Embracing Darkness II - Why Heroism and Virtue in Dark Fantasy is Desired, not Dull
We used to recognize that "morally grey" stories existed on a spectrum of shades between black and white. Nowadays it's treatment feels more like a cynical, bitter, monotone sludge.
“Embracing Darkness” is an ongoing series of essays detailing my thoughts on the current state of dark fantasy as a subsect of genre fiction. In this series I attempt to identify both common mistakes which tend to drive readers away, and many of the core elements and themes which have helped some of the most beloved stories in the genre endure. If you’d like to read the other essays in this series, you may do so via the links below.
In prior essays I’ve produced, both in the written form here on Substack and in video on my long inactive YouTube channel, I’ve made mention of the overlap in techniques that exists between writing fiction and preparing tabletop RPG campaigns in regards to planning, plotting, and worldbuilding. Despite what some personalities in the various old school gaming circle may argue, such as The RPG Pundit, the building of some kind of story is inherent in the playing of tabletop RPGs.
Does this mean that the Game Master is a storyteller? Not necessarily. Does it mean all tabletop RPGs should strive for heavy focus on story, or that every group of players should aim to tell deep and emotionally resonant stories with their characters? Again, the answer is no. The needs and desires of individual groups playing their chosen games in the way they wish is what will ultimately determine the answer to these questions. Some will want their games to be extremely story rich. Others will want a hard focus on mechanics and plot to exist only as a guideline to point them to the next tactical combat encounter. Most, in my experience, fall somewhere in the middle.
One thing that remains true of all these methods, though, is that they will ultimately create a story when all to do with the game is said and done. Even if it ends up being an extremely basic story, lacking in details and strong in-character motivations, it’s still there in the recounting of events. No matter how stripped down it may be, it remains present, and no argument otherwise will change that fact.
I open my essay today with this particular preamble because of a serendipitous discovery I made when heading off to my last doctor’s appointment. As chance would have it, I watched a small set of tabletop gaming videos for the first time in months recently and, as its algorithm often does, YouTube curated some suggestions for me within that vein. One such suggestion, included below, caught my eye; a video by a relatively new and largely unknown creator by the name of TRILL titled, “Why Grey Morality & Gritty Realism FAIL”.
In the video, TRILL discusses a myriad of pitfalls that come with the use of so-called “grey (or gray) morality” in our tabletop games, and the points he hits on apply very well to those of us who enjoy writing stories of the darker persuasion. I won’t go over everything he discusses word for word. The video is only thirteen minutes long, short enough to make for easy listening, and I wouldn’t want to do him the disservice of pilfering his well made arguments just to add commentary of my own. In short, please watch at least this video and if you like it, watch a few more and consider subscribing to him. I’ve watched a small handful of his videos now, and as they’ve all been quite good so far, I’d like to see him grow.
All this being said, there’s two particularly strong points he hits on in this video which I’d like to discuss from my perspective as a dark fantasy writer. Firstly, as referenced in the title of this essay, is the idea that heroism and virtue are somehow boring and undesirable in dark fantasy. Secondly, the degradation and misuse of grey morality as both a concept and a tool in our fiction. So, without any further ado, let’s get into it.
The Virtues of Showing Virtue (and Villainy)
In my first Embracing Darkness essay on dark fantasy, I discussed how the one key element that’s most overlooked in this subgenre is the presence of hope. Throughout my years reading and writing dark fantasy stories, I’ve found it to be a universal truth that the stories which best stuck with me weren’t the ones that only went all in on the grim, dour, and brutal aspects that stand as core components of the subgenre’s trappings. Glimmers of hope exist all throughout the most lasting examples in the genre, though they might not be immediately obvious, especially if the stories tend to end in tragedy.
Michael Moorcock’s dark and cursed antihero, Elric of Melniboné, has drawn no small amount of flak from those who see his stories as being largely hopeless. This is due to the heavy sense of tragedy that lingers over Elric and follows him throughout his adventures, and that carries through to the way the series ends. I shan’t spoil it, but suffice it to say that happy endings are not par for the course in the tales of Elric.
However, saying happy endings aren’t par for the course is very different from saying they flat out don’t happen in his stories. They do, and with surprising regularity for a series that’s often touted by its detractors as being devoid of hope and heroism. In fact, most of my favorite stories within the series showcase not only that strong undercurrent of hope that I hold as so important to creating memorable dark fantasy, but examples of heroic virtue as well.
