30 Friends of Evil

1. The Bandit

Banditry is not the private domain of evil, many brigands and outlaws have chaotic or neutral alignments, and many have fallen to their profession due to circumstances beyond their control. Even notable heroes can be considered bandits, fighting oppressive lawful societies from the stance of chaotic good and neutral alignments. This doesn't apply to the Bandit. The Bandit has pledged themselves to darkness and evil. Most of the time this makes them a markedly more cruel bandit, more sadistic than others, more bloodthirsty. But that isn't the end of of it, the Bandit is a tool of the forces of evil, and when the heroes move, when there is a threat of a chosen one or a prophecy, the Bandit is the hammer that is send.

2. That Fucking Woman

That Fucking Woman is a sorceress with a serene face, with a panoply of jewels, enchanted accessories, and a cadre of magically bonded, and enhanced fighters to act as her bodyguard. The problem with That Fucking Woman is that she is a meddler, a busybody, a gossip, and a smotherer. Anyone who tries to cross her is upbraided and insulted, those who displease her are put to menial tasks, and for some reason, she has money, and power, and influence, and no one fucking likes her. She has her power because she has long been in the graces of the shadow, her magic and charisma, her wealth and influence, are all gifts from whatever fell god, evil necromancer, or elder demon dragon lord. To serve her master she sows dissent, puts the righteous in self doubt, surrounds herself with busywork, and browbeats anyone who dares to show spine, or lawful good, or follows a hint of prophecy.

3. The Friendly Traveler

The Friendly Traveler is just that, a person who has been on the road for a long ways, traveling from far away to a point seemingly on the other side of the world, and their path has lead them to meet the PCs, nothing more tha coincidence. A peddler, a tinker, an itenerant merchant, a musician, a traveling poet, almost any veil thin excuse works. But they have long served the forces of darkness, and for those eldritch and evil beings they are spies, informants, couriers, and when the need arises, assassins and catspaws. Many friendly travelers have been so long leashed to evil that they've forgotten much of themselves and when the time comes, for forces of darkness can use them as a gate, turning them into monsters, or making them the pathfinder for things worse than the human imagination.

4. The Armorer

The Armorer is just that, a specialty blacksmith who makes very fine armor, and has a comfortable life and a degree of wealth that is the envy of many working folk. Their hammer and their gold serve evil, and they do this through three main avenues. With gold in hand, the Armorer is a financier for the forces of evil, able to put coin in the hands of lesser servants, or use their gold and influence to make sure things ease towards the goals of the dark ones. The wall doesn't need maintenance, the Guild of Heroes has too much power and should be reigned in, there is no corruption in the city guards. Secondly, they can provide arms and armor to those who need them, putting weapons in the hands of assassins, and dressing blackguards and dread lords in black armor. Finally, the armorer provides the gear for heroes and lords, pity if the metal used for the latest round of armors were substandard, or had a secret rune of weakness hidden inside it.

5. The Hapless Stooge

The Hapless Stooge is the schmuck who sold their soul for a turkey sandwich and found out that the meat was dry. Plenty of people make deals with the devil for chump change, and that is the Stooge. They have no serious skill, they are no serious threat, but they are such a fucking curveball, there is a chance that they might kill the chosen one with a cup of poisoned tea, or awkwardly attempt to steal the item of important power in a way so stupid that it might actually work. Unfortunately for the Stooge, their attempt is going to be easily thwarted, and when they fail, some horrific weapon or beast of the underworld will appear and splatter them before the heroes can question them, or they will suffer a terrible death for their failure. Sucks to be them.

6. The Midnight Dahlia

The Midnight Dahlia is an oddity among the Friends of Evil. They are a healer, a rescuer, and a pitch black saint. Relying on a combination of black magic, evil thaumaturgy, and an extensive network of friends of the dark and unknowing allies, the Midnight Dahlia rescues villains and evil lieutenants from heroes, appearing in the nick of time to throw a diversion, activate a contingency spell, use a wondrous device, heal the mortally wounded antagonist, and then teleport away to safety. By day, the Midnight Dahlia is a noble of middling wealth an importance, few knowing that they are a senior officer in the inner circle of evil.

