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 Not only good, but the unofficial love interest. The good guys dress in black, remember that,
Just in case we're ever face to face and make contact
— Will Smith, Men in Black
So, you have a race of people who all have black, leathery wings. They're born with the ability to shoot black, shadowy globs out of their hands. Also, they prefer the night, and let's not get started on their wardrobes. Surely, they're evil!
Well... no one actually mentioned them doing bad things; in fact, they may actually be pretty good guys. It's not like they keep pet dogs exclusively for kicking. Despite any images that may have been burned into our minds, creepy appearances and killing people actually don't have much to do with each other. It's not My Species Doth Protest Too Much, because the species, for the most part, isn't protesting the do-gooders. Unfortunately, however, people can still judge them based on their looks.
This trope can be a subversion or aversion of several other tropes depending on how it's played, including Beauty Equals Goodness, Always Chaotic Evil, and Colour Coded For Your Convenience. It can also be used to promote Evil Is Cool and Evil Is Sexy except without the, uh... evil. See also Perky Goth, Strange Girl, Our Monsters Are Different, Anti Anti Christ, Satan Is Good, and Reluctant Monster.
For the reverse, see Light Is Not Good. A natural implication of the Yin Yang Bomb.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The Gantz team is always dressed in black, but are mostly the good ones. (Okay, their opponents are blood thirsty montrosities, mainly.
- Deshwitat, the main character from the Rebirth manhwa is a dangerous Dark Power-loaded half-vampire bent on killing Kalutika, The God of Light because he was once close friends with Desh when Kal was still human, and after a godly-powers-releasing Heroic BSOD cursed a mutual friend with immortality, killed Desh's girlfriend in front of him because of Desh's failure to rescue Kal's sister, turned Desh into stone for 300 years, annihilated the
Galactic Senate Council of the Gods, resurrected or cloned Desh's girlfriend and made her his consort, and is now plotting the destruction of the human and vampire races because of his really miserable childhood. Light Is Not Good indeed...
- The main character of 666 Satan is part demon, has a black and white motif with more emphasis, and constantly says that his goal is to rule the world. However, throughout the story he ends up doing more good than evil, accomplishing his goals more by gaining allies and saving people.
- Out of the three supreme Oni siblings in Hell Teacher Nube, only middle brother Sekki is irredeemably evil. Baki and Minki start out this way, but are quickly brought to the side of good by Nube and remain heroic characters throughout. Similarly, a Western-style devil summoned by a witch (and fellow teacher at Nube's school) is actually a very nice guy, and Yukime's schoolmates at the Youkai High are great people, except for being, you know, horrible demons. (Ironically, at least one god is demonstrably evil.)
- Evangeline of Mahou Sensei Negima uses Dark magic, but she's more of a Noble Demon. Also two of the team members are part Demon, but are perfectly trustworthy (and probably some of the more honest of characters).
- Fran Madaraki of Franken Fran is a Cute Frankensteins Monster. She has almost no social skills, and her day-to-day life can be best described as "macabre". But she's a brilliant surgeon (if... unorthodox) whose entire existence is defined by helping people as best she can. Her servants also count - they look like the cast of a Universal Studios horror movie, but given they all recoil in terror from an actual horror movie...
- Unfortunately, while Fran does mean well, the results of her experiments tend to end very badly for the people she is "helping" (although, in many cases, they did have it coming).
- What about Skull Knight and Guts (known as the Black Swordsman) in Berserk? Sure, Guts isn't exactly by-the-book good, but he's willing to fight the real evil until the final consequences (to himself) must be worth something, not counting he's actually a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold. The other is literally a Skeleton, as his name implies, and is frequently confused with Death itself, but is probably the most by-the-book Knight In Shining Armor in the whole universe of Berserk.
- Another example: Angel Sanctuary has about all the main cast dressed in black rpbes and the like. And a lot of the good guys are demons or at least argueably non-holy creatures.
- The titular character from Yu-Gi-Oh! often uses the Dark Magician card. There's also the Shadow Games; they often have a harsh penalty for the loser, but the one who initiates a Shadow Game must either make the rules completely fair or put himself at a disadvantage. Plus, they're generally only invoked against or by bad people anyway.
