What makes a good villain? All villains are heroes in their own eyes. That is because typically they are fighting for a cause they believe in. Take King Radolf. His mother was outspoken about the selling of indulgences and so outraged by the clergy, who were profiting from this practice, that she made too many waves. The unscrupulous offenders targeted her as a witch and she was burned at the stake. Despite the fact that the accusations were outrageous lies, King Radolf’s father turned his back on her to save his kingdom. You will read a bit of this in the backstory in The Last of the Silver Wings book 1 in the Chronicles of Nadine. King Radolf is not anti religion, but anti the corrupt abusing their power to control the weak. This is ironic due to the kind of brutal man he is. But that is the way of a typical villain. They see the world through their own lens. Taking into account the state of the world’s wars, it is easy to see how human beings in their worst states find it easy to demonise opposing cultures. But within each enemy society, there are humans trying to make sense of the world and take care of their families. Stereotypical thinking about enemies is something I explore in my books. The first culture I introduce into my series is the Controns. This is a warrior clan. They have no family structure. New Contron warriors are bred by slaughtering all the males in an opposing village and having couplings with the surviving women. They never create family units. No women are allowed in their camps. Rather, they wait for the boys of these relations to become of age and then claim them for the training camps. There is one exception, and that is Beatrice, the only known female Contron Warrior. Her father broke from Protocol by falling in love with a woman and claiming and concealing the female child she bore shortly before her death. It was a risky move and one which ultimately cost him his life. If you thought that the Controns were bad, then they could only be described as pussy cats in comparison to the Ofardoes. They first appear in book 4, “The Tears of the Crystal Heart.” I have not yet been able to humanise this terrible culture. Maybe one day my imagination will demand that I give it a try. But for now, this is what you need to know. Ofardoes are gruesome looking people. They tattoo the skeletons over the full side of half of their body. So when they come for you, you will see a skull on one side of their face and bones down one half of their body. You won’t find this blood thirsty group just invading an enemy camp. They exterminate entire villages; men, women, children, animals; every living thing. Now before you die of fright, know that I never write scenes about the kinds of gruesome things they do. Many of the characters in my books have all heard about this fearsome culture’s reputation and they caution others against this clan. Ofardoes makes excellent trackers and has a secret tracking communication system. Markings are tattooed on their fingers and which when held up at certain angles, allowing them to communicate silence messages with their tracking partners. They usually track in pairs and so if you capture one, you had better know that there is another one close by. They are notoriously unpredictable. Sometimes trackers are sent out in pairs and sometimes they have an extermination party trailing behind the pair. None of the spymasters in my series have been able to discover reliable intelligence about their strategies or interpret their language. Despite their brutality, Ofardoes are excellent linguists and are able to understand and, in some cases, speak a number of different languages. They worship many gods, but one of them is a serpent god, who is known as the god of the hunt. Ofardoes hunters always leave a meat offering after a hunt for this god. The only people they don’t kill are the human traders. That is because human traders have a comedy they need. Slaves. No one ever wants to be acquired as a slave by an Ofardoes clan, because their passage to the afterlife would be horrific, to say the least. I once had a friend ask me, “Why would you write about such terrible things?” The answer is simple. How does light truly shine in a fallen world unless it has some darkness to contrast it? If I don’t have some pretty good villains, then you may as well pick up a book of calculus. So there you have it. The bad, the horrible and the cruel. I hope this helps you to better understand the world I have created. | 
