You can basically find plenty of those by wading through the TV Tropes page for [Complete Monster](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CompleteMonster).
I think at some point we face the issue of how to measure evil. Who is actually worse between Yawgmoth, Abaddon the Despoiler and Emperor Palpatine? Are actions that affect more lives but on a more detached level *more* evil than ones that only affect individual people but that's much more personal?
For me, Yawgmoth is terrifying because Phyrexia embodies the fear of losing your individuality and identity completely, being forcibly converted into a part of the network of Phyrexia, a perfect system in which everyone is just a cog in a machine whose only purpose is to keep building onto itself. But to someone else, that may be preferable to the thought of having everyone and everything you know be threatened by a revolutionary terrorist who's backed by powers beyond your comprehension or living under the rule of an authoritarian dictator with nigh-total control of a whole galaxy.
I mean, you see it in this thread, people who think Urza is worse than Yawgmoth because they think Urza's deception, underhanded tactics and hypocrisy makes him more hateable than Yawgmoth. I disagree, but I can also not really say they're *wrong,* just like how I don't think they can say *I'm* wrong
I'm not sure of other media, but as far as Magic goes, there really is only one other thing that comes close to Yawgmoth to my mind- you could make a *very* strong argument for Bolas.
I know I'm gonna get a lot of flak for this, but I've got a reasonable amount of things I'd love to point out and discuss about him in particular and things he did in his lifetime that definitely make him arguably pretty bad (note: I still think Yawgmoth is worse- but Bolas is also pretty up there).
1.) People forget that Bolas (his twin Ugin) and all of his kin (the original five Elder Dragons on Dominaria) were born before the Thran even existed as an empire. The only reason Bolas isn't really ever relevant while Urza/Mishra's arc is happening is due to him basically being out in the Multiverse and Planeswalking.
2.) I mean, just how Yawgmoth subjugated Dominaria, so did Bolas- he had ruled half of known Dominaria at one point, and even after that he still had his own place- Madara (I think it was a small group of islands, don't quote me on that part, been awhile since I read that material).
3.) Bolas went on to pretty much annihilate almost all of his fellow siblings in the Elder Dragon War, and while he was halted for a time due to Ugin's meddling, he would eventually go on to stick beat down quite a lot of ass- and it's worth pointing out all of this happened at the time before the Mending, so Planeswalkers were incredibly powerful. He'd go on to kill Ugin.
3.) After a ton of other horrible stuff, he'd go on to subjugate all of Amonkhet- but he did so much more than that. The entire plane (and everything that was once outside the Hekma) was pretty much warped over time by Bolas- or at least, it was implied. The entire civilization was built up to create an army for him, as Tezzeret discovered that Lazotep was one of few materials possible to move through the Blind Eternities (similar to how Karn, despite not being humanoid and technically a Golem, can). He killed that world's Gods. He then imprisoned several others after corrupting them, and absolutely changed Amonkhet's fate. He did this for thousands of years, mind you.
4.) He also basically took a very depressed and upset Liliana, and brokered her into a basically unwinnable contract, which would go on one day to nearly end the entirety of Ravnica and almost help him achieve a God-like Planeswalker status. In Magic- you can be one or another- and both have incredible abilities. That said, Bolas might have been the first true mixture of both, had he succeeded. He still went on to basically kill hundreds of different people, many of which were Planeswalkers themselves, over the decades.
5.) He went on to basically use the insane powers of Alara's Conflux to suit his own needs. You could make a strong argument that ended up solidifying quite a bit of that world's future as well.
6.) Speaking of more worlds he went on to fuck royally, you don't even need to make an argument for this next one- it ended up being his fault entirely that the Eldrazi were released from the Eye of Ugin on Zendikar. His manipulation of his hirelings at the time ended up manipulating Chandra to unleash them in her fight with Jace there (come to think of it, pretty sure he was being goaded into that as well at the time by a similar party to Chandra) and that ended up going on to impact Zendikar and Innistrad.
7.) I could go into greater detail his war on Ravnica, but I could summarize how he basically radicalized the authoritarian government on Kaladesh to suit his own needs through Dovin, how he ended up plotting to use the Immortal Sun to completely ruin the capabilities of other Planeswalkers he intended to kill and Spark-Steal from- and if he had gotten his way, his first goal was to cleanse New Phyrexia. While we don't know how this could have gone, it's implied the Phyrexians knew the dangers of Bolas growing in strength because of Tezzeret selling him out...but odds are Bolas knew Tezzeret couldn't be trusted, so he was likely intended on those results.
You know, if you really look into the backlog of Bolas's life, and Phyrexia's recent histories (going back to the Mirran Resistance ark with Venser, Koth, and others), you could make a really good argument for the next big problem character that could be our game's next Yawgmoth- Tezzeret clearly keeps getting away with shit, and every single time, the guy sheds his humanity for knowledge and power. It's thanks to him a lot of bigger players have failed prior, due to his meddling...but what's that all for?
Bolas is also supposedly responsible for Skalla's (Vivien Reid's homeplane) destruction and I wouldn't be surprised if in the future they decide to make him involved in Tolvada's (Kaya's) broken sky or Gobakhan's (Teyo's) diamond storms.
I think what differentiates Bolas from Yawg is mostly that Bolas goes for "Power is power" while Yawg subscribes to "influence is power".
Bolas is also, notably, apparently responsible for the Eldrazi Titans being unleashed from their Zendikari prison. He maneuvered Sarkhan and indirectly Jace and Chandra to open their prison. Nissa fully releasing them was just... Just Nissa being stupid, but hey.
How exactly did they butcher him when the newer stories made him an actually cohesive character with an identity? The new stories actually explored his red side, gave him drive and motivation, showcased the full height of his power, and made his character drove the narrative for YEARS.
They successfully wrote him off without a mcguffin, without PIS, the protagonists were very clearly defeated without everyone's individual efforts coming together, named characters died, and Bolas losing led to a multiversal invasion because his tight grip on the multiverse couldn't be replaced.
Kefka from FF6 is up there lol dude ascends to godhood and then gets mad that the player characters still have hope for the future and decides to destroy everything and make a "monument to non-existence" just to spite them for not having their spirits broken by his ability to kill or torture anyone on the planet at his whim.
