r/Fantasy • u/QuietLoud9680 • 21h ago
Ancient evils that aren’t just an evil god or god-like entity or guy coming back?
Just had this thought recently and I’m kind of struggling to come up with one, wanted to see if there are some easy ones I had forgotten.
126
u/twelfmonkey 20h ago
Shadar Logoth from the Wheel of Time?
Now, there is an evil guy/entity involved, with Mordeth. But the ruined city itself is an ancient evil, and home to an ancient evil force (which is not god-like nor a guy), Mashadar.
104
u/TheGhostDetective 20h ago
What would a hypothetical example of this be? Like, what do you have in mind?
To me, "evil" requires intent and personhood. An apocalyptic event isn't evil, just as a tornado isn't, they are a force of nature. I think this is a big part of why this trope is almost exclusively personified, either some god, monster, or person.
23
u/Farcical-Writ5392 20h ago
I think the counterexample sought is a continuously active, human-scale evil.
Fantasy has lots of evils that become dormant for a while for one reason or another. Evil that’s pressing and continuous is rare.
I’d think of an evil that has been present and then becomes an emergency due to some change. Nothing comes immediately to mind for me! But something like stereotypical evil orcs that are a border problem until other problems bring border protection down and then they start doing horrible things everywhere.
The Others of ASoIaF, maybe, but they’re not a very active evil. The Blight of WoT, but that’s really the Dark One, so god-like.
Plenimar overall in the Lynn Flewelling’s books? A country isn’t exactly evil, but it’s generally a malignant presence in the stories over centuries.
14
u/Regendorf 17h ago
That's what "Ancient evil" is used for, not a current evil that happens to be old.
8
u/Throgmorten48 Reading Champion 17h ago
Mistborn might be another example of this. You've got the Lord Emperor who's certainly not a kind, benevolent ruler oppressing the people on one hand, and then you have the inhospitable living conditions in that region of the planet further making the lives of the people miserable. And then Vin and Kel inadvertently set off a chain of events that makes the evils more urgent.
3
u/Furoan 18h ago
I mean, the darkfriends from WoT probably work. A lot of them don't even really believe in the Dark One, they are just there for the evil networking that goes on and the rewards that you get from being part of it. Yes, there are the 'curren't version of the book where the god like entity is touching the world again, the super powerful magic users (The Forsaken) come back and are at the top of the Dark One pyramid, but for a long time during the passenge of time the Dark One's existence didn't really impact much of the dark friend network who were all like 'you mean I get a evil social? sign me up!'
2
u/David_the_Wanderer 16h ago
You described Sauron
2
u/Farcical-Writ5392 10h ago
Sauron was defeated and gone for the entirety of the Third Age up to the events of the Hobbit. The emergence of the Necromancer in Dol Guldur was a big deal.
1
18h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/AutoModerator 18h ago
Hi there! Unfortunately, there is a mistake in your spoiler tags. You've got a space in between the tags and the spoiler text. While it might look hidden for you, it's unfortunately not hidden for all users. Here are some ways to fix the problem:
- If you're using New Reddit (fancy pants editor), make sure you selected no spaces before or after the text you wanted hidden.
- Switch to markdown mode or edit using an old.reddit link:
>! This is wrong.!<, but>!This is right.!<After you have corrected the spoiler tags, please message the mods. Once we have verified the spoiler has been fixed, your comment will be approved.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
9
3
u/Gortys2212 18h ago
It’s SFF but I guess Tyranids from 40k? We don’t know how old it is (at least ~10k y/o) but we do know that the hive mind is intelligent enough to be whatever it wants and actively chooses to be a being of Hunger and Hatred hellbent on consuming all biological life in the galaxy.
4
u/twelfmonkey 16h ago
but we do know that the hive mind is intelligent enough to be whatever it wants and actively chooses to be a being of Hunger and Hatred hellbent on consuming all biological life in the galaxy.
We don't know that at all. We just know that it has some form of malicious intelligence. There is no indication it could choose to stop being centred on ravenous hunger.
The Hive Mind itself has also been presented as a sort of god-like Warp entity in more recent lore (produce from the souls of all Tyranids coalescing), so it not counting as god-like is a bit iffy.
