"Oh my god... guys... does anyone else think Miquella is totally going to be evil in the DLC? He looks JUST. LIKE. GRIFFITH. He probably doesn't actually care about Malenia and all the oppressed people he's trying to help out. And I bet he even charmed Mohg to use him as a pawn and let himself get be kidnapped so-"

I hate imps, I hate imps, I HATE IMPS MOTHER OF GOD

I met a truly lovable sort today.

I still stand by what I said about Radahn probably being the hypest boss in the game, but I'll be damned if Margit/Morgott's final battle doesn't give him some serious competition. His rainbow blood sword is cool as hell, I loved the weird blood attacks he threw in during his final phase, and I wasn't expecting Melina to be a summonable helper! That was seriously cool, and it made me wish that we got to interact with her more during the game. Plus, it was a tough fight and I died a lot, but it was still a lot of fun to learn and overcome!

Also, good GOD does this man need a hug. The descriptions for his items and the self hatred he shows when he enters his second phase just destroyed me.

>the leadup to the fight

>all those summons helping you out

>the music

>the massive wall of arrows coming your way once the fight starts in earnest

>THE FUCKING METEOR ATTACK

I think it's safe to say Radahn's boss fight is definitely one of this game's biggest highlights, holy shit.

Why the fuck did a random zombie dude suddenly turn into Margit

Baddest of the Bad: Elden Ring Edition (Extra)

Honorable Mention: Preceptor Seluvis/Pidia

"You... understand, don't you? That once you have Ranni drink my draught, my scheme will come to fruition. And we, well, we'll be in a position to claim the very finest puppet ever crafted. Just imagine... the pure elation..."

"Y-you're my puppets! I loved you with all I have! How could you forget… such bliss? Ouch! Eeek! Eeeeeeek!"

So I said that I was done with my Elden Ring Baddest of the Bad series. And I am, honest! But while I was ready to walk away after talking about the Dung Eater... something didn't feel right. I made a list of the most depraved, disgusting villains to haunt the Lands Between, and the Twisted Dolly Botherer wasn't on it. Neither was his possible puppetmaster. Which is weird because they're actually agreed to be Complete Monsters on TV Tropes (which is a trope where all entries are put through an overly anal voting process), let alone by the fandom at large, and that's something I myself am in agreement with.

Honestly, I've been debating on whether they deserved the number five spot over Godrick or not, and even now I still don't feel confident in my answer. But hey, if they're worth talking about then they're worth talking about.

Anyway, Seluvis. Oh boy. If you choose to pursue Ranni's questline, you're introduced to quite the memorable cast of characters. While icy (heh) and guarded when you first join her, as well as generally manipulative and worryingly Machiavellian, Ranni's a charming young lady once you really get to know her and surprisingly sweet to those she truly cares about. Likewise, two of her three (four?) hooligan sidekicks, Iji and Blaidd, are incredibly friendly and some of the game's most likeable characters. Even Pidia, creepy old fuck he may be, seems to be a harmless groveling servant when you first meet him (or if, considering how hard he is to find without using a guide). And then there's this asshole.

The very second you meet Seluvis you'll likely want to shove a Greatsword through his face, because he's a preening, smarmy, arrogant asshole who does nothing but talk down to you and insult your intelligence. He's on a perpetual high from sniffing his own farts, and being so aggressively unlikable means that even Blaidd, his co-conspirator, fucking hates the guy and flat-out calls him a spiteful little rat. You'd think it'd be impossible to make him more unlikable, only for him to order you to give a highly suspicious potion to Nepheli Loux, a friendly and fierce warrior woman, and are hit with a bombshell when you either do as he says, or show it to Gideon at the Roundtable Hold.

The man's a serial rapist.

To get more specific, he turns people into "puppets" (aka slaves) by slipping them potions that cause them to lose their minds and their free will, meaning that they're forced to let him do whatever he wants to do to them. Visiting his secret lair will reveal that he has a lot of "puppets" stashed away, and a majority of them are helpless young women that he's free to rape as he pleases.

