Exploring the Depths of Villainy - Which Groups Are the Most Evil?

[Andreah]

I've been thinking about the various villainous groups we encounter, and it's struck me that some of them seem a much worse than others. I'm not talking about which groups are the most annoying to fight, but rather which ones in game lore seem to have the most evil goals and cause the most suffering.

 

We've got a wide variety of bad actors to choose from. Some seem primarily motivated by personal gain, like the Family or the Outcasts, while others, like the Circle of Thorns, seem driven by a desire to corrupt or pervert good, often through pacts with demons or forbidden magic. Still others, like Nemesis, engage in complex schemes that involve deception and manipulation. And of course, there are groups like the Rikti, whose invasions cause widespread destruction. Then there are groups like the Devouring Earth or the Banished Pantheon that seem to have a kind of alien and horrifying motivation.  Clearly, it's more than just actions, but also motivations and wider collateral harms.

I'm curious to hear:

• Which villainous groups do you personally consider to be the most evil, and why?
• What specific actions or motivations make them stand out as particularly heinous in your mind?
• Do you think some villainous acts are inherently worse than others, and if so, why?

I'm really interested to hear your perspectives and understand how you all interpret the different shades of evil within the game. Let's keep it to game lore evil and not real-world. I look forward to reading your thoughts.

[lemming]

Going thru the page at https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Category:Enemies

 

Not enough coffee in me yet to go into a philosophical debate over the nature of evil though.  (I'll be ranking Council/5th Column probably near the top for a few reasons)

[High_Beam]

For me its simple.  Column-Council

 

They are fascists, Nazis, supremacists whose ideas and ideals have never belonged in society, ever and must be aggressively stamped out whenever possible.

[Luminara]

Nemesis/5th Column/Council are the most evil.  The others just want to kill, corrupt or pervert everyone alive, but these bastards want everyone to be alive, going about their daily lives without interruption, but enslaved.  They want absolute control over everyone's actions, and even thoughts, but they want them to be aware that they're not in control, that they're pawns, that they exist solely at the whim and for the purpose of serving their masters.

 

Subjugation, on every level, is their goal.  The utter and complete abolition of freedom.

 

There is no greater evil.

[Andreah]

I'd put Circle of Thorns above the various fascist themed groups (council, arachnos, fifth-column). CoT actually obliterate souls.

[Octogoat]

28 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I'd put Circle of Thorns above the various fascist themed groups (council, arachnos, fifth-column). CoT actually obliterate souls.

 

I'd rather have my soul obliterated than stomped on my whole life though. I bet a lot of people would choose the same. Also happy holidays Amby 🙂

[Luminara]

27 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I'd put Circle of Thorns above the various fascist themed groups (council, arachnos, fifth-column). CoT actually obliterate souls.

 

That's just death.  Even if it's eternal death with no afterlife, it's still kinder than keeping someone alive and in chains.

[Andreah]

If you are still alive, then there is still the possibility of hope. Those are fair responses, and I'm not saying they're wrong.

 

Are there other groups that rise to similar heights of what you consider to be the worst? Banished? Rikti? Devouring?

[Snarky]

Circle of Thorns is deeply evil.  Possession is wrong m’kay. Some groups are flat out alien, not necessarily evil, but just so non human goal oriented that they come across that way.  Ritki, although they pit thought into it.  Hami and crew, just alien.  
 

Vahzilok are flat out human crazy evil.  Live vivisection is frowned on.  
 

Crey is corporate evil striving for a global edge.  
 

Arachnos…. Heh.  Any and all evil is welcomed.  Just honestly joyfully bad.  
 

Praetorians, some know they are evil.  Some are stupidly going along with evil. Mother?   What an evil Mutha…..

 

I could keep going but those are the highlights that come to mind.  
 

Luddites are demon worshipping morons who think they are making the world better.  Go team. 

[Go0gleplex]

I'll just go with the top six on my list of the most amoral groups:

Circle of Thorns - soul destroyers

Banished Pantheon - soul slavers 

Vahzlok - sociopathic butchers with a god complex

Carnival - mind slavers

Talons of Vengence - sociopathic nihilistic murderers

5th Column/Council - narcissistic sociopathic supremasists with delusions of adequacy and ruling

 

The rest just seem to be squabbling wanna be's...though Malta, Nemesis, Arachnos, and the Skulls are likely the next most evil. Not necessarily the most dangerous...that would be a different list IMO.

 

 

 

 

 

[Andreah]

For me it comes down to means and ends.

 

What is the group trying to accomplish, and how bad is it? How broadly does it apply? To one person, or a city, to the world? The universe? Just for now, or for all of time?

 

Then, what means are they willing to use to achieve it? I mean, if they want to enslave everyone in the world, but only hold up signs and hand out pamphlets, that's less villainous than another group with less ambitious ends, say, for personal profit, but who're willing to resort to widespread deadly force to get it.

[Greycat]

Hmm.

Upper ranks:

 

Banished Pantheon. They not only willingly worship and serve deities that celebrate and feed from negative emotions, but sacrifice people and spirits to them to feed them and bring them to Earth. These deities were bad enough to have *every other god* band together to defeat them and banish them.

