thoughts have turned toward demolishing the faith as a bastion of nascent political power.

    • Appearance: Although the bleached bones of his skeleton comprise the majority of his form, gobs of nauseating rotten flesh still adhere to his frame. 

    • Personality: He still dreams of the death of kings.

    • Motive: He hopes to render the people of Krevborna weak, vulnerable, and afraid by removing their protectors.

    • Flaw: Without a downfall to plot, he finds himself growing erratic and unstable.

Vanessa Laurant

The Khorva Sea’s most powerful villain is Vanessa Laurant, a pirate captain who serves a primordial abomination. 

Vanessa Laurant 

Vanessa Laurant is the most dreaded pirate captains operating on the Khorva Sea. Captain Laurant is justly feared; not only is she a vicious combatant with a reputation for relentless and remorseless bloodshed, it is also well-known that her command of voodoo is without equal—fully half of the crew of her ship, the Dawnrazor, are zombie sailors under her control. 

Vanessa Laurant is not content with her role as the Pirate Queen of the Khorva Sea. Theft upon the high seas enables her true calling—she searches for the whereabouts of a fabled weapon known as the Brineblade. The Brineblade is a legendary blade empowered by Zhylassa, the monstrous Lady of the Drowned. Once the Brineblade is in her hand, Vanessa Laurant plans on waging a war of terror against the sailors, fishermen, and merchants who rely upon the sea for their livelihoods as a way of offering Zhylassa a rich banquet of fear to feast upon. 

    • Appearance: Horrific scars crisscross her face and body, though her long red hair is strikingly beautiful. 

    • Personality: She relishes causing terror.

    • Motive: She wants rule the seas in Zhylassa’s name.

    • Flaw: She cannot get over a grudge or perceived slight.

Patchwork Jack

Creedhall’s most powerful villain is Patchwork Jack, a corpse golem gifted with a genius for invention.

Patchwork Jack

Patchwork Jack is a towering flesh golem built from corpses and other refuse of the charnel house. Patchwork Jack is both Viktoria Skarnstein’s greatest scientific triumph and her greatest failing. Through some quirk of his creation, Patchwork Jack was endowed with a particularly fine mind. He learned quickly, becoming Viktoria’s laboratory assistant and collaborator. 

However, it was soon clear that Patchwork Jack was only interested in using his scientific genius for evil ends; unable to cope with the prospect of her creation’s desire to use his inventions to acquire and wield tyrannical power, Viktoria Skarnstein cast him out of Chateau Frankenstein and bade him to never return. 

    • Appearance: His hulking, mismatched form and the stitches that cover his body evidence his origins from among the dead remains of a variety of human beings.

    • Personality: The machinery of life and the inner workings of the mind fascinate him.

    • Motive: He desires a laboratory of his own that would allow him to create an army of corpse golems, take Chateau Frankenstein by force, and kill his “mother.”

    • Flaw: Despite his formidable intelligence, a bestial rage boils just under the surface of his cadaverous flesh.

Lithka

The Grail Tombs’ most powerful villain is Lithka, the last ruler of the Vlaak Empire.

Lithka

Empress Lithka, last sovereign of the Vlaak Empire, continues to exist as an undead creature long after the fall of her people. She toils within Madesh, the Imperial Crypt, working steadily among piles of eldritch machinery, books of magical theorems, and alchemical apparatuses that clutter her inner sanctum. 

Despite devoting her every moment to occult research, her forays into unwholesome avenues of magical inquiry are always hindered by her persistent madness. Lithka’s brilliant mind was ruined by the traumatizing ritual that transformed her from a living vlaak royal into an undead lich. Lithka is usually lost in a fog of madness, delirium, and repressed memories, but her rational mind sometimes reasserts itself, granting her fleeting moments of clarity. During her brief lucid phases, Lithka schemes of returning to the world above and reclaiming her place as empress of all she surveys. If she were to regain her sanity, Lithka would be a grave threat.

    • Appearance: Her alien, corpse-like form is shrouded in the remains of a once-sumptuous gown and a regal mask.

    • Personality: She behaves as if she still presides over an empire at the height of its power.

    • Motive: She plots to remake the world in her own image to begin the second great age of vlaak civilization.

    • Flaw: Her mind is not what it was—she scrounges through the pieces of her fragmented memories seeking coherence.

Helena and Ivara Graymalk

Hemlock Hollow’s most powerful villains are Helena and Ivara Graymalk, two Devil-bound witches.

Helena Graymalk

Helena Graymalk is the matriarch of the Graymalk family and the unofficial burgomaster of Hemlock. The townsfolk look to her for guidance, as it is acknowledged openly that her witchery keeps the town and its mines thriving. 

    • Appearance: Helena appears to be a comely woman in her mid-thirties; she is especially proud of her mane of curly auburn hair. 