And it's heartbreaking when you look at his most noteworthy ones: one is a finger maiden who never met her Tarnished, and another is a spirited young lady who was a friend, critic, and likely lover of Gideon Ofnir's (I wonder if her enslavement led to, or at least contributed to him becoming a lot more ruthless). But what disgusted me the most was the one stashed away in his secret bedroom: some poor young woman forced to "role play" as Sorceress Sellen, likely because she was unfortunate enough to look like her and Sellen herself was unobtainable.

He also has male puppets in his collection, and it's very likely he's had his way with them too: poor Jarwright wears nothing but a loincloth and is far from a capable fighter, and then there's the matter with Pidia alluding to have molested a few soldier puppets that I'll cover later. But this man's depravity truly know no boundaries. After all, he wants to turn Ranni into the "prize jewel" of his disgusting collection, though that never comes to pass.

And yet, context clues suggest that Seluvis may or may not be a victim of "puppetfication" himself. Pidia, a well-hidden Albinauric servant just happens to share a voice actor with Seluvis (which rarely happens in this game, and the few times it does, it's usually because the characters have a significant connection), just happens to have some of Seluvis' favorite puppets on his corpse when he dies, and just happens to have a map leading to the key ingredient of the potion Seluvis wants to give to Ranni. And when you give Ranni the fingerslayer blade to further her questline, you'll find Seluvis dead, his body in the exact same pose as his puppets, likely because his puppetmaster is busy being mercilessly attacked and killed by several soldier puppets that finally get a chance to turn against the man who ruined their lives.

While there's plenty of debate on whether these are actually clues that Seluvis is a puppet that Pidia acts through or if they're a bunch of red herrings (I'm personally in the "Pidia is Seluvis" camp), Pidia is at the very least a predator himself. Seluvis may or may not be "worse", but make no mistake: they're both disgusting, vile pieces of filth. And sadly, disturbingly realistic. While you're very unlikely to run into a murderous tyrant like Godrick or a sociopathic serial killer like the Dung Eater (at least I hope so), there's no shortage of creepy rapists like Seluvis and Pidia out there. And that lends a fear factor to them that the other guys don't quite have.

The only reason why they aren't part of the top 5 proper, honestly, is the sheer scale of the atrocities committed by the guys I listed. Rykard, Shabriri, Mohg, and the Dung Eater are existential threats to the Lands Between with massive potential body counts, and even Godrick has a shit-ton of victims. Seluvis and Pidia's crimes are smaller in scale, and the puppetfication of Ranni is doomed to fail no matter what.

But like I said before, this isn't a numbers game or me stating definitive facts. Everyone I've put up for consideration is a vile, awful piece of work. And I don't blame anyone at all for putting Seluvis and Pidia at the top of their lists. They are truly horrible people, and the fact that their plans will inevitably blow up in their faces is a big relief.

Baddest of the Bad: Elden Ring Edition (Finale)

Number 1: THE LOATHSOME DUNG EATER!

"Have you ever felt the curse? With your whole being, the pox upon life itself. Feared and despised by all. The Reviled blessing. Apparently not. You are but a lamb. A stranger to defilement. Ignorant to your own ignorance.  You no longer interest me. I've been long without peace. Don't spoil my quietude."

I like how Elden Ring players and their relationship with the Dung Eater follows an amusing little cycle: laughing at his name during the narration and writing him off as some weird pervert who was kinkshamed to death, probably the Messytails of the Lands Between... and being horrified upon meeting him and realizing that he's a complete fucking monster and easily the most evil character in the game.

An infamous serial killer, the Dung Eater has racked up god knows how many victims, subjecting them to torture and defilement that is so awful that their souls don't return to the Erdtree and reincarnate upon death. Instead, they're doomed to live cursed existences as Omens (or beings similar to them), and will bear cursed children that will turn bear more cursed children for generations to come. And those are just the souls that actually turn into Omens: when the Dung Eater astral projects into the Roundtable Hold, sweet and innocent Roderika can sense the screaming souls of people that seem to be stuck inside his body and envelop him as some sort of tortured living aura a'la Imperfect Cell.

