[Zsinj16]

I've been working a bit on my Atarchus story lately, and I've come to a place where I could use some suggestions.
You see, the main villain in my novel, Sinistroth, the vampire lord, is the head of an evil, demonic cult of vampires called "The Order of the Dark Serpent". In this cult, there are six "Serpent Lords" including Sinistroth as the "High Serpent Lord". The vampire Serpent Lords other than Lord Sinistroth are "Cronost the Time Devastator", "Levirkna the Feral", "Relnus the Bloody", and "Virnis and Tirnis, the Dark Sisters of Burning Ice".
Now the trouble I'm seeming to have with this, is at first, I was planning for Atarchus, the main vampiric anti-hero of the story to kill all the Serpent Lords one by one in different ways, but now I see this plot element as being very predictible and somewhat "video-gamish", so I've decided not to have them defeated that way.
Are their any suggestions or advice that anyone here could please give me reguarding how the Serpent Lords could possibly be defeated at the end, without it becoming too predictable?

Also, I have a question reguarding a term I'm going to use in my Atarchus story: In the story there is this religious fanatic who believes that all the races that are not human are evil and he plans to kill all the non-human races. Now when he plans to do this, would I refer to it as him plotting a "genocide" or a "xenocide"?

[Bardos]

The answer to your second question is genocide, indeed, I think. Well, of course, genocide is for ONE race. For many fantasy races I think it would by multiple genocide or something. That is if he plans to kill them ALL --that is genocide: anihilating a whole race, clan, nation, etc.

It's a Greek word actually! (Yeah, yeah, I know you're bored with explanations! ;-PP) http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/biggrin.gif
It's "genoktonia" -- geno (=genos = race) + ktonia (=killing of something).

Anyway. http://www.sffworld.com/ubb/wink.gif

As far as your first question goes, I really can't answer; I think only you can answer that. Decide!

[wastra]

Well, for starters,

GENOCIDE is the singling out of a RACE for extermination.

XENOCIDE is evidently a bastardization of XENOPHOBIA, meaning fear of foreigners. XENOCIDE is not an actual word, but I assume it would refer to the killing of foreigners.

I believe you want to use GENOCIDE for the killing of all non-human races.


As for the other questions, others could give advice, but you really need to work it out for yourself. Try imagining where you want the climax ot take place...what kind of setting. Whyare they there? How CAN they be killed? Do you even WANT them killed, or just defeated/driven off? What weapons or skills are at the hero's disposal? What weakness do the villians have? Are they immune to sunlight? Perhaps your anti-hero exposes them to sunlight, killing both him and the villains at once. Have you even exposed some weakness?

When you reach stopping points like you have, rather than turn to others for your ideas, try simply asking yourself questions that a reader might be wondering.