the snowflake project

Full Character Chart (Step 7 of TSM)

Short Character Summary (Step 3 of TSM)

Name: Achi

1-Sentence Summary: Faced with the temptation of power, Achi’s loyalty is tested and fails, ultimately costing him his humanity.

Motivation (abstract desire): Achi desperately wants to achieve self-mastery. He has never been able to control his impulsive and self-destructive nature.

Goal (concrete desire): Achi believes that being strong and powerful will give him self-control. To that end, he accumulates as much power as possible.

Conflict (barrier to goal): Achi’s monkish vows against violence, his friendship (and later on his feud) with Kos, all stand in the way of Achi’s rise to power.

Epiphany (lesson/change): Achi struggles with an honest desire to better himself – however he loses himself on the wrong path to his goal, and eventually abandons his humanity in exchange for power.

1-Paragraph Summary: In the wrong place at the wrong time, Achi is collected by the empire and conscripted with Kos into their army. His life is irrevocably altered when he chooses to break his monk’s vows and follow orders to kill for the empire. He finds that violence makes him feel in control of himself, and he cultivates that control by becoming a ruthless soldier. Achi rises through the ranks, and as an officer, his loyalty to his childhood friend, Kos (now a gladiator), is tested when he must decide Kos’s fate – Achi fails Kos, and sentences him to death by execution. This evokes a full-scale rebellion among the gladiators and Kos escapes, causing a grave embarrassment – Achi vows revenge on Kos, and goes on a rogue vendetta mission with his most trusted soldiers. During his pursuit, Achi meets with a powerful force, and accepts its offer of power in exchange for the remnants of his humanity. Failing to pin Kos down, Achi, now become a creature of darkness, finally faces him when Kos comes to the imperial capital of his own accord – and loses. Achi flees, abandoning his post in the army, now loyal only to himself and his dark patron.

Plot POV (Step 5 of TSM)

Achi was a happy and fulfilled novice monk and best friends with a fellow novice, Kos. The two of them were in the coastal city running errands for their masters in the Dragon Temple up on the mountain when a cry went up that ships had been spotted off the coast. Achi wanted to rush back up the mountain to inform the monks of the news – no foreign vessel had ever been seen before, and certainly temple officials would want to hear the news right away. But Kos convinced him to go down to the beach and watch the ships come in.

Achi watched in horror as the advancing fleet methodically destroyed each fishing boat it passed, and ran in terror when the first fireball hit the beach. In his panicked state, Achi ran in random directions, sometimes with the crowd, sometimes against it. A huge explosion hammered him to the ground and flaming shards of metal rained down on him, piercing his side, and he fell unconscious.

Achi woke up back in the Dragon Temple, being tended to by physician monks. Bitterness filled him when he learned how much his world had changed while he slept. His people were now subject to the invading empire, with no recourse but peaceful resistance, and few but the monks were managing to resist at all. Thanks to the advanced medicine of the monks, Achi’s wounds healed quickly, but left a garish, pink scar on his side.

Once again, Achi and Kos were sent down into the city for supplies. They were given strict instructions to ignore the imperials whenever possible. In the city they witnessed a shopkeeper being beaten by two imperial soldiers. Achi was content to follow his instructions and just keep walking. Kos, however, couldn’t do that. Kos leapt to the shopkeeper’s defense, and because Achi owed his life to Kos (who carried him up the mountain), Achi joined him. Together they managed to beat off the soldiers, but they couldn’t escape before a metal giant with fiery eyes flanked by two high ranking officers found them. The soldiers were reprimanded, but Achi and Kos suffered a worse fate. The metal giant, which terrified Achi to begin with, held them both while the officers clamped metal collars around their necks.

Unable to remove the collars, Achi and Kos returned to the Dragon Temple in shame. Ever placid, their masters told them that their fate was the will of the Dragon, and therefore of The One. They were fated to live with the collars and their consequences. Weeks later, they suddenly began walking down the mountain, unable to stop themselves. At the city gates they were met by another enormous metal figure, this one with a cage built into its back. It tossed them in the cage and carried them to the docks, loading them on an outbound ship. All the while Achi and Kos were powerless to resist.

On the ship, Achi and Kos trained to become soldiers of the empire – their collars forcing them through the drills on deck along with other conscripts from the city. The training was hard, but a monk’s life is harder, and Achi and Kos took to it with no difficulty. Achi despaired at their fate, however, constantly lamenting the loss of his idyllic life and his lack of control over his own destiny.

