Academy of Villains is a play by post roleplay on the NationStates forum that was created in January 2016. It was created as both an original RP set in its own universe (or universes, once dimensional travel comes into the story), and a Spiritual Successor to another roleplay called Academy of Heroes and Villains, and its official spin-off Academy of Heroes and Villains: Future Present.
Players in the roleplay play as students training to become supervillains (or to be a Badass Normal), and go on missions for an organization called the League of Villains on the way.
The archive for the roleplay can be found here
, containing links to both pre-reboot and post-reboot threads.
Academy of Villains contains examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: An AI runs the base in the background. However, a copy of this AI was accidentally merged with an experimental organic computer, creating the sociopathic sentient being Tempest.
- All Myths Are True: Wonderland, Never Land, Heaven, Hell, and a whole lot of other places get mentioned— and occasionally visited.
- Awful Truth: Alice discovers that the Jabberwock's return to Wonderland was accidentally her doing.
- Badass Normal: The guards don't have abilities of their own, but manage to keep the entire school under control.
- Big Bad: Question, the Director of the Academy, can act as this. He is one of the three leaders of the League of Villains and exercises a very high amount of power over it as a whole.
- Death Glare: Alice and Raven are both very good at these. Raven tends to just give them out for the tiniest infractions, but Alice prefers to save them for special occasions.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Raven screws up a mission, so Jazz decides that traumatizing her is a good punishment. Justified, perhaps, in that they are villains.
- Driven to Suicide: Honor drank poison after (incorrectly) believing that Violet was dead.
- Interspecies Romance:
- Honor and Violet have went past platonic relations, with Violet being a demon and Honor a human.
- James and Luna have a romantic relationship, with Luna being an elf and James a human.
- Fragile Speedster: Benson avoids close combat despite having superhuman speed because he can't take a hit. He prefers to attack with guns and use his speed to dodge attacks.
- Heroic BSoD: Honor goes through one on her very first day at the academy, being told the truth of her origin and conception.
- Lampshade Hanging: After Wendy refers to Alice seeming to have 'a hair trigger', Azazel asks if that's like a Berserk Button. Extra points for this one, because Wendy then compliments a previously unreferenced lampshade.
- The Masquerade: The existence of superhumans is mostly unknown to the world, and the League of Villains is a complete secret to anyone outside of the criminal underworld.
- Retractable Weapon: Alice's Vorpal Blade appears as a knife while she's in the Otherworld. Once she returns to Wonderland, it reverts to its normal form of a long sword.
- Traumatic Haircut: Alice had to endure one of these when imprisoned, long hair being a luxury she wasn't allowed to have.
- Villain Protagonist: Every single player character in the roleplay is working to become a supervillain.