- It probably doesn't help matters that in the first few chapters, The Other Yugi looks ominously like Chucky.
- They go one further in Yu-Gi-Oh GX, where Judai's Superpowered Evil Side Haou the Supreme King is actually not that evil (nor, surprisingly, is the third season's antagonist, the demonic-looking Yubel); the former's power, known as the "gentle darkness" is meant to fight against the malicious Light of Destruction, while the latter chose to become a demon to protect Judai's past self until he grew up enough to fight the Light off. Both were ultimately corrupted by the Light, though, hence why they were in full Face Heel Turn mode upon their debut.
- That said, however, while both of Darkness' hosts were relatively nice people when they weren't trying to either set fire to Judai's friends or destroy the world via Instrumentality, the entity itself was definitely not an example of this trope.
- Card Captor Sakura has both a "Shadow" card and a "The Dark" card, neither of which are evil.
- The shinigami in Death Note look grotesque and kill humans to prolong their own lives. Despite this, they're a far cry from card-carrying villains. Most of them are morally neutral and easy to get along with. A few shinigami even fall in love with a human and risk their lives to protect her.
- The heroic Exorcists of D Gray Man are part of the Black Order. Despite the name and generally ominous, gloomy labyrinths that make up its headquarters, it's a good organization full of generally friendly people. It also (might) work for the Vatican.
- However, the standard "dark = evil" is played straight in that the Akuma are made of "dark matter" and the Innocence is "white".
- In order to save Deedlit (and, indeed, all of Lodoss) in Record Of Lodoss War, Parn had to wield both the Holy Sword as well as the Soulcrusher, symbolizing the necessary balance between Light and Dark.
- Even more so: The 'Dark Knight' Ashram may appear to be utterly evil but indeed only seeks for a place for his people to live in peace. (Other than a cursed island, if possible) And his lover Pirotess isn't that much more evil than Deedlit, just less pure.
- Despite the name, the Lord of Nightmares, from The Slayers, is not evil. She is, however, extremely powerful and dangerous, and the spells that draw on her power both count as Dangerous Forbidden Techniques.
- Lampshaded in that a lot of characters do think that She is evil and the revelation that She is not is a pretty big reveal.
- As in the video game, the Pokemon that look scary or "evil", like Houndoom, Shuppet, Duskull, and others, are just as capable of forming friendships with their trainers as any "cute" Pokemon, and frequently appear in perfectly normal settings. On more than one occasion, in fact, Ash and his friends were in fact helped out by Houndooms against Team Rocket.
- A shining example is Ash's Gliscor; despite becoming more confident in its abilities since evolving, it retains signs of the hyper crybaby it was as a Gligar. However, it isn't a Dark type at all (its fierce design likely fooled everyone into thinking otherwise).
- The demons of Yu Yu Hakusho go all over the morality spectrum. While we have demons like Suzaku and Yomi that want to take over the human world and treat us as cattle, we also have outright good demons like Kurama, Yukina, and Raizen. In fact, his learning that not all demons were evil was half the reason for Sensui turning into a Nietzsche Wannabe. The other half was learning that Humans Are Bastards.
- Subverted in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei with Mayo Mitama. She really is as evil as she looks, but everyone else simply assumes that she's misunderstood.
- GaoGaiGar FINAL takes this trope home and cuddles it. GaoGaiGar was always black, so the OVA pits it against the clinical-white Palparepa, who has an A God Am I complex the size of the sun. Then, just to drive the point home, it depicts freeze-frames in the battle as between a white angel and a black demon. FINAL also created the final pair of Dragon Twins, KouRyu and AnRyu, who represent light and dark respectively, and combine into TenRyuJin (that's Heaven Dragon God in kanji).
- Hei, a contractor with the nickname "The Black Shinigami" in Darker Than Black, is probably the most humane of all the contractors despite his morbid reputation and a love for black clothing.