7. The Corpse King

The Corpse King is a bastard, a usurper, a blackcoat, an imposter, an assassin of royalty, and wearer of the inverted crown. A Corpse King is a dead man, because his ability to remain in power in the light of day is limited. There is only so long that a person may claim a throne or divine right before holy steel and fire claims them. Corpse Kings are most often found sitting on secondary thrones, tertiary thrones, subservient to greater powers, but undermining them, ignoring their calls for aid, and when aid is sent the grain is moldy, the soldiers are poorly trained militia fit only as fodder for a meat grinder, or blackguards waiting to betray. The Corpse King laughs as their short reign heralds the collapse of nations, genocides, civil wars, ethnic purges, and the wholesale slaughter of innocents.

8. The Re-Animator

The Re-Animator is much more than the common casual sold their soul to evil sort of friend. They literally started their existence as a divine tier magic spell that was cast, once upon a time, the Re-Animator was a Raise Undead spell cast by an incredibly powerful magic user. They came into being as a living, breathing, being with the innate ability to Raise Undead an unspecified number of times per day. While this could be as brutal and short as being a combat reanimator, this particular friend of evil wove their way into a society and into a low level position where dead bodies are commonplace. The Re-Animator can handle all the mortal remains they want, with no consequence, but when the time comes, they wiggle their fingers and the dead start rising to feast on the living.

9. The Legalist

The Legalist is a lettered person, educated and respected, mostly for their ability to read and write and understanding of the law, be it divine, kingly, secular, or otherwise.The Legalist is the Advocate of Shadows and much of their work goes into ensuring that casual evil is overlooked, or is exonerated through the letter of the law, while slowly eroding trust in any sort of legal or judicial system. Unfortunately, there are far too many friends of evil among the ranks of lawyers, barristers, justices, and legalists. The lure of easy power over others and vast amounts of wealth are too difficult for most to resist that first slide into shadow.

10. The Shadow's Hand

The Shadow's Hand isn't an assassin or powerful person, they are a member of the city guard or civic guild. As a friend of evil, they make sure that ever growing parts of the city become unsafe, allowing corruption and evil to fester unhindered, untended. Missing people remain missing, vice gets a bye with some graft, and anyone who starts looking a little too much like a nosy farm kid inspired by myth and legend gets their teeth knocked in and left on a civic conscript work gang. Its the little things that matter, that push the light further away, and make the quick and easy out offered by evil look like the better option.

11. The Black Sword

The Black Sword is a career soldier. What makes them different from the bandit, or other less than heroic figures is that the Black Sword is the worst sort, and encourages the same from those around him. Fascism, racism, and nationalism are his calling cards, and rape, murder, and torture are his favorite tools. The Black Sword isn't front and center, he's away from the capital, away from the castle. He is in the hinterlands, with a cadre of soldiers slowing being swayed to his ideals, or he's in a middle position where he makes sure the worst sort get promoted, and the upright get the short end of every deal. Goody-Two-Shoes get the boots in the yard treatment.

12. The Chef of Horrors

The Chef of Horrors is a very normal seeming person, though their eyes might be a bit haunted, their stare running towards that 1000 yard blankness. Years ago, the Chef survived a terrible siege, one where the food supplies ran low, and people resorted to eating rats, and then in great secrecy, their own dead. In that dark time, the Chef broke and fell to evil, and started cooking the flesh of the dead, often finding that the freshly killed were more palatable that whatever corpses they might have found. They offered dark prayers, survived the siege, and now, years later, still truck in forbidden cuisine, serving meals made of the murdered, often curating the most black of feasts for the most wicked of the Friends of Evil. Feast of a unicorn, sure. A properly basted and roasted infant, easy. A spit roasted child, a delicacy.

13. The Castrator

The Castrator is a woman who desired the power offered by Evil, and didn't care who was harmed by it. She had nothing to lose, and a world full of people she wanted to hurt. Revenge is a petty dish and Evil served in in a buffet, and the Castrator became a powerful woman. This Friend of Evil enjoys her work, finding those young men who are steadfast and loyal, tempting them to darkness so that they forget their vows, forsake their brotherhoods, abandon their loves and families for what she has to offer, and then, at their moment of gratification, castrates them and reveals their failure and weakness. Sometimes this is literal mutilation, sometimes this is social in nature, so that an honored paladin is excommunicated from the church, or a stalwart defender finds himself at odds with his liege lord. A young man torn from his bride, a family destroyed, a marriage sullied, and each is a crack in the monolith of happiness and goodness.

