To Curse the Darkness

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Eveon (NE male human Rogue 10/Exemplar 5) is definitely the villain of his tale.

He was always smarter, faster, stronger and more handsome than the other children while he was growing up, in a backwater village on the very edge of the empire. He knew he was destined for great things -- or would be, if only he were allowed to do the things that would prepare him for his glorious future. But his parents -- his beautiful but people-shy mother and his slow, plodding farmer father -- seemed determined for a life of obscurity and surviving from year to year. Drawing attention was not for the likes of them, they said, and Evon shouldn't wish for such things either.
When Evon exploded at his mother one fateful night that she could have been a great lady if only she'd played her cards right and used her beauty to attract a wealthy man, she let slip something she shouldn't have. She hinted that a wealthy man had indeed been attracted to her, back when she was still a maid serving at the royal palace, had availed himself of her beauty in a cruel fashion and then just tossed her away.

This lit a fire in the young man's mind. He was sure now that he was not the son of the patient, plodding farmer who had raised him and worked hard to support his family. No; Evon was special, so his father must be special as well. A great noble, a military man... the king himself? Yes!
The king had sired Evon on a maid, then allowed him to suffocate at the edge of his realm in the mud of the farmer's acres!
The unfairness of it all lit a fire beneath Evon's feet. Before the year was out, he had rid himself of the family that was determined to hold him back, sold off the farm and enrolled himself in a decent school. He learned and trained hard, excelling at most subjects due to his own effort, stealing from his fellow students' research where he could not excel. Politics and alchemy were his favourite subjects, and his teachers said that surely he would one day be part of -- maybe in due time head of -- the Ministry of Sciences.

Instead, Evon was the founding member of a new political party, one that harshly criticized the royal family and its dependence on the divine providence of kings, as well as its reactionary politics.
He was also the unidentified genius who created a special elxir; a toxin he introduced into the nation's waterways, and that started to kill off the staple crops at an accelerating pace.
He was also the one to foment unrest and rebellion, the handsome young firebrand and demagogue to lead the mobs and fan the flames of bloody revolution. With the country collapsing all around him, Evon guided his army to the royal palace to depose the king and finally claim the throne he felt he deserved!

The king was not there. He had fled long ago, taking with him his wife and the remaining treasury, abandoning his three daughters -- one in her twenties, the other two five year old twins -- so the presence of royal blood would maintain the castle's wards and keep Evon from realizing he was gone.
Evon came upon the young woman he thought was his sister in the throne room, half delirious with fever and hunger, but struggling to hold final rites for her little sisters, who had succumbed the very day of the attack.
When one of his men shook the princess, demanding to know where the castle's stockpiled food was, she could only mumble: "Food...? If we had food, wouldn't I have given it to them...?"

Evon realised this was a critical moment; his followers depended on him to feed them, and he had been spinning them lies about the bounty being hoarded by the royal family ever since he started the famine. So he said: "We have food right here. Lots of it."
While the princess was dragged off, screaming, Evon ordered the bodies of the twin princesses to be butchered and roasted as the start of the feast. The castle's servants were to be next, and he planned to save the princess for last. Once his troops were sated, Evon thought to himself while he sat on the king's throne, dining on a stew of human flesh, he would set about 'miraculously' creating an antidote for the 'plague' crippling the nation's food supply.
It would take time for the plants to grow back, of course, but he could order the mob to raid across the border for food, and there were plenty of useless people who could help to make ends meet in the meantime. Evon went to sleep with a full belly and a glad heart.

When he awoke, it was to dread news that traitors had rescued the princess from the castle ... and unnatural Mists had risen at the borders of his new kingdom.

In truth, Evon's parents were indeed his biological parents - and he murdered them.
He has zero blood connection to the royal family.
For his crimes, he is now the Darklord of his own domain.
The true queen is abroad, and people know it.

So what should his special power and curse as a Darklord be, and why?

[Mistmaster]

Well, dependence on human flesh and turning in a Ghoul Lord is the most obvious solution; Or he could be unable to eat meat of any kind, needing vegetables and unable to fix the damage he did; He rules on a Ghoul infested land gorging themselves , while he is perpetually starving. Meat is not scarce. He can control any Ghoul and histouch kills plants.

[tomokaicho]

The reward and curse should be the same. The common folk are dimwitted and plodding, just like Evon's parents, and absolutely loyal to Evon. Any interesting or capable person has no particular loyalty to Evon, although they are not necessarily enemies.

In game terms, anyone with the average stat array is a follower of Evon, while people with the elite stat array or above have no loyalty to Evon and may even become enemies. Or something. After writing it I feel it's kind of lame.

Another possibility is that the realm given to Evon by the Dark Powers is rural. Yes, Evon is the absolute ruler, but he rules over farms, and the areas with the highest population density are no larger than a hamlet or thorpe. In this scenario, Evon has big ideological ideas, perhaps even politically progressive ideas, but the material reality of his realm makes it nothing but a pipedream.

EDIT: I just realized that the latter curse is very similar to Harkon Lukas' curse.