Super Villains
Written by Alexis Hope   
Monday, 29 December 2008 08:09
It may not seem like there is a great deal of difference from one type of evil to another, but the
subtleties are there.
    Any time you get a group together, politics kick in. Some people are popular, some aren't. Some people have the power of knowledge to get things done, and can get valuable goods or services through exchange (or extortion). If you've got a powerful group of heroes, you need to give them a challenge worthy of their powers.

The most obvious way to do this is to throw bigger and more potent catastrophes at them, which works well enough some of the time. But the other way to challenge them is with smarter, devious villains; who are organized and have enough sense to properly employ their numbers.

Chaotic Evil
    With chaotic evil, the unifying factor is "fear of the big guy" (just as with chaotic good,
the unifying social factor is "desire to look out for the little guy"). Chaotic evil has a reputation
as "the eeeeevilest evil" because the big booty-trouncing red dragons and Unspeakable daemons from
Hell" were chaotic evil. Maybe there's a connection, but it works in the other direction. Big Red
isn't powerful because he's chaotic evil. He's chaotic evil because he's powerful. When you can win
any argument by brute strength there's not a lot of incentive to be organized or reasonable.

Chaotic evil is lazy evil: It gets things done in the simplest possible way. Chaotic evil can
also be considered "efficient evil". Converting your neighbour’s house? Conk him over the head and move
in! Don't like the the adventurers creeping into your dungeon? Waste'em! Nothing troubling you at the
moment? Take a nap! Like every other alignment, chaotic evil types tend to hang out together because
they understand on another. These groups don't have a lot of rules or formal structures. The boss is
the the boss because he gets things done and is strong enough to bend others will. The underlings want
to be in charge, and one of them will probably get ambitious enough to attack the leader eventually...
assuming the leader doesn't crush him first.
    A society based on violence and poor impulse control has some built-in limits to it's size.
No matter how powerful a leader is, his number of followers is limited to those he can personally awe
or bully. If the  followers eat to live (as opposed to demons, who only eat for the fun of it), the
number is far more limited, because chaotic evil types don't have the patience to farm or the
organizational skill to make slaves do it. Basically, chaotic evil groups are like biker gangs in
those old 1950's scare flicks. They're though, they're mean, they're unpredictable, they ride in and
seize what they want, but they don't stick around because they really can't. Once they've stolen
whatever they can carry, there's no reason to stay. They're off to the next town ripe for the picking.
    Individually, chaotic evil beings tend to be the toughest because they're more likely to do
crazy. Stuff like fight to the death or meet a massed charge with massed charge. Their tactics tend to
be built around mobility, surprise, and overwhelming offences. But they burn twice as bright, they only
last half as long.
    These problems only get amplified in a society where everyone's looking out for the number
one, and there's no stated or implied punishment if you successfully kill the boss. Chaotic evil gangs
tend to scatter when the leader dies and if you negotiate with the underlings it doesn't the long to
find someone who'd love to slit the chief's throat - if he thought he could get away with it. As
individually though as they are, chaotic evil societies are among the easiest to take apart.
Methodical patience and a willingness to play the inevitable factions off against each other can be
the party's greatest allies when dealing with such groups.

Even though the above information is written for a d&d game, I still find it useful when considering a
character for other story purposes. Heroes villains of all classes need to be thought about prior to
the writing. It help immensely having references to the topics such as extreme evil. Especially if
your genre contains supernatural entities or fantasy themes.