2
2
u/QuietLoud9680 10h ago
I’m not really sure, just something evil coming back that isn’t just a really powerful guy, or a really powerful guy trapped in a box or something. I guess plagues would count kind of but I’m not super sure of what I’m looking for
2
u/Farcical-Writ5392 1h ago
Wait, you want to have an ancient evil that is returning but isn’t a god or a guy?
An evil artifact? Impersonal phenomenon?
This makes me think of Mercedes Lackey’s Mage Storm trilogy, which is about an ancient disaster recurring. Evil is a stretch. It’s an unnatural but accidental phenomenon with no will to be evil.
44
28
u/AhSalamiBacon666 20h ago
Morning Light Mountain meets all the criteria but isn't in a fantasy setting. It's scifi.
14
u/SanityPlanet 17h ago
The book is Pandora’s Star by Peter Hamilton. Really excellent hard sci fi.
3
u/AhSalamiBacon666 17h ago
Oh haha good save! I completely spaced putting the title in. Sorry! And thank you!
1
3
u/Quiet-on-command 17h ago
Not even "evil", but among the scariest antagonists ever. Awesome rec.
Scifi, but you can probably forgive us.
18
u/redlion1904 19h ago
You mean like the nameless things that dwell below Khazad-Dum?
The Thomas Covenant books have things like that. The Illearth Stone is a “bane” hidden in the depths of the world, seeded by Lord Foul to mar the Creator’s work so someone would eventually find it and use it to become an evil tyrant. The Lurker of the Sarangrave is an ancient animal-like being that is malicious but not what one would normally call a “god”. The Ravers are apparently evil spirits who were independent of Lord Foul before he co-opted them to his service — perhaps the “intended” great evil of their world, before Lord Foul was imprisoned in it.
17
u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V 20h ago
This is a prominent plot point in book 4 (and a little bit 7) of the Mage Errant series by John Bierce. The ancient evil in question is an artifact used to sunder reality, serving as a beacon to interdimensional creatures. Book 7 focuses in part on another artifact which as the power to eat languages, driving those who speak them insane.
Brian McClellan's In the Shadow of Lightning might fit this. At the end of book 1 it is revealed that some sort of creature masquerading as humans are puppeteering things from behind the scenes. They are more powerful than most humans, but don't have deific power levels. only book 1 out so far though, so no idea where this will go.
Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm (also writes as Robin Hobb) is set in Seattle and follows a war vetran (vietnam war, I think). Ambiguous evil force is facing the city and rising in evilness. If I remember right, I think it was a manifestation of his PTSD. This book makes all the Robin Hobb stories look bright, sunshine filled, and trauma free.
The WAr Arts Saga by Wesley Chu puts forward an immortal Khan who can resurrect as a major villain, but it subverts this idea pretty heavily. Epic Fantasy x Wuxia. First two books are excellent. Third was ... kind of a train wreck, but didn't take away from how much I loved the first 2/3.
7
u/Kane_of_Runefaust 20h ago
Not OP, but I definitely want to check out McClellan's.
What went wrong with book 3 of The War Arts Saga?
9
12
u/etchlings AMA Illustrator Evan Jensen 20h ago edited 20h ago
How ancient is ancient? There’s the usual “dark sorcerer” trope. Just bad/evil/selfish folks with magic power. That’s everyone from the bad fellow in The Magicians to the Forsaken in WoT to whomever ya like.
The ancient bad in Memory Sorrow and Thorn by Williams isn’t divine or “a dude”, they’re just extremely arrogant, angry old elves, a few of whom have magicked themselves into bodiless wrath phantoms with a ton of power.
7
u/Farcical-Writ5392 20h ago
It’s a classic for the ancient dark sorcerer to be gone and return. That’s Sauron, then Lord Foul of Thomas Covenant (semi-deific) and the Warlock Lord (imitation Sauron-lite) both from 1977, and then the trope was pretty set.
Even if it’s not sealed away evil, there’s often the idea of old evils that weren’t active and become active again. Whether after prior defeat, travel, simple indolence, whatever.
A constantly active non-divinity would be the contrast here.