Two of the best examples of this within Elric’s saga, in my opinion, are the stories The Fortress of the Pearl and The Revenge of the Rose. I shan’t go into deep detail on either of these as that’s not the point of this essay, so let it suffice to say that each of these stories features Elric behaving at his most virtuous. In The Fortress of the Pearl, for example, Elric - who, for those unawares, is a rather sickly albino that must regularly imbibe alchemical tinctures to keep his body from failing him - finds himself stranded not just in the desert, but the city of a rival nation that despises his people1. Worse yet, the potions which help sustain him have run out, leaving him in an extremely vulnerable position. A scheming noble from the area learns of this, and opts to take advantage of Elric’s unfavorable position to force the Melnibonéan to aid in his schemes. This leads Elric on his journey to find the titular fortress, as well as the young girl that’s currently hidden away in there.
Across the course of this story, Elric is made to face the complex realities of this foreign land in which he finds himself. The scheming noble who’s holding his life over his head for personal gain is undoubtedly a villain in this tale, but the sorcerer adventurers he employs seem at first to be led by honorable men. However, this is called into question when Elric finally encounters the people whom act as the guardians of the fortress, as well as the Dreamthief Oone2, who are revealed to be far goodlier folk than he was led to believe. What results is a tale of fantastical adventure that’s supported not just by the surreal imagery of strange dreamscapes, which is something Moorcock excels in, but by shows of genuine heroic valor from a character often described as nothing more than depressing, dour, and dark. After all, he travels into what’s effectively another plane of existence to find and protect a girl he knows nothing about, simply because he believes it right and sympathizes with her father’s worries for her safety. A rather virtuous course of action, if you ask me.
This all brings me nicely to the point I wish to counter in this first section: the idea that heroism, virtue, and valor are boring and undesirable within dark fantasy stories.
Characters like Elric, or Arvin from Lisa Smedman’s House of Serpents trilogy3, or D the vampire hunter, and even Solomon Kane put the lie to this idea. These are characters who showcase specific values and moral codes that are clearly displayed in each of their stories. In some of these cases, such as with D and especially Solomon Kane, they hold to these ideals rigidly. This helps them stand out as firmly heroic, if more than a little dour, in the dark settings in which they’re placed. On the other hand Arvin, and in particular Elric, struggle with adherence to their ideals. In Arvin’s case, he must find the way to balance the freedom and family he wants to attain with what he needs to do to escape the yokes of Zelia, Hlondeth’s thieves’ guild, and the threat of Sybil’s cult. For Elric, its the struggle of trying to rise to the ideals of valor, honor, and enlightenment which he values, while being forced to reckon with the fact that the greater powers which enable him to fight for these ideals - his black runesword Stormbringer and the sinister chaos entity Arioch - aren’t only opposed to these, but take active efforts to undermine him.
Heroic virtues are touted by some as being boring or naïve elements to include in dark fantasy stories. According to them, portrayals of virtue are a detriment to “realism” and a story’s believability. Personally, I see this more as a sign of their own cynicism than anything else. However, given how common this argument has become and how long it’s been around, I feel it’s worth addressing. The argument that I usually hear made about virtuous characters usually amounts to some version of what I’ve come to call the Superman excuse: “These characters are just boy scouts. Nobody’s all good all the time, that’s not realistic.” You can just as easily flip this in the other direction to speak of irredeemably wicked villains and it would apply just as well.
As with most poorly formulated arguments of this type, a kernel of truth exists at the heart of it. It’s true that people aren’t all good or all bad all of the time. People are complex. We can and will fluctuate in our moods, behaviors, actions, ideals, morals, and so on. Differences in upbringing, culture, life experience, etc. will lead to people displaying different moods and behaviors, or holding different ideals and morals, more frequently. Any experienced writer worth his salt knows that if we want our characters to feel real, then we need to be able to effectively portray these nuances in our fiction. The argument being made by these detractors is that virtuously heroic characters are, for some reason, incapable of capturing said nuances.