- Hayate Yagami of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The Queen of the Night Sky and mistress of the Book of Darkness, she has six black wings, a mostly black motif, and her signature spell is a Sphere Of Destruction made of pure darkness called Diabolic Emission. She is also the boss of the heroes and one of nicest people you could ever meet.
- The demons in Shuffle are only demons in name. They're pretty much amiable people with long elven ears. Nerine and her Hot Shoujo Dad Forbessi exemplifies this well enough, these demons seems to be less rambunctious than the Gods' side (which consists a Genki Girl and a Bumbling Dad).
- History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi has "Dou"-type martial arts,which are powered by rage and aggression (in contrast to "Sei"-type, which are more about skill and precision). It is stated that many practitioners of Dou martial arts are most likely to walk the path of destruction. However, Dou-type fighting in itself isn't regarded as evil, and Dou users who are gentle by nature (including two of Kenichi's masters) don't usually fall to that path.
- Umehito Nekozawa from Ouran High School Host Club is a fairly nice person who just happens to be allergic to sunlight.
- The Black Knights of Code Geass though their leader is occasionally forced to cross the Moral Event Horizon once in a while.
Comic Books
- Hellboy. That is all.
- Death of The Endless, or, for that matter, Dream of The Endless.
- I don't know, some of the things Morpheus does edge pretty close to evil. Like, say sending a woman who spurned him to hell for ten thousand years. If not evil, he is, at the least, a massive dick.
- Really, though, the whole point of his character development was that, as the story progressed, he became less and less of a dick and finally started acting decent. But to do that, he had to change his nature so much that even continuing to exist became intolerable to him.
- Might not be played straight after all: Daniel wears white.
- Batman. The Dark Knight is one of the best barometers of what the writer wants you to think is morally acceptable in all of comicdom. In fact, this troper is convinced he's seen more "Oh noes Superman has gone evil!" stories, whether alternate universe or mind-control situations, than "Oh noes Batman has gone evil!" stories.
- That's because Superman going evil results in a massive conflict. Batman going evil simply results in him taking over the universe in about 30 seconds, because he's the Goddamn Batman.
- The DC superheroine Nightshade has darkness-based powers, including the ability to create and manipulate darkness, and to create shadow-creatures.
- Likewise the DC superhero Obsidian.
- And the DC superheroine Shadow Lass from the Legion of Superheroes.
- DC does have some supervillains that use darkness, but one notable one, the Shade, ended up as a mentor to Jack Knight, aka the hero Starman, so the Shade probably counts for this trope.
- Nightcrawler of the X-Men. Despite the fact that he resembles a demon and was in fact chased out of his hometown for looking like such; he remains a devout Catholic. (Not to say that that hasn't caused problems.) Also, there's that minor matter of his powers work by shunting himself though Hell.
- On page 257
 of Flare, Aphrodite tells Pan that "Nyx is not evil. But she does hate Eos."
Film
- The citizens of Halloween Town, from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, are textbook examples. They said it in the opening song quoted above. Even though they're all skeletons, Frankenstein-esque monsters, ghosts, vampires, a Mad Scientist, etc., for the most part they're just fun guys who love a good Halloween. The only one who's obviously evil is Oogy Boogy, who isn't exactly popular with the others.
- However, they did kidnap
Sandy Claws Santa Claus, and the children memorably sang a song about killing him. Of course, said children work for Oogie Boogie, and Jack hadn't meant for Santa to come to any harm...
- The children also live in a land of zombies, vampires, living skeletons, and a reanimating Mad Scientist, so being dead doesn't mean ceasing to exist for them, obviously.
- Oogie Boogie is actually from a completely different (and very dead) holiday, so he's not really from Halloween Town anyway, as one of the video games reveals.
- Another Tim Burton film that plays on this trope is Corpse Bride, wherein the undead are jovial and friendly both to each other and to mortals, while a lot of the mortals themselves are jerks.
- They are also more colorful whereas the mortals appear in what can only be called 'the Tim Burton palette'.
- Beetlejuice is yet another Tim Burton example. It features a sympathetic ghost couple who try to scare off a new family that moves into their house with the intent of giving it a massive makeover. The couple meet various other undead people along the way, some hideously disfigured. The dead are all portrayed as eccentric-but-decent people, with the sole exception of the film's titular antihero, Betelgeuse.
