When I started writing Rise of the Winged Assassin I knew ahead of time that at some point Airik would show up, but I hadn’t planned on him to show up in book one. Like so many of my characters they have their own ideas and Airik was no different. He shows up briefly in Rise of the Winged Assassin, but gives Lorelei some life changing information, so his brief visit has a powerful impact on her. So who is this guy Airik? Why do we care? In this post I will be giving you an insight on who Airik Yaseai is and why he is.
In Lorelei’s profile I explain that the inspiration for her character started with a fantasy role playing game. There came a point where we realized that she needed a counter balance and so a nameless trainer and mentor was created to help her with the disease that was causing her to act out. This character was only a faceless character because he was never really brought into the mix before we disbanded, but he lurked out there in the back of my mind for a really long time.
During the rough draft phase Arik started knocking on the door, wanting to be let out. As it turns out, the decision made sense, so I took this faceless blob of clay out of storage and shaped him into that mentor and trainer Lorelei needed. There are some caveats to his character though. He isn’t the standard mentor that is all wise and knowing and in control of himself. Airik has the Renai, and even though he appears to be in control, there is a constant war raging inside of him which makes him both dangerous and unpredictable.
The character has quite a bit of history and backstory, so he will likely earn his own book one day. For now, here is a quick view of who he is as I’ve written him into my notes section in scrivener.
Airik is a member of a group of Keiyou (Lorelei’s winged race) called the Aku Kira. The elders refer to the Aku Kira as a group of dangerous, deadly and highly infected band of mercenaries who care only to fulfill their desires to murder and torture anyone, even their loved ones. These mercenaries became infected with the Renai while participating in the war against the Toraveru and chose to escape their fate of execution for merely having the disease. The Elders have their reasons for executing them for being sick, but I don’t really trust everything they say.
You can think of him as a recovering addict of sorts. He lives with the guilt and remorse of what he did in his past and fights every day to not allow the Renai to take him back into those dark depths again. The Aku Kira is a community of infected and exiled warriors and act as a support group for each other with their own altered code of honor. He wants to atone for what he’s done, and also as a part of his training, the Elders of the Aku Kira are giving him that chance by sending him out to help Lorelei.
He’s strong, disciplined, perceptive, intelligent, enjoys his privacy, and awkward around Lorelei. At the same time he has an addictive personality, impulsive, sometimes reckless, and of course violent when he loses control or when the situation calls for it. I do use both the Negative and Positive Trait Thesaurus books to help be setup those traits for each character. A super useful set of resources.
I like to write plots with characters that struggle with real issues that we can relate to in our own world that is not dominated by dragons and magic with characters we care about. I care about Airik, of course I created him, but I hope you can related to him too. I’m not an addict to violence, but I can relate to being addicted to caffeine and cookies like Cookie Monster. Okay now I have to add my favorite cookie monster video with Siri. I get you Cookie Monster. I really do. Also if you want some more Cookie Monster fun ask Siri to tell you what zero divided by zero is.
I hope you enjoyed a glimpse of Airik who appears in my book Rise of the Winged Assassin. He also have a Character Short blog post on this blog, where I dropped him into a situation so I could learn more about him. You can find that post HERE.
