What if Xykon was the hero?

[Fyraltari]

He was the protagonist in Start of Darkness, and that was not boring.

Start of Darkness is not this story, though. If Xykon was the protagonist of this story it would be boring because he spends most of it waiting for somebody else to make a move.

[Kish]

He was the protagonist in Start of Darkness,

Not everyone agrees with your analysis.

[martianmister]

He was the protagonist in Start of Darkness, and that was not boring.

Are you sure?

[Lacuna Caster]

The greek gods picked sides mostly out of petty grudges (the whole mess started as a contest between the 3 main goddess for which one was prettiest after all).

And diomedes as a bloodthirsty idiot. Palamedes as a shady egoistical *******, Agammemnon as a kinslayer, Odysseus is literally called "heartless" a few times (if I am not mistaken). Also their collective abandonment of Philoctetes.

The Illiad reads to me as just a long parade of murderous roid-raging *******s. Which I find very interesting, given that the only greek deities Homer depicts as half-way capable of decency are Hephaestus and Athena.

I mean, it's not impossible for Xykon in his current form to be the Hero. There could easily be a scenario where he tries to save the world from being destroyed so he can conquer it instead.

Yeah, but I think the OP was referring more to a version of Xykon that's genuinely altruistic, rather than 'the lesser of two evils'.

Xykon's defining traits are Boredom, Vanity, Hedonism/Indulgence transmuted to Rage/Self-Hate, and a total disregard for others. There's... not much obvious heroic potential there. Wringing a hero's journey out of that would be like reforming Belkar, but squared.

[georgie_leech]

The Illiad reads to me as just a long parade of murderous roid-raging *******s. Which I find very interesting, given that the only greek deities Homer depicts as half-way capable of decency are Hephaestus and Athena.

I mean, the opening lines of The Illiad directly call out that it's about rage, so a parade of roid-raging %&€#@'s is kinda par for the course

[Fyraltari]

Xykon's defining traits are Boredom, Vanity, Hedonism/Indulgence transmuted to Rage/Self-Hate, and a total disregard for others. There's... not much obvious heroic potential there. Wringing a hero's journey out of that would be like reforming Belkar, but squared.

Boredom, vanity and hedonism can very-well be used for a flawed (anti-)hero or as the things they overcome during their character development.

The disregard for other is trickier to work with but using a less extreme extreme case than "our" Xykon, you have material.

Not sure where you see self-hate in Xykon's character.

The thread title is "What if Xykon was the hero" not "what if Xykon became the hero". Changing his character is inevitable.

[Lacuna Caster]

Not sure where you see self-hate in Xykon's character.

"Ever since he became undead, the only thing he really enjoys is watching things die."

Xykon's transition from 'unreliable ally' to 'complete monster' in SoD is triggered by the loss of physical pleasures after his lichdom. My take is that he'll never admit it, least of all to himself, but Xykon envies and hates the living. It's the single particle of pathos you can kind of wring from the character.

[Fyraltari]

"Ever since he became undead, the only thing he really enjoys is watching things die."

Xykon's transition from 'unreliable ally' to 'complete monster' in SoD is triggered by the loss of physical pleasures after his lichdom. My take is that he'll never admit it, least of all to himself, but Xykon envies and hates the living. It's the single particle of pathos you can kind of wring from the character.

Makes sense.

[Synesthesy]

Xykon can became a hero if Rich wants to (spoiler alert: he doesn't). But it involves redemption.

You see how much is interesting to see Belkar's redempion, so I assume that an evil lich that has done only evil in all of his life understanding why it was wrong and trying to fix the world would be good.

For a general story, I once wrote a story where the villain was a Lich that seemed good to all the world, and the hero was a lich that everyone thought was the bad guy. Hero's motivation was revenge: the villain killed his family, his master and his beloved one 1000 years ago; then the Hero understood that he would need more time then a single life to become enough powerfull to kill the villain, so he did the same thing the villain did to become immortal. The hero did bad things to become a lich, but it was nothing compared to what the villain did to himself and to the world.
So, yes, a good man can do bad thing like becoming a lich, if you gave him the right motivations.