Xykon

Xykon is the main villain of the webcomic The Order of the Stick, created and written by Rich Burlew.

Biography

Background

Xykon was born human, 107 years prior to the events of the comic. He had a natural talent for necromancy, which he developed in childhood by zombifying his dog and later (by his teenage years) his grandmother. After an interview with Dr. Xavion, a wizard who tried to recruit him to his S-Men, a group of sorcerers who use their powers for good, Xykon realised that his power was due to his being a sorcerer, proceeding to kill and zombify the wizard, whom he sets upon his parents along with his grandmother. At this point he developed a love of coffee and chose the name of Xykon to replace the name his parents gave him. He served for some time under an Unholy Master, but when the Master chose not to promote Xykon due to his lack of strategic and leadership skills, he later cut loose to start his own evil team.

Forty years later, Xykon slew (and zombified) the wizard Fyron Pucebucket, solely for Fyron's crown, in front of his apprentice Eugene Greenhilt. It was later revealed that the crown had no magical properties, and Xykon merely thought it looked "badass." This led to Eugene swearing a "Blood Oath of Vengeance" against the sorcerer, an oath that, with his death, has now passed down to Eugene's children, Roy and Julia. Xykon remembers very little of this event due to the sheer number of people swearing revenge on him for killing their loved ones in front of them, though he does tell Roy more details of the event upon taking back his crown, which Roy had worn on a necklace.

Xykon then fell in with the goblin Redcloak, who told him of a plan to unlock one of the gates imprisoning the Snarl and use the monster to blackmail the gods themselves. However, the gate's defender, Lirian, defeated Xykon with a virus that neutralized his spellcasting powers. Redcloak restored Xykon's power by killing him with a spell that turned him into a lich, making him immune to the virus and later returning to successfully kill Lirian; an unexpected side effect was his inability to enjoy coffee any longer, which seems to have made him even more cruel and sadistic than before as well as being more intelligent.

Six months prior to the start of the webcomic, Xykon took over the Dungeon of Dorukan, killing the wizard Dorukan, in order to gain access to Dorukan's gate (Lirian's having been destroyed by fire when Redcloak fought her treant servants). Filling the dungeon with goblins, mercenaries and undead minions, he waited for his chance to unlock the gate.

Order of the Stick

That chance came with the arrival of the Order of the Stick, led by Roy Greenhilt, out to fulfill his father's blood oath. Needing people of pure heart to open the gate, Xykon allowed them to gain access to his throne room and attempted to bluff them into completing his plan. Elan the bard was on the verge of doing so, when Haley Starshine, who had learned the details of Xykon's plan from one of his goblin minions, stopped him. The annoyed lich inflicted pain on the pair, only to be confronted by Roy. Angered to learn that Xykon had no particular interest in his oath, on the grounds that he'd slain more people than he could be bothered to remember, then enraged by the lich's casual destruction of his ancestral greatsword, Roy knocked off Xykon's head (a mere inconvenience to the lich), then threw both parts of his foe into the gate. The energies of the gate completely destroyed Xykon's body. With their master gone, Xykon's forces either ran or attempted to surrender (only to be killed by Belkar). Dungeon, gate and the castle above were all destroyed when Elan set off the self-destruct system that Dorukan had built into his stronghold.

Although his physical form was destroyed, Xykon's phylactery, made from the unholy symbol of his chief minion, the goblin high priest Redcloak, remained intact, allowing him to regrow his body over the next few weeks. He assembled a new, much larger army of hobgoblins (88 legions of approximately 300 hobgoblins each) and used them to reclaim his tower from an infestation of good-aligned creatures. He added many of these to his forces in undead form, most notably a zombie silver dragon which served as his mount.

