Alucard from Hellsing

In War of Nytefall: Savagery, I have a lot of supporting characters step up into the spotlight.  The one that is not a surprise to readers of the series would be Kai Stavros.  For those who don’t know, he is the spymaster and top advisor to Xavier Tempest.  I never had much of a plan for him since I had so many versions of this series that omitted him.  So, I was amused that I found a great storyline for him to follow for a while.  He might not be one of the top characters, but he’s certainly found a niche and way to develop while remaining in his role.

Of course, I can’t go into details without spoilers.  This means that I have to be vague and then open the floor for comments.  Kai suffers a lot as the series progresses.  I had him be the mastermind of the agents, which worked at some points.  Yet, he continued to get undone at times.  Probably one of his greatest moves wasn’t even on the page, but he talked about it.  I would have added it, but it stole the momentum from everything else going on.  This made me feel bad, so I tried to get him more involved and things went downhill from there.  At one point, I thought that I was simply going to kill him off since he’d fallen so low.  If not dead then ship him out of the story and never have him return unless I could fit him into the ending.  Would have been a really sad state of affairs for Kai Stavros.  Though, a little fitting since he’s an RPG character I played for one session and then he got junked.

Kai was saved and rose from his ashes though.  Part of it was because I realized Xavier would be incredibly kind and helpful to his agent.  This wasn’t Baron Kernaghan or the Lich that I was working with.  Lord Tempest actually cares about his people, especially Kai who has been his advisor for over a century.  This faith and loyalty was returned, so Kai wouldn’t willingly leave.  Because of this, I couldn’t remove him from the series and had to figure out what to do.  The only plan I had was to gradually rebuild him while events were unfolding.  He couldn’t be the mastermind during part of this, but maybe he needed some humbling.  Of course, I didn’t really know where I was going and what I would do with him.

That is until War of Nytefall: Savagery.  I think Kai really comes into his own here and gets the rebuilding that he deserves.  He got to be cunning and manipulative like I wanted him to be.  Maybe he simply had more to fight for this time instead of a slow-moving civil war.  The stakes are really high and he’s in more danger even compared to when he started his fall from grace.  Kai doesn’t have the offensive powers and reduced weaknesses of a Dawn Fang either because he’s an old-world vampire.  Yet, I have him being able to handle the monster that forced Clyde to retreat.  It was a really fun game of ‘how can he keep his plans moving’ with every chapter.  That’s why I think he deserved what he got in this volume.  Lots of fun to read.  Hint, hint, wink, wink.

Well, that’s the vague tale of Kai Stavros’s past.  Has anyone else ever written a character that fell to the bottom and then surprised you by rising back out?