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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47036
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47036
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I am going for a frame challenge. While scanning the question all that I remembered was a big bag of buzz-words, starting with degenerate, barbarians, nomadic, Indo-Iranians, viruses, and further fluff.

It seems to me that you have overloaded your antagonists with all that you think could raise a sense of fear and exotic, in the hope that the reader will feel compelled to feel the same. It may work for your closest circle, but it is not in these buzz-words that you will find believable non-stock antagonists.

My frame challenge can be summarized as:

> _The evil that you know best is the one closest to you._

This has the corollary:

> The unknown is not necessarily evil, even if you are afraid of it.

### My suggesions

First, wash the exotic. You may want an antagonist to which the reader can relate. Bring them closer to you. Write about them in the same manner in which you would write about people that you know, in the setting that you know.

Second, come to terms that in depicting an entire populace as non-stock believable evil, you have to take a racist<sup>1</sup> point-of-view. While there can be people that perceive pleasure in harming others in any possible circumstance, it seems fairly unsustainable for a population living with scarce resources, as is often the case for nomadic tribes. In contrast, a misuderstanding of certain cultural nuances, or even a clash of objectives, whereby two groups of people need a certain resource to survive, may fall into the perceived category that the others are evil. Alternatively, your antagonists could just be ignorants, bigots, or bureaucracy fanatics, as the standard Western evils. Note that not one of these groups profess being evil _per se_, in fact they are rather convinced of being doing the right thing.

<sup>1</sup> <sub>Racist as in 'the country to which the MC belongs is so much better than the nation of these evil antagonists'</sub>

Third, while not true in general, I may suggest that in your case _less is more_. Do not force yourself to explain things unless the explanation serves a very clear purpose to your story. It will make your story easier to follow, and easier to relate with, as the imagination of the reader will fill the gaps.

Finally, the writing advice is to not place the antagonists next to the usual buzzwords of bloodthirsty mindless brutes. Describe their actions as well thought, their speeches as deliberate with a specific albeit not simple style. Ensure that they sound consistent throughout the entire spectrum of emotions. Trace a line in the way you write about them, and the way the MC speaks about them. They may be mindless brutes for the MC, but for you as author they are complex and deep at least as much as the MC.

Original score: 4