This is mostly about my plot, which is why I posted it here instead of Character Development. Essentially, in my fantasy WIP, my villain is Myron and his group of merry thugs. All they care about is power, wealth, and enjoyment. They run a brothel and steal from the wealthy patrons. They hold a "fight club" in the basement to compete for bragging rights. And they regularly bully and pester people on the streets for their own enjoyment, then pay the city guard to look the other way. This is a planned trilogy, and the focal villain changes in each book. But as a whole, this group is the villain. They are responsible for all the events that occur. In book one, the villain is a magical crystal (that was created by this group) that is killing everything. In book two, it's the group. And in book three it's a God going crazy because of what the group did to them. In a world full of gods and mythological creatures, I'm concerned that my villains are just... men. Nothing special, nothing overly powerful. Just guys with their hands in everything. Do you think this would annoy a reader? If so, do you have any suggestions on how to make these villains more sinister? Thanks in advance.
On one hand, human's with their limits are often much more interesting than gods. But I have to ask, if they are able to mess with a god and creature sentient life, what is the difference between them and gods? They were able to drive a god insane from the comfort of a single brothel, with the sole motivation of "could be fun". It seems like a very small group to be capable of doing something so grandiose.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer dealt with numerous monsters, dark wizards, and demon-gods. One of the most terrifying (and spoileriffic) villains of the entire series was just some guy with a gun. However, he was scary because the writers paid attention to what he could and couldn't do. How did your group drive the god crazy in the first place?
Smart villains can often be more effective than simply powerful ones. If the hero is capable of taking on gods, you've just got to give them a reason they can't curb-stomp these guys - blackmail, or a threat to family maybe? That said, from your description, the group itself are only really the villains of the second book. In the other two, they seem more like catalysts.
It's kind of complicated to explain in short. lol But I'll give it a shot. The gods in my story rely on a delicate balance. If one gets too strong, it weakens the other two. Well thousands of years before my story starts, the death god Aeron got too strong -- so strong that his very presence killed the land around him. He became sort of crazy, thinking his only job was to kill and take over the world. The only solution was to trap him in a crystal-like cage and bury him below ground so he'd have less influence over the world until the balance is restored. He can still preform his required functions while trapped, and he lives kind of like a genie in a bottle. This group discovers he's buried, breaks him out, then holds him captive. They sacrifice people in front of him to strengthen him enough that he becomes as powerful as he was before. They chain him to an elaborate trap that will immediately kill dozens of people should he choose to escape. And Aeron, not wanting to be who he was before, refuses to break out or kill his captures. The group hopes that, by bringing him to his ultimate power, Aeron will be grateful to them and grant them a position in his new world order. Make sense?
So you've got a crazy death-god cult. They sound like decent enough villains. I think all that really matters is their relative threat level to the protagonists, not that other things in your world could potentially be bigger threats than they are.
Would you really just leave something like that unguarded? If this is a realm of gods and mythical creatures, surely you'd want the toughest safe possible, not just something a bunch of people can stumble upon.
So your baddies worship a lesser version of the Chaos God Korn. Does your 'dark' god offer even the meager chance to enhance/encumber those that worship him? I think that would add a little bit more 'spice' to the concept of sacrifice to the god in the first place. Otherwise why be an interactive being. Although with with all mytho type Gods, they only reward those that manage to capture their attention. So you can really have a bit of fun say one guy gets some type of epic OP item/armor etc., and another might get some type of physical/mental mutation that may or not be worth the price of worshiping said deity. Kinda shows the erratic nature of worshiping such a god in the long run. "All hail Tzeentch!" ( Or Slaanesh if you happen to be particularly inclined and twisted enough to do so.)
If the people tasked with guarding it all those years ago were killed by either an unexpected coincidental attack, natural disaster or some other means, there would be no one who would remember the location and the purpose it served. The place would be left unguarded for anyone to stumble upon. I really like your idea of these people holding a God of death prisoner, actually worshipping it in a way it does not want to be worshipped, and forced to 'accept' tributes against its will. Yikes. You can definitely draw parallels to extreme fanaticism there. The mere fact that your villains are doing this for shits and giggles, because they obviously do not need to prove the existence of gods, is scary as hell. I think your human villains are great. Your entire story sounds awesome!
But there's two other gods who would know where he's buried, who could just as easily send a new crew to guard him. Then again, since he was trapped so long ago, his prison is only a myth buried in ancient texts that took years to uncover. So I guess I can still make it work. Crisis averted. Thank you. Thank you! I've never been more proud of a story since I started creating them. Now I just have to get the bugger written..
So in other words you're writing my heroes? Lol. I've always loved the darker groups who are barbaric and mean, who care only for themselves and what they can get from life, but with a twist of kindness to them. In all seriousness, and to answer your question, I would focus mostly on them as the villains instead of anything else. Each time they are doing something awful or searching out some item (that may be more powerful then they know) just to screw some folks out of their money. Monsters have their rhyme and reason, humans don't.
You could always pull a Lord of The Rings and have someone steal it and it be lost, passing down from group to group.