- Part of the twist ending to The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, in which Mad Scientist Caligari is actually a perfectly kind psychologist, his sleepwalking hitman is just a harmless loony, and the hero turns out to be a paranoid psychopath. Although it is notable that after The Reveal, Cesare and Caligari look a lot less dark, and Francis looks a lot darker. Since Tim Burton gets all of his ideas from Caligari, this makes perfect sense.
- ...Unless, of course, you see the very rare removed footage, which twisted this back on again, by revealing in a Mind Screw moment, that the "kind psychologist" really IS Dr Caligari.
- The monstrous Gorgonites of Small Soldiers were much nicer guys than the human Commando Elite. This is part of the fact that the Gorgonites were originally planned to be peaceful creatures by their designer, but was cast as the Designated Antagonist of the Commandos due to the CEO stating that they need an enemy to fight in the first place.
- Santi, the Creepy Child in The Devil's Backbone.
- And, while we're on the subject of Guillermo del Toro, it turns out that the Nightmare Fuel Unleaded-faun of Pans Labyrinth is entirely trustworthy.
- Similarly, the intentions of the other children in The Orphanage weren't quite as macabre as originally thought, as they were trying to let her know something crucial.
- Daywalker Blade is not only dark, he's black. Although this troper doesn't know how much they intended to play with the racial prejudices in this case. All the vampire leaders though are white, so...
- Don't forget the Man in Black from The Princess Bride. He dresses like a villain, even acts like one in places (more in the book than in the movie), and is eventually identified as the murderous Dread Pirate Roberts - but at the end of the day it's all subterfuge, because he's really the presumed-dead hero Westley.
- This trope and its reverse are essentially the entire plot of Clive Barker's Nightbreed - it's the humans who all act monstrously.
- Edward Scissorhands.
Literature
- In The Edge Chronicles, the Professors of Light and Darkness are not enemies, merely friendly rivals, and each is a harmless, basically likable character in his own way.
- Less literally, the slaughterers. They're nocturnal, look like blood-red goblins, and have a sinister-sounding name. They're actually peaceful and relatively friendly, and they get their name because they slaughter in the true sense of the word — killing and butchering animals. Unfortunately, despite this, they're undeservedly reviled because of their strange appearance and distasteful work.
- The Overlords in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End aren't evil even though they looked like demons.
- In Steven Erikson's Malazan Book Of The Fallen, the Tiste Andii are the Children of Darkness, humanoids with black skin and darkness-themed powers. But they are no more evil than any other people in that world, and seem better than their cousins the Tiste Liosan Children of Light, who (judging by their few appearances so far) seem like bigoted Knights Templar.
- Oh, and by the way, the lord of the Tiste Andii is ultra-badass Anti Villain Anomander Rake (Knight of High House Dark, Son of Darkness, etc).
- The hero of Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods is known as Shadow, somewhat ironically, as he is an incarnation of the god Balder of Norse Mythology, who is associated with purity and light.
- Not all that ironic if you consider that without light, you can't cast a shadow.
- Morrolan e'Drien from Steven Brust's novels lives in a place called Castle Black and wields a sword called Blackwand(Lit.: Magical-Wand-That-Creates-Death-in-the-Form-of-a-Black-Sword ) that can destory people's souls on a whim. Guess which side he's on?
- Discworld trolls? Created largely as a reaction to the implication in Tolkien that big, scary-looking humanoids were Always Chaotic Evil.
- Even if they don't several witches, including Granny Weatherwax and Miss Treason, do.
- And then there's the undead, most of which are entirely harmless. Reg Shoe and Otto Chriek spring to mind in particular.
- Let's not forget Death and Vetinari. Seriously, if the Grim Reaper is on the side of humanity, and the Bond villain type is only working to make the city a better place for everyone but mimes...
- The shadows in Jeff Noon's Vurt books aren't inherently more evil than anyone else.
