Portraits of a Villain - A Preview

Over the course of the next three weeks, each Friday, I will be presenting a Portrait of a Villain. These "portraits" will include a fully developed villain inspired from historical or literary sources, and guidelines to drop them into any D&D campaign setting. In addition, each of these posts will be accompanied by original artwork by none other than Hugo Solis - one of the contributing artists of Open Game Table and Kobold Quarterly. Please check out Hugo's online gallery and, while you are looking, consider hiring Hugo for your next project. Below are some concept sketches Hugo has created for each of these villains - final inks will be included with the full portraits later in the series.

Mordred, Morgan Le Fey, and King Cerdic Elsing

click each concept sketch for a better view

Three villains? Historical sources?

Yes. Over the course of the next three weeks, I'll be presenting three villains taken from the historical and mythological roots of the early Dark Ages in a fully usable format to be dropped into any existing D&D campaign. In addition, I'll also be providing full stat blocks both as a PC and as a (less powerful) Solo NPC for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The three villains I'll be featuring to kick off this series will include:

• Sir Mordred - The traitorous illegitimate son of the king, Mordred commands the darkest energies of hell to lay waste to whatever stands in his path. No living soul has yet to escape his blades' fury.
  
• Morgan Le Fey - An otherworldly queen seeking to widen holes torn into the fabric of reality. While working with a brood of sorceress queens, she tireless plots to unravel the world we take for granted.
  
• Cerdic Elsing - As one of the The Sons of Wōden, Cerdic will stop at nothing until he is proclaimed High King of the Angles - even if this means the slaughtering of his own peoples.
  

So, you'll get fresh artwork, fully developed backgrounds, motivations, goals, and two versions of 4E statblocks for three awesome villains. Word is that At-Will and Mad Brew Labs will be featuring a similar series as well -- it's all part of our evil plans...

We'll be putting a more-than-average amount of work into these posts; so please let us know what you think! Feedback will be critically important!