D&D: Five Villains Almost As Evil As Hedge Funds
The stock market is basically a D&D campaign gone off the rails. Let art imitate life with five villains almost as evil as hedge funds.
We’ve all been in this D&D session before. The DM is watching as their carefully planned campaign goes off the rails and down in flames. The players who usually roll up with characters like Fighty McFightface (Human Fighter) and Fungeon Dan the Dungeon Man (Human Rogue) figured out that, technically the sourcebook the DM was using to build their villains was fair game, and now Slippopotamus (Giff Barbarian/Druid), Dr. Potato_Head MD, Esq (Potato Life Cleric) et al. have become seemingly unstoppable. At least for now. The DM’s got that faraway look in their eye and is wondering just where it all went wrong.
Of course, we all know that eventually the campaign will all come crashing down, the DM will either start fudging dice or will result to the ultimate “rocks fall everyone dies” and you’ll be looking for a new campaign with a new villain. So here are five villains almost as evil as a hedge fund manager.
Ogre Landlords
A couple of Ogres whose greed and hunger know no bounds have bullied their way onto a merchant consortium, and direct caravans through their territory to raid them. They use their ill gotten gains to buy the deeds to poor people’s houses so they can eat them when they can’t make rent.
The Healing Mage Organization
The benevolent order of healing mages–or the Healing Mage Organization for short–is a guild that exists ostensibly to provide magical healing to whosoever needs it. They gather together bards, clerics, wizards with access to cure light wounds, and celestial-pact warlocks, and paladins, necromancers–never mind that last one–but those who fall ill and receive care from them are saddled with a ‘reasonable fee’.
Those that can’t afford to pay it (which is anyone who isn’t a noble), are offered an “alternative cure” whereby their symptoms are relieved because they’ve been turned into a zombie, or a skeleton, or a wight or a ghoul, take your pick, the HMO profits whether you’re alive or undead.
The Hedge Wizard Manager
This is a powerful lich that has used its vast wealth to manage wizards’ access to arcane reagents, spell components, magical focuses, and so on… of course, if it thinks a wizard might become powerful enough to become a lich, it takes action, hiring adventurers to take down their would-be rival before they can become a threat, ensuring that there’s only ever one arcane tyrant devouring souls in the kingdom.
The “Gracious” Thief
This one is a real Robin Hood type figure. This thief publicly declares that they’re robbing from the rich and giving to the poor and allows anyone to join their band of thieves. Those who do eventually discover that the Robin Hood figure gets their money from powerful nobles who pay the leader of the thieves’ guild not to rob certain nobles. Those who defy the guild leader’s wishes are dealt with harshly.
The Nobles Who Believe Mind Flayers Are Responsible For Everything
When a beloved baron starts offering parcels of land to folks willing to work it, and has been seen negotiating with village leaders to make sure that the villagers have access to magical healing and protection, a group of nobles is convinced that the only reason someone with a title would do this is because they’ve been enslaved by a mind flayer. Now this cadre of nobles has hired adventurers to find the mind flayer behind everything–and if they cannot, then they must at least free the baron from the mind flayer’s control. Alive or dead.
Happy stonks