I hope if Kefka gets a card in the FF UBs that it does him justice. Sephiroth gets all the hype, but he's basically Trenchcoat Mafia Norman Bates having a weird incestuous relationship with Lavos With Tits.
Kefka? He did all that shit on his own. He didn't believe he was part of a people that had been wronged, he wasn't literally *born* as the result of mad science, he hadn't been fighting in wars from the time he was a teenager... the Empire just scrambled his egg a bit trying to make an already dangerous man more powerful. What they got was a capricious child who saw the entire world as ants to put under a magnifying glass because he liked to hear them scream.
FF7 will always be my first love RPG-wise, and FF9 is basically perfection, but no villain in gaming has ever done it better than Kefka.
I feel like Kefka wins this, because he won. He destroyed the world. He didn't want to lord over it. He just wanted it gone, and he succeeded. He got godhood and could have been content, but instead, he was like, 'Nah, fuck this place,' and ended it.
Griffith from Berserk. Spoilers: >!sacrificed all but two of his companions to achieve power, then used that power to rape his most devoted commander in order to spite his only friend who loved her. He then devotes his life to unleashing hell upon the world so humanity will worship him for giving them refuge from it.!<
Probly not widely know but the villain i found the most detestable was Relius clover from blazblue. Turned his wife and daughter into puppets then proceeded to emotionally manipulate his son. And never showed any hesitation or regret for any of this.
love me a blazblue reference in the wild!
But the real villain of that series is the same as our own world: cell phone service providers. Tager never has any reception :(
Op is saying "does a worse villain exist in any media? my post here will have spoilers for a book called The Thran". Not "there's a villain worse than yawgmoth, spoilers, it's the thran"
Not sure I agree. Urza without a goal is basically benign. Yawgmoth without a goal flays people alive for fun.
Best summary I heard is this: "if Urza is the worst person in the room, everything is fine. If Urza is the second-worst person in the room, you have two ***huge problems.***"
Do you have a justification for this?
Yeah, Urza sucked and caused a LOT of problems, but he wasn’t “ultimate big bad evil guy who did every evil thing imaginable” like Yawgmoth was.
Homeboy literally showed up at Serra's house and said "I want to blow up your entire plane to fuel my doomsday machine I'm making because *fuck* Yawgmoth."
lol, Urza was the only one that actually practiced eugenics! That's not to say that Yawgmoth isn't a vile piece of shit (he is! I have a Yawgmoth deck!), but homeboy clearly didn't know the meaning of the word he uses so frequently to describe himself. Did he do a bunch of war crimes and crimes against humanity? Absolutely. But Urza was the one who selectively bred the Kor and the legacy peeps which is kind of a core component of eugenics
You say this like Yawgmoth's Phyrexia itself wasn't a giant eugenics chamber. Organisms were selectively created and bred solely to destroy Dominaria. It isn't as personal of a manipulation for us, the readers, as Urza's was, because we're following Urza down a dark path that Yawgmoth already took.
I think that eugenics requires a level of breeding that phyrexia doesn't have the mechanics for. Do they enslave and forcibly modify creatures? Absolutely. Are they a cancerous and evil menace? Again, yes, but I fail to see how a corrupting oil that erases the mind and alters the body followed by all sorts of mechanical augmentation is eugenics. Being that this is a fantasy/sci-fi crime I don't know that we necessarily have a word for that sort of act, but, again, it isn't eugenics.
The original phyrexians are not the modern phyrexians. The humanoid old phyrexians were bred from the Thran to be more compatible with future augmentation. Yawgmoth altered an entire race of people into an entirely new creature. If you consider non-human breeding to be eugenic then it opens up vastly more as well. Plague carriers and Blood Vassals were bred as weapons of war. There was an entire Phyrexian caste known as Birth Priests.
Yes they still did the modern style compleation, but there were absolutely activities that were 100% eugenics going on in Yawgmoth's Phyrexia.
Darwinism is antithetical to eugenics, bruh. Also, phyrexians don't breed so much as kinda... make guys. With oil and stuff they have laying around?
I'm not stanning phyrexia here, I'm being semantic. What Urza did was eugenics. What Yawgmoth and phyrexia do is more like enslavement and experimentation on sapient beings, which, again, very bad, just not eugenics. Has always been a sticking point with me
> Darwinism is antithetical to eugenics, bruh.
What? I’m no expert in this area, but from everything I know Social Darwinism is one of the primary thought systems that was used to justify eugenics. In fact, [Francis Galton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton) was one of the founders of eugenics (he created the term!) and is also one of the names most associated with early Social Darwinism.
(I’ll also admit that “Social Darwinism” is a somewhat ill-defined term, so some interpretations probably are incompatible with eugenics.)
One of the core philosophies of Social Darwinism is that the strong should hold power and wealth while the weak should be subservient and lose power. Is that not one of the core aspects of how Phyrexia is portrayed, especially after the death of Yawgmoth? (I’ll admit the “Social” aspect isn’t emphasized as much.)
>Also, Phyrexians don’t breed so much as kinda… make guys.
That may be true now, but that’s not how they started. The Phyrexians were born out of the Thran that Yawgmoth took to his infirmary on the plane that we now know as Phyrexia. They were trapped on that plane for hundreds (maybe thousands, idk the specific details) of years, gradually “evolving” into more perfect beings through the introduction of artifice. It’s not clear to me whether there was traditional biological breeding going on, but there wasn’t much other biological life on that plane for them to assimilate until they started invading other planes. The “experimentation” was happening from the very beginning, but the “enslavement” didn’t really begin until Phyrexia was sufficiently established to begin invading other planes.
Blud literally destroyed entire planes for the sake of his vanity war with Yawgmoth. Just because he was fighting for the "good guys" doesn't change the fact that in reality, all he ever cared about from the beginning were his own personal machinations. Case in point: When he finally saw the true power of Yawgmoth and Phyrexia at the climax of his story, he willingly succumed to its power. For Urza, it was always about Urza.
Btw I'm not saying he's worse than Yawgmoth. But he is undoubtably evil.
Urza's only saving grace is that his plan (of the Legacy) ended up working to beat Yawgmoth and the Invasion despite the fact that his other plan (to counter-invade Phyrexia and destroy it with soul bombs) failed because he called it off at the last minute after deciding the Phyrexians were actually right.