It's no secret that this game and others in FromSoft's catalogue take a bit of inspiration from Kentaro Miura's Berserk, albeit not to the degree that many assume they do. Still, part of me feels like the Dung Eater was inspired by Wyald: both are disgusting, depraved, psychopathic monsters who live to defile and murder others to the point to where they're the only things they seem to find enjoyment in. Hell, the Dung Eater's ugly-ass face beneath his helmet kind of reminds me of Wyald's in a way.

But while Wyald's an animal who proudly boasts that he kills and rapes for fun, the Dung Eater seems to view his own atrocities as a sacred duty. A sacred duty he really enjoys, mind you, but he still conducts himself like a holy man bestowing blessings upon others. I mean, when he uses the Sword of Milos' ash of war and unleashes a bunch of wraiths, he screams "BLESS YOU!" for crying out loud! His mindset is warped, alien, and utterly inhuman: he thinks he has to be as reviled and disgusting as he is, and he seeks to corrupt the very concept of Order into one where everyone is as disgusting and hideous as him.

And if you, for some god-forsaken reason, see his sidequest to the end (one that will lead to the mutilation, cursing, and death of Blackguard Boggart, probably one of the most likeable characters in the game, if you don't take serious precautions beforehand), you can create a Mending Rune that will do exactly that, and will spread the curse to the Elden Ring and thus, reality itself. While birthing the rune kills him and ensures that he won't be alive to see the results of his handiwork, he dies enraptured knowing that he created something that can defile the very world to its core. And surprise surprise, helping out the sociopathic serial killer who tortures people, defiles their corpses, and eats shit is possibly the worst ending for the Lands Between.

I've seen some argue that this ending isn't all that bad since his motivation ultimately boils down to wanting to turn everyone into Omens, who are touched by the Crucible and thus are holy beings who are only suffering because they're discriminated against for being born in the wrong age. But while the Omens are indeed victims of horrible and unfair discrimination, I think it's safe to say that they're still genuinely cursed. Their blood is repeatedly described as such, and as seen when Morgott suddenly pukes up a bunch of it during his boss fight, it gets painful when it acts up. They're also tormented by wraiths, and are regularly plagued by shared nightmares of a horrifying demon. Even if the Golden Order treated them fairly, Omen life would still suck.

Plus, while we don't really get a good look at the Blessing of Despair outside of the sky turning into a giant fart cloud (curse this game's Mass Effect 3-style endings outside of Frenzied Flame and Ranni), the narrator makes it clear that the age you usher in is one of unending torture and misery, and we're given no reason to doubt it.

And this is all assuming that the Dung Eater's curse is literally the Omen curse, and not some twisted offshoot that amplifies the pain and suffering its victims are subjected to. His ending would be even worse if that was indeed the case.

I'll give the Dung Eater this: he's honest. He never lies to you or tries to use honeyed words to win you over, he's very matter-of-fact about being a disgusting monster and that releasing him from his cell and helping him out will end very, very badly. But that's the one good thing you can say about him. He's pure evil to his core, and he doesn't have a single truly redeeming quality to his name. He doesn't have the sad backstory of Mohg, the pitiable aspects of Godrick, or even people that he loves and cares for like Rykard did with Tanith and his siblings (pre-snakeification, at least, jury's out on if that still applies). He doesn't even truly care about the Omens that he tries so hard to emulate: he projects his disgusting and depraved worldview onto them and has deluded himself into thinking that he's just like them because they too are hated by society.

To paraphrase one of my favorite Breaking Bad quotes, he's an insane, degenerate piece of filth, and he deserves to die. Or be turned into a puppet with Seluvis' potion, since that actually scares him.

Assorted thoughts about Ranni's questline

Going to bundle them all up in one post so I don't just keep spamming my thoughts en masse.

First off, I thought I was supposed to go to the Altus Plateau after beating Rennala, which apparently locked me out of the first few steps of the questline and caused me to miss out on some good interactions with Blaidd and Iji. Whoops. On the bright side, I apparently got to skip a terrible boss fight against a Leonine Misbegotten/Crucible Knight duo when I went to the Radahn Festival, so I guess that's a bit of a silver lining!

