Figure I might as well elaborate this since people have expressed interest to me on Discord.
The two homebrew Deathlords I have up in the thread are done with
@EarthScorpion's model as opposed to canon or another or what, and part of that is because of
what they are instead of just their actual function as gameable villains (though that's part of the appeal too). I don't think others have thought quite as hard as this about me, so I'll articulate why I say this, and what I see here. It has to do with their position to the psuedo-Samsaric nature of Creation and how Buddhism (some versions/aspects of it at least) intersect it. It's a big faith (I am also not an expert) and not all parts of it hold all these things to be the same, so caveat lector.
The Buddhist conception of
upādāna usually gets translated as "attachment", which comes from
taṇhā (cravings/desires). To achieve
nirvana is to step outside of the cycle of reincarnation and death.
Parinirvāṇa is a particular kind of
nirvana that, in some Mahāyāna scripture, includes a fundamental dissolution of the 'self' - already something that doesn't exist as an immutable, normative thing in Buddhist theology, but rather as an agglomeration of
karma and other things. To quote someone (admittedly also Western) vastly more familiar than I:
Perhaps the single most distinctive and radical of the Buddha's teachings was the notion of the non-substantiality of the self, the doctrine referred to in the Pali scriptures as anattaa (Sanskrit: anaatman) and usually rendered in English as the view of "no-self" or "non-self."[6] As an corollary of the principle of conditionality (pratiitya-samutpaada) and as one of the three marks of samsaric existence (along with impermanence and unsatisfactoriness), the doctrine of the nonsubsantiality of the self lies at the very of heart of the Dharma. With the emergence of modern scientific notions of change and indeterminacy it is easy to loose sight of just how radical this idea would have seemed in the Buddha's day. The notion of an essential, enduring, and immutable "self" (aatman or jiiva) lying at the core of personal identity was one of the central themes of the diverse Upanishadic speculations characteristic of the Age of the Wanderers into which the Buddha was born.[7] While other thinkers of this period also challenged the notion of an essential or substantial self, the Buddha's rejection of an aatman was unique in that, unlike the skeptics and materialists of his day, he simultaneously maintained a notion of ethical or karmic continuity, one that persisted not just throughout the life of the individual, but over multiple lifetimes as well. Indeed the Buddha went so far as to assert that his notion of "no-self" was actually necessary to sustain any theory of ethical continuity and efficacy over time. But how then was this continuity to be secured? How could actions performed in the past effect consequences at some point in the future?
This brings us back to Creation.
Let's use my own work as an example, since I've focused actively on these aspects. Both of my Deathlords are beings defined by stagnation, impulse made neurosis, and classical tragedy: Last Word is defined by shame and determination to control legacy (while being unable to), and Smiling Ape is defined by having nothing left but the hollow pursuit of a fight he will never, ever get.
They go to the bottom of the world, compelled by their
upādāna until they become slaves to it. Last Word must self-define. Smiling Ape must fight good fights. They exit the cycle of death and rebirth, sinking like spiritual anchors to the bottom of the world, stuck as a
single definite self, made so only by
upādāna in a sort of inverted
nirvana. A spiritual nadir. An anchor sitting forever in a puddle of spiritual filth in nega-enlightenment that seeks to destroy the whole of everything - but, where the Buddhist tradition emphasizes non-being as a state wherein peace can be found, the Deathlords try to pull everything into forever-death of permanent
dukkha. An miserable self-contradictory un-real instead of a peaceful absence of existence.
(There's also the Shinto aspect of
kegare to this all - they are literal radiators of metaphysical rot and decay, after all. But that's not what I'm focusing on here.)
This is why the model works so well for larger-than-life-and-death villainy and motives: it's
literal all-consuming motivation. Deathlords then become about the worst impulses we have, because they are slaves to those impulses and drives, the id rearing up like a cobra to hollow out the ego and superego.
Deathlords are self-destructive impulses grown wild like cancer. Deathlords are bad habits, cruelty, obsession, unquenchable neurosis; illness of existence and mind and soul. Deathlords are black holes that sink, and take the world with them into screaming un-being. They are a cup with a hole in the bottom that will never be full.
Which just means they're about the worst that people can do. Which makes them great villains.