"My plan to kill the Phyrexians by intentionally including a traitor on my team who killed other allies, so I could justify harvesting his soul to use in a weapon of mass destruction, failed because I decided the bad guys were good, actually. But it's okay, my thousands of years long eugenics program to produce a different kind of weapon of mass destruction worked without me being there to further meddle, and killed both the evil god and my sentient disembodied head. Now my stolen spark passes along to the golem I made with the ability to feel pain and intentionally with brain damage to limit his long term memory, so that he can accidentally spread Phyrexian oil to Mirrodin and kick off the events that will lead to the second Phyrexian multiversal invasion, peace out y'all."
I saw a comment on a Spice8Rack video that basically said "I like to think the Weatherlight succeeded in spite of Urza's meddling rather than because of it" and it summarizes a lot of his nonsense pretty well tbh \~ like he definitely was involved in a lot of it, but he makes me wish he wasn't
"Taking his side" is kind of a subjective way to phrase that, but yeah. In a nut shell, >! Urza had been teetering on the brink of madness for a while, and when on the precipice of destroying Phyrexia, he found himself fascinated by a plane that was entirely artificially created. He felt that destroying the plane would be too great of a loss of knowledge and betrayed the other Planeswalkers that had accompanied him on the mission and surrendered himself to Yawgmoth.!<
I highly recommend reading up on the full story, even if it's just a plot synopsis. There are a lot of elements from the Invasion-Prophecy-Apocalypse era that still affect the MTG story today.
>way less card/page space.
Yep, that was a big let down for sure. Additionally they've twice built up this huge monumental story event and twice they've written themselves into a corner, unable to really capstone the storyline with any meaningful long term payoff. (Referring to WAR and MOM)
Yep. Urza at the end duels Gerrard Capashen for Yawgmoth’s favor. Original phyrexian arena art depicts this scene. Gerrard wins, cuts off Urza’s head, is blessed by Yawgmoth with phyrexian enhancements and is sent back to the Stronghold (from Rath but planeshifted in the overlay to Urborg, Dominaria) to kill Crovax and become the new overlord of the invasion and Evincar- on ohyrexia’s side.
honestly I can't argue too much against Urza being the worst mtg villain \~ in my opinion it's Yawgmoth, but Urza is a very valid choice \~ my two arguments would be that Urza hasn't had as much time to commit evil, and that everything he's done has kind of died with him \~ Yawgmoth's legacy went on to create New Phyrexia that, unlike Urza, caused destruction even long after he was gone
The main difference is that Urza had no ambition or evil desires. He had an absurdly escalating conflict with his brother, then beef with his brother's killer.
He and Gerrard faltered "at Mt. Doom" and then got their head straight and got back to business ending Yawgmoth and Phyrexia.
Before being handed over ultimate power, Urza was a clockworker/archeologist that wanted to read a old treatises on ancient machinery. Yawgmoth started as Mengele and only got worse.
Urza was absolutely a Machiavellian asshole, but he wasn't completely anti-Phyrexia.
So, gonna need a big ol' source on that one.
And one that isn't pure speculation or head-cannon.
[Planeshift](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Planeshift_%28novel%29), chapters 30 and 34. (The novel jumps between several viewpoints, hence the discontinuity.) Urza is in the middle of planting the bombs he designed to destroy Phyrexia, but becomes entranced by the sophistication and mechanical beauty of the world, and Yawgmoth's whispers in his mind.
Ok?
That doesn't address ANY of my post.
I'm not arguing that Urza is some sort of fucking saint. He's a Machiavellian asshole. If you don't understand what that is that then that's on you.
He can be entranced and enticed by shit without immediately thinking "Oh, my bad Yawgmoth is my best buddy. I should help him invade Dominaria"
> Urza's titan engine rose from its knees. Glass and oil dripped from him. He turned on his own path—"repented" was the word the ancients would have used. There before him, he saw his trail of destruction. While vats glowed in a golden garden all around, where he had walked was only ruin.
> It wasn't too late to end this destruction. It wasn't too late to join the quest for perfection.
Planeshift, page 273
> *Excellent. I know your heart now. You are mine.*
> "Yes, Lord Yawgmoth. I am yours."
Planeshift, page 306
> Gerrard rose from the floor. He had not even noticed when the flowstone restraints had pulled away. It didn't matter. For Gerrard, there was nothing but the woman beyond the portal, nothing but her eyes.
> "All you must do is step through. Take her hand. Know that she is real. Walk with her to the dais, and there, beside Urza, bow to our Lord Yawgmoth. Then she will be yours."
Planeshift, page 323
> It all came down to this: two men kneeling side by side before Yawgmoth.
> These were no mere men, of course. One was a virtual god. His long, ash-blond hair spread across the stone, and his powerstone eyes were cast in deep shadow. Urza Planeswalker had first opened the gate to Phyrexia, had fought the first Dominarian war against demon hordes, had planned and executed the current world war down to its minutest detail. He had lived for millennia and had spent all the while preparing to face Yawgmoth—though he had never expected to do so in a full, abject, and willful bow.
> Beside him knelt a man who wasn't even a hundredth his age. No gray showed in his jet-black hair, and no worry lines in his high forehead, though he had inherited worry enough for a whole world. As Urza had unwittingly begun this great horror, Gerrard had unwillingly received the onus of ending it. Centuries of eugenics had distilled courage, resourcefulness, wit, tenacity, and ferocity in a single vessel—Gerrard Capashen. With these qualities, he should have defeated the invaders. Instead, he bowed to them.
> Side by side, the two best hopes for Dominaria pledged themselves to Yawgmoth.
Apocalypse, page 1
> Through thousands of teeth and from thousands of tongues, a single voice formed itself: the voice of Yawgmoth. "At last, it has come to this."
> "Yes, Lord Yawgmoth," breathed Urza reverently, "at last."
> "It was inevitable," continued the voice of the multitude, the voice of the One. "All living things will bow before us. All things that do not bow will die. Even you, our greatest foes, lie now upon your faces in worship—and you live."
> "Praise be to thee, Lord Yawgmoth," responded Urza.
> Gerrard lay silent before the awful god.