14. The Infernal Necromancer

Those who play with fire get burned, and those who deal with the dead run afoul of the dread Evil powers. The necromancy might have started as a medium or a nethermancer, a ghost talker, or a cleric who venerated the spirits of the ancestors, and for the most part, they keep that role. In the darkest hours they conjure evil spirits, reanimate corpses, use ghosts to steal secrets and sell them, and otherwise take a venerated position, one with access to people at their weakest, and use it to their full nefarious advantage. Infernal Necromancers tend to be less extroverted people, and are more likely to be the portly friendly person who lives near the graveyard or a person who can sometimes do readings, rather than the villain wearing skeleton armor and laughing as they wave a scythe made of barrow-flame.

15. The Dread Pirate

Pirates are seldom considered positive role models or outstanding members of the community. The Dread Pirate is something worse, as they have garnered a pact with something dark and evil, ancient and nameless that dwells under the sea. They desecrate their victims to the dread leviathan, and call on its dark powers to fuel their piracy. When heroes go to ships, the Dread Pirate and their benthic behemoths are waiting to take down white sailed ships.

16. Kursd

Kursd is a barbarian, a berzerker, a person who has fever dreams of burning cities, and fantasies of severed limbs and lakes of blood. This is all well and good for most barbarians, but Kursd isn't like other barbarians. No. Kursd is a rudimentary being, a violent urge wrapped around a brain stem attached to a strong body. There is one goal, service to the Dark Ones, offering them their favorite things, mangled bodies and burnt sacrifices. Unlike other Friends of the Dark, Kursd actually is favored by the dark powers, and after being slain, Kursd is given the dark rebirth and comes back from each death with only a few new scars and a greater veneration for the dark powers.

17. The Corpse-Maker

The Corpse-Maker is a gladiator, and makes a show of being a heel. They drink and spit blood at the crowd, they invoke the names of the dark powers without fear, and participate in the worst sort of matches, where when the melee is over the sands are drenched in the blood of men. Corpse-Maker doesn't fight animals, and doesn't participate in fixed fights against drugged foes, or those who know nothing of holding a weapon. Theirs is a pageantry of evil, brazen and unabashed, and for many, who dont take the boasts seriously, its all entertainment and gambling. Outside of the arena, the Corpse-Maker behaves like a normal citizen, albeit a massive scar covered one.

18. The Poisoned Bosom

The Poisoned Bosom is a tavern wench, dark haired and wickedly lovely, with breasts cinched up to her chin. She has seen the worst of humanity, the depths and the lows, and has since decided that it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. The Poisoned Bosom is a fence for information, and can pass small but important items to people who need them, and when it comes time to face heroes and PCs, the Poisoned Bosom can slide poison into drinks, open locked doors for assassins, or even seduce a hero or hireling and put a knife between their ribs. A cunning Poisoned Bosom might even know a pinch of magic.

19. The Punisher

The Punisher used to be a regular person, just another face in the crowd, until things went wrong. Their farm was trampled by the Order of Light, crusaders took everything they had for the war, including their sons for squires and daughters for comfort brigades, or the faith came one day, took their land to build some large important building, and pushed them off. Regardless of how it happened, the Punisher has an axe to grind with lawful good people, and so do the Forces of Evil. They now have since given themselves to said forces and now serves evil as a vengeful fist.

20. The Questionable Alchemist

The Questionable Alchemist traded their soul for alchemy years ago, and while they can transmute lead to gold and pursue immortality, they are intelligence operatives for the forces of evil, and conduits to the dark entities. They can bring supernatural poisons, and potions, and supply magical items to baddies. In the larger scheme, the Questionable Alchemist does things like distribute dangerous drugs, sketchy contraceptives, and tonics and potions that sow confusion and chaos. The best Questionable Alchemist has been supplying the heroes for some time, and sometimes the potions just dont kick like they should, or the potion of strength also causes nausea, or healing potions lead to impotence.

21. The Sinful Servant

Servants are rarely seen, and never heard. Their lives are menial labor, and abuse at the hands of the nobles and the royals, or anyone wealthy enough to hire people to mind their personal interests. Maids, butlers, chauffeurs, household cooks, sculleries, grooms, groundskeepers, and the like, the secret subclass. The Sinful Servant lives like a tick inside a household, drawing from it, and poisoning it at the same time. They disseminate rumors, make sure certain guests are mistreated, or wicked guests get the best accommodations, and when the time comes, they are knife in the night, the poisoner, the person who accuses the hero of wrongdoing, and even have the proof needed to make sure they are busy evading the city guard instead of finding the glowing statue stolen by the necromancer lord.

22. The Fell Farmer

Farming is a hard job, and farmers are well accustomed to seeing animals die, to blood and loss, and scratching their existence out of the Earth itself. The Fell Farmer has made pacts with dark forces, watering their fields with blood, burying children alive under the cornerstones of barns, and holding secret bloody holidays to venerate the harvest.