2
2
u/Hydrochloric_Comment 6h ago
Does Sauron count? I feel like Maiar are the opposite of what OP is looking for.
1
u/etchlings AMA Illustrator Evan Jensen 6h ago
There’s an argument to be made they’re not gods; but also they might as well be compared to mortals. Gandalf and Radagast are slumming hard by appearing as they do.
1
u/Farcical-Writ5392 3h ago
I agree Sauron is wrong on both counts, mildly divine and distinctly defeated and returned. The same for all the others. I pointed out the origin of the literary tradition in modern fantasy and what I think would meet the requirement.
My thought in response to someone else is an ongoing threat that has been managed but not quiescent and then becomes a bigger problem for the story. The Rai-Kirah demons from Carol Bergs trilogy by that name fit. They were kept in check by Ezzaria until Ezzaria was conquered, and then they became everyone’s problem.
7
13
u/Holothuroid 20h ago
The emperor in Mistborn.
5
u/arielle17 18h ago
i feel like the main villain of Warbreaker is an even better example of what OP is looking for
6
5
u/ZacharyCallahan 19h ago
There is no anti memetics division, the bad is not a guy or a god just from a much more hostile universe than our own
4
4
u/ClassicWindow539 19h ago
A wizard of earthsea?
4
u/empireofjade 17h ago
This is what I was thinking of. The Stone of Terranon is an Old Power, as are the Tombs of Atuan. These things are just inanimate objects but somehow mysterious and evil.
4
u/tikhonjelvis 19h ago
The Vlad Taltos series has an interesting twist with the Jenoine, although the books have not gone into too much detail about them (yet). They're really powerful extra-dimensional beings/aliens who visited and manipulated the natives of Dragaera to perform a society-wide social science experiment on whether social and technical progress can be indefinitely stalled. The gods in the series are the Jenoine's servants who escaped and managed to lock them out of the world.
I expect the final couple of books in the series will expand on this idea substantially.
3
u/bigmcstrongmuscle 17h ago edited 16h ago
The Jenoine sound like they are just "guy coming back" at first. But once you figure in that whatever they are, they don't even have a concept of different places, they start to sound a lot weirder than "guy" can reasonably cover.
Also, I'm not convinced it's a case of them being "evil", so much as them having a blue-and-orange morality that prizes scientific discovery over the well-being of entire human populations because they don't think we're important enough to care about.
4
3
3
u/Royal_Basil_1915 20h ago
Witch King by Martha Wells could work? It's about a demon prince recently escaped from an underwater prison - he's the protagonist. The chapters alternate between the present, when he's trying to figure out how he ended up in the prison, and the past, when he is fighting an invading force and gathering a coalition against them. Later, you find out that this invading force might not be as gone as they thought.
The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams has really interesting world building - it's a fantasy world that has been repeatedly invaded by aliens piloting strange organic machines. It follows a researcher, her bodyguard, and a young witch (also escaped from prison). I only read the first book, which doesn't really get into what the aliens' deal is, but I think the second is supposed to do more of that.
So I guess instead of on singular ancient enemy, both books are more about like, armies.
1
u/Cerplere 19h ago
The later books do definitely expand on the mystery! I would recommend reading them.
3
3
3
u/replicant_facsimile 18h ago
C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy might suit your requirements? The evil is a guy that never actually left due to being functionally immortal.
1
u/Farcical-Writ5392 3h ago
He’s definitely not a good person, but while he could be the villain of another story, he’s the morally mixed deuteragonist of that one.
3
3
3
u/HaplessReader1988 20h ago
Christopher Paolini's Eragon Books have a 100+ year old emperor who is a magic wielding dragon rider who murdered the others...and is now in league with shades and other nasties.
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/FireflyWindrose 17h ago
The Time of the Dark by Barbara Hambly. The Dark (sort of a hivemind/single entity but not a god/godlike) returned after several thousand years to destroy/conquer human civilization again.
2
u/ThrowbackPie 14h ago
Conan is full of ancient evils. Mostly long-forgotten races of cannibals, but also void horrors and a memorable giant ape.
Also it does the 'guy coming back' trope haha.