I don't know how I feel about helping Ranni, because on one hand? She's nice enough once you endear yourself to her, she gave me my wolf-bros, and led me towards one of my favorite areas in the game (the eternal cities/Siofra River) and one of my favorite bosses in the game (Astel). However, what started as me trying to help my bro Rogier escalated into me helping a Machiavellian schemer (who started putting out Lucifer vibes the further I got into her questline) commit deicide... I think. Are the Two Fingers gods? I thought I understood the lore and cosmology well enough until it turned out that the Fingers at the Roundtable Hold weren't the only pair.

I REALLY wish I did this questline the "right" way because Iji and Blaidd seemed like cool characters, but I barely got to spend any time with them. I also didn't expect Seluvis to fucking die when I told Gideon about his plan, but I wanted to punch his face in the second we crossed paths, so I can't really say I was looking forward to interacting with him a bunch.

Speaking of Seluvis, I thought he was merely an insufferable douche when I interacted with him. So imagine my shock when I googled him, discovered his secret rape dungeon, and found out what he really had in store for Nepheli and Ranni.

I didn't have anywhere near as strong of a bond with him as I could have, but giving Blaidd the Old Yeller treatment after he helped me fight Radahn was still heartbreaking.

The eternal cities and Siofra were SO GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL holy shit. The singing minotaurs, the fight against the Ancestor Spirit, exploring those ancient cities full of weird blobs and alien(?) monks with whipswords... the Lake of Rot, on the other hand, was disgusting and nightmarish. Wonderfully so, too! The Astel was also a cool boss with some interesting lore implications. Apparently, aliens are invading!

Thank god for player messages, because if those fucking ants dropped down on me out of nowhere without any sort of warning, I'd probably have had a heart attack. I definitely would have screamed. Still, it's not as bad as Fallout 3's ant queen spazzing out and clipping out of her boss room and getting right in my face out of nowhere because of Bethesda's programming.

The clay/mud guys in the river freak me out more than most enemies in this game. I don't know why because they're easy to fight and more annoying to kill than hard (at least as an astrologer)... there's just something about the way they look juxtaposed with the way they move that gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The inverted study hall was cool, but why did Miriam respawn after I killed her the first time? She wasn't hard to deal with as an astrologer, but holy crap, I am NOT looking forward to fighting her as a melee fighter.

I HATE THAT FAT FUCKER GUARDING THE WAY TO RANNI'S CORPSE. Holy shit, fuck that guy and his stupid rolling attack. I'm unashamed to admit that I just galloped past him on Torrent and never looked back after my eleventh death or so.

On the other hand, I thought it was funny that the Blaidd-looking guy that Ranni was so afraid of never even attacked me once. I assume he's much more dangerous as a melee fighter?

Broke: We already had SlashMan.EXE before Battle Network 6, but they called him BeastMan.EXE for some reason.

Woke: BeastMan.EXE was never supposed to be SlashMan.EXE. He was SlashBeast.EXE.

Sometimes I wonder if one of the writers/developers for the MegaMan Battle Network games had a really bad trip to America and/or Europe, because Jesus Christ, the bullshit Lan has to deal with when he visits Netopia.

He gets mugged TWICE in the second game, and is forced to jump through hoops to get his battle chips and zenny back.

In the fourth game he gets his lights punched out and is kidnapped because apparently, that's how the preliminary rounds for Netopia's tournaments work judging by a random Navi commenting on his operator also being a victim of a similar incident.

A seemingly friendly old man pranks him by infecting his PET with viruses for funsies.

One tournament scenario has another old guy perform a fucking voodoo death curse on MegaMan because he doesn't want Raoul, the man he's backing in the tournament, to lose (but also because he's probably butthurt that his Navi got wiped out thanks to the power of Guts Soul/V Code Vulcans and SuperVulcan).

The local princess is actually an admin of a terrorist organization and keeps a bunch of Saw-style deathtraps in her castle's basement (to her credit, she gets better).

True, crazy bullshit happens all the time in the Battle Network games (and I wouldn't have it any other way), but I can't help but feel that there's something personal to Netopia's nastiness, lmao.

Sometimes, my brain torments me late at night with the knowledge that I thought Roger Retinz from the sixth Ace Attorney game was Apollo Justice's father because he was part of Troupe Gramarye and his stage name was one letter away from literally being Zeus, meaning that the hilariously unsubtle wordplay of Mr. Reus/Mysterious flew right over my head.

