Thursday, 26 October 2023

Baron Ausbach

For today's countdown to Halloween post, I give you another trip down memory lane as well as a villain. All good stories need a good antagonist and horror stories are no exception. You may remember that I am found of the Forbidden Gateway gamebooks, a horror series that sadly had only two titles: Where the Shadows Stalk and its sequel, Terrors Out of Time. The first book ends on a cliffhanger, where an artifact your character brought is stolen by a mysterious figure. In the next book, this figure is introduced: it is Baron Ausbach. He is the main villain of the story and a really cool one at that. Not a vampire, although he does share some characteristics with them, but a sort of undead who looks like a mummified corpse(later on he also sports a pair of giant bat wings). What I like about him is that he is very much like classic horror monsters of old: as smart and resourceful as he is repulsive. He is not a mindless beast or a dumb zombie, he has a plan and he knows what he is doing. And his scheme involves world domination, of course. There should be more villains like Baron Ausbach in horror.

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