This is, in all senses, entirely untrue. One need only look at lasting examples of both virtuous heroes and baleful villains to see this. Luke Skywalker recognized the evils being inflicted by the Galactic Empire, but he didn’t just up and run off to fight only because Obi-wan told him to. He struggled with that idea, and ultimately only accepted it when the Empire took his family from him. Does this mean he wasn’t a person who held to virtuous ideals like justice, honor, and honesty? Of course not, just as the fact he holds to those values doesn’t mean he won’t struggle to uphold them, as is shown in both of his duels with Darth Vader.
But let’s bring it back to fiction from film. Does the fact that Sméagol killed his brother Déagol in their fight over the One Ring mean that he’s nothing but an irredeemable villain? Did he never do good, never try to change? No, we know that he did. Sméagol spends a good chunk of his story in The Lord of the Rings trying to be decent again in repayment for the understanding which Frodo shows him, an understanding born of the fact that he knows the burdens and dark temptations of the ring firsthand. Sméagol struggles with the actions he’s taken, and the fact that he can’t help but succumb to the ring’s influence, that he can’t help but be Gollum, plays into the deep tragedy at the heart of his character. After all, it’s precisely that evil temptation which not only made him the pitiable creature he became, but ultimately resulted in his destruction.
Both of the examples I provide are classic showcases of the strengths of virtuous and villainous characters in fantasy stories. No one who has a strong understanding of what makes for well written fiction would argue otherwise. This is because it’s the struggles of the virtuous and the villainous, both the external ones had against one another and the internal ones had against themselves, which make the most memorable of them so engaging. This truth is near universal across fiction, and it’s why some of the most beloved and respected characters in darker stories - Solomon Kane, Elric of Melniboné, The Witcher’s Geralt of Rivia, Warhammer 40k’s Ciaphas Cain and Ibrahm Gaunt, Berserk’s Guts, the vampire hunter D - continue to occupy space in the memories of those who enjoy them.
However, a character’s virtuous attributes aren’t created in a vacuum. They have to come from somewhere. This is when morality comes into play.
Black, White, and the Many Shades Between
Adding to the serendipity of discovering TRILL’s channel the other day is the fact that that same night, I found myself with a couple hours of free time and managed to finish the campaign mode of Space Marine 2, which I briefly discussed in a recent essay I wrote on the strange position of the entertainment industry in the year 2024. This game marks the latest and, to date, single greatest video game property released under the Warhammer 40k license outside of mobile gaming. This has nothing to do with why the timing of my completion of the game is serendipitous, though. That has everything to do with the game’s story.
As I’ve stated in the past, including in the linked article above, Games Workshop really hasn’t done its flagship property many favors over the years. Warhammer 40k is the property that ultimately birthed the term “grimdark,” which is used to describe the very darkest entries within the dark fantasy subgenre. I will tell you now, digging into the deep lore of this excessively expansive universe will reveal numerous reasons why this is the case, and many of the examples you’d find stand as reasons why the series has just as many detractors for its stories as it does fans. It both can and has stepped into the mire of excess that I discussed in my first Embracing Darkness essay, and that’s led to the whole of the series being painted in an unfavorable light by many people.
Like before, I’m not going to try to argue that the criticisms that Warhammer 40k receives for its lore aren’t without merit. The stable of writers that Games Workshop has working in their Black Library4 is expansive and their skill levels are, to put it as generously as I can, varied. Where on the one hand you’ve got writers like Dan Abnett and Justin D Hill who tend to be quite consistent in bringing quality stories to the table5, you’ve also got rather mediocre writers like Andy Smillie, and writers who seem intent on wasting their talents by using their books as platforms to villainize public figures they personally dislike. Looking at you, Mike Brooks. Point is, the quality of Warhammer 40k’s output, be it in games or fiction, has been anything but consistent. However, this sort of inconsistency also applies to the types of stories being told.
Warhammer 40k is one of those settings that people often point to as being exemplary of the issue of moral greyness. It stands right alongside Game of Thrones in that respect, albeit on a much shorter pedestal since it’s not nearly so well known. The thing is, just like everything else about the setting, this is only half true, as the story of Space Marine 2 shows.
