Underlings
Tropes and Archetypes
Introduction
This is the first issue of my new series of articles, titled Tropes and Archetypes. I aim to explore various literary tools, heroic and villainous archetypes, all from my Indie author's point of view. My goal is to share what I did right and where I erred on my humble quest for self-improvement. I ended up learning quite a lot from my mistakes and hope that sharing this journey of mine would help others grow.
It is not my goal to tell you how to do things or imply that my way is the “bestest evaaar.” I hope that you'll find something useful that can augment your own, distinctive style of writing, training weights for your glorious gray cells to lift and get ultra ripped...
Index: The Villainous Way of Command | The Villain’s Apprentice | Deserved superiority | The Quest for thy Hate | M for Mystery | Farm Commonwalker
The Definition
The Underlings or the Mooks trope, is a term that describes throngs of disposable, “one-hit” enemies. They are slain with ease by the Hero/Heroes and in their literal throngs. No matter their arms or equipment, the Mooks are woefully unprepared to face the Heroes, but are quite adept at conquering unarmed civilians. Try as they must, the Mooks cannot land a single shot (punch or a sword strike), and the heroes walk unscathed. Said underlings are loyal to a tee, and willing to walk into the very jaws of death at the whim of their master.
The best and the worst
Tropes are a tool and like all tools they can be misused, abused, or employed with glorious success. By far, the most inept use of this trope in recent history was Disney's abuse of Stormtroopers in their various failed TV series. This noetic display of storyshowing incompetence began in Disney's “Star Wars trilogy,” with the utter misuse of Finn's character. Then, things accelerated further down a chute ending in the proverbial burning trash heap, which was that imbroglio of a show, Obi-Wan.
Of course, the humble underling shines not with his (or hers) awesome powers of deduction, nor are they avid scholars of Sun Tzu, or by any shape or form, accurate shots. Theirs is the most important job of providing the viewer/gamer/reader with all the contrast they'll need to accentuate the differences between elite enemies, the Big Bad, and the Heroes. This is an important balance needed for achieving satisfying payoffs, and establish the competent main players of this story. However, these, and many other points escaped the activists who are masquerading as writers at Disney.
There are many and quite glorious uses of the Underling trope, in games, movies, TV series, or literature. I was forced to roll a dice since I had not the time, nor energy to write about each and every one of them. The Orks of Tolkien are what a well-rounded underling should look and act like!
Properly debased (they even eat their own!), vicious, backstabbing, the Ork hordes are beyond successful in their trope duty. Unleashed upon hapless civilians, they slaughter, pillage, and enslave without equal. Their very existence gifts the reader with quite the contrast between them and the Nazgul, for example. When the time comes for Saruman to release his own, genetically... erm... excuse me – magically modified Orks, who are the Elite Underlings of Lord of the Rings, it is already beyond clear to all readers, who is who and who is capable of what.
Tips&Tricks
This is the part where I am going to share the tips I got from other, much better authors than I, and, of course, from my reader feedback. Since my writing skill is sorely lacking, I leaned heavily on my ability to plan stuff. I aimed to achieve a modicum of consistency and maintain it throughout all stories set in specific universe, which brings us to our first point:
Worldbuild their who and why – You don't have to bury your nose in the history books to write a plausible reason why are the Underlings of your story their incompetent selves. There are various themes which you could employ... like the massive, force conscripted regular army of a giant empire, or the summoned en masse impish demons. Whatever your pick, the trick here is to remain consistent with your representation of your Underlings.
In my own writings I went the force conscription route and worldbuilt each and every horde of underlings. Be it the desire of inbred Border Counts to conquer small colonies via a force of poorly trained conscripts, the Pirate Clans' fanatic devotion to Holy Darkness which drove them to invade Earth, or the cannibalistic hunger of the Jaern tribes to hunt other peoples progeny, the reader knows about the roots and motivation of every Mook in the Starshatter universe.