23. The Scapegrace Slave

The Scapegrace Slave was born into slavery, the child of slaves, the grandchild of slaves, and destined to see their own children shackled into bondage. The Scapegrace has bartered their services to the shadow, swapping mortal masters for eldritch god masters. They want to see the entire world in chains, and work to break the morale of those around them, encouraging overseers to be as cruel as possible, and promoting as much abuse and sadism as possible, even encouraging the other slaves to turn on each other.

24. The Broken Bard

The Bard was once a proud and accomplished performer, welcomed in guild halls, noble courts, even gracing the royal court once or twice, a rising star. Then, they were caught in courtly intrigue and drama, blamed for a royal falling out, implicated in a conspiracy, etc, and were suddenly in shackles and bound for the headsman's block. A quick and dirty deal with a devil and they were swashbuckling their way to freedom. The catch is that they were guilty of the thing they were accused of, and really deserved the execution that had been arranged for them. Now the Broken Bard travels town to town, spreading ballads of dissent and sedition, undermining institutions of law and order, goodness and light.

25. The Damned

The Damned was once a regular person, perhaps someone already on this list, but they died. But they died in service to the dark ones, and for this, the Damned was resurrected, so that they could continue to serve. Unfortunately, they have the stats and general abilities of a zombie, but retain a good deal of their intelligence, and most of their motor skills. The Damned is dead, knows it, and knows that their continued existence relies on keeping the dread gods pleased, and eating as much living flesh as they can. A Damned who pleases their dark gods might find themselves re-raised as a Deathknight or even Dreadlord provided the evil they did in life was grand enough.

26. Hell's Hooker

Hell's Hooker is a courtesan who has unearthly beauty, unimaginable charms, and the best ...  parts ... that a person would spill gold to experience. Hell's Hooker, one pubic nerve at a time, convinces others to join the forces of evil. Those who get the offer and refuse it, well that's what knives, poison, and tentacles concealed in the body with razor tipped stingers.

27. Kinecard Village

The ENTIRE village of Kinecard is populated with Friends of Evil, the entire place. People visiting the village get a weird vibe from the place, and the wise leave quickly. The people are evil, the livestock is invested with infernal essence, the fields teaming with sheep with too many horns, all the cows and horses are jet black, and all the dogs and cats have a threatening aura about them. But everything on the surface is Theme Park smiling and happy, even when the farmer is slopping the hell hogs with a bucket of obviously human remains, and there is almost no effort made to conceal the fact that the scarecrows in the field are the corpses of travelers.

28. The Damned Goon

The Damned Goon signed on to work with a band of what they thought were Adventurers-Upon-Return, and found out the hard way that they were a band of villains. The goon had few choices, try and sneak off, try and off one of the evil avatars and die in the process, become slain by actual heroes, or take the knee and accept the black sacrament and become a friend of the dark. At the time, the Damned Goon chose the path of least resistance and thought that after a bit, they could slip off, recant their evil ways, and get a new job somewhere else. That was before their soul was stained by the deeds of their hands, and evil magic, evil gifts, are like heroin. A taste is all it takes, and then the Goon's fate was sealed.

29. The Bitter Blossom

The Bitter Blossom is a young and beautiful child of royal or noble blood, most often a princess. The Bitter Blossom came very early into the fold of evil, though the machinations of courtly intrigue and drama, and the jaded decadence that comes being isolated into extreme wealth ungrounded from any sort of reality. Bitter Blossom has been groomed, maybe even starting as a groomed child bride, just another thing to make evil all that more appealing. Now, their dark power and influence are growing, and if they play their cards right, the next Queen will be a friend of evil, certain to surround herself with infernal allies, and corrupt her husband as well.

30. The Aged Antiquarian

The Aged Antiquarian is just like the things he peddles, old and antique. While he has nothing new, he has something of everything so long as it is old, and people know he has a knack for these things. Old scrolls and books, old figurines and wizened wands, coins and jewelry tarnished with time, of course, all this and more. Vintage clothing, weapons from another age, strange potions that the labels have long since faded from, always useful, even if not necessarily what you think it is. The Antiquarian is a historian and archivist for the friends of evil, and uses his shop as a place for them to pass messages, gather information, and the like. When they do make sales, the items have a little bit of a Needful Things vibe to them, cursed. Not all of them, that would be too obvious, but about one in ten for adults, and half of those given to children.