    • Personality: She finds pleasure in exercising power and bending others to her will.

    • Motive: She hopes to summon the Devil from Hell so that he might bring the world under his sole dominion.

    • Flaw: She knows that if she were to ever displease her master, he would revoke her longevity and let time ravage her body.

Ivara Graymalk

Although she plays the part of a bookish and naive young woman, Ivara Graymalk is an accomplished witch who does the Devil’s bidding. Ivara is currently Helena Graymalk’s favored child, but they both know it is inevitable that they will strive against each other.

    • Appearance: Ivara poses as innocent and scholarly girl, dressing like a prim and proper schoolteacher, but this guise is calculated to make her appear harmless or perhaps even in need of protection. 

    • Personality: She is a patient schemer unafraid of using others to get what she wants.

    • Motive: She desires to replace her mother as matriarch of the Graymalk witches.

    • Flaw: She burns with impatience to to recognized as a powerful witch in her own right.    

Father Anjelus

After my players killed off the pontiff of the Holy Blood Church in one of my campaigns, I was faced with the prospect of creating a new villain for Chancel. Here's who/what I came up with, clearly inspired by the mythology around Rasputin:

Father Anjelus 

Anjelus Navarre governs Chancel and is the High Dogmatist of Krevborna’s Church. Anjelus is widely feared, even by the most pious members of the Church’s inner circle. Father Anjelus exudes an aura of palpable menace; his penetrating gaze can see anyone’s most guarded secrets.

In actuality, he is a fallen angel who uses his position to sate his unchaste desires. Father Anjelus reserves his personal tutelage for a select group of followers drawn from the ranks of the wealthy and powerful. He preaches that in order to deserve heavenly forgiveness, aspirants must first experience the depths of sin. To that end, he secretly encourages them to pursue their vices so that they might more fully experience the grace of repentance.

    • Appearance: Father Anjelus has a wild mane of hair and the grizzled, unkempt beard of a mystic; he dresses in shabby robes to emphasize a humbleness he does not truly possess. 

    • Personality: Every word he speaks is cloaked in pious dissemblance and hypocrisy.

    • Motive: He wishes to become the Church's central figure of veneration, eclipsing even the saints.

    • Flaw: If it were discovered how many innocent people he has sent to their deaths, his position would be jeopardized.

Alcesta von Karlok and Magnus Draghul

I detail two of the big villains of the Sibersk area of Krevborna below. This is one of the largest revisions of this bit of the setting; previously, Countess Alcesta was the undisputed ruler of the "vampire adventure" area of Krevborna, but now I'm convinced that having two powerful vampire lords who intrigue against each other offers so much more opportunity for drama and intervention by the players' characters.

While I'm here, I thought I would answer an interesting question someone recently asked me about Krevborna: "How are Krevborna's Big Villains different from Ravenloft's Darklords?" To my view, in Ravenloft each domain is an extension of its Darklord. In the earliest box sets for the settings, most of the world-building is tied up in the Darklords' tragic backstories. Each domain is a custom prison cell containing and frustrating the Darlord who lies within it; each domain is a reflection of their evil.

In contrast, each named villain in Krevborna is an exemplar of what's wrong with that region of the setting. For example, both of the vampire lords below are personifications of the feudal, class-based anxieties that Sibersk is meant to explore.

Countess Alcesta von Karlok

Alcesta von Karlok is a masterful gatherer of information and an adept manipulator. Alcesta favors indirect machinations; she prefers quiet assassination and complex stratagems over blatant aggression. She regularly holds salons in Castle Siebenhurst to stave off boredom and keeps a harem of beautiful, intellectual, and artistic men and women to provide her with whatever stimulation she requires.

    • Appearance. She is a breathtaking, red-haired beauty who refuses to be dressed in anything less than the height of fashion. 

    • Personality. She appreciates witty conversation and demands to be amused by those around her.

    • Motive. She wants to be privy to every secret and experience every possible pleasure—no matter how base or degenerate.

    • Flaw. She detests the inescapable ennui that comes with long centuries of undeath.

     

Count Magnus Draghul

Magnus Draghul only ever truly feels comfortable when striding across the battlefield clad in his bloodred armor and giving vent to his violent impulses against whoever dares to oppose him. Magnus has few close relationships, but his most trusted advisors are his three vampire brides: Lilandra, his cunning spymaster; Phaedra,  his private assassin; Maxima, his military strategist.

    • Appearance: He is a towering vampire of rigid, militaristic mien, with a long mane of hair, a sweeping mustache, and piercing eyes.

    • Personality: Magnus idolizes Malistrad and seeks to emulate his regal and uncompromising warrior ethos. 

    • Motive: He is driven to seek glory through military victory.

    • Flaw: His belief in the superiority of his martial skill sometimes blinds him to obvious danger.