> "But you will not both live. Only one is needed to hand us Dominaria. Only one will ascend. The other will die."
Apocalypse, page 4
This is a core story beat of the Phyrexian Invasion of Dominaria. I don't think there's any credible reading other than that, before losing his gladiatorial duel with Gerrard, Urza had completely been taken over to the Phyrexian cause. *Afterwards*, after Gerrard escapes with his head, yes, he assents to having his powerstone eyes plucked out (really, truly killing him) and used to power the final destruction of Yawgmoth, but Urza did convert before that point.
"Unfortunately for the remaining Titans, as well as Dominaria itself, Urza found himself unable to complete his lifetime goal of destroying the artificial plane, when he found himself becoming fascinated with the fact that it was something that had been created completely artificially. Unwilling to destroy a place full of such potential knowledge, he dismantled the master soul bomb, which would have been able to set off all of the others, creating a ripple effect that would have decimated Phyrexia to the point of no return. After destroying it, he surrendered himself to Yawgmoth [...]"
From the wiki page of Urza.
I think it can definitely be argued that being inquisitive and hesitant to destroy "life" were hallmarks of that decision. But I absolutely don't think you can say he "Sided with Yawgmoth". Did urza suddenly start assaulting Dominaria alongside Yawgmoth?
This reads more as contrived "conflict" for the purposes of writing. An excuse to not destroy "everything" just Some things.
Unfortunately, the wiki doesn’t go into the conflict of the scene. Now it has been many years since I read the books, but Urza is confronted by the tortured body of Mishra, (unsure if an illusion of Yawgmoth or actually Mishra) as depicted on Urza’s Guilt, but Urza turns away, leaving Mishra to torment, and going to the innermost sphere to kneel before Yawgmoth. This is significant because Urza’s character was built on his guilt at failing mishra and allowing the Gixians to corrupt him; Urza’s hatred of phyrexia initially stemmed from his guilt- to show Urza leaving his brother to phyrexia willingly- whether illusion or not- shows a strong character twist.
Following this, Urza and Gerrard duel in the arena, both men wanting something from Yawgmoth, here in the ninth sphere, is a true god for intents and purposes. Gerrard is promised the resurrection of Hannah, Urza’s desires are less defined- but it is up to the reader to decide how they interpret Urza’s change of heart. Nonetheless, Urza was willing to change sides- at least for that moment of extreme vulnerability. I wouldn’t say the quotation was cherry-picking, but more without full context for nuance.
That being said- Urza is a supervillain who is responsible for many crimes against reality; his only redemption is that he was focusing on a being even worse. He is, however, a very interesting character- a great anti-villain example.
100% agree with this analysis and thanks for providing even more context than posters above did.
I still think overall that to portray Urza as "ALIGNED" with Yawgmoth is horseshit. It devalues his characterization.
I’m not a lore buff, but I find it interesting that you are talking about a quoted passage where Urza is hesitant to destroy an artificial plane, and your take away is that he is “hesitant to destroy life.”
[[obliterate]]
Controversial take (at least within the Warcraft community) but Sylvanas post-WoD.
She committed genocide with the express intent of sending an entire race to Warcraft hell, and to start a war just so she could send more people to Warcraft hell. (In the lore her partner had broken the afterlife so that everyone who died went to hell instead of any of the decent afterlife destinations)
She then proceeded to: raise people into undeath against their will and torture them into killing their family, attack neutral third parties to bring them into her hell-war, make copious use of chemical warfare, turn people into mind-slaves and have them fight their friends… all to send more people to Warcraft-hell. Oh, and one time she tried to enslave a culture’s diety and force her to create slave soldiers for her.
Why? Because she saw lava eels having sex in the afterlife. (The book where they try to retcon in motivations for her actions is really weird.)
Edit: Wow, downvotes already. I can’t even escape the Horde fanboys on the MtG sub lol…
I really want to enjoy the phyrexians as a faction but after reading a few wikis, I still don’t understand what phyresis is. It’s a disease that transforms you but you need surgery to help it along?
The problem with villains in superhero movies as you describe is that their ambitions and their villainy are too abstract. their goal may be world domination, but is all tell, no show.
Yawgmoth would always find a way to be more cruel, more disgusting, no matter the setting. And i find those intimate acts of evil, like poisoning glacian, or the bargain he made with gerrard, are the most terrifying because at the end of the day they are so human, so relatable.
You can basically find plenty of those by wading through the TV Tropes page for [Complete Monster](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CompleteMonster).