Storytell The Environment – If we can show the reader that a particular, dangerous environment kills our underlings, the Hero's or Heroes own preparedness, survival skill, and overall prudence can further establish them as even more competent a character. One of the defining characteristic of the underlings and their leaders is overconfidence, especially in their numbers. Again, our own history is rife with similar examples, when a woefully under-prepared force marches into a harsh jungle/mountain/desert terrain, only to fall prey to a small guerrilla force.
The overbearing heat, thick, muddy ground, sauna-like humidity, and vicious, blood-craving bugs; literally everything that they face further erodes their overall combat capabilities, even taking them out of the fight entirely. A wounded, suffering from thirst, and sick with tropical diseases underling is a useless underling.
By contrast, a single determined Hero, born or acclimatized to this very environment has a significant advantage even against a horde of unprepared Mooks.
Their own gear fails them – You could make crafty use of the Underlings' main characteristics; their lack of, or often substandard equipment. This is not something unheard of even in real life, where many an army outfits the bulk of their troops with guns and gear by the lowest bidder. Whatever the flaw, especially if a piece of kit is a prototype/brand new item, it will be of great hindrance to the underlings.
One could make further use of this trick and write the commander of these Mooks (due to ineptness or some other reason) has fitted them with gear, unsuitable for the environment they are being deployed in. Perhaps, the unit being thrown at the Hero/Heroes is even trained and outfitted for something else entirely... like space combat for example.
I used this in the intro book for my Starshatter series. The inbred Taz'aran Border Count marched one unit of space troopers deep in the jungle; bulky spacesuits, untested prototype rifles and everything. On paper (and in his mind), these otherwise numerous forces should've succeeded in their task and conquered the small Terran village. In reality, they struggled following their initial success, and with each new day spent in the jungle, suffered more and more casualties due to attrition and equipment failure.
Good commander vs Bad commander – This is yet another nifty trick you can make use of, in order to make even better use of your Underling force. Perhaps the low-rank leader of the Underling troops is naïve, inexperienced and full of themselves officer, and this their very first battle?
Or is it the supreme general of the Underling troop who is some obnoxious fool, who climbed up the ladder of command due to his ability to kiss the asses of his superiors? No matter your pick, using this trick could help your Hero/Heroes best the Underlings, and without overusing their powerful abilities.
Let them hurt the Hero – I admit, this one is a bit tricky. On one hand, the Mooks are not known for their supreme abilities, yet on the other, they should get lucky... once in a while. Perhaps this specific group of Underlings is led by a competent leader, who overcame their ineptness by forging a great plan?
Or the Hero/Heroes were a bit cocky and made a costly mistake which nearly led to their demise? You could even make a display of the rookie Hero's own lack of experience so you can further flesh out their specific character archetype?
One of my early mistakes was letting the Underlings literally bash my characters to near death, and not once, but a number of times during their adventure. While I admit that reading about the Hero/Heroes crawling with their guts on the floor might be appealing to some, such are moments specifically reserved for Big Boss encounters. However, because I had planned early on the introduction of Elite Underlings, and the arrival of competent Mid Bosses, I achieved balance.
The Indie opinion
In conclusion, your creative works would greatly benefit from imaginative application of the Underling trope. From my own reader feedback I learned that fiction enjoyers love seeing both Villains and Heroes being built up, and the contrast a throng of evil Underlings provides is quite useful in this regard. Your elite Underlings would feel more vicious, and their commanders, the Mid Bosses, more adept in their villainous leadership!
Honorable Tags:
Not only do I appreciate this essay because it's well-written and is a topic deserving of exploration, but because it touches on the inspiration for my current Warrior Wednesdays tale, "Fodder Squad"; the primary protagonists of that tale are all typically 'cannon fodder' in other genre stories.
I'm trying to go in the other direction. A semi-realistic portrayal of mobs. They are rarely 200 on 1, like the fight with Englebert.
If I put two hundred underlings, my heroes have 199 soldiers with them.
In a scene I recently wrote for a book. My MC and his people found a bandit camp of two hundred. Instead of rushing straight in, he sent for allies, which equaled out the bad guys, and then surrounded the camp. Rather than fight, the 200 enemies escaped into caves.
Underlings aren't cheap and they will run out on you, if you treat them like shit.