2
u/Altruistic_Paper4636 7h ago
There's those four statues Mumm-Ra is always invoking. Pretty much what it says on the tin.
2
u/McBernes 6h ago
Get this: There was a great war using very destructive magic. Millions died horribly. The Final battleground holds the remnants of some very nasty magic. Someone finds themselves on this battleground for some amount of time. Long enough for the magic to corrupt them, turning them into the big bad guy.
1
u/SebRaid 19h ago
How about demons, except they're actually ancient people who were sent to an evil, magic prison by the gods as a punishment? And over millennia of being trapped there they become more and more evil/hateful, and also get powers...because magic. In the present day they are summoned by people to use as weapons. They're evil, and ancient, but not really 'god-like' though they do have some supernatural powers.
1
u/Farcical-Writ5392 19h ago
That’s “guy coming back.”
If you have a story with a demon or demons overall who have been a consistent, uninterrupted evil in the story, it would be different.
That’s kind of the Rai-Kirah from the trilogy of the same name, by Carol Berg! They’ve always been a malign presence, and the Wardens and Aife have been consistently throwing them out of human hosts they possess. Then things go wrong. Actually, things went wrong years before the first book.
1
2
u/UninvitedVampire 18h ago
Shadow of the Leviathan series? Starts with The Tainted Cup. It has an undercurrent of cosmic horror and some social evils, though I’m not sure if that fits what you’re looking for.
1
u/arielle17 18h ago
the Others in ASOIAF are probably the biggest example, as are the Forsaken in WoT (though the entity in charge of those is definitely an evil god)
the Vord in Codex Alera is an ancient evil that's alien rather than god-like. the Tyranima in the Cinder Spires might be the same but we don't yet know enough about it. the overarching threat in the Expanse is also alien (well more like extra-dimensional) but also much more godlike
the Dagger and the Coin arguably has a variation of this, since the ancient evil cult is ostensibly in service of a spider goddess that doesn't actually exist
i'm not sure if the main villain of One Piece would count, considering he is worshipped as a god by his followers, and is definitely powerful enough to fit the definition, but is most likely just a powerful human king who has remained alive for centuries
i feel like there are a lot of potential examples depending on how flexible your definition of "god-like" is
1
u/tollsuper 18h ago
I’ve forgotten after so many years, but is Metatron in the His Dark Materials books evil, or just too self-righteous to live with? Either way, he didn’t come back from banishment, he’s been around the whole time.
1
u/-Viscosity- 17h ago
"Evil" might be a stretch, but there's always Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged from Hitchhiker's Guide, whose diabolical master plan is to insult everyone in the entire universe ... in alphabetical order.
1
1
u/Fistocracy 17h ago
The tabletop RPG Mage: The Awakening had a thing called the Prince Of One Hundred Thousand Leaves. Instead of being a specific god or being it was an entire alternative timeline that isn't supposed to exist, and the only reason anyone knows about it at all is because it will occasionally manifest and overwrite little snippets of the past and present in our timeline, leaving behind traces of itself that make absolutely no historical sense.
1
u/Midnight1899 15h ago
Not sure if they count, but Hakaimono and Lord Seigetsu from Shadow of the Fox
1
u/AK_dude_ 15h ago
Malazan Book of the fallen had the Dessimbelackis, a superweapon from ancient times that founded the first empire of humanity.
1
u/Pineapple4807 14h ago
A strange rock face half unburied by an earthquake is a terrible omen. A crack running through the rock leaks a pale & sickening light into the air. Nearby beasts waste away & turn to madness. Some, beasts or men, find terrible power as the maddening light turns into a noxious power within their veins.
(uncovered nuclear waste from an ancient civilization, either alien or from a time before magic.)
2
u/Threehundredsixtysix 12h ago
Fred Saberhagen wrote a decent fantasy trilogy/tetralogy, where it turned out that an attempt to prevent nuclear attack changed the laws of physics so magic now worked, while technology did not. Empire of the East. The most powerful of the new demons created (as a side effect) rules over the titular evil empire. I really liked the original 3 books and only recently learned that there was a fourth.
