Heavy Metal Album Cover Evil (HMACE, pronounced HMACE) is Black-Bladed Broadswords with Demon Motif, Chrome Skull Shoulder-Plates with Ruby Eyes, Sallow-Skinned Necromancers in Ragged Robes. HMACE commands armies of demons, hordes of the undead, and legions of black-armored soldiers, human and otherwise. HMACE rides skeletal dragons or flaming-hooved black horses – not just into battle, but around town and to the store. HMACE lays siege to the castles of Holy Paladins, plots against the Rightful Heir, and sacrifices Elf Princesses to obtain Eternal Power.
The Lands of Occident are filled with more prosaic and conventional evils – wars for land and power, wars of religion, predation of the peasantry by an entrenched aristocracy, genocide and conquest masquerading as Holy Crusade, Orthodoxy enforced on pain of Auto Da Fe, under jurisdiction of the Holy Inquisition, Ad Extirpanda.
HMACE clearly needs to remind the Lands of Occident what evil really looks like … and you're just the ones to do it. You're not HMACE yet, but you're definitely HMACE Material… you need only earn your Chrome Skull Shoulder-Plates, build your nefarious power-base, raise your fell army, and then cover the land with Darkness.
Heavy Metal Album Cover Evil is a fantasy role-playing game inversion, designed and run with GURPS, 4th Edition. Player-characters are aspiring Evil Overlords – criminals, heretics, and would-be villains – in the Lands of Occident, a stylized pastiche of Mythic Medieval Europe and related fantasy/gaming tropes … Black Knights, Infernal Sorcerers, Pagan Priestesses, Demon-Blooded Aristocrats, etc. The key word, however, is aspiring; the Forces of Light are far too strong to be fought head-on. Cunning PCs will amass power quietly and strike from the shadows, retreating into the darkness once their nefarious plans are fulfilled, only to scheme for their next sinister offensive. Foolish PCs will end up dead on the swords of Holy Paladins, or screaming out confessions before the tender ministrations of the Inquisition.