Folkloric characters that make good BBEGs? I’m talking about like, Koschei the Deathless, the mythologized version of King John, etc
Literaly jfk...
>>98240337Vlad Tepes
>>98240337Traditional games?
>>98240337Which King John though
>>98241882King of England, the one that signed the Magna Carta and is the villain of the Robin Hood mythos
>>98240365Camelot... home...
>>98240337Gilles de Rais
>>98240337DraculaThe Devil, or any kind of folk demon for thatlots of European towns have their own dragon; for example the Tarrasque, tho to be fair there are a lot of towns between Spain, France and Italy claiming to be the true town from the legend of the Tarrasqueor the dreadful OP's mom
>>98240337The Baba Yagas. Both the versions with walking houses and the ones with fences made of bones whose skulls scream when they notice intruders.
>>98245760
>>98245764im confused now; is Baba Yaga a single character or a kind of collective? Like D&D hags, I mean. i thought she is a unique character
>>98246078I'm not an expert on this to be fair so someone with more knowledge might be able to correct me if I'm wrong.Anyway, like most folkloric creatures and characters it depends on who you're asking, where, and when. Most folklore goes through changes, has heavy regional variation, and isn't really written down until much, much later.Baba Yaga is also Eastern European/Russian right? Russia is massive so there's probably a lot of different ideas floating around.I know that doesn't really help, but that's my take on it.
>>98240337Balor of the evil eye and the Fomorians might be a good BBEG, supernatural Irish evil twisted deformed giants
>>98246078>>98246107There is a Baba Yaga, but there are many baba yagas.
>>98246175And apparently the can be male too
>>98246078Baba Yaga Kostianaya Noga (granny Yaga the Bone Leg) is a name of a single fairytale character. It is a collective image of an undead/whitch. Yaga probably cook people in owen because real life witches probavly cured some flue-like deseases that way. One leg is a bone to represent that she is undead, "one leg in the underworld". She lives in a hut with chicken legs probably because in Karelian tradition dead are burried in huts on wooden pillars (fumigation also sounds like chicken in russian). The name ethimology is not clear, maybe it is even from mom of slavic prince Yagaylo. She fly in the mortar controlling it with broom the same way western witches use broom. It also probably connected to two-souls mythology which is basically undead/witches/animated objects stuff.
>>98246078What >>98246107 said. What appears on the internet is a version written down by someone, which usually becomes flanderized and sometimes treated as "canon". Folklore has no canons. And whatever it has, changes over time, and the reason might be as casual as someone misunderstanding something.I wrote >>98245764. Have no idea why a serbian variant talks of carrying of hot coals, or why it carries them. But it's mentioned. I also screen-grabbed >>98245760, because I find it funny even now."It depends on the setting" also works for real life. Polish, russian, north macedonian? What your drunk uncle told you is boring and when you told your friend, you changed some bits to impress him? Yeah it counts.The Brazilian headless mule sometimes is a horse with metallic hooves. My bet is that nowadays people don't deal with mules, so they don't develop a good fear/respect for them. And if you never saw the results of being kicked, or bitten by a mule, the hooves need to be made of silver or iron to seem good enough.A 2002 book whose name I forgot, had the earliest description of the Grootslang being an elephant/snake chimera, AFAIK. A snake originally meant to be big enough to kill and eat elephants, or big as an elephant, got confused into being part elephant. Both versions count, canon is for nerds to debate into who is the better at memorizing. If you want to compete, I lose and you win.
>>98240337Yeah, >>98245760 is right, Baba Yaga is a classic. Heck, maybe such hags could be a race, what other beings or creatures would work as races?
>>98240337Tam Lin.He's a mortal man abducted by fairies, and raised in their world, he guards a copse of wild roses, and should a young woman pick one, he appears to take her maidenhead.He is also the likely sacrifice for the queen of the fairies next tithe to Hell.Traditionally he ravishes a girl named Janet, who falls in love with him, and waits at the crossroads for the Fairy rade. to pull him down from his horse, holding onto him through several magical transformations, eventually leaving her holding a beautiful mortal man, whom is now her prize.This is Scots fairy lore.Tam Lin would make a pretty effective villain, you just have to elaborate on his role and activities some more.Also, chicks dig sexy dangerous villains.
>>98249919fae in general make for good villains but they're hard to pull off satisfactory. I started developing a campaign inspired by tolkien's King Orpheus but stopped halfway to work more on the villain's motivation and general themes
>>98240337The black knight is always a good option.
