Mokallai gets everything he wants about halfway through this arc. Dyiij’s fealty, a truce, total leverage over an entire planet. And what does he do with that victory?
He cups his face in his hands and can’t answer his own question: to what was he even aiming for?
That’s the villain beat I’m proudest of so far, and I want to talk about why “winning feels like nothing” is scarier to write than “still hasn’t won yet.”
Menace Is Easy. Hollow Is Hard.
It is genuinely not difficult to make a villain frightening. Give him power, give him a body count, have somebody tremble in a hallway when they hear his name. Mokallai’s got all of that already — the Kyusoa skull throne alone is doing a lot of heavy lifting on the intimidation front.
But menace on its own is kind of a dead end, storytelling-wise. Once he’s won, what’s left? If the answer is “more winning,” you’ve basically written a video game boss, not a character.
So instead: he wins, and it curdles instantly. Bitter bile in the back of his throat. That’s the good stuff. That’s the beat I’d tell past-me to chase harder if I could go back and lean on it earlier in the draft.
The Compensating-For-Something Villain.
The other thing I like about him is that he’s insecure in a way that’s almost embarrassing to watch. He’s running the Einarriel-versus-Maowd-Ib rivalry like a jealous manager who can’t stop playing favorites. He flinches at the word “god” even while tolerating an entire cult built around him. That’s not a guy who feels powerful. That’s a guy performing powerful, badly, in front of the two people closest to him, and I think readers clock that even when the characters in-scene don’t.
A villain who’s compensating reads as a person. A villain who’s just powerful reads as weather.
Where I Think I Still Have Work To Do.
If I’m being honest with myself (an occasional and uncomfortable hobby of mine), his whole immortality obsession is currently more stated than felt. We know what he wants — to become Deathless, to force his way into Blaqnyon on his own terms — but not enough about why that, specifically, versus any other kind of ultimate power a guy in his position could chase. Since the hollowness is already my strongest card with him, I owe him one more scene that roots the immortality thing in something actually his: a fear, a memory, somebody he lost. Otherwise it’s just “villain wants ultimate power,” and I already know I can do better than the default.
He’s also, right now, defined a lot through other people’s reactions to him — crueler than Ib expects, softer than Einarriel expects. Which, fine, that’s a legitimate way to build someone. But it makes him a little reactive on the page. The “what was I even aiming for” scene, where we’re just alone in his head with no one around to define him against? That one did more character work in one paragraph than three scenes of other people describing him.
Lesson to self: more of that, please.
Until next time.
~Spenx