One thing I loved about Crier’s War and Iron Heart was how badly Scyre Kinok messed up his own plan when he distributed the Nightshade.
Quite often the villains in adventure stories never make Mistakes. It’s usually presented that if the Hero doesn’t thwart them then they will win, because everything has been planned out properly and they have accurately mapped every development. Sometimes even when it makes no sense, and the villain would have needed to be practically omniscient to have pulled it off and predicted all the minute points.
But Kinok just goes and poisons his most loyal followers by accident.
I LOVE it.
And it makes sense. He’s working out of a secret chamber in the back of his office, with no support or assistance from trained alchemists, no peer review, no human or even animal trials before he begins distribution....it’d be a bigger surprise if it worked. Imagine if the head of your local religious institution came to you one day and offered you a vial of liquid which he claims is nutritious and healthy, which he says he invented with his basement chemistry set. Would you drink that? Would you have faith when he started selling it online as a Miracle Cure that same day? You may believe in his religion, but that doesn’t mean he’s a doctor.
Kinok wiped out almost his entire support network because he was too arrogant and impatient to run proper clinical trials. Simultaneously unleashing a zombie horde is just the cherry on top.
