BACK FROM
THE DEAD?
It was too good to be true.
A year ago, the nefarious Alais ir'Rannan was pre
sumed dead when she fell from an airship into the mid
dle of Lake Galifar. Her scheme to bring the towers of
Arcanix to the ground likewise seemed ended.
But yesterday, according to eyewitness reports, ir'Ran
nan was seen in the common room of Passage's own
King's Star Inn, talking with two other unsavory-looking
characters who could not be identified.Have an Escape Plan. Secret passages, spells of invis
ibility or teleportation, flying mounts, and throngs of
minions can help a villain escape when a confronta
tion with the adventurers goes badly. Any villain likely
has at least one fallback plan.
Take Hostages. Most adventurers wouldn't be willing to
attack the villain if they fear that the villains' lackeys
are about to slaughter innocent captives the moment
they draw their swords.
Returning from Death. Of course, death is not a final
fate for player characters, and it doesn't need to be for
villains either. After the adventurers kill their nemesis,
they might next encounter the villain raised from the
dead or as an undead. It's conceivable that dying could
make a villain more powerful and more angry at the
meddling adventurers. Alternatively, the characters
might assume a villain is dead-after falling over a wa
terfall, being trapped in a burning building, or getting
swallowed by a purple worm-only to discover later
that the villain survived and is hungry for revenge.IMPROVING VILLAINS
Adventurers get more powerful over time, so if a villain
is going to remain a relevant threat, the villain needs to
get more powerful as well. There are three ways you can
approach this issue:
Mechanical Improvement. Use the guidelines in chap
ter 9 of the Dungeon Master's Guide to add class levels
or Hit Dice to the villain and improve its challenge rat
ing to make it relevant to the higher-level characters.
NPC Stat Blocks. Some of the stat blocks in the Mon
ster Manual can reflect the same character at different
stages of advancement. For example, the adventurers
might confront a villain who uses the stat block of a
mage (9th-level wizard) and then returns later as an
archmage (18th-level wizard). You could also use stat
blocks in other sources to add to the sequence, so the
characters could even meet this aspiring villain as an
apprentice wizard and later as an evoker (both in Vo
/o's Guide to Monsters).
CHAPTER 4 I BUILDING EBERRON ADVENTURES
Organizations as Villains. Rather than use an individ
ual as a recurring villain, you could think in terms of
the organization the villain belongs to or represents.
For example, low-level adventurers might fight low
level agents of the Order of the Emerald Claw and
grow to loathe the sight of their claw-shaped symbol
and green cloaks. As they attain higher levels, the
characters will face increasingly more powerful mem
bers of the order.SHADES OF EVIL
Moral ambiguity is a feature of the noir genre that can
add richness and complexity to an Eberron adventure.
In a world where a red dragon isn't necessarily evil (and
a bronze one isn't necessarily good), it's impossible
to know who you can trust, and even the actions of a
so-called villain might not fit neatly into clear-cut defini
tions of good and evil. Even adventure villains are more
often driven by human motives than by cosmic concepts
of good and evil. People sometimes do evil things for
good reasons.
Exercise some caution when exploring these noir
themes in the stories you develop. It can be fun for some
people to wrestle with moral quandaries in adventures,
but it doesn't work for all play groups. In particular, if
there's no good solution to the quandary-if the charac
ters have no choice but to follow a course of action they
abhor-some players might end up unhappy.
The Morally Ambiguous Villains table offers some
twists you can add to the villains in this chapter, giv
ing them more or less good reasons to perform their
evil deeds.MORALLY AMBIGUOUS VILLAINS
d4 Villain
The villain is targeting people with aberrant dragon
marks in the desperate hope of preventing another
War of the Mark.
2 The villain is suffering under a terrible curse, and their
increasingly serious crimes are an effort to fight off
the curse.
3 The villain is rising to power through entirely legal
means, winning popular support (through generous
campaign promises) and working within the system.
4 The villain's schemes are directed at preventing the
release of a demonic overlord.THE VILLAIN You KNOW
Not every villain is a mastermind who schemes in the
shadows or a world-destroying horror. Sometimes the
most significant villain is someone the characters see
every day-someone who moves around society in plain
sight but keeps their evil deeds well hidden. The law en
forcers and adventurers who are trying to bring the vil
lain to justice are thwarted at every turn, unable to find
proof of the villain's crimes. If the players come to loathe
the villain, everything is going according to plan.
Use the Villain You Know table to add some depth
and detail to the actions and motivations of a villain who
plagues the characters on a regular basis.