User blog:BigBadSquid/PE Proposal: Mulgarath



So... I was wanting Skeletor to be my final proposal for 2019, but due to interferences with spending Christmas and the New Year with my family, I'm afraid that I won't be able to get enough details for his proposal until January. Luckily, I have a backup.

What's the Work?
The Spiderwick Chronicles is a series of fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, later made into a 2008 film by Nickelodeon Movies. In this series, fairies and other mythological creatures exist, but they are invisible to the naked eye. A man named Arthur Spiderwick writes a field guide to his discoveries of the fairies. 80 years later when the Grace family moves into Spiderwick Estate, they learn of the beasts and become in a conflicted battle with some who want to use the field guide to obtain power.

Who is Mulgarath? What has he done?
The villains of the series are a group of monsters who want to obtain the field guide to accomplish their own power-hungry goals. Their leader is a shapeshifting tree ogre by the name of Mulgarath, who wants to obtain the field guide to learn the weaknesses of humans and other fairies so he can essentially take over the world. The evilest of his race, he collects an army of Goblins lead by Red Cap, dwarves, and dragons to seize the book from the Grace family to become the dominant lifeform on the planet. He builds his army out of intimidation alone. He shows no mercy to any of his forces, as shown in the fourth book The Ironwood Tree, where Mulgarath has the goblins kill off the dwarves after they make weapons for his army.

In the next book, The Wrath of Mulgarath (which is also the last), we learn from aunt Lucinda, who was Arthur's daughter, that when she was young, Mulgarath tortured her in punishment for not choosing to betray her father in giving him the book. Then Mulgarath learns about the Grace family and shows sadistic joy in having his goblins attack and try to kill them to obtain the book. In the climax, the goblins destroy the manor and kidnap their mother to bargain her being eaten by the dragons in exchange for the book. Along the way, they discover that Mulgarath killed off multiple fairies by drowning them in honey, and uses their hardened bodies as statues to decorate his palace. Jared saves a few, but is traumatized by watching the rest slowly drown in their own screams for help.

After killing off the dragons, the children rescue their mom and... dad? Just kidding, it's Mulgarath under disguise, taunting the children for being too late to stop his dragon armada, only to realize that his dragons were already killed. In a rage, Mulgarath throws Simon and Mallory out his castle window, although Thimbletack's chains save their fall. Jared stabs Mulgarath in the foot with Mallory's sword and pushes him out the window, turning into a bird to escape. Unfortunately, Mulgarath flies too close to a tree with the hungry Hogsqueal. And since Hogsqueal eats birds, Mulgarath the predator becomes prey himself.

Mitigating Factors
Nope. He only cares about himself and nobody else, willing to do anything to obtain the field guide to claim not just the enchanted forest, but the entire world as well. He manipulates the hostile monsters of the forest for his own goals, and promptly gets rid of them when they outlive their usage to him.

Heinous Standards
This one is pretty easy as Mulgarath is the heinous standard. There are no other villains in this series that come close to how horrible his actions are. The other monsters featured in the series have animal-like instincts and are either wanting to kill the children for food or the book. Mulgarath wants the children dead just for fun and shows no pity for anything he does. Even his minions are terrified of him and witness Mulgarath force a fraction of his army to death simply for completing their use to him. While there are more sentient beasts like Red Cap and other villainous characters introduced in the sequel series Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles, their actions are nowhere close to what Mulgarath accomplishes.

Final Verdict
Directly or indirectly, this arrogant, cunning ogre is behind almost every problem behind the Spiderwick and Grace families, and he enjoyed doing it until his death for hegemonic power. Keep.