- In L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Recluce series black magic is order magic while white magic is chaos magic. The reason given is that black is the absence of color and thus represents complete order and white is all colors squashed together and therefore chaotic. Of course, chaos magic isn't necessarily evil either. Just destructive.
- Good Omens takes this farther, adopting as a major theme that "most demons weren't deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors-doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operation of the whole thing." These are actual from-hell fallen-angel straight-out-of-the-new-testament demons, but they're not really evil.
- Hey, Crowley "did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards."
- And of course, there's Death himself.
- Jacqueline Carey's The Sundering whose original title was Elegy for Darkness. It it, the "dark god" Satoris is dark because he has been burned and constructs his dark fortress as protection. He protects the outcast and the despised, and answers the prayers of those who honor him. His minions are honorable and thoughtful creatures, who only fight to defend themselves. It is the armies of the Light that engage in genocide (forbidding defeated species from having babies) - and should they win, humans might stop having babies too.
- Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, a sequel to the HG Wells Time Machine sends the Time-Traveler into a very different future where he is rescued from an inhospitable far-future earth by a more civilized version of the Morlocks. The Morlock who becomes his sidekick has to spend quite a lot of time convincing him that the Morlock tendency to skulk in dark places is not evidence of an inherently evil nature (In fact, he implies that they chose to live in the dark to improve their night-vision for stargazing). It comes as quite a shock to the Victorian Time-Traveler to realize that his distate for Morlock appearance and habits has more to do with his own body issues than with some kind of inherent evil in the Morlocks.
- Soulcutter from Fred Saberhagen's Third Book of Swords might count. Unlike the other Twelve, its hilt has no symbol, but is rather all black, and even its blade is dull. And its ability might seem evil, as it imposes a crushing despair on everyone within its area of effect; for this, it is nicknamed the Tyrant's Blade. For all that, though, the one time we see it used, it is to stop the evil would-be world-conqueror Vilkata.
- On the other hand, Vilkata is also known as the Dark King, so that would certainly be an inversion of this trope.
- The Black Elfstone in Terry Brooks Shannara books is not evil, although its magic can certainly be put to destructive purposes. It's only black though because its power is to absorb magic, just as black objects absorb light.
- Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, from the novel of the same name and its many film adaptations.
- In Curse of the Mistwraith and its sequels, Arithon controls the powers of shadow, but he's a pretty nice guy. His half-brother, Lysaer, controls the powers of light, but due to the titular curse he's a bit of a douche.
- In Anne Bishop's Black Jewels
Trilogy Universe, three main, sympathetic and hot characters are named Sataen, Lucivar and Daemon. "Dark" simply means "more powerful", and does not carry any connotations of evil.
Live Action TV
- The Addams Family comprise of a variety of Horror Tropes, and appear highly sinister, but they hardly ever do anything that could be considered evil. They are, in fact, for the most part perfectly friendly and decent people, if more than a bit weird and possessing unquestionably morbid and bizarre tastes.
- Irish children's programme The Morbegs had a whole episode centred around the "festival of darkness" that the Morbegs brought to Ireland from Morbegland. The human host of the day was afraid of the dark, but as the Morbegs said, "Don't fear the darkness! It's not bad, it's just different!"
- The British show Being Human plays with this, as the main characters are a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost, all of whom just want to do their jobs, go down the pub and be friends.
- Its safe to say that 99% of the demons in the Buffyverse are evil but they make a good point of showing that some of even the more evil looking demons are actually good guys. Clem (the loose skinned but amiable slacker demon from Buffy) is an obvious example. As well as Lorne (from Angel, green with red eyes and horns). Skip from Angel, though originally fitting the trope, later counts as a subversion.
- In the Supernatural episode "In My Time of Dying", Dean is on the verge of death and has become something like a ghost wondering the hospital. He sees a ghostly specter that seems to be trying to kill him and another patient. He meets a girl who seems to be in his same situation, But it turns out to be the Reaper he saw. She took a human form to be able to talk to him, and she turns out to be very sympathetic to his situation, but gently explains that he might become an angry spirit if he doesn't follow her into the afterlife.