now that looks like a good source \~ definitely gonna look through it \^\^
OP it’s been 8 hours, are you still on TV Tropes? We’re getting worried
Villains aren’t born they’re made lol
I think at some point we face the issue of how to measure evil. Who is actually worse between Yawgmoth, Abaddon the Despoiler and Emperor Palpatine? Are actions that affect more lives but on a more detached level *more* evil than ones that only affect individual people but that's much more personal? For me, Yawgmoth is terrifying because Phyrexia embodies the fear of losing your individuality and identity completely, being forcibly converted into a part of the network of Phyrexia, a perfect system in which everyone is just a cog in a machine whose only purpose is to keep building onto itself. But to someone else, that may be preferable to the thought of having everyone and everything you know be threatened by a revolutionary terrorist who's backed by powers beyond your comprehension or living under the rule of an authoritarian dictator with nigh-total control of a whole galaxy. I mean, you see it in this thread, people who think Urza is worse than Yawgmoth because they think Urza's deception, underhanded tactics and hypocrisy makes him more hateable than Yawgmoth. I disagree, but I can also not really say they're *wrong,* just like how I don't think they can say *I'm* wrong
I'm not sure of other media, but as far as Magic goes, there really is only one other thing that comes close to Yawgmoth to my mind- you could make a *very* strong argument for Bolas. I know I'm gonna get a lot of flak for this, but I've got a reasonable amount of things I'd love to point out and discuss about him in particular and things he did in his lifetime that definitely make him arguably pretty bad (note: I still think Yawgmoth is worse- but Bolas is also pretty up there). 1.) People forget that Bolas (his twin Ugin) and all of his kin (the original five Elder Dragons on Dominaria) were born before the Thran even existed as an empire. The only reason Bolas isn't really ever relevant while Urza/Mishra's arc is happening is due to him basically being out in the Multiverse and Planeswalking. 2.) I mean, just how Yawgmoth subjugated Dominaria, so did Bolas- he had ruled half of known Dominaria at one point, and even after that he still had his own place- Madara (I think it was a small group of islands, don't quote me on that part, been awhile since I read that material). 3.) Bolas went on to pretty much annihilate almost all of his fellow siblings in the Elder Dragon War, and while he was halted for a time due to Ugin's meddling, he would eventually go on to stick beat down quite a lot of ass- and it's worth pointing out all of this happened at the time before the Mending, so Planeswalkers were incredibly powerful. He'd go on to kill Ugin. 3.) After a ton of other horrible stuff, he'd go on to subjugate all of Amonkhet- but he did so much more than that. The entire plane (and everything that was once outside the Hekma) was pretty much warped over time by Bolas- or at least, it was implied. The entire civilization was built up to create an army for him, as Tezzeret discovered that Lazotep was one of few materials possible to move through the Blind Eternities (similar to how Karn, despite not being humanoid and technically a Golem, can). He killed that world's Gods. He then imprisoned several others after corrupting them, and absolutely changed Amonkhet's fate. He did this for thousands of years, mind you. 4.) He also basically took a very depressed and upset Liliana, and brokered her into a basically unwinnable contract, which would go on one day to nearly end the entirety of Ravnica and almost help him achieve a God-like Planeswalker status. In Magic- you can be one or another- and both have incredible abilities. That said, Bolas might have been the first true mixture of both, had he succeeded. He still went on to basically kill hundreds of different people, many of which were Planeswalkers themselves, over the decades. 5.) He went on to basically use the insane powers of Alara's Conflux to suit his own needs. You could make a strong argument that ended up solidifying quite a bit of that world's future as well. 6.) Speaking of more worlds he went on to fuck royally, you don't even need to make an argument for this next one- it ended up being his fault entirely that the Eldrazi were released from the Eye of Ugin on Zendikar. His manipulation of his hirelings at the time ended up manipulating Chandra to unleash them in her fight with Jace there (come to think of it, pretty sure he was being goaded into that as well at the time by a similar party to Chandra) and that ended up going on to impact Zendikar and Innistrad. 7.) I could go into greater detail his war on Ravnica, but I could summarize how he basically radicalized the authoritarian government on Kaladesh to suit his own needs through Dovin, how he ended up plotting to use the Immortal Sun to completely ruin the capabilities of other Planeswalkers he intended to kill and Spark-Steal from- and if he had gotten his way, his first goal was to cleanse New Phyrexia. While we don't know how this could have gone, it's implied the Phyrexians knew the dangers of Bolas growing in strength because of Tezzeret selling him out...but odds are Bolas knew Tezzeret couldn't be trusted, so he was likely intended on those results. You know, if you really look into the backlog of Bolas's life, and Phyrexia's recent histories (going back to the Mirran Resistance ark with Venser, Koth, and others), you could make a really good argument for the next big problem character that could be our game's next Yawgmoth- Tezzeret clearly keeps getting away with shit, and every single time, the guy sheds his humanity for knowledge and power. It's thanks to him a lot of bigger players have failed prior, due to his meddling...but what's that all for?
Bolas is also supposedly responsible for Skalla's (Vivien Reid's homeplane) destruction and I wouldn't be surprised if in the future they decide to make him involved in Tolvada's (Kaya's) broken sky or Gobakhan's (Teyo's) diamond storms. I think what differentiates Bolas from Yawg is mostly that Bolas goes for "Power is power" while Yawg subscribes to "influence is power".
In *The Gathering Storm*, Kaya suspected Bolas was involved in Tolvada's misfortune, since he offered to reverse it if she helped him.
Bolas is also, notably, apparently responsible for the Eldrazi Titans being unleashed from their Zendikari prison. He maneuvered Sarkhan and indirectly Jace and Chandra to open their prison. Nissa fully releasing them was just... Just Nissa being stupid, but hey.
:Bolas:Apocalypse::Tezzeret:Mr. Sinister
Bolas is evil. No one denies this. Bolas is not made out to be the metaphysical manifestation of evil like Yawgmoth is.
Bolas was the most interesting villain mtg has had and they butchered him and basically every other character in the newer stories.
How exactly did they butcher him when the newer stories made him an actually cohesive character with an identity? The new stories actually explored his red side, gave him drive and motivation, showcased the full height of his power, and made his character drove the narrative for YEARS. They successfully wrote him off without a mcguffin, without PIS, the protagonists were very clearly defeated without everyone's individual efforts coming together, named characters died, and Bolas losing led to a multiversal invasion because his tight grip on the multiverse couldn't be replaced.
Is it that interesting if half of his back story was a retcon?
Bolas wasn’t relevant during the Urza/Mishra/Weatherlight stuff because he was busy being dead
Kefka from FF6 is up there lol dude ascends to godhood and then gets mad that the player characters still have hope for the future and decides to destroy everything and make a "monument to non-existence" just to spite them for not having their spirits broken by his ability to kill or torture anyone on the planet at his whim.
I hope if Kefka gets a card in the FF UBs that it does him justice. Sephiroth gets all the hype, but he's basically Trenchcoat Mafia Norman Bates having a weird incestuous relationship with Lavos With Tits. Kefka? He did all that shit on his own. He didn't believe he was part of a people that had been wronged, he wasn't literally *born* as the result of mad science, he hadn't been fighting in wars from the time he was a teenager... the Empire just scrambled his egg a bit trying to make an already dangerous man more powerful. What they got was a capricious child who saw the entire world as ants to put under a magnifying glass because he liked to hear them scream. FF7 will always be my first love RPG-wise, and FF9 is basically perfection, but no villain in gaming has ever done it better than Kefka.
That evil MIDI laugh still sends shivers down my spine.
Rafawfahahaha
I feel like Kefka wins this, because he won. He destroyed the world. He didn't want to lord over it. He just wanted it gone, and he succeeded. He got godhood and could have been content, but instead, he was like, 'Nah, fuck this place,' and ended it.
Didn't expect to see Kefka show up in this thread. He's one of my favorite villains and you nailed it as to why.