Baddest of the Bad: Elden Ring Edition (Part 4)

Number 2: Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy

"HMM... VERYWELLLLLGH. JOIIIIIN THE SERPENT KING ASFAMILEHHHHHHHHHH. TOGETHAH, WE WILL DEVOUR THEVERYGODSSSSSSSSSSS! *throaty gurgling*"

I had a VERY hard time settling on who counted as Elden Ring's second most evil villain, because Rykard is a nasty guy. A very, VERY nasty guy... but so is Mohg. And I had to spend a good, long while debating on who just barely muscled out who, because their crimes (and hell, even their roles in the story) are fairly similar, which muddied things up even further. But ultimately, I decided that Rykard edged out Mohg because he's just that bad.

You're first likely to hear about Rykard from Gideon, and he makes it clear right off the bat that he was never really a "good" guy. He was a ruthless inquisitor with a "serpentine demeanor", and tortured a ton of heretics before turning to blasphemy and becoming an enemy of the Golden Order. And once he completed his heel turn and crossed paths with the God-Devouring Serpent... oh boy, did things take a turn for the worse.

If you thought Stormveil Castle being stuffed with severed limbs and mutilated corpses was bad enough, Rykard's legacy dungeon and seat of power, Volcano Manor, makes it look like Disneyland. While presenting itself as a home for assassins that kill their fellow Tarnished and seek to overthrow the Golden Order, Volcano Manor may as well be a literal hell on Earth. You've got a huge torture chamber filled with Albinaurics that have been subjected to inhuman cruelty to the point of being driven violently insane for shits and giggles, an entire town converted into a horrible prison with nightmarish living conditions, man-serpents born to women through freaky rituals, Omenkillers and Godskins hanging around to indulge in their sick depravities... all inside a mansion surrounded by boiling lava!

And of course, that's just the stuff leading up to Rykard. Whether you explore the mansion in its entirety or have Tanith teleport you straight to him by completing all your assassination contracts, you're met with the horrific sight of an enormous chamber housing an abominable man/serpent hybrid... and the corpses of his many victims. So many, in fact, that the floor is MADE of charred corpses, and Tarnished-sized piles of human bones are piling up all over the place.

Turns out that the Volcano Manor is not, in fact, a safe place for the assassins it recruits. If you're too good at your job, you get fed to Rykard so he can take your strength for himself. And the souls of those he eats are still alive inside of him and in unimaginable pain that will never end. That's horrific enough, but what's even worse is that Rykard's aiming higher than just eating powerful fighters. He wants to devour entire gods as well as the planet itself, meaning that if he isn't put down like the mad dog he is, he'll become an omnicidal threat to existence, basically his universe's equivalent to Galactus and Unicron. Is it any wonder that his loyal soldiers were so disgusted and horrified by the freakish monster he had become? Or that they'd actively conspire and look for a way to take him down?

While it's easy to laugh at his hammy dialogue and odd voice, Rykard is still one of Elden Ring's most twisted villains because while his omnigluttonous tendencies are probably more in-tune with the desires of the God-Devouring Serpent he's fused to, he still manages to come off as a bad man turned worse seeing as how he willingly offered himself to that damn thing. Going back to Mohg, while he's a monstrous piece of work himself, you at least get the sense that he's a product of an abusive environment that played a part in making him the monster that he is today.

Honestly, I was considering putting Rykard down as my number one pick for the biggest monster in the Lands Between because he really is that bad... but his evil plan, as horrific as it is, is at least doomed to fail since there's no way to for him to actually devour THEVERYGODSSSSSSSSS. Men of his who turned traitor and left behind the Serpent Hunter ensured that his ultimate plan will meet a swift and humiliating end.

But while he needs your help to do it? The guy I deemed the most evil in all the Lands Between can actually bring about an age of suffering and despair. You likely know exactly who I'm talking about, but let's just say that he's... loathsome...

Baddest of the Bad: Elden Ring Edition (Part 3)

Number 3: Mohg, Lord of Blood

"Welcome honored guest, to the birthplace of our DYNASTY!"

