Getting a character away from home?

[Ireth]

That's a viable option. It would require some setup though, and I'm not sure how to handle it with the POV limitations of the story (it's solely from the hero's point of view from start to finish). The NP and the MC are total strangers, so any way I handle this it's going to seem like a random encounter from the MC's point of view if I can't offer the NP's perspective. I don't really like the idea of having one of the MC's human companions suddenly turn nasty.

 

[gavintonks]

Clive Barker does this so well,he has a protagonist who sends people out to kill, you can have a sub plot of a serial murderer

 

[ThinkerX]

Had a thought concerning NP. Basically he's a relative - brother or nephew or some such of the people in the castle, who spent a long time fighting in one war or another, and is a bit psycho as a result. Your MC is very leery of him - NP is unbelievably paranoid, drops a hint or two that he knows vampires exist - and might actually be tough enough to win a fight against a vampire. MC should overhear the other humans talking about NP, should maybe spot NP snooping around something that *might* eventually out MC as a vampire, that sort of thing. But, the longer NP stays with his kin, the jumpier his kin get. And finally, NP, through luck or observation deduces that MC is in fact a vampire, at which point we go to NP's botched kill or control scheme.

Main points are

1) NP is a fairly close relative of the humans.

2) NP doesn't just appear out of the blue and start killing, but hangs out around the keep for a few weeks or so.

3) As a result of his background, might want to give NP some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Possible bonus - possibly NP actually did tangle with a vampire somewhere else and live to tell about, and drops a hint or two of this to your MC during their confrontation.

 

[Ireth]

That's a very good idea, Thinker. My one problem is, who could the NP go after that Olan would care about enough to want to kill the NP? My most likely thought would be Ciaran, Olan's vampire friend; bringing in Olan's younger sister, as in previous ideas, would be likely more problematic than it's worth. I'd still need an excuse for her to be out there and so far from home in the first place, as I've stated on the previous page.

 

[ThinkerX]

That's a very good idea, Thinker. My one problem is, who could the NP go after that Olan would care about enough to want to kill the NP? My most likely thought would be Ciaran, Olan's vampire friend; bringing in Olan's younger sister, as in previous ideas, would be likely more problematic than it's worth. I'd still need an excuse for her to be out there and so far from home in the first place, as I've stated on the previous page

Perhaps the person NP goes after is a relative of Olans, just not his sister - rather a male cousin, who came into the keep as a ward of the other humans. Somebody Olan remembered from his own youth, and quite possibly a deciding factor in Olan allowing the humans to move in with him in the first place.

Just to really vex your MC, have this cousin/victim start hanging around NP, mesmerized by NP's tales of battles and distant places, even as NP starts getting jumpier and jumpier around Olan. This way, when things finally do blow up, Olan can see NP's actions as a betrayal of the trust that his cousin had in NP on top of everything else.

Also, have a couple ranking members of the humans refuse to hear or dismiss NP's psycho behaviour 'He had a tough time. Some honest work will settle him right down. He's my brother damn it! That means everything!' That sort of thing.

 

[Ireth]

Having the NP's victim as a cousin of Olan's may or may not be feasible. I'm trying to go for at least some historical accuracy as far as the interactions between the clans go, though I've taken a few large liberties for the sake of plot -- the most heinous of those would be the absence of the MacKenzie clan, who IRL were living in Eilean Donan when the MacRaes got there in 1362. I'm not sure how much the MacRaes and the Stewarts (Olan's clan) would have interacted in those days. I'll need to research that.

 

[ThinkerX]

Hmmm...if the victim was not Olans cousin by blood, perhaps he was a relative by adoption? His father a really skilled blacksmith or some such, valued to the point where he was informally adopted?

 

[Ireth]

That's possible as well. Though the trouble is getting the information about this previously unknown and unmentioned cousin into the story without it seeming at all forced -- there's no family mentioned at the start of the story other than Olan's parents, siblings, and paternal grandfather (the latter of which is important to both the hero's and villain's backstory). I'll figure it out.