Table Top Games
- Though Dungeons And Dragons tends to be pretty bad for "dark equals evil", this is not always the case. Even necromancy isn't always evil; while most of the necromancy-themed prestige classes don't allow you to be good, they don't require you to be evil, and a wizard specializing in necromancy may be of any alignment.
- A subversion existed in the older spell-casting rules: Healing spells were in the Necromancy school, until they were moved to Conjuration in the Third Edition. However, there are still some beneficial Necromancy spells, such as False Life.
- By 3.5 core rules, very few Necromancy spells are evil. The Evil Necromacy spells are any that create undead creatures, causing disease via Contagion, making unholy water (the opposite of holy water, natch) via Curse Water, the life-draining Death Knell, the torturous Symbol of Pain, and the "Evil Eye" Eyebite. Oddly Deathwatch is described as Evil even though the only effect of the spell is to know how close nearby creatures are to dying. Strangely, not even instant-kill spells like Finger of Death are given the "Evil" stamp by the game - and most of the Evil spells are available to priestly Clerics.
- Presumably due to the flavor text mentioning it involves harnessing infernal spirits.
- Not infernal (which would indicate demons or devils). The flavor text merely mentions the caster "using the foul sight granted by the powers of unlife", but that's merely that... flavor text. Rewrite the sentence, and the whole argument collapses. It's only a "detect hit points" spell, for God's sake. Giving it an evil descriptor is ridiculous. Especially since the 3.5 edition Spell Compendium contains a spell that basically does the same thing: It allows player character clerics to closely monitor the hit points of their allies during combat, how wounded they are, etc., so the cleric will instantly know when and where to dispense healing.
- What's really odd, is that Deathwatch is on the spell list of the Miniatures Handbook Healer, which is required to be Good, and Book of Exalted Deeds Slayer of Domial, that loses all powers if it commits an evil act. Hmm.
- Not really odd; Clerics are not constrained in alignment, and are often evil. And really, there's nothing more evil about snuffing someone out with a fireball than with finger of death, which is probably why it lacks the evil descriptor.
- Clerics are much much much more affected by alignment descriptors than Wizards-indeed, only with something like the Spell Focus (Evil) feat do alignment descriptors have any game effect on arcane spellcasters. Clerics, however, can't cast spells opposed by their alignment. The goddess Sharess from the Forgotten Realms might be partially an instance of this - not a dark goddess, but she certainly brushed with Evil is Sexy when confronted by Shar before ultimately ending up good. Someone check my references though...
- The "Book Of Vile Darkness" describes evil, and what has to be done for it to be evil. Spells like "Finger Of Death" are not evil— Killing something is a neutral effect, the reason why is what's morally affected. However, spells that cause unneeded pain or torment, like "Wither Limb", which causes the target's limbs to shrivel, terribly, are evil simply because you could incapacitate an enemy in a much less cruel way. Otherwise, in a game like D&D, where a Paladin loses all abilities for doing any evil, even just attacking would be evil because it's causing harm. It's okay, because it's not torture.
- 4E has an embodiment of the trope as a basic character class, the theurgy-inclined Warlock. The three paths they have to their partiular brand of Pact Magic are, as follows: Making a literal Deal With The Devil for more offensive Black Magic, consorting with The Fair Folk for Psychic Powers and various trickery, or making a contract with a Cosmic Horror for a mix...And they are quite as capable of being good as any other core class, athough the book mentions they have great capacity for evil as well, but that's the same for all other classes. There's even the Dark Pact in the Player's Guide to Faerun, in which you make deals with shadowy beings of darkness, and you are no more forced to have any alignment restrictions either (though it does promote acting like a dick in some cases).
- Not to forget the 'tiefling' player character race, quite demonic-looking descendants of an ancient human empire that made pacts with infernal forces for power (at least in the implied default world). While their looks and history give them a definite push into the dark and brooding loner direction, any given tiefling may still be of any alignment.
- The sharakim in D&D 3.5 are a race of orclike humanoids who are mostly kind and goodhearted. Likewise, the mongrelfolk, who go back to 1st edition, are deformed mish-mash hybrids that look like man-eating monsters for the most part, but they really just want to be left alone.