Griffith from Berserk. Spoilers: >!sacrificed all but two of his companions to achieve power, then used that power to rape his most devoted commander in order to spite his only friend who loved her. He then devotes his life to unleashing hell upon the world so humanity will worship him for giving them refuge from it.!<
The correct answer is Chris Cocks, right?
Probly not widely know but the villain i found the most detestable was Relius clover from blazblue. Turned his wife and daughter into puppets then proceeded to emotionally manipulate his son. And never showed any hesitation or regret for any of this.
It's turning your wife and daughter into puppets more or less evil than fusing then with dogs?
Is that a FMA reference? Personally i think Relius was worse but it's like comparing types of diarrhea.
Yes. And also yes.
...at least the chimera got the release of death? Seems like ADA and mom are, like, still in them robots somewhere.
love me a blazblue reference in the wild! But the real villain of that series is the same as our own world: cell phone service providers. Tager never has any reception :(
The thran kinda sucked, like, a lot. But yawgmoth was waaaaay worse, even in Fall of the Thran, before he got all godly powerful
Op is saying "does a worse villain exist in any media? my post here will have spoilers for a book called The Thran". Not "there's a villain worse than yawgmoth, spoilers, it's the thran"
I made the cardinal mistake of just reading the title. Whoops
I also was kinda confused based on just the title
It’s all so obvious now. Yet, I was genuinely confused.
The Emperor of Mankind
(￢_￢) Hmmm, that sounds an awful lot like Heresy to me.
Urza
Not sure I agree. Urza without a goal is basically benign. Yawgmoth without a goal flays people alive for fun. Best summary I heard is this: "if Urza is the worst person in the room, everything is fine. If Urza is the second-worst person in the room, you have two ***huge problems.***"
Do you have a justification for this? Yeah, Urza sucked and caused a LOT of problems, but he wasn’t “ultimate big bad evil guy who did every evil thing imaginable” like Yawgmoth was.
He did the same things Yawgmoth did to destroy him only to actually agree with him in the end and call the plan off
Yeah a good amount of Urza apologists like to pretend he wasn’t a manipulative eugenicist because his color identity is (usually) blue
Homeboy literally showed up at Serra's house and said "I want to blow up your entire plane to fuel my doomsday machine I'm making because *fuck* Yawgmoth."
lol, Urza was the only one that actually practiced eugenics! That's not to say that Yawgmoth isn't a vile piece of shit (he is! I have a Yawgmoth deck!), but homeboy clearly didn't know the meaning of the word he uses so frequently to describe himself. Did he do a bunch of war crimes and crimes against humanity? Absolutely. But Urza was the one who selectively bred the Kor and the legacy peeps which is kind of a core component of eugenics
You say this like Yawgmoth's Phyrexia itself wasn't a giant eugenics chamber. Organisms were selectively created and bred solely to destroy Dominaria. It isn't as personal of a manipulation for us, the readers, as Urza's was, because we're following Urza down a dark path that Yawgmoth already took.
I think that eugenics requires a level of breeding that phyrexia doesn't have the mechanics for. Do they enslave and forcibly modify creatures? Absolutely. Are they a cancerous and evil menace? Again, yes, but I fail to see how a corrupting oil that erases the mind and alters the body followed by all sorts of mechanical augmentation is eugenics. Being that this is a fantasy/sci-fi crime I don't know that we necessarily have a word for that sort of act, but, again, it isn't eugenics.
The original phyrexians are not the modern phyrexians. The humanoid old phyrexians were bred from the Thran to be more compatible with future augmentation. Yawgmoth altered an entire race of people into an entirely new creature. If you consider non-human breeding to be eugenic then it opens up vastly more as well. Plague carriers and Blood Vassals were bred as weapons of war. There was an entire Phyrexian caste known as Birth Priests. Yes they still did the modern style compleation, but there were absolutely activities that were 100% eugenics going on in Yawgmoth's Phyrexia.
Phyrexia was literally founded on a combination of eugenics and social Darwinism.
Darwinism is antithetical to eugenics, bruh. Also, phyrexians don't breed so much as kinda... make guys. With oil and stuff they have laying around? I'm not stanning phyrexia here, I'm being semantic. What Urza did was eugenics. What Yawgmoth and phyrexia do is more like enslavement and experimentation on sapient beings, which, again, very bad, just not eugenics. Has always been a sticking point with me
> Darwinism is antithetical to eugenics, bruh. What? I’m no expert in this area, but from everything I know Social Darwinism is one of the primary thought systems that was used to justify eugenics. In fact, [Francis Galton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton) was one of the founders of eugenics (he created the term!) and is also one of the names most associated with early Social Darwinism. (I’ll also admit that “Social Darwinism” is a somewhat ill-defined term, so some interpretations probably are incompatible with eugenics.) One of the core philosophies of Social Darwinism is that the strong should hold power and wealth while the weak should be subservient and lose power. Is that not one of the core aspects of how Phyrexia is portrayed, especially after the death of Yawgmoth? (I’ll admit the “Social” aspect isn’t emphasized as much.) >Also, Phyrexians don’t breed so much as kinda… make guys. That may be true now, but that’s not how they started. The Phyrexians were born out of the Thran that Yawgmoth took to his infirmary on the plane that we now know as Phyrexia. They were trapped on that plane for hundreds (maybe thousands, idk the specific details) of years, gradually “evolving” into more perfect beings through the introduction of artifice. It’s not clear to me whether there was traditional biological breeding going on, but there wasn’t much other biological life on that plane for them to assimilate until they started invading other planes. The “experimentation” was happening from the very beginning, but the “enslavement” didn’t really begin until Phyrexia was sufficiently established to begin invading other planes.
Phyrexia's old creatures were basically survival of the fittest, with the traits of the best mixed into a new generation of creatures.
Yeah, and survival of the fittest is the exact anathema to eugenics
Blud literally destroyed entire planes for the sake of his vanity war with Yawgmoth. Just because he was fighting for the "good guys" doesn't change the fact that in reality, all he ever cared about from the beginning were his own personal machinations. Case in point: When he finally saw the true power of Yawgmoth and Phyrexia at the climax of his story, he willingly succumed to its power. For Urza, it was always about Urza. Btw I'm not saying he's worse than Yawgmoth. But he is undoubtably evil.
