Following the heaps of useful help I got in my “how to break someone’s mind” thread, here’s another problem.
I’m struggling with a chapter in which characters fall foul of a trap set by a magician, after a previous version I’d written of the trap was shown to rely too heavily on unlikely assumptions by the evildoer.
The characters are an eastern-style monk and his disciple/bodyguard, and it’s the monk the magician needs to kill. He knows the two are staying in a hotel (it’s a late-19thC type setting) which has few, if any, other guests. He can’t use a physical attack, as that can be traced, and in any case he wants to use magic out of pride in his abilities.
The basic form of the trap is to enchant a physical object, a “trigger”, in such a way as to give a psychic shock to whoever touches it. In an elderly individual such as the monk, this should result in heart failure. But it will only work properly if the victim is in a state of psychic distress at the time he touches it, especially if confronted with a horrific scene that draws his awareness to the physical body, internal organs etc. The nature of the trigger should also ideally have some symbolic connection with death or injury, such as a knife.
The magician’s problems are: 1, how to get the monk to such a scene; 2, how to get him to physically touch the trigger; 3, how to make sure his disciple doesn’t touch the trigger first and discharge it.
My current preferred trap involves the use of a female associate of the magician (though not in a spangly leotard) whom the monk met earlier that day and with whom the magician is displeased, to the point where he would quite happily sacrifice her. The woman, under the magician’s instruction, writes a note to the monk saying she needs to speak to him about his investigations, and giving a room on the same floor of the hotel. There is something in the note’s wording that suggests she might have other, more personal motives. This is delivered late at night (perhaps slipped under the door by the magician’s henchmen), after a sleep in which the monk has been sent dreams involving this woman being sexually attracted to him. These are designed to make sure the monk goes to her room alone.
After that, I’m struggling. The woman could be either alive or dead – if alive, she could have been hypnotised by the magician, or her mind could have been reduced to mush. To induce the state of horror, the magician could have “decorated” the room with blood, etc, though probably nothing that would smell too bad, to avoid drawing unwanted attention. One idea I had was that the woman could be tied to a chair with strips of cloth, and the scissors apparently used to cut the strips – actually the trigger – could be lying by the chair, and the monk would use them to free her.
(If the woman were dead, the trigger could be touching her body. If she’s alive, it can’t be, as that would discharge it.)
I’m not altogether thrilled with that, though. Sorry for the long background explanation, but does anyone have any better ideas?
Thanks very much in advance
I’m struggling with a chapter in which characters fall foul of a trap set by a magician, after a previous version I’d written of the trap was shown to rely too heavily on unlikely assumptions by the evildoer.
The characters are an eastern-style monk and his disciple/bodyguard, and it’s the monk the magician needs to kill. He knows the two are staying in a hotel (it’s a late-19thC type setting) which has few, if any, other guests. He can’t use a physical attack, as that can be traced, and in any case he wants to use magic out of pride in his abilities.
The basic form of the trap is to enchant a physical object, a “trigger”, in such a way as to give a psychic shock to whoever touches it. In an elderly individual such as the monk, this should result in heart failure. But it will only work properly if the victim is in a state of psychic distress at the time he touches it, especially if confronted with a horrific scene that draws his awareness to the physical body, internal organs etc. The nature of the trigger should also ideally have some symbolic connection with death or injury, such as a knife.
The magician’s problems are: 1, how to get the monk to such a scene; 2, how to get him to physically touch the trigger; 3, how to make sure his disciple doesn’t touch the trigger first and discharge it.
My current preferred trap involves the use of a female associate of the magician (though not in a spangly leotard) whom the monk met earlier that day and with whom the magician is displeased, to the point where he would quite happily sacrifice her. The woman, under the magician’s instruction, writes a note to the monk saying she needs to speak to him about his investigations, and giving a room on the same floor of the hotel. There is something in the note’s wording that suggests she might have other, more personal motives. This is delivered late at night (perhaps slipped under the door by the magician’s henchmen), after a sleep in which the monk has been sent dreams involving this woman being sexually attracted to him. These are designed to make sure the monk goes to her room alone.
After that, I’m struggling. The woman could be either alive or dead – if alive, she could have been hypnotised by the magician, or her mind could have been reduced to mush. To induce the state of horror, the magician could have “decorated” the room with blood, etc, though probably nothing that would smell too bad, to avoid drawing unwanted attention. One idea I had was that the woman could be tied to a chair with strips of cloth, and the scissors apparently used to cut the strips – actually the trigger – could be lying by the chair, and the monk would use them to free her.
(If the woman were dead, the trigger could be touching her body. If she’s alive, it can’t be, as that would discharge it.)
I’m not altogether thrilled with that, though. Sorry for the long background explanation, but does anyone have any better ideas?
Thanks very much in advance