He continued with his master plan to gain power, having turned his attention to the three remaining Gates located around the world, each of which could be used in the same manner as Dorukan's. Selecting the Azure City Gate as his next target, they successfully assaulted the outer watchtowers of the realm, eliminating the guards, imprisoning the paladin Miko Miyazaki (although he intended her to escape, allowing him to use her as a scrying focus to successfully determine the precise location of the Gate) and destroying the warning beacon before it could be activated. The army (approximately 30,000 Hobgoblins and several hundred zombies, ghouls and siege engines) arrived at Azure City and the attack got underway. Xykon's disregard for such things as tactics meant that they used a plan constructed solely by Redcloak to assault the city. This mainly involved using three decoy Xykons, a cowardly Eye of Fear and Flame leading the southern division, a Death Knight leading a charge at the breach in Azure City's walls made by Redcloak's titanium elementals and a Huecuva (undead cleric) holding position in the rear; all three are humanoid skeletal creatures that look no different than a lich, to the extent that Redcloak gave them colored pendants to tell them apart. The real Xykon was flying towards the castle on a zombie dragon, under a Greater Invisibility spell.

After Sangwaan, Azure City's seer, revealed him with a True Seeing spell, Durkon dispelled his invisibility. Xykon then made several passes over the battlements, but was warded off and then assaulted mid-flight by Roy with his Starmetal sword. After unsuccessfully trying to talk Roy into giving up the attack, he destroyed his own mount with a Meteor Swarm, sending Roy falling to his death. He then flew off under his own power, using the Overland Flight spell he had cast earlier. On the way he recruited Tsukiko, a prisoner released to defend the city, who told him the location of the throne room where the rift is located. Upon entering the throneroom however, he found that it was heavily guarded by the Sapphire Guard. When the Guard attempted to attack him, using their sheer numbers to overwhelm Xykon, the lich responded by using a single Symbol of Insanity inscribed on a rubber bouncing ball to drive almost the entire Guard into madness, attacking each other, and proceeded to casually destroy the rest. However, while Xykon was gloating over the success of the Insanity superball, all the spirits of the slain paladins ascended and took on new forms as 'Ghost-Martyrs' alongside the spirit of Soon Kim, Founder of the Sapphire Guard. Faced with a massive battalion of spirit warriors and an even more powerful foe in Soon, Xykon was rendered speechless. In danger of being overwhelmed, Xykon was rescued by the arrival of Redcloak, who told the lich to focus on Soon Kim's spirit while he dealt with the others. Realising that Soon knew about his phylactery, Xykon attempted to get Redcloak to leave, but the pair were swiftly incapacitated. Only when Soon was distracted by the arrival of the delusional Miko Miyazaki was Xykon able to escape, carrying Redcloak with him. After escaping the destruction and healing themselves, Xykon and Redcloak proceeded to proclaim that Azure City was under their rule.

Personality, traits and abilities

Xykon is, in many ways, a highly stereotypical evil overlord as seen in many fantasy novels and roleplaying games and does his best to live up to all the clichés associated with the role. However he is also genuinely cruel and sadistic, mainly taking joy in the deaths of others. He is rarely surprised by anything, is normally guided by his whims and cannot remember the names of the Order (often butchering Roy Greenhilt's surname into Bluepommel, Redblade or some other variation, if he is able to remember at all who he is) and has to be reminded by Redcloak who they are, which hints at either a vast experience with adventurers and villains, or else his low intellect and chaotic nature. He is often shown to be rather casual about his evil deeds and is rarely in a serious mood. He finds tactical discussions tedious, apparently feeling that simply throwing his minions, who he generally regards as being completely expendable, into the fray in huge numbers will get the job done. He does have a certain talent for improvising methods to get by obstacles however. His general approach to his activities indicates that he gets bored with conventional strategy and he already knows what he's going to do, and doesn't see a need to discuss it. His stated belief is that there is a level of force against which no tactics can be successful and one of the keys to victory is how far one is willing to debase oneself until feeling remorse. He has used the gullibility of heroes against the Order of the Stick, and he knows the genre conventions of evil. He is apparently at least level 20, possibly even Epic Level (21+), as he points out he is at least 7 levels higher than Roy (who is level 13 minimum, probably 14).

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