I want to talk about something that's been bugging me for a while. Basically, I have a group of 6 OC villains in my story, each one a different race and each one having different personalities and mannerisms. The problem lies in what ISN'T different about them. Or more specifically, I can only come up with unique background stories for about half of them. The others all seem to fall into the same template.

And that template is this: they're different from other members of their race, and they consequently get rejected or disowned by their own people. Finding themselves alone, they turn to the first person who offers them friendship, who happen to be two of the villains.

For clarification, here are the characters I have fleshed out background stories for:

Silence - An alicorn doll brought to life by a deranged author. Starting as a simple cluster of animation spells, she later gained sentience. She subsequently frightened her creator, who only wanted her to be an obedient servant. He locked her up in a cave in a faraway mountain until he could find a way to undo what he had done with her, and she spent years alone until she was discovered by a wandering unicorn named Nightshade.

Nightshade - A traveling musician who stumbled upon Silence in the cave. Orphaned at a young age, Nightshade took solace in his budding musical talent. When he first stumbled upon Silence, he wasn't sure what to make of her, but he took her along as a travel companion, feeling that his friendships were scarce. The two bonded and grew, and Silence encouraged him to take his music beyond his gig to gig lifestyle. He worked hard under her encouragement, and eventually became famous. The two grew close, so close that when Silence was discovered by her creator and banished to Tartarus, Nightshade was devastated. Hatred and despair filled his thoughts, and he began to see the world as twisted and broken.

Havoc - A changeling drone, Havoc was tasked with recovering love for the other changelings to feed on. When he consistently failed in doing so, Queen Chrysalis kicked him out and left him for dead. Injured and unable to muster the strength to shapeshift, he was discovered by Nightshade and Silence. The latter took pity on the creature, and nursed him back to health. He faced crushing self-doubt after his failure, which he only overcame with the help of Nightshade and Silence.

Now that that's done, here are the remaining three whose stories I can't quite nail down.

Eclair - A female diamond dog. Talks in fragments rather than sentences, if she talks at all. Very physically strong, and can hold her own in a fight.

Adflatus - A relatively small dragon. He is fascinated by magical artifacts and runes. Intelligent and well-spoken, he is often very serious, and doesn't understand jokes.

Siegfried - A male griffin. Very hospitable and warm, but not very honest. Lives alone in a small house far from civilization.

So yeah, I'm stuck with these guys. :P

Any suggestions would be appreciated, whether its for the one's I'm struggling with or with the ones I think I have down pat.

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For Elclair, you could do something where the Diamond Dogs began to run out of jewels to harvest, or just couldn't find any, and they began to die off. Elclair could be a survivor of that.

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Siegfried could just be like any normal griffin, but he could have a backstory where he was cheated out of many things in life through money or racism.

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I like to avoid to over powered villains in my work, or the usual emo villains. I liked Nightmare, but I've always been a fan of villains like Vicious or Wrath.

For example, if I may use my story as example, the villian has no actual powers, but has caused untold destruction through simple manipulation.

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Adflatus could be from some library somewhere, and he's out to learn new things. Maybe he finds a cave or something that changes him forever?

1210015 That is an awesome idea. But where did you get the idea that diamond dogs needed jewels in order to survive? Not saying you're wrong, just asking.

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I like to think that because Diamond Dogs are obsessed with jewels, it has become their life blood through adaption,

1210023 This is where you and I differ. I love tragic villains. I don't like villains that are just evil for the hell of it. For me, there has to be some underlying motive for their actions, otherwise they're just cartoon characters.

Also, tragic =/= emo. Just saying.

And where did you get that my villains were overpowered? I'm merely curious is all.

1209992 For Eclair and Adflatus, perhaps Adflatus was starving, having been kicked out of his dragon tribe for being a 'runt' and his pursuit of intelligence rather than power.

Whilst he was on the brink of death by starvation, Eclair found him, and - for whatever reason - took pity on him and gave him some of her own jewels on which to feed.

The reason she took pity on him may be due to a traumatising experience as a child? That might explain why she rarely speaks.

