I should probably give a shout-out to the baddies of my story.  There really wasn’t much to their origin.  The Lich was the main villain of the D&D game where Luke was born and he summoned the Hellfire Elf to do his dirty work.  In truth, Luke and the Lich didn’t come face-to-face until their ‘final’ encounter, which had its own comedy about it because of a stupid plan, a cocky smile, and a really bad die roll.  The Hellfire Elf was the one who broke Luke into his warrior status and it was a really rough trial of fire.  Level one characters are not supposed to battle demonic assassins and survive, but Luke managed to do it with help from his friends and (I’m sure) some fudging of stats by the gamemaster.  It was this little flaw in the game that made me realize that my book characters had to start off stronger than their game counterparts, so I owe the Hellfire Elf a thank you for that.  Though, I also owe him an apology for what happened to him after he was sent back to the Chaos Void.

The creation of the Lich’s personality was tough because he wasn’t a present entity in the game.  We never heard him plan or talk to anyone.  The only time he physically appeared, he wasn’t rather cliche in the way he talked.  So, I decided that he would be the stereotypical inept villain.  Many times throughout the series it will be pointed out how the Lich is the source of his own downfall.  Yet, he keeps trying to earn respect and success, so you gotta give the old skeleton some credit on that count.  I have to admit that as time went on, I started feeling sorry for the Lich and tried to give him a few scenes where he is actually effective, cunning, and you can respect him as a villain.  I will admit that I do have a grand plan for him, but that’s a secret.

The Hellfire Elf is an interesting case for me because he is the first demon to appear in any Windemere-based series, so he sets the standard for how they work.  I had to pay close attention to his mannerisms and growth to see if I could gain any insight to the overall demon world that was in my head.  Through him, I learned that demons will begin to develop mortal personality traits as they remain outside of the Chaos Void.  This opened up the door for me to go into more depth with other demons that appeared.  I also learned that Hellfire Elves feed off pain and cannot regenerate until they reach a certain age.  This demon is also the source of the Chaoswind weapons that will be plaguing Windemere for centuries.  I am sorry that as the first tier villain, he couldn’t go further than he did, but eventually Luke would be too strong to make the rivalry worthwhile.