How to make evil
I had this idea for demonic entities. Basically, there's this energy that inspires evil in beings, and corrupts anything it touches. It turns elves into dark elves, angels into demons, humans into zombie-like ghouls (or vampires if they learn how to do it right), nymphs into succubi, and trolls into...evil trolls (yeah, I know I mixed all mythologies into a big grabbag). Of course, all those beings are perfectly capable of doing evil all on their own (except perhaps angels, haven't worked out all the kinks in the cosmology yet, and they're mostly in the background anyway), but the dark energy corrupts them to the point where it's difficult for them to be anything but evil. It's sort of like a magical disease that one contracts either by abusing black magic or by having telepathic contact with somebody who's "infected". Law enforcement has an order to shoot to kill anything infected given their danger, but the means do exist to rehabilitate and purge them in they're captured alive (exception being vampires and ghouls, since the black magic is all that's keeping them animate, as they're already clinically dead).
Is this too cliche? I've heard a lot of people dislike the whole "villain is controlled by evil" as opposed to "villain is evil". One of my first major arcs I was going to do was have one of my main characters meet up with an old friend, who's turned dark elf, and then having to deal with the complications thereof.
I do have a plan B for my monsters. I still need demons, vampires, and dark elves in order for some things to make any sense. My alternative idea was for vampires to be sort of like a demonic parasite that reproduces through humans, and their origin is shady where some human a really long time ago made a pact with a demon. Dark elves would be interchangeable with dwarves a la Norse Mythology. And demons are evil being who exist in the other world, so they're pretty much the same as plan A.
It's not too late to alter the story, so advice please. Which do you prefer, plan A or B?
I had this idea for demonic entities. Basically, there's this energy that inspires evil in beings, and corrupts anything it touches. It turns elves into dark elves, angels into demons, humans into zombie-like ghouls (or vampires if they learn how to do it right), nymphs into succubi, and trolls into...evil trolls (yeah, I know I mixed all mythologies into a big grabbag). Of course, all those beings are perfectly capable of doing evil all on their own (except perhaps angels, haven't worked out all the kinks in the cosmology yet, and they're mostly in the background anyway), but the dark energy corrupts them to the point where it's difficult for them to be anything but evil. It's sort of like a magical disease that one contracts either by abusing black magic or by having telepathic contact with somebody who's "infected". Law enforcement has an order to shoot to kill anything infected given their danger, but the means do exist to rehabilitate and purge them in they're captured alive (exception being vampires and ghouls, since the black magic is all that's keeping them animate, as they're already clinically dead).
Is this too cliche? I've heard a lot of people dislike the whole "villain is controlled by evil" as opposed to "villain is evil". One of my first major arcs I was going to do was have one of my main characters meet up with an old friend, who's turned dark elf, and then having to deal with the complications thereof.
I do have a plan B for my monsters. I still need demons, vampires, and dark elves in order for some things to make any sense. My alternative idea was for vampires to be sort of like a demonic parasite that reproduces through humans, and their origin is shady where some human a really long time ago made a pact with a demon. Dark elves would be interchangeable with dwarves a la Norse Mythology. And demons are evil being who exist in the other world, so they're pretty much the same as plan A.
It's not too late to alter the story, so advice please. Which do you prefer, plan A or B?
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