I'm in the process of introducing a new villain for the current arc of my campaign. I've created a half-orc druid who taps into a forbidden druidic magic known as The Rot. At a young age, he's plagued with horrible dreams where he comes face to face with a cosmic entity that he does not understand. Over time he has become obsessed with the entity and intends on pulling it from his nightmares to plague the material plane.

I've had this villain in mind for quite some time but I feel like I need to not only understand the character better but provide interesting encounters involving him for my party. If anyone could give me some general advice provide a few questions to expand upon the character and help me come up with a villain that could really put some fear into my party.

This is a party of level 14 characters who are currently in charge of a small town.

I like the sound of this- a Gillian driven to villainy by outside forces.

How does he intend to pull the creature into his universe? Is there an artifact or ritual? A specific time or place where the walls between dimensions are weakest?

Maybe he looks for information himself in an ancient monument to the creature, and the players need this information too.

Does he he want to 'share' his madness and vision? Are there any monstrous equivalents to the creature he would enlist? 

Maybe the ancient monument is under the town the heroes protect and the villagers are having similar visions? If you have ever seen the anime 'Full Metal Alchemist' there is an episode with a massive spell etched into the ground around the town that uses the villagers as material component of a spell?

Encounter wise, a race to an artifact that flickers between dimensions, infected villagers attacking the pcs that the pcs do not wish to hurt, have one of the pcs infected by your villain and the cure will doom the village. I think any cross dimensional enemies (githinki  and githzerai, mindflayers, slaad etc) would match your theme. If your wanting themed dungeons they would all have different style and architecture (e.g. mindflayers levitate so no stairs in their cities). Hope even one of those suggestions prompts something for you 😁 

Villains have goals, and abilities, and tactics ( which are influenced by their world view and personality ).

What I would do is set up a main goal for him ( let the "cosmic entity" into the Material Plane ), then set up a strategy for him to do it. That strategy will involve sub-goals. Set it up so that those sub-goals impact the party, or things that the party cares about.

The party and the villain might not even be aware of each other at first - but it's the conflicts of their values and goals which bring them into direct confrontation.

Stereotypical Example: The villain need to retrieve ( or destroy ) a series of artifacts which can aid ( or hinder ) bringing some of the minions of the cosmic entity into the material plane. One of those artifacts is kept in one of the temples of the small town. So, he sends minions to attack the town and retrieve it. They may - or may not - carry off some damsel for sacrifice in the fell rites needed to activate ( or destroy ) the artifact if the party needs more motivation.

You can structure the short and medium term goals of the BBEG to continuously run up against things the party cares about. Eventually, you might not need to do this, as the party will start to take things personally, and start acting against the BBEG for reasons of revenge, or stopping him on ideological grounds, or when they discover - eventually - the overall horrific goal.

Now you have a series of "negative goals" ( stop the BBEG from accomplishing things) and positive goals (gather allies and resources to oppose the BBEG at the final showdown at the end of the campaign arc). You can make these as nuanced and multi-layered as you want: maybe you need the local Elven settlement as allies, and to make them allies, you have to accomplish something for them - which spins off on an entire side quest that may not even involve the minions and goals of the BBEG, but is motivated by it.

You've got a very fertile ground to mine for all sorts of story possibilities here :)

Good Luck :)

I'd check out Out of the Abyss or the recent Mordenkeinen's book, and look up Our Lady of Fungi, Zuggtmoy, as well as the Unearthed Arcana for the Circle of Spores.  She's very much a Lovecraftian horror (google Yuggoth for more info), she's called the Queen of Rot and Decay, cultists and people that see her are inflicted with "madness."

Seems like it would be a good match for what you're trying to accomplish. 

thanks for the responses. ill answer these questions shortly 😊

@Onitwin @Vedexent I had an idea that he was performing the ritual over the course of a few months that required him to travel a great distance planting seeds along the way forming a crop circle of rot magic for the dream god to come through. The town just so happens to be one of the last spots. 

his rot magic also corrupts animals and creatures so he has monsters that obey him automatically. I love your suggestions though. I like the idea of flickering dimensions and utilizing an ancient monument.

@Mephista ill take a look at that. the dream god is still a concept to be expanded on and I'm sure that'll give me some good ideas

Personally, I find that "madness" as a personality characteristic is not often a satisifying justification for villany. The root of this madness needs to be something else, a deeper character flaw or experience, ideally one that could even be seen in a sympathetic light. Otherwise, you risk this being a rather one-note antagonist.

I'd suggest taking some time to think about why this entity chose the half-orc druid in the first place. What about the druid's personality or his history made him more inclined to turn to this forbidden magic and to open himself up to this nightmarish creature? What's his driving motive for wanting to bring this entity into the world in the first place? Whatever this motive is, it should color the way the druid approaches his goals.

There's some really good suggestions for encounters above, and for the type of monsters that might serve this half-orc druid and the entity that controls him. But having the players directly confront the druid would be a bit of a missed opportunity. For this type of enemy, it really helps to play up the horror aspect.

You noted that the PCs are 14th level and in charge of a small town. It may be difficult to threaten the characters themselves, who are very high-level, but you can certainly threaten the town itself. A creeping blight that corrupts animals and plants could be an existential threat to a town that is worried about the coming winter, and it's a problem that may be difficult for the PCs to solve with brute force. On the mental side of things, inflicting terrible nightmares on the townsfolk could lead to them committing terrible acts against one another or even rising up against their rulers (the PCs). This can also introduce some potential consequences, as how the PCs deal with infected townsfolk may have repercussions even after this entity is ultimately defeated.

I'd also suggest thinking a little more about why this town happens to be the last site for your villain's ritual. Is there something about this town in particular? Perhaps there was a tragic event or an atrocity somewhere in the town's history that could be dredged up again by all these events.

There are a few other monsters in D&D lore that can cause these kinds of effects (nightmarish visions, rot and decay). Mephista mentioned Zuggtmoy, but there's also many undead creatures with similar characteristics, and night hags for the dream aspect. It could be fun to have the PCs try to piece together what exactly it is they're confronting as the town is slowly falling apart around them. You can ratchet up the suspense and fear of the unknown as the PCs slowly discard other, more common explanations for these phenomena, only to realize they have no idea what they're dealing with.

Also, I think this kind of plot is well-suited to a slow burn. Introduce clues about this new threat gradually. Perhaps it begins with some really minor "omens" related to the Rot and then slowly increases in intensity as the druid proceeds with his plan.

Depends on how you do "madness" - I mean, mustash twirling villains are always lame.  But you can have someone with a psychological impulse towards killing people in order to calm their nerves down as a direct result of bad parenting as a child; that's pretty much the text book definition of a psychopath killer, really.  Everyone's always got a story. Its just a question of how you develop said story.

And "madness" in this case is really closer to magical brainwashing into a cult.  Cults happen to good people and turn them into scary zealots all the time in reality. The hook here is to get the people away from the source of their deranged behavior and see if they can be cured - they're victims here. A disease that needs a cure, not just flames and killings.