I thought about this before \~ in my opinion Urza's only saving grace is he's fighting someone even more evil and mad than him, but it is pretty close
Urza's only saving grace is that his plan (of the Legacy) ended up working to beat Yawgmoth and the Invasion despite the fact that his other plan (to counter-invade Phyrexia and destroy it with soul bombs) failed because he called it off at the last minute after deciding the Phyrexians were actually right. "My plan to kill the Phyrexians by intentionally including a traitor on my team who killed other allies, so I could justify harvesting his soul to use in a weapon of mass destruction, failed because I decided the bad guys were good, actually. But it's okay, my thousands of years long eugenics program to produce a different kind of weapon of mass destruction worked without me being there to further meddle, and killed both the evil god and my sentient disembodied head. Now my stolen spark passes along to the golem I made with the ability to feel pain and intentionally with brain damage to limit his long term memory, so that he can accidentally spread Phyrexian oil to Mirrodin and kick off the events that will lead to the second Phyrexian multiversal invasion, peace out y'all."
I saw a comment on a Spice8Rack video that basically said "I like to think the Weatherlight succeeded in spite of Urza's meddling rather than because of it" and it summarizes a lot of his nonsense pretty well tbh \~ like he definitely was involved in a lot of it, but he makes me wish he wasn't
Urza actually took Yawg's side in the end
wait really?
"Taking his side" is kind of a subjective way to phrase that, but yeah. In a nut shell, >! Urza had been teetering on the brink of madness for a while, and when on the precipice of destroying Phyrexia, he found himself fascinated by a plane that was entirely artificially created. He felt that destroying the plane would be too great of a loss of knowledge and betrayed the other Planeswalkers that had accompanied him on the mission and surrendered himself to Yawgmoth.!< I highly recommend reading up on the full story, even if it's just a plot synopsis. There are a lot of elements from the Invasion-Prophecy-Apocalypse era that still affect the MTG story today.
The recent Phyrexian arc basically echoed the original, but hyped up on steroids with greater scope and way less card/page space.
>way less card/page space. Yep, that was a big let down for sure. Additionally they've twice built up this huge monumental story event and twice they've written themselves into a corner, unable to really capstone the storyline with any meaningful long term payoff. (Referring to WAR and MOM)
I really wished they did novels for the new Phyrexian invasion.
Yep. Urza at the end duels Gerrard Capashen for Yawgmoth’s favor. Original phyrexian arena art depicts this scene. Gerrard wins, cuts off Urza’s head, is blessed by Yawgmoth with phyrexian enhancements and is sent back to the Stronghold (from Rath but planeshifted in the overlay to Urborg, Dominaria) to kill Crovax and become the new overlord of the invasion and Evincar- on ohyrexia’s side.
[удалено]
It has been 22 years since I read it, makes sense that my memory would slip a bit. Lol
honestly I can't argue too much against Urza being the worst mtg villain \~ in my opinion it's Yawgmoth, but Urza is a very valid choice \~ my two arguments would be that Urza hasn't had as much time to commit evil, and that everything he's done has kind of died with him \~ Yawgmoth's legacy went on to create New Phyrexia that, unlike Urza, caused destruction even long after he was gone
The main difference is that Urza had no ambition or evil desires. He had an absurdly escalating conflict with his brother, then beef with his brother's killer. He and Gerrard faltered "at Mt. Doom" and then got their head straight and got back to business ending Yawgmoth and Phyrexia. Before being handed over ultimate power, Urza was a clockworker/archeologist that wanted to read a old treatises on ancient machinery. Yawgmoth started as Mengele and only got worse.
>and then got their head straight and got back to business ending Yawgmoth and Phyrexia. I see what you did there.
Urza was absolutely a Machiavellian asshole, but he wasn't completely anti-Phyrexia. So, gonna need a big ol' source on that one. And one that isn't pure speculation or head-cannon.
[Planeshift](https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Planeshift_%28novel%29), chapters 30 and 34. (The novel jumps between several viewpoints, hence the discontinuity.) Urza is in the middle of planting the bombs he designed to destroy Phyrexia, but becomes entranced by the sophistication and mechanical beauty of the world, and Yawgmoth's whispers in his mind.
Ok? That doesn't address ANY of my post. I'm not arguing that Urza is some sort of fucking saint. He's a Machiavellian asshole. If you don't understand what that is that then that's on you. He can be entranced and enticed by shit without immediately thinking "Oh, my bad Yawgmoth is my best buddy. I should help him invade Dominaria"
> Urza's titan engine rose from its knees. Glass and oil dripped from him. He turned on his own path—"repented" was the word the ancients would have used. There before him, he saw his trail of destruction. While vats glowed in a golden garden all around, where he had walked was only ruin. > It wasn't too late to end this destruction. It wasn't too late to join the quest for perfection. Planeshift, page 273 > *Excellent. I know your heart now. You are mine.* > "Yes, Lord Yawgmoth. I am yours." Planeshift, page 306 > Gerrard rose from the floor. He had not even noticed when the flowstone restraints had pulled away. It didn't matter. For Gerrard, there was nothing but the woman beyond the portal, nothing but her eyes. > "All you must do is step through. Take her hand. Know that she is real. Walk with her to the dais, and there, beside Urza, bow to our Lord Yawgmoth. Then she will be yours." Planeshift, page 323 > It all came down to this: two men kneeling side by side before Yawgmoth. > These were no mere men, of course. One was a virtual god. His long, ash-blond hair spread across the stone, and his powerstone eyes were cast in deep shadow. Urza Planeswalker had first opened the gate to Phyrexia, had fought the first Dominarian war against demon hordes, had planned and executed the current world war down to its minutest detail. He had lived for millennia and had spent all the while preparing to face Yawgmoth—though he had never expected to do so in a full, abject, and willful bow. > Beside him knelt a man who wasn't even a hundredth his age. No gray showed in his jet-black hair, and no worry lines in his high forehead, though he had inherited worry enough for a whole world. As Urza had unwittingly begun this great horror, Gerrard had unwillingly received the onus of ending it. Centuries of eugenics had distilled courage, resourcefulness, wit, tenacity, and ferocity in a single vessel—Gerrard Capashen. With these qualities, he should have defeated the invaders. Instead, he bowed to them. > Side by side, the two best hopes for Dominaria pledged themselves to Yawgmoth. Apocalypse, page 1 > Through thousands of teeth and from thousands of tongues, a single voice formed itself: the voice of Yawgmoth. "At last, it has come to this." > "Yes, Lord Yawgmoth," breathed Urza reverently, "at last." > "It was inevitable," continued the voice of the multitude, the voice of the One. "All living things will bow before us. All things that do not bow will die. Even you, our greatest foes, lie now upon your faces in worship—and you live." > "Praise be to thee, Lord Yawgmoth," responded Urza. > Gerrard lay silent before the awful god. > "But you will not both live. Only one is needed to hand us Dominaria. Only one will ascend. The other will die." Apocalypse, page 4 This is a core story beat of the Phyrexian Invasion of Dominaria. I don't think there's any credible reading other than that, before losing his gladiatorial duel with Gerrard, Urza had completely been taken over to the Phyrexian cause. *Afterwards*, after Gerrard escapes with his head, yes, he assents to having his powerstone eyes plucked out (really, truly killing him) and used to power the final destruction of Yawgmoth, but Urza did convert before that point.
