Character Creation: At'toock

Writing an intriguing character - character creation: At'toock

This deals with my science fiction/science fantasy eBook -  The Freelancer Chronicles Vol 1: Apex Predators

I'm going to take a look at one of the catalysts for change within my book, a character by the name of At'toock.

First a little bit of his background.

At'toock is an alien of the Arglois race who was put in place to try to keep the past buried. He also came to hate human beings through the histories that he was taught and the acceptance of his race's social stigma and ban on practicing complex sciences.

According to history the Arglois race wanted genetic diversity so they introduced human DNA into their blood and created a race which they could conceivably breed with and use as assistants in their scientific endeavors. This race was named Targlois.

The Targlois are considered to be failures with each generation becoming more and more intelligence deprived. The Targlois race breed like jackrabbits, have been blamed for the destruction of multiple planets and are now considered the brutes of known space.

How does this affect At'toock's personality? From chapter one of my book:

"...At’toock despised Humans. He hated their violence and their lack of self-discipline, both traits which are obviously genetic. Both traits were passed down to ‘The Great Mistake’: the Targlois race. The Targlois were to be the saviors and the breeding stock of the Arglois but the Targlois destroyed so much, they were so stupid and dense. The Targlois destroyed three entire planets and now the high crafts of the ancients, of At’toock’s own ancestors were forbidden."

At'toock also feels inadequacies and worry about performing his job of keeping the past buried. He had successfully done so for a long time until a family of xeno-archaelogists showed up.

Also from chapter one of my book:

"... Humans were always a bad mix. The only good Humans were the dead ones. Dead Humans could only do so much after all. His overly large purple eyes registered sudden fear. Dead Humans, Delezerians to be precise, were what has led these new Humans here. Humans always went for the Delezerian crystals. Strange, that, no Human alive could do more than make the crystals hold light and display images and that the Delezerian technology was far above what Humans currently possessed and the Humans could do nothing with it. Fools. All of them. Then again some mystic guardian he made. He couldn’t even do his job and keep these secrets here buried forever as he was ordained to do by the high council. Too many rumors left this planet because he couldn’t kill the Humans which came here before."

This starts At'toock off in a place where he is emotionally stunted in his views and his grasp of humanity. He is an antagonist at the start of the book, yet later on has to depend upon some humans for his survival.

Does he learn? He does to some degrees. At one point he becomes an honest friend to some humans while one of them is waiting to exact vengeance on At'toock.