Of course, these are just ideas I've come up with in like 3 mins, so apologies if they're sub-standard :D

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Apologies... but thats a trap I see a lot of individuals fall into. Just offering some advice

1210095 No worries man. You're allowed your own opinion. I was merely stating my opinion in response, that's all. :)

If I were you, I would give Siegfried a trust complex, where somepony wronged him in the past (killed his family, something dramatic). Make him a lovable villain. The villains that can be seen as good guys are always the best (IE: Dr. Horrible, Two Face, Magneto, Dr. Doom, etc.) The trusting issues can also be applied to all the rest of the villains.

If you want to "bind" all the villains together by a common thread, I would make Siegfried as the leader of their bad, that goes around and gathers each villain from their past lives and into his own little "axis of evil."

1210253 The trust complex thing isn't a bad idea, although the "common thread" between the villains as already been established in my mind. Silence is the one that brought them all together, and it's her "death" that causes them to turn villainous. So yeah, not sure how that's gonna work, sorry, :/

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I like Siegfried, so I think that you should definitely write him into a leader of the villains. After the death of Silence, I would show a total paradigm shift in him, showing how he went from being happy and kind (if not a little untrusting) to malicious, cold, and very untrusting, thinking that anyone outside of the group-or anyone who disobeys him in general-deserves nothing but death. Add a few gruesome scenes where he tortures someone or where his change really shows, and he could become a cold-stoned killer.
If you don't like Siegfried as much, then just apply this to Nightshade. Also, a little bit of a god-complex and megalomaniac schemes wouldn't hurt either (IE: trying to hypnotize all of Equestria with his music, or using music-magic to kill, like those assassins in Kung Fu Hustle.)

1210015 1210027 You could even build on that, like say that the diamond dog group that Eclair lived in was in a region where the jewels were being heavily mined by ponies, who fought off the diamond dogs from their grounds. The group was displaced and no longer able to supply a steady stream of gems to feed them all. Many died off initially. But some families, in an effort to have some of their pups survive, would choose the strongest/smartest/fastest/best pups and kick out the rest of their litters to die because they couldn't feed all of them. Eclair could have been the runt of her litter and was kicked out because of it. However, she survived and this is what made her drive herself to become strong and learn how to fight well. (I don't know if you want her to be small now, but either way, she either could be small and very strong or just bulked up over years of living in the wild by herself) This is also why she doesn't talk much-she has been alone most of her life.
Just the idea that sprang into my head. I was inspired...and well, I love coming up with OCs!
I don't have much to offer on the others though, but if you don't get more from this thread let me know and I'll see if I can try harder for you!

1210365 Actually, I already have applied it to Nightshade. In the first chapter of my story, he abducts Princess Luna and sets in motion a "megalomaniac scheme," as you call it, to reform all of Equestria.

How does he plan to do this? Well, he swipes the Elements of Harmony and uses them and Princess Luna to create a creature called Gestalt, which he unleashes to consume all life. Gestalt is a strange beast; each life form it consumes becomes a "node" within the creature, and each of the individual nodes gain power by forming connections with the other nodes. Nightshade views this process as a form of friendship and solidarity between all life forms, and he aims to spread it across Equestria and the world.

So yes, that's my plan.

1209992 The griffin could be an old con artist and decided he wanted to escape those who were hunting him? The dragon could've been a scholar for magic and other things, he killed someone or some people for an artifact that he became lusted after. The Diamond Dog? I'm just suggesting... A trader whose life went wrong after a certain deal went completely haywire? Just suggestions.

1213676 After looking at the synopsis of your story, I think I have some idea. And in the words of Spike, "Dude, that's creepy."

If you need a picture of Silence, you needn't look far. She's on the cover art for my story, The Great Divide. But here it is anyway. For lazy people.

1214825 Thanks. The design was inspired by the Drones of Panzer Dragoon, notably Azel...

No need to feel stupid, though. I didn't specify whether the story was up or not after all. :P

Let me know if you decide to do that picture.