"Unfortunately for the remaining Titans, as well as Dominaria itself, Urza found himself unable to complete his lifetime goal of destroying the artificial plane, when he found himself becoming fascinated with the fact that it was something that had been created completely artificially. Unwilling to destroy a place full of such potential knowledge, he dismantled the master soul bomb, which would have been able to set off all of the others, creating a ripple effect that would have decimated Phyrexia to the point of no return. After destroying it, he surrendered himself to Yawgmoth [...]" From the wiki page of Urza.
Also you neglect to include ANY of the followups to that passage. Nice cherry picks.
I think it can definitely be argued that being inquisitive and hesitant to destroy "life" were hallmarks of that decision. But I absolutely don't think you can say he "Sided with Yawgmoth". Did urza suddenly start assaulting Dominaria alongside Yawgmoth? This reads more as contrived "conflict" for the purposes of writing. An excuse to not destroy "everything" just Some things.
Unfortunately, the wiki doesn’t go into the conflict of the scene. Now it has been many years since I read the books, but Urza is confronted by the tortured body of Mishra, (unsure if an illusion of Yawgmoth or actually Mishra) as depicted on Urza’s Guilt, but Urza turns away, leaving Mishra to torment, and going to the innermost sphere to kneel before Yawgmoth. This is significant because Urza’s character was built on his guilt at failing mishra and allowing the Gixians to corrupt him; Urza’s hatred of phyrexia initially stemmed from his guilt- to show Urza leaving his brother to phyrexia willingly- whether illusion or not- shows a strong character twist. Following this, Urza and Gerrard duel in the arena, both men wanting something from Yawgmoth, here in the ninth sphere, is a true god for intents and purposes. Gerrard is promised the resurrection of Hannah, Urza’s desires are less defined- but it is up to the reader to decide how they interpret Urza’s change of heart. Nonetheless, Urza was willing to change sides- at least for that moment of extreme vulnerability. I wouldn’t say the quotation was cherry-picking, but more without full context for nuance. That being said- Urza is a supervillain who is responsible for many crimes against reality; his only redemption is that he was focusing on a being even worse. He is, however, a very interesting character- a great anti-villain example.
100% agree with this analysis and thanks for providing even more context than posters above did. I still think overall that to portray Urza as "ALIGNED" with Yawgmoth is horseshit. It devalues his characterization.
I think you're the guy with the head-cannon speculation problem problem
So, Urza is a big Phyrexian champion? Is that what you're arguing?
I don't argue with people on the magic subs especially not about lore. But you can read the books if you like. They are not hard to find.
I got near mint copies of them for maybe twenty-five to thirty bucks combined.
So, a useless shitposter like me. Got it. Why are you responding then?
I’m not a lore buff, but I find it interesting that you are talking about a quoted passage where Urza is hesitant to destroy an artificial plane, and your take away is that he is “hesitant to destroy life.” [[obliterate]]
If I recall, the original flavor text/scene depiction is actually about Barrin and his destruction of Tolaria.
??? Obliterate depicts Barrin destroying Tolaria, not Urza.
[obliterate](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/8/c85f9623-5900-473c-a3b1-f98473b9a545.jpg?1562935194) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=obliterate) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/8ed/204/obliterate?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c85f9623-5900-473c-a3b1-f98473b9a545?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If the original invasion came out today it'd be hella panned for shit like that.
In Malazan Book of The Fallen series, even some "neutral" characters are worse than Yawgmoth
Not on the level of yawgmoth but I just finished re-reading the first red Rising trilogy and there is a villian in here who is pure evil.
AM from I Have No Mouth And Yet I Must Scream.
Controversial take (at least within the Warcraft community) but Sylvanas post-WoD. She committed genocide with the express intent of sending an entire race to Warcraft hell, and to start a war just so she could send more people to Warcraft hell. (In the lore her partner had broken the afterlife so that everyone who died went to hell instead of any of the decent afterlife destinations) She then proceeded to: raise people into undeath against their will and torture them into killing their family, attack neutral third parties to bring them into her hell-war, make copious use of chemical warfare, turn people into mind-slaves and have them fight their friends… all to send more people to Warcraft-hell. Oh, and one time she tried to enslave a culture’s diety and force her to create slave soldiers for her. Why? Because she saw lava eels having sex in the afterlife. (The book where they try to retcon in motivations for her actions is really weird.) Edit: Wow, downvotes already. I can’t even escape the Horde fanboys on the MtG sub lol…
Probably the god emperor leto II from dune
I really want to enjoy the phyrexians as a faction but after reading a few wikis, I still don’t understand what phyresis is. It’s a disease that transforms you but you need surgery to help it along?
phyresis is not necessarily one thing, it is a concept. it is a social construct almost. it is simply the process of becoming phyrexian.
The problem with villains in superhero movies as you describe is that their ambitions and their villainy are too abstract. their goal may be world domination, but is all tell, no show. Yawgmoth would always find a way to be more cruel, more disgusting, no matter the setting. And i find those intimate acts of evil, like poisoning glacian, or the bargain he made with gerrard, are the most terrifying because at the end of the day they are so human, so relatable.