I often have trouble with characters' problem-solving processes - since I know the solution, it seems really obvious to me, and it's hard to get an idea of how easily the characters should figure it out. So, I'm going to present one such problem to you guys and see which solutions you come up with and whether you come up with the one that I'm intending to have succeed. The story: In a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting, there's a group of nomadic Gypsy-like people wandering from town to town. The main character, Jilar, is one of them. When Jilar was a small child and his brother Tariq was a baby, a plague spread through his people, killing many, including his father. But unlike all the other plague victims, his father came back from the dead as a zombie and attacked and killed several villagers before he was killed again. He believes that someone, he's not sure who, brought his father back from the dead to attack certain people. Much later, Jilar discovers that he can sense the locations of zombies, and his people set up a zombie-hunting team with him as their guide. During the course of this time, he learns that smashing a zombie's brains out is the only way to kill them, that he can mesmerize zombies with his gaze (forcing them to look at him and not his teammates, which helps them attack unexpectedly), that Tariq has the same abilities that he does, that zombies are more intelligent than people think, and that some zombies have limited magical abilities (such as a form of invisibility that is broken by movement). Then one of their fights goes horribly wrong, and Jilar dies. Much to his surprise, he comes back as a zombie. For awhile he wanders around killing other zombies and feeding off of various criminals, searching for the one who resurrected him so he can kill him. During this time, he discovers that zombies attack people because they need to drink blood and don't have good self-control about it, that zombies have telepathy which doesn't work on the living and that zombies can't talk because they don't breathe. Finally, Tariq tracks him down. They discover that Tariq, when making eye contact with them, can command zombies and they have to obey, and that he can hear zombie telepathy. Tariq insists that he can find a way to cure Jilar, or at least make it that he no longer needs to kill. Any ideas what solutions they might try?
That's really funny. Um, so these people are something like zombie vampires? O... kay. I'm not very good with this, it's not a genre that I read, but I'd suggest Tariq might... uh... command Jilar not to drink blood... it might be helpful if I knew why zombies have to drink blood, I thought they couldn't die, then maybe I could come up with a better solution. Sorry, I'm afraid that wasn't very helpful.
Oh thank goodness I wasn't the only one who thought of zombie vampires. With the little information we have, really it's not much for me to go on either, I'm with Erato... or voluntary blood donations. Edit: I don't know much about voodoo zombies, is that what you're using?
I guess drinking animal blood, although that's been overdone. I think an interesting twist might be that there is no cure, that by the end both of them realise Jilar is a monster now and always will be.
Hmm, this is a tough one! OK, lets presume that zombies drink blood so that they can consume the life-force of the living and therefore prolong their own "life" (despite being dead, but you know what I mean). The blood that they drink from everyday normal people is ok, but they have to keep feeding or they become weak and "die". With this in mind, perhaps a possible cure for Jilar could be a special type of blood - just one drink could make it that he didn't have to keep feeding/killing. Perhaps this special blood would need to come a certain type of person, one who was particularly innocent or one who for whatever reason had an abundance of 'life-force'. Blood of a virgin? Blood of a descendant of Jesus? Blood of a serial killer?? It could work!
I'm confused? You want us to come up with an ending to see if it's te same one you come up with? I don't think it matters tbh - it's all in the story and how you tell it. For me this would go well as a dark comedy perhaps as the whoel pretence is quite cliched and potentially comedic anyways. As to an ending - do whatever you like there's a bunch: It's all one evil wizards fault, it's a gypsy curse for desecrating a shrine and a god must be appeased, Everyone dies, there is no cure, it turns out no-one was dead at all and it was just a new disease for whcih they find a cure and so on.... I say just write it.
