from DH and the literature, ignoring Chaos Marines, 40k just seems to lack decent villains.

descriptions start off interesting - brilliant guy trained in an academy of evil, or corrupted priest with a mysterious background, or highly talented, rich and degenerate noble.

But then they boil down to - seems to randomly cause trouble. Is psychotic and evil. Has no known goals. Just likes to be mean to people.

Are there any villains out there that aren't just psychotic? WIth a goal of bringing a loved one back to life, getting revenge on one particular person, or some other simple (but possibly megamaniacal) goal?

In the written background of 40K not many because it is primerily based on the TT game and so the focus is away from that sort of character. In the 40K universe there will be many individuals like that but the scale of 40K means that they will unlikely be famous outside their area of space. Basically if you want to use someone like that you have to make them up yourself because they are the least obvious characters to appear in 40K literature. The upside is that they are the types of people who are likely to go to extreme lengths to get what they want and disregard the saftey and security of the Imperium so they are basically textbook advesaries of the Inquisition.

Kaihlik

Why ignore the chaos space marines, there are plenty of HQ units if you read through the codexes that are wonderful villans if you are willing to go that high scale on baddies. I mean look at Cypher the fallen angel of the dark angels chapter, in the great heresy when the dark angels began the civil war against eachohter on caliban Lion el' johnson and his most trusted right hand ( the name escapes me right now, if anyone knows it), the lion was killed and his friend realised once the deed was done his horrible act and ended his own life (Granted my memory serves me right..) The world was being orbital bombarded during all the fighting and so much damage was done that the planet was destroyed. Before it completly colapsed the chaos gods pulled all of the heretic angels off of the planet and sucked them into the warp to be safe until they were needed again, which leads to the current hunt for the fallen that the Dark Angels strive to complete. Cypher is the hardest to catch http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Cypher

The villain in the novel Relentless just a normal naval officer trying to keep what he thought was rightfully his command and he be damned if the real captain (Captain Becket), the Commissar or anyone else cared. He is a good example of a non-psychotic, non-chaos worshipping villain, just a officer with ambition and a sense of being wronged.

In the novel Star of Damocles, while the greated backdrop is a war with the Tau (nay, I say a Crusade!) but the true struggle was between Lucien and the head priest of the Crusade. The preist wasnt a heretic or a chaos spawn, he was just a man with power who beleived he was in the right and his opinion mattered more then anyone else.

In Rebel Winter while there are orks to contend with, the other foe was a break way imperial world. They were not swayed by chaos, they were not crazy or diabolic, they just believed the Imperium had abandoned them and thus decided to breakway from the Imperium.

The Kal Jericho comics had him going up against a vast range of non Chaos worshipping foes. Just criminals, thugs, crime bosses and that sort of nonsense.

Its all what you make of it. A Juvenant addicted, bloated crime boss ruling over a small desert world outpost who traffics arms to the highest bidder may very well be involved in the Cold Trade, shipping arms to insurgents on Tranch or helping the Amarantine Syndicate make contacts and deals and he doesnt have to be a xeno-loving chaos worshipping mutant. Just a greedy sumbitch. He may even aid the characters once he finds out his latest cargo is a shipment of viruses smuggled to him by the Dark Eldar to wreck havoc on a colony they plan to raid afterwards.

So as was said before, they are there, you just have to squint to see them.

There were Quixos and Cherubael, IMO, they were pretty good villains, as were the ones in the Ravenor Trilogy

The imperium are/can be villans as well...

Anyone with a different opinion is a villan. A fire-and-brimstone burnemall inquisitor and a long haired lets all be friends and let the demons run wild hippy can both be villains, depending on who the story is following.

The best villians in stories are often the ones that are designed in counter the heroes. A favourite of mine is to let the group decide on their characters and then create an antagonist for them. So if your group creates a team mostly of arbites or scum-gone-good then consider a crime boss as a bad guy. If they have strong priest character is blatently going to be a leader then give them a 'heretical' opponent (ie someone who doesnt have the same opinion!). In short, flip the whole thing on its head. Look at the heroes youve got and think about what sort of bad guys the Inquisition would send that team after.

My current campaign has a suitably psychotic misled bad guy as head of the conspiracy (The Chirugeon from Edge of Darkness), but most of the minions and bad eggs the team encounter have all too mundane motivations: politics, power, money, simply doing a job or odd beliefs. Bad guys don't have to be chaotic and psychotic for the PCs to be gunning for them, all they need to do is tick the Inquisition off...

Not all are psychotic chaos killers bent on destroying humanity, in fact some of the best villains make your characters go hmmm.