- The Al-Qadim campaign setting went out of its way to embrace this trope, such that goblins, orcs, ogres, and other races that are just there for the heroes to kill in other settings were actually peaceful, productive members of society; the only races that were Always Chaotic Evil were explicitly supernatural, like the yuan-ti, yak-folk, and efreet. Likewise, the Eberron setting played goblinoids as aggressive but not inherently evil, while the orcs were actually responsible for protecting the world from Cosmic Horrors. And, of course, the draconians in Dragonlance were created to be the vile servants of the Gods of Evil, but once the gods went away, a lot of draconians realized that not being willing tools of evil has its ups.
- The gods and demigods that make up The Dark in Nobilis are harder to characterise as Not Evil than their opposite number are as not Good, since they believe above all else in inducing humans to suicide. Their work generally involves systematically destroying everything a given person cares about. However, they have some redeeming features: They are arguably a fundamental and necessary part of human nature, having sprung from the fruit of the Garden of Eden. They will almost never kill, since a murder is a suicide prevented, and may even step in to avert needless death. The more someone resists their tortures, the more likely they are to simply leave them alone for an easier target, effectively purifying the gene pool. Some believe that the point of their work is to make those they test stronger. However, as the book points out, cruelty for kindness' sake can be much more thorough than the other kind...
- Slightly averted in Warhammer 40000. The Black Templars and Dark Angels Space Marine Chapters are... no more evil than their peers, though the Dark Eldar are definitely a lot worse than the Craftworld Eldar. Although the Dark Angels are one of the shadier Chapters of Space Marines, more concerned with personal redemption than serving the Imperium itself...
- Considering that the setting is a Darker and Edgier Refuge in Audacity Crapsack World, if the imperium was idealistic they would have either been consumed by the Tyranid Swarm, be tortured into insanity by the Dark Eldar, have the Necrons harvest their souls for the C'tan, dying would look like the least painful option... and then you realize that there is only one afterlife, take a wild guess what it's like.
- Changeling: The Lost has the Darkling seeming. They explicitly had some of the "light" (however you want to define it, it might change from person to person) taken from them in Arcadia, leaving them rather warped and with an aversion to sunlight. One of the kiths sees ghosts; another drains life from passerby. Their major Contract gives them power over darkness and shadows... and nothing stops them from being decent people.
- The Moros Path of mages in Mage: The Awakening have Death and Matter as their ruling Arcana. Their powers are thus heavily rooted in destruction and decay. For the most part, however, they're not evil, just depressing; you'd be the same way if you saw the world through the eyes of the dead, too. (The game's tendency to assign most of the "black-hat" Legacies to them kind of mitigates this, sadly.) And in the earlier ''Mage: The Ascension"" there were the Euthanatos mages, who were also down with death and decay, were resident experts on where the souls of the dead go, and were dedicated to making sure all things die at their appointed time. Despite all that they were still supposed to be good(ish) guys, and firmly disapproved of things dying before their appointed time.
- Vampire: the Masquerade had the Nosferatu (who were all hideously disfigured) and Gangrel (who start normal but become more and more bestial-looking over time) vampire clans. Despite being full of monstrous-looking freaks, neither of them were "baddy" clans.
- Werewolf: the Forsaken and Werewolf: the Apocalypse had... well, pretty much everyone. The protagonists are werewolves for god's sake, turning into big ugly monsters comes with the job.
- The Nightbane RPG from Palladium books is about characters who are gifted with incredible superpowers that they use to fight off demonic forces that secretly rule the world. Except the superpowers all relate to darkness or blood, and they have to transform into hideous freaky-deaky monsters to use their powers.
- The Golgari Swarm in the Magic The Gathering setting of Ravnica are a cult of elf and human necromancers who use zombies as labor... but they're also an indispensable part of Ravnica's society, providing food and waste disposal services. A lot of them are indeed black-hearted knaves who sacrifice unwilling people to raise them as undead, but one of the heroes of the tie-in novels is the leader of the Golgari, who's working to reform them after the death of his evil sister.
Video Games
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