I think it's interesting when you compare and contrast Mohg with his twin brother Morgott. They're demigods who were born as Omens and as a result, were banished to the sewers of Leyndell since they were considered abominable by the Golden Order. Morgott would grow up deeply ashamed of his existence and cursed blood, while Mohg would embrace it. Morgott would prop up the Golden Order despite the abuse he suffered as a result of its ideology and do everything he could to protect the Erdtree, while Mohg would pledge loyalty to the Formless Mother and try to establish his own dynasty that would replace the Golden Order. Morgott, while far from a blameless good boy, is still one of the more sympathetic Demigods overall... while Mohg is a complete and utter monster.

Turning a heavily isolated underground palace into his own little Fortress of Solitude, Mohg runs a cult dedicated to the Formless Mother, and sends recruiters like Varre (AKA Mr. No Bitches) to manipulate lost, wayward individuals into becoming sadistic murderers who butcher innocent people. He corrupts all sorts of people and creatures, including the oppressed Albinaurics, into servants of evil with cursed blood. And most (in)famously of all, he has the kidnapped Miquella, a demigod stuck with the eternal body of a young boy, trapped in his mausoleum, and is attempting to turn him into his dynasty's god with heavy implications that he's raping him as well.

It's not a shocker that the cult leader who looks like the goddamn devil and lives in a palace surrounded by a literal lake of blood would be evil incarnate, but the depths of his depravity still manage to be shocking, especially his treatment of poor Miquella. And I'm not even strictly talking about his rape or spiritual defilement via cursed blood: as awful as those are, what horrified me the most was the far-reaching effects Miquella's kidnapping had on the world at large.

While there's plenty of debate on whether or not Miquella's really the christlike figure he's hyped up to be (I'll be giving him the benefit of the doubt, but that's neither here nor there), his actions, at the very least, have been consistently benevolent. By shedding his blood to grow the Haligtree, a potential replacement Erdtree, he hoped to turn it into a sanctuary where those spurned and rejected by the Golden Order could find refuge. When the Golden Order was unable to dispel the Scarlet Rot that has infected his sister Malenia since birth, he decided to take matters in his own hands and at least managed to hold it at bay. And while it's not connected to the Haligtree, the spirits of Castle Sol and the Golden Epitath's item description reveal that he's trying to save Godwyn, his beloved half-brother, from the horrible undeath that twisted him into a soulless Deathblight-spreading abomination. Had Miquella been successful in his endeavors, he could have done so much good for the Lands Between...

But it wasn't meant to be.

It takes a while for the true impact of Miquella's abduction to set in, but once it does? It hits hard. Visiting the Haligtree reveals that without him around to nourish it and keep the Rot within Malenia from running rampant, this sanctuary for the scorned and oppressed has decayed and withered into a crude mockery of what it should have been: its inhabitants have turned violently insane, and the Scarlet Rot has infected the very roots of the Haligtree itself. Malenia is losing her mind, and blooms into the incredibly powerful and dangerous Goddess of Rot when you stumble upon her. Albinaurics who should have found sanctuary in the Haligtree can instead be found around the Mohgwyn Palace, either corrupted into Mohg's lackeys or about to be (and dreading it, judging by how sad they look). And unless he factors into the DLC, Godwyn will never die a true death, and continues to infect the Lands Between with the Deathroot sprouting from his corpse.

While it's unlikely that Mohg intended for all of this to happen, he sure as hell doesn't care: what matters to him is that Miquella is his and his alone, merely a tool to further his ambitions for lordship and kickstarting a nightmarish age of blood. And even worse: this act of selfish cruelty was totally pointless. The Mohgwyn Dynasty will never come to pass, and the game repeatedly draws attention to him being a delusional nutjob by way of Gideon Ofnir's comments and the descriptions of his own gear. Miquella never responds to his honeyed words and intimate whispers of affection, either unable to do so because Mohg messed things up by removing him from the Haligtree mid-slumber, or unwilling to do so because the man is a disgusting psychopath whose nightmarish dynasty is one he wants nothing to do with.