By the time their ship reached the mainland to the west, their basic training was complete. Their collars were removed, and Achi and Kos were sent to join a legion of troops policing a rebellious barony. Achi was disgusted by the squalor most mainlanders lived in – they were dirty, poor, and always fighting each other. He quickly saw that only those who were strong enough to win the fights had anything of value. That fact was as true in the army as it was among the people.

In battle, it was expected that imperial soldiers kill their enemies – with Kos’s encouragement, Achi refrained, instead using the purely defensive tactics they had learned without even knowing it through their training as monks. But after the battle, when a wounded rebel was placed before Achi, he broke and killed the man, shouting defiantly at Kos that he had taken Achi’s life, so Achi could take this life. Achi turned and walked away while Kos was beaten.

Rumors about Kos began circulating the next day – that he had killed an officer – that he was some kind of demon or sorcerer – that it had taken ten men to kill him. Finally, Achi learned that Kos had lashed out against the discipline he had been given, and that had earned him a place as a gladiator in the Blood Pits in a city closer to the empire’s center.

Achi became a good soldier, following orders religiously, showing initiative when necessary. He was visited in the middle of the night by an officer whose face was hidden behind a veil. The officer invited Achi into a secret society within the empire; one whose members not only rose quickly in status – Achi would be made an officer – they also had access to real power. He offered Achi a chance at the kind of power men only dream of. Achi accepted, and so became an unwitting disciple of Gurik Sal.

Achi quickly got his reward – a commission as an imperial officer at arms – in exchange for performing small tasks that were given to him via inconspicuous means. One task was to travel to the Blood Pits and do away once and for all with Kos. The society saw him as a threat. Achi gathered hardened, loyal soldiers who were willing to die for the empire, and passed them off as gladiators, setting up a “free for all” match where they were all to gang up on Kos and kill him.

Achi attended a party in the city where Kos was being held, and met Aryenne. His attraction to her was instant, but the fact that she spoke so feverishly in defence of the gladiator who would not kill made Achi burn with rage and attraction gave over to the desire to possess and control her.

Kos’s defensive powers proved to be too much for even Achi’s most seasoned warriors. When his men were subdued, Achi demanded that Kos kill his opponents, and of course, Kos refused, as Achi knew he would. He fought down the tiny part of him that saw his friend in the Blood Pit instead of a ragged criminal who deserved death, and ordered Kos’s execution. He granted Kos one week to prepare for his death – though it was a selfish kindness. Achi wanted to spend the extra time in the city to court Aryenne.

When the week was up, Achi awoke to an alarm being raised. The gladiators had escaped the Blood Pits. He was furious – his weakness for a woman had cost him success at an important mission. He took a small group of soldiers from the local garrison and tracked the gladiators to the point where they seem to fragment, small groups going in all different directions. Achi’s tracking efforts were foiled.

Upon returning to the city empty-handed, Achi found a message for him from a superior of the society. He was to present himself to a high lord of the society at one of the ancient Dwarven temples to the Giant. Fearing the worst, Achi set off for the temple alone. When he got there, he found a man waiting for him – a man whose smiling face was utterly devoid of life or feeling. Being near the man made Achi feel a mixture of negative emotions. Achi spent a long time at the temple, under the trance-like spell of the man, while the man rummaged through his soul like a box of old tools. At the end, Achi was given a gift – a spark of dark power that would let him do powerful magic.

Achi left the temple forever changed, a willing servant of Gurik Sal. When he returned to the imperial capital, he found Aryenne there waiting for him, and he spent his days in court advocating for greater concentration on the empire’s expansion and on policing the subjugated people. He worked to keep humans fighting humans, rather than uniting to fight the threat the emperor knew was fast approaching.

When rumors that a warrior monk leading a small army was making his way through the empire from the west, Achi knew it could only be Kos. He rode out to meet him, eager for another chance to make good on his earlier failure. || Achi’s pride and his confidence in his new found magical powers were instrumental in his decision to face Kos in single combat. But Achi wielded his magic with the reckless abandon of an untrained madman, and Kos struck with precision and delicacy. Kos used Achi’s unfettered and poorly directed strength against him, practicing the same defensive and subduing principles and techniques he used in the Blood Pits. After a long and grueling fight during which Achi is continuously foiled in his attempts to obliterate Kos, Achi is defeated, and flees after Kos shows him mercy.