The Hero
The hero/protagonist in my character triangle is Nathan Reynolds. Nathan is a strong man of slightly larger than average build who is motivated by a strong desire to make the world a fair place. He's witty, charming, and intelligent. And yet, his eyes betray a troubled sadness that stems from his youth.
Abandoned by his parents, he was raised as a ward of the Catholic Church where his tortured experiences cost him to his faith and as well as his innocence at an all to early age. Because of this, he's carried a chip on his shoulder ever since looking for wrongs to right, hypocrisies to expose, and villains to purge from this unfair, unjust world.
The Ally
Nathan's ally and within this triangle is Zoe Summers. An athletic street-wise girl who's youth was in many ways the opposite of Nathan's. She grew up in a nice house in a nice neighborhood with well educated, upper-middle-class God-fearing parents. It was around the age of 14, when her father caught her kissing the neighbor's 15 year old daughter that things got hard for Zoe.
Her ultra-religious parents did everything they could to "fix" her. But from embarrassing church interventions to shock therapy during a two-month stay and the local church-run mental health facility, nothing helped. In the end, instead of practicing forgiveness, at the age of 16, her parents turned their backs on her and kicked her out of the house. With nowhere to go she lived on the streets, eventually deciding to join a gang instead of becoming the victim of one.
At 17 she was kidnapped and tortured by a psychotic serial killer for over two weeks. She eventually managed to escape with her life and the help of a young Nathan Reynolds. But she was once again forever changed, hardened. Her unknown assailant was never caught and still haunts her dreams.
The Villain
Caleb Cobb is the triangle's villain/protagonist. A wealthy, middle-aged man, of average build with short black hair, Caleb is considered a philanthropic pillar of the community. In reality, Caleb is a brutal, cold and calculating monster. Raised the way most sociopaths are, Caleb's super-rich parents worshiped material possessions, believed in hard work instead of love, and didn't at all believe in consequences for their perfect child's less than perfect actions. By the age 8, Caleb was torturing and killing small mammals almost daily.
Unendingly fascinated by the splendor of living creatures under the most extreme types of stress and pain, he mastered the art of torturing creatures to the brink shock and then backing off just enough so they continued to suffer without going catatonic. Caleb absolutely hated shock. To him, the Universe had personally affronted him by imbuing all creatures with this natural defense against the one gift he truly loved to give most, unimaginable, unbearable, unspeakable pain. Caleb hated the Universe for it.
By his late teens Caleb's victims were more people than animals, usually choosing small children. It wasn't that Caleb had any particular proclivity for children, not at all. When it came to pain, Caleb was completely non-discriminatory. It's just that children were easier to subdue and contain than teens or adults. He learned that the hard way when one of his victims, a homeless street urchin girl, escaped with the help of some piss ant do-gooder right out from under his nose.
Caleb knows that his true talents will land him in the electric chair if he is ever caught. Fortunately, after helping his parents to an early grave he learned to mask his private passion using the considerable inheritance his family's high social standing.
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