As hard as I've been on Mohg, I won't deny the tragedy of his character. He was treated horribly as a kid and undoubtedly traumatized as punishment for being born "wrong". Life pre-Formless Mother was a horrific struggle for survival that he never asked for, and it's no accident that the boy who was denied a mother's love ran into the arms of a mother that was far fouler than even Marika.

But at the end of the day, Mohg is an adult who can make his own decisions, and he chose to take a deep dive into total depravity and never looked back.

Baddest of the Bad: Elden Ring's Top 5 Most Evil Villains

So while I'm shifting gears and writing proper stories, I'd like to start what I hope will become a recurring "series" on this blog! Namely: villains of any given series (or an individual entry), and just how evil they are. Why? I dunno, I just always found this sort of thing fascinating! I guess as an aspiring writer who enjoys writing despicably evil villains for the audience to root against, I find it helpful to compare and contrast villains of this sort of ilk so I can emulate them with the baddies that I end up writing about.

Anyway, since I've recently beaten Elden Ring for the first time, I've got that game and its own villains fresh on my mind! So what better place is there to start, than to rank the biggest baddies haunting the Lands Between?

Just a fair warning that this isn't strictly a numbers game in terms of body count: that definitely plays a part in it though! Nor are the villains listed here all just 100% PURELY evil with no redeeming qualities. When I'm ranking villains by most evil, it's a combination of the scale of their actions, their personalities, the visceral nature of their crimes, the impact they have on the narrative... and my own personal bias. :^y Anyway, I promised a countdown, so here it is!

Number Five: Godrick the Grafted

"A lowly Tarnished, playing as a lord. I command thee, KNEEL! I am the lord of all that is golden!"

Ah, Godrick. One of my favorite characters, and one of my favorite boss fights! And one of the biggest butchering bastards you'll encounter during your journey through the Lands Between. While Limgrave isn't as outright hostile and scary as, say, Caelid or Mt. Gelmir, it's a far grimmer and bleaker place than its initial idealistic high-fantasy aesthetics would suggest. And a lot of it has to do with the vile piece of work in charge of the region.

As his sobriquet would imply, Godrick has a thing for grafting. His nasty, misshapen body is made almost entirely of limbs and muscle stolen from innocent people. Stormveil Castle, his seat of power, is stuffed to the brim with mutilated limbs and the corpses of his many victims. Context clues suggest he might even be a cannibal who dines on said limbs and corpses. And then, there are the disturbing implications that Grafted Scions, freaky, shambling, multi-limbed abominations who look worryingly childlike, were other grafting victims that were converted into his personal attack dogs.

But what really effected me most wasn't the disgusting, haunting sight of such a majestic and beautiful castle turned into this freak's slaughterhouse. It was the encounter with Roderika on my way to Stormveil that really made me want to take Godrick down. Apparently, Godrick has people willingly sacrifice themselves to him, with Roderika being one such willing sacrifice who (rightly) got cold feet and bailed, only to shame herself for her "cowardice" since she didn't want to be tortured and mutilated by a psychopath abusing the authority afforded to a man of his station. What the hell did he do to foster this sort of mindset among the general populace?! I couldn't begin to tell you, but it was the friendly chat with that lovable spirit chuner that gave my eventual fight with Godrick personal stakes.

And believe me when I say that killing Godrick was satisfying. Ignoring the fact that he's a disgusting nutcase, his death leads to not one, not even two, but three characters walking away with a happy ending. Nepheli Loux, a compassionate warrior who looks out for the weak and helpless can take the throne if you see her sidequest to the end. Likewise, she has the pompous, yet well-meaning and surprisingly open-minded Kenneth Haight helping her out. And while it may be wishful thinking on my part, I like to think that Gostoc will be less of a shifty (yet lovable) rat bastard now that he's no longer being abused and demeaned by Godrick and has someone as benevolent as Nepheli taking the reins at Stormveil. Killing him is absolutely a net positive for Limgrave, and it makes you feel that there's hope for this barren, broken world yet.

