What do you call this type of villain and are there more like them?

What do you call this type of villain and are there more like them?

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Demons?

Like thematically or genre wise? Cus they're basically all just liches

Liches?

Disappointing

Mordeo

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Omnicidal Maniacs. Despite their various origins, each one of these freaks seek one thing and one thing only. The end of all life.

Pointlessly edgy, see every emo 13 year Old's fanfic ever made

The shadowy monsters with antlers are based on Leshy. A slavic monster. They're like really cruel tricksters.

What most of these villains are though are a more symbolic villain. They don't have actual agency as a character, they're like a looming shadow personified, some threat and darkness that is given a visual form so you can better understand them.

Similarly the eye of Sauron was the same trope. He was not a character with presence, he was a looming threat of death, darkness, and shadow.

That's the only thing all of these characters have in common, how they relate to the story. The beast for example is in the distance, laughing, taunting, singing, as others despair and give up, encouraged to it by his taunting because he is despair and the death of hope. He doesn't grab you and drain the energy from you, his shape is there to represent a less tangible threat.

Leshens

Christian demonizations of pagan horned gods

yeah beast and nowhere king didn't get enough time

>shadowy monsters with antlers are based on Leshy. A slavic monster.

this fuckin shit again. no. it started with leshen in the Witcher game and then it was put into Monster Hunter World as a homage to the said Wither game. Leshy doesn't have antlers. Like most slavic folklore creatures it's just a humanoid. In leshiy's case he is often described covered in moss, leaves and other herbal crap, sometimes a giant, sometimes a midget (all slavic spirits of a place can change size and form and just have a proffered one). Antlers are purely CDPR's invention, it's not even in the books (and their lore are also not 1:1 to our world's). It's probably because of the Boruta demon, that is (arguably) derived from leshy at a later point and only in Polish folklore. no horns, no antlers, just a green old bearded man.

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Aside from design they’re actually pretty different. The Beast is basically a Satan figure. Scheming and tempting and striking deals, really fits in the setting too. The Nowhere King is hard to put in a box because of how he resolved, but he’s basically a power-corrupted maniac. The lich is just pure unfiltered evil, a force of nature villain. There isn’t much dimension to him beyond that, by design of course. His hyper-lethal serious determination is what made him work in his silly fun show. But unlike the other two he could not be spoken to or reasoned with. So yeah, similar but different enough in execution that I probably wouldn’t bundle them together

>liches
Literally none of those characters are liches. I suspect you don't even know what a lich is.

A lich is just a wizard that ripped their soul out and hid it somewhere so they'd be an immortal pseudo-undead.

The one on the right is referred to as "the lich" in the cartoon and through that they're implying he is a lich, and he does have an undead look and is immortal, but his role in the story is more like a diety of mass death, destruction, and the end of all life. He is often shown representing a nuclear apocalypse which is the origin of the adventure time world.

That correction aside the rest still stands that what all these characters have in common is that they're the kind of villain who is more of a personification of something.

Satans?

>the rest still stands that what all these characters have in common is that they're the kind of villain

again, false. leshiy is true neutral. if you respect him and his domain - you have nothing to worry about. if you annoy him - you'll get whatever you deserve. leshiy is more like the master of a place in shinto mythology.

just give it up - you brought up wrong creature. acknowledge it. don't double down on misinformation.

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user I am literally not talking about leshy because you told me those characters are not leshy. I was talking about the characters in the OP. I said two of them were inspired by leshy in their design only but you told me I was wrong about that. So ok, despite that error, the literal rest of my post was about their role in the story, the one thing they actually have in common. But which they don't have in common with leshy.

Evil, nature associated horned figures are corruptions of cernunnos, pan, etc, usually manifested as satan or some other anti-god figure. "the beast" even shares his name with the anti-christ related figure in biblical myth. Sauron was pretty clearly a lucifer analogue too, being crafted by a guy explicitly trying to create a believable mythology and who was not reserved about taking from his own very christian personal beliefs. I suppose you are right about the whole "symbolic villain" thing but a much easier way of saying that would just be calling them satan expies, though that concept stretches back to ahriman of zoroastrianism and probably older.

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technically Sauron was created by the lucifer analog when you get right down to it.

also Lazy

Sauron is far more of a Lucifer figure than Melkor. He is a "fallen" angel and a deceiver.

They're both kinda? Morgoth was god's brightest subordinate but was an asshole from the start, and Sauron was the fallen angel who actually did his job before turning away. Guess Tolkien liked the idea of corrupted light so much he needed TWO satans. Morgoth is closer to a "primal" evil I would say though, more Ahriman than Lucifer.

Melkor was pretty deceitful back in his day. Managed to trick all the other gods into thinking he was totally a reformed good guy before fucking up everything. And he was the one to tempt Mairon away from good, seducing the great seducer.