From the books, I remember the short story where Eisenhorn goes after a "heresy" only to find that the heresy wasn't one as such, but a group of battle-scarred war veterans who were still fighting the war, even though they had been decommisioned. As much as I don't exactly think Eisenhorn is the greatest read of all time, the fact that he was fighting loyal servents of the Emperer, trying to do the best they could to serve him, but the trama of the war wouldn't let them stop fighting it was simply fantastic. Villains sure, heretics no.

I know in our group one of the most heartbreaking personally was the one where our inquisitor sent us to investigate a world for heresy. What we found was technically a heresy, but one of a different color. See the world was a poor world over all and was constantly threatened by Ork and Eldar raiders. So one day the people decided not to send its tithe to the Imperium anymore, in order to help strengthen its own world.

They were loyal to the Emperer, almost fanatic, but they simply wouldn't send off their people to fight the Emperer's wars, nor their resources in some far off battlefield, when they could fight the Alien on their hometurf with the same resources. They insisted, and proved, that the resources were better spent on the homeworld, do to the proven large amount of casualties they had inflicted on the Alien invaders because of the increased access to resources and manpower, then before when they sent their tithe to the Emperer.

It became interesting what we as players would have done, compared to what our characters eventually did. Even our characters fought, where we asked would it be better to ignore the so called heresy because of the improvements they were doing in the fight against the Alien, or should we fight all heresy at all cost.

A lot of us were quite personally distraught as the Imperial Navy decended and forceably carted off the tithe for the next 5 years, plus the back tithe, and we personally executed the entire ruling government for heresy. All because they tried to help out their home world, and fight the Alien, and actually did a better job then the slow moving beauracracy of the Imperium could or did.

****SPOILER ALERT****

If you haven't read Legion in the Horus Heresy series, don't read any further if you don't want the book spoiling for you

I know you said barring Chaos Space Marines in the OP, but one legion does deserve a mention in the form of the Alpha Legion

They're villains and heretics in the eyes of the entire Imperium because they put their lot in with Horus during the Heresy, but in reality they joined Horus because it was the only real way to wipe out Chaos - Horus winning the war would have created feelings of immense guilt within him that would have turned to rage and anger as he lashed out at humanity, wiping everything out in the galaxy, leaving Chaos with no worshippers and that would have resulted in the entities in the Warp losing their power and eventually would have resulted in the 'death' of Chaos and the Warp returning to how it was originally.

Basically, my point is that it's possible to have a villain that's acting in the best interests of other, but is viewed as heretical in the eyes of everyone. Another example of this is the Soul Drinkers Chapter, throwing off the shackles of oppression at the hands of the Imperium (making them heretics) but still doing everything they do in the name of the Emperor.

Due to the Imperium's dogmatic approach to everything, you can set up some very good 'bad guys' who aren't really 'bad'.

For example; the Imperial tennet "Suffer not the alien to live".
What if an isolated Imperial world not only allowed aliens to live on their world, but did so willingly. What if they even *bred* with the aliens, and had happy little lives totally independant to the Imperium.

Then one day the Imperium arrives and declares the happy, alien-loving population to be heretics and then sends legions of Imperial guard to slaughter them all?
What if this is all down to the planet being the source of a valuable ore, which the Imperium wants?
Then what if the alien-lovers respond with violence, backed by their alien buddies?

Who's the bad guy then?

user4574 said:

If I remember correctly, they try to reawaken the Emperor by collecting his sons (called Senseis) and sacrificing them to him when his will finally fails to keep him alive and Astronomican working. The sacrificial should restore Emperor to his full glory as Sensei-Emperor, making him once again the leader of mankind instead of High Lords of Terra. Also, they are the only humans (and almost only sentient beings) who can come and go as they feel in the Black Library of Chaos.

Of course, their plan doesn't quite satisfy Amalathian inquisitors (Ordo Malleus is particularly interested to capture or destroy any Illuminati and Sensei they can catch) and it certainly doesn't please the High Lords of Terra or Cult of God-Emperor, because both of them would lose almost all of their power if the Emperor rose from Golden Throne. The High Lords of Terra would again be middle-management instead of rulers of Imperium and Cult of God-Emperor would cease to be, because the Emperor was most hardcore atheist I have red about and he certainly would not want to appear as some god.

This also brings out another great villain, Amalathian inquisitors. They want to destroy anyone who wants some kind of progress in the Imperium, if it isn't crusade against xenos or servants of Chaos.

If you don't really like the pre fab villians then do something about it......make your own villians. Those are always the best b/c they have everything that you are looking for a deep plot and goals. They feel more personalized so there fore it is more fun to play them and have PCs interact with them. A lot of the game is left to you to come up with something since you are really only in one sector of space.... there is still an entire galazy that you could move your PCs to.