However, for as awful as a person as Godrick is, he's still at the bottom of my top 5 list for one major reason: he's honestly really pathetic. He's an incompetent leader who repeatedly overextended himself with his reckless warmongering, meaning that he has to fill his ranks with criminals and mercenaries due to the loss of so many troops. He's also a coward who has been known to run for his life, hide among civilian women, and beg for mercy after picking fights that he can't win. He's a total laughingstock in-universe, and he knows this. Why else would he be trying so hard to emulate Godfrey, THE Chad Thundercock of the setting? Why else would he convert himself into a clumsy, misshapen freakshow in a misguided attempt at becoming strong? It's pitiful and would be genuinely sad if so many people didn't have to die as a result of his insecurities.

It also helps that for as bad as Godrick is? There are definitely worse people in the Lands Between, both in terms of the scale of their atrocities, and the atrocities themselves...

As promised, my last thoughts regarding Elden Ring and certain characters/events/spoiler heavy things

A friend of mine told me that Gideon betrays you later on, and I have to say: that is the least surprising plot twist ever. :p Ignoring that I did Nepheli's questline that involved his Albinauric genocide campaign and him totally, absolutely NOT sending his pet edgelord after me, the guy wants to become Elden Lord. I want to be Elden Lord too. And I already got the feeling that he's not interested in sharing the throne with me.

I was more surprised to learn that Gurranq is important to the plot and one of the last few bosses that you fight. Granted, I already put two and two together when it comes to him being Maliketh given the lore descriptions for the stuff you get from him, the big ass Black Blade gargoyle guarding his house, and the allusions he made to committing some kind of sin... but still! I wasn't expecting one of my favorite quest givers to be an important storyline boss!

I was equally surprised to hear that Marika and Radagon are the same person... though I wasn't exactly shocked. My reaction was just "Oh, okay then." Because how am I supposed to react to this bit of information aside from being amused that Radagon cheated on his wife with himself?

I'm impressed with how much I've come to like Kenneth Haight. When I met him, I had him pegged for a funny, but dumb nobleman who'd be a pain in the ass until some monster would come and eat him/squish him like a bug. Instead, he's actually a genuinely good man who overcomes his prejudices against the Tarnished, takes his duties seriously, and is self aware enough to know that he simply isn't capable enough to keep Limgrave together after Godrick and the Shattering at large sent it straight down the shitter. I have a feeling that he, Lorenz Gloucester, and Ferdinand von Aegir would be really good friends if they ever met.

Also, I'm not ashamed to admit that I may have kind of a huge crush on Nepheli. Not only is she drop dead gorgeous, but she's a huge sweetheart and easily one of the nicest NPC's in the game. I'm glad she gets a happy ending after losing so many other friends to tragedy.

I tried to kill the Dung Eater the second I found him in the sewers, but I just can't kill him thanks to me sucking at Elden Ring the sewer you fight him in being a cramped, claustrophobic nightmare of a place. I found out ahead of time that if you help him, he'll end up murdering Boggart (or as some say, BROggart) so I decided to aggro them both so Dung Eater wouldn't kill him, and Boggart would be too angry to die just as a bit of insurance. Once I replay this game, I'll make sure to do a better job at protecting my seafood-cooking bro.

Speaking of the Dung Eater, I love and hate that guy. Hate because he's a vile, twisted, disgusting piece of shit, yet I also love his voice, his armor, and after spoiling myself on it, the fact that he's completely sincere when it comes to his warped outlook on life. He's fascinating, if nothing else... thought not fascinating enough to save him from getting killed. :p

Rykard might just be the first video game character to trigger my gag reflex. Not so much his fucked up snake body, but his weird gurgly psuedo-Palpatine voice and that nasty fleshy sword he pulls out of his throat. Is it weird that I respect him for that, though?

After clearing out the Deeproot Depths, I happened to notice growths that look a lot like Godwyn's eyes back in that one village where the first Tibia Mariner is. Thought it was cool, if seriously creepy.

Omens have dethroned Imps for being one of my least favorite enemies. I understand that they've got it rough, and that they're victims of some seriously awful prejudice... but it's hard to feel bad for them when they're more mobile than anything their size should be, take forever to kill, and leave you on death's door if they pull off their crazy suplex attack.

"I'm not Godrick! I'm my own character, Blodrick!" - Godefroy the Grafted, maybe