When I finished Cronos’ section, I felt compelled to spend a little extra time discussing his character development, both on the page and behind the scenes. I feel like doing the same for Gamaliel. If I recall correctly, a prototypical version of Gamaliel existed from the earliest version of the story, but it wasn’t until TTWC came into its current form that he took up the role of antagonist to Solon and Xanthe, a role I expanded on significantly when the story was brought into production.

There was a time when portraying a corrupt cleric in fiction was edgy, but now the opposite is more of a surprise. There are basically two ways of characterizing the antagonistic cleric: the cynic and the zealot. The cynic has little if any real faith and merely uses religion as a tool to serve temporal ends. The zealot is a true believer whose fanaticism precludes whatever charity exists in the tenets of his religion. I was vacillating between these two options when I finally asked myself ¿Porqué no los dos? *cue trumpet rendition of “La Bamba”*

You see, Gamaliel is not simply a pious fraud leveraging the blind faith of the masses to gain worldly power. He sincerely believes that he’s working God’s will but is also coldly calculating when it comes to manipulating people and situations to achieve his goals. Related to this, I’d considered making him a coward who always shrank from any real danger, but instead his mad zeal very nearly compels him to be on the front line against all the horrors of the Darklands. (He’s not quite that far out there, but this is still the guy who was eager to set his men against Dragons.) The average reader may not be drawn in, but he certainly gets the job done in universe.

In Cronos’ case, I felt he was a character who didn’t live up to his reputation but then turned it into a plot point. For Gamaliel, I had very different directions I was wanting to take him and wound up with a fusion that’s better than the sum of its parts (in my opinion, at least). Now that I’m on the topic, though, I may go back and do similar reviews of the previous leads and continue to do so for the leads to come. These aren’t meant to be especially deep; just some musings on where these characters came from and the course of their development. Perhaps you’ll find it interesting. Stay tuned.

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