 

Nictus. Out of interest of just extending their own lives, they deceived their own (former) kind and started a war just so they could kidnap and eat them. They developed a device to siphon off Kheldian life energy from light years away to feed themselves. They'll deliberately keep other beings weakened to use them as, essentially, motels and take over, instead of work with, their hosts in some instances - either by force or by slow whispers.

 

Mu. Yes, part of Arachnos, but should be considered separately (they consider themselves apart, at some level, at least.) Deity says "Go forth and perform genocide," and they're perfectly happy to. Even thousands of years later.

 

Flip side of that is why I don't really consider COT *as* evil as the others. Yes, they're stealing bodies and souls now and yes, evil... but they're doing that because they lost theirs because they *wouldn't* slaughter innocents. I see them more as tragic - leading to a bad end, yes, being stuck as bodiless spirits for thousands of years twisting most of them.

 

Vahzilok, just for the lack of humanity and seeing people as parts. I should put a mention here of some of Crey's newest dialog we see with them surrounding civilians (and unconscious/dead ones) at least in Bricks, and some question of what's going on with their tanks... which some of the dialog makes sound not-completely-voluntary (or at least not what they signed up for.)

[Octogoat]

31 minutes ago, Andreah said:

For me it comes down to means and ends.

 

What is the group trying to accomplish, and how bad is it? How broadly does it apply? To one person, or a city, to the world? The universe? Just for now, or for all of time?

 

Then, what means are they willing to use to achieve it? I mean, if they want to enslave everyone in the world, but only hold up signs and hand out pamphlets, that's less villainous than another group with less ambitious ends, say, for personal profit, but who're willing to resort to widespread deadly force to get it.

Fair points and along those lines we'd be looking at whose the most proactively evil. I think?

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

I could keep going but those are the highlights that come to mind.  

 

Most evil?  Anything with vampires.  Just you wait until Mom finds out, buddy!

[Hogunn]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

Nemesis/5th Column/Council are the most evil.  The others just want to kill, corrupt or pervert everyone alive, but these bastards want everyone to be alive, going about their daily lives without interruption, but enslaved.  They want absolute control over everyone's actions, and even thoughts, but they want them to be aware that they're not in control, that they're pawns, that they exist solely at the whim and for the purpose of serving their masters.

 

Subjugation, on every level, is their goal.  The utter and complete abolition of freedom.

 

There is no greater evil.

Let’s get em!

[Mopery]

At the end of the story the only thing left in Pandora's box was Hope, the cruelest punishment of Zeus.

[RabidNemasys]

What about Longbow?

 

Can you really justify using a flamethrower as a non-lethal method to subdue someone?

 

Seriously though, Circle of Thorns is pretty evil.

Edited Sunday at 09:21 PM by RabidNemasys

[keyguardactive]

I think it has to be the 5th Column, because they're literal Nazis. 

 

The Circle of Thorns and the Banished Pantheon are more... existential threats? Their goals feel like madness. I don't know what it would be like to have my soul obliterated and to cease to exist. None of us do.

 

But we understand what the fascists want, and we've seen what that looks like. 

 

The Column and the Council are a deeply human sort of evil. Vampires and Warwolves, sure, but at the end their goals are something I can recognize in real life.

[cranebump]

Vahzilok. Organized serial killers.

[Skyhawke]

Willy Wheeler. Everyone thinks he's just stupid, but I ain't buying it.

[Snarky]

26 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

Most evil?  Anything with vampires.  Just you wait until Mom finds out, buddy!

Vampires actually tend to be no more evil than the average serial killer.  Which, on the whole, is a shit show.   But really in the realm of pedestrian evil.  Master vampires can be worse, especially ones with an agenda.   The “Vampyres” in game are really just science experiments.  But to really step up to CoH evil “worth mentioning” it takes more than an insatiable thirst for human blood.  
 

[Andreah]

1 minute ago, keyguardactive said:

The Column and the Council are a deeply human sort of evil

I don't know that they are, in this setting. Both are tightly tied up with space aliens; and as I read it, their motivations aren't well aligned with mere human ideology any more. In contrast, Arachnos is more clearly a human ideology to me (And still a very bad one).

[Andreah]

6 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Vampires actually tend to be no more evil than the average serial killer.  Which, on the whole, is a shit show.   But really in the realm of pedestrian evil.  Master vampires can be worse, especially ones with an agenda.   The “Vampyres” in game are really just science experiments.  But to really step up to CoH evil “worth mentioning” it takes more than an insatiable thirst for human blood.  
 

I concur. Your classical vampire is a criminal, but only on a very small scale, and doesn't come pre-packaged with a vastly greater threat. He may have one, but so could anyone else, it's not intrinsic to his condition. 

[Andreah]

15 minutes ago, cranebump said:

Vahzilok. Organized serial killers.

And they're completely lacking in any empathy. They look on people like some resource to be dug out of the ground. It's in a service to a twisted ideal of Dr. Vahzilok's that he can defeat death; and I believe, in game canon, it's given that he is insane.

 

Of the game enemy groups, they're the ones that give me those heebie-jeebies the most.

Edited Sunday at 09:44 PM by Andreah

[biostem]

I dunno... It's hard to think of anyone being more evil than those who literally harvest people's organs/bodies.  I could be misremembering, but do the CoT use those with Oranbegan ancestry as vessels for possession by other CoT spirits?  That's another kind of torture, especially if the original person still experiences said possession.  Even the Hellions, presumably, use unwilling captives for their rituals...