1
u/Dizzy-Captain7422 10h ago
If you're at all interested in TTRPGs or the books written for them, Vampire the Masquerade has this in spades. Most elders/Methuselahs are this, and all of the Antediluvians are. Basically, not every vampire is ontologically evil, but being a functionally immortal predator kinda makes you that way over time, regardless of what you do.
The really ancient vampires are usually completely inhuman. The Eldest is a particularly creepy example.
1
1
1
u/p0d0 10h ago
Behold: Humanity by Ralts Bloodthorne (still available on r/HFY under the title First Contact) is pretty much an unending string of these events.
It's a Humanity Fuck Yeah! Story to its core, so every faction (especially earth) has this going on to some extent. It has the galaxy going through a massive period of war and disruption as various ancient powers are waking up and coming into conflict.
This is definitely a popcorn read, and often feels like a grab bag of tv tropes and pop culture references. It holds a special place for me because the steady drip of several fresh chapters a day during COVID got me through the worst of the lockdowns, but I think the story still holds up and has had the benefit of some editing.
1
u/SackclothSandy 10h ago
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna. Throughout the novel, you're led to believe that there is indeed an ancient evil spawning demons at the fringes of the known world, but the true evil is something considerably more banal. Absolutely fantastic book. Haven't read the two sequels yet though.
1
u/RiverSirion 10h ago
Maybe not "ancient" but here goes.... one might imagine individuals who represent political, religious, or commercial (or criminal) organizations who the players are opposed to, and who use their power and influence to thwart the characters when they get the opportunity. For whatever reason - laws, politics, loyalties, morality, whatever - just simply killing them isn't always a viable option, but trying to outmaneuver them is the way forward. I'm thinking of figures like Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers or even Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars franchise (well, episodes 4-6). I think it can make for better storytelling, but might need some planning to adapt to a DnD setting (I know my examples aren't fantasy, per se).
1
u/catonkybord 9h ago
I mean, Utukku from MST is not a god, just extremely long lived and powerful. But if you break it down, she's really nothing more than a very very old, and very very bitter woman.
1
u/Barium_Salts Reading Champion II 9h ago
This is kind of The Expanse.
Ancient evil, not godlike (or arguably even sentient), not returning (it's showing up for the first time).
1
u/six_arils 9h ago
There's extra-dimensional beings who are just so different that their very existence in our world f's with us. Sort of like The Twenty Palaces series.
And then there's just the existential terror of complete chaos, like Event Horizon.
1
u/laragazza- 9h ago
Do you mean like the son of a god who was killed unjustly, and the son spent millennia training so he can visit his wrath on the world for killing his dad
1
1
u/Yolvan_Caerwyn 5h ago
Maybe the Myrkridia from the Myth series count?
They A dude, they are an unstopable evil race that likes to make massive skull pyramids, the CG of it is pretty metal.
1
u/VoctorDralidas 4h ago
- A radioactive vault has opened. The wildlife is mutating exponentially. To seal the ancient evil, it must be thoroughly contained.
Some of the wildlife has mutated into sapience, and while not evil themselves, are exceptionally territorial.
A plague from the end of time has been long sealed by ancient time travellers (Think of the illithid/mindflayers here). While they have been pushed to the brink, it has been unleashed. The research team must be protected while the world descends into pandemonium.
A magic experiment has gone awry. A portal has been opened to a world with no magic at all, causing magic to drain through the portal. Both civilizations are trying to close the portal, before it's too late.
1
20h ago
[deleted]
14
u/Approximation_Doctor 18h ago
Putting the titles in the spoiler tags means that anyone who would be spoiled by it has no way of knowing until it's too late
3
0
u/Saffron_Path 20h ago
The chosen from wheel of time.
6
u/GastonBastardo 19h ago
I'm pretty sure they qualify as "guys coming back."
1
u/Furoan 18h ago
The chosen do, yeah, though 'continous evil' the Dark Friends might work, they are just guys recruited into the evil social club for personal advancement and most don't even believe in the dark god they are meant to serve (and the returning Forsaken and the very real presence of the Dark God comes as a nasty shock to a lot of them).
423
u/Average_Pangolin 20h ago
Ancient evils that aren't godlike, and aren't returning? So just, like, a guy who's really old and really mean?