To give a brief rundown, the story of Space Marine 2 follows Demetrian Titus, the main character of the original game. Having been disgraced after a terrible accusation of corruption was leveled at him by one of his own squad mates - and I’m talking warp corruption here, which means he was effectively accused of consorting with the 40k universe’s very real and very dangerous demons - he was made to serve in secret as a member of the Deathwatch, a coalition of Space Marines drawn from their various chapters to serve under the forces of the Imperium of Man’s ruthless Inquisition. Basically, this means he was sent out on secret and highly dangerous missions to root out heresy, corruption, and defend the Imperium’s holdings against the threat of xenos6 species.
Due to the events of the new game’s tutorial mission, Titus finds himself reinstated in his old chapter, the Ultramarines - the single largest and most powerful of all the Space Marine chapters - as the new lieutenant of the 2nd Company. The records of his dismissal have been stricken so as to avoid the raising of questions by his new squad, and he’s sent into battle to deal with major threats across a small system of three planets. Pretty simple premise, and it help sets up the simple but engaging story of honor, redemption, brotherhood, and justice that revolves around our primary trio of Titus, his sergeant Gadriel, and their fellow marine Chairon.
The story we get is neither particularly deep nor particularly complex, but it is well told, and the drama that exists between the members of the squad hinges on the revelations of Titus’ past and the strict moral codes the Space Marines are expected to adhere to, as laid out in the tenets of the Codex Astartes. That sounds like a pretty black and white sort of moral framework to me, especially when we consider the threats posed by the enemies we face throughout the game. The resolution of these intercharacter struggles, and the lines of small but meaningful growth we see in our main trio and their relationships to each other, all ultimately fall in line with the values they hold as brothers in arms; as Ultramarines. This is to say, conflicts are resolved upon reflection of shared moral values, which leads to stronger bonds being developed between them.
Doesn’t really sound like the kind of storytelling you’d expect from a setting often touted as morally grey, does it?
This is why, in the wake of TRILL’s video, my completion of Space Marine 2’s story campaign felt so appropriately timed. To my pleasant surprise, the game stood as a fine example of one of the key points made in that video: that moral absolutes often lead to more interesting conflicts in stories, not less. The strict codes that the Space Marines are expected to live by, those set out in the Codex Astartes, often call for extreme measures to be taken in the case of warp corruption. The influences of the warp and the dark entities which exist within it are the sorts of things that are capable not just of sending planets or even entire solar systems into ruin, but tearing the fabric of reality itself. It is considered the single most dangerous thing in the 40k universe, and with damn good reason.
This is why accusations of corruption most often result in execution, while planets under threat of such can see themselves entirely destroyed simply because it’s a better option than allowing the forces of Chaos to gain those footholds. All of these options are debated in the campaign, but none of them will be considered until no other option is left. The Ultramarines would rather fight and die to protect what they value than to destroy it, and they’ll do so for as long as they’re able to fight.
Now I want to be clear, this isn’t to say that moral greyness doesn’t exist within this story. It does, but it’s handled in a way that both supports the opposing moral pillars we’re presented within the story, and that deepens and strengthens its characters. This is what many modern stories that proudly proclaim themselves to be morally grey often lack: the nuances within the greyness, the gradient that’s supposed to exist between the black and white ends of the moral spectrum. All too often we see stories that proudly proclaim how realistically gritty or morally grey they are ultimately devolve into a bunch of asshole characters who don’t really care about anything lashing out against other asshole characters who don’t really care about anything. In other words, the stories exist to present a cynical sort of meaninglessness which, in the worst cases, can push into tiresome expressions of nihilism on the part of the author.
Much like a good many other literary concepts today, both moral absolutism7 and grey morality are finding themselves frequently misused and misunderstood, particularly in regards to the latter. As opposed to the gradient of nuanced moral values that the grey is supposed to represent, it instead often finds itself treated as an absolute all its own. Put plainly, this simply doesn’t work in the vast majority of cases.
Stories of absolute good against absolute evil might get derided as simplistic, lazy, or unrealistic by some, but they also make up some of the longest lasting stories we’ve seen throughout the whole of human history. What’s more, they can still work as engaging stories because they present a clear delineation between the heroes and the villains. Black and white morality creates conflict, which is necessary for any story to be interesting.
Absolute grey morality tends to have the opposite effect. Instead of giving clarity to the characters in a story, it obfuscates them. This isn’t always true, mind you. It’s entirely possible to write engaging stories suffused in grey morality. The 2019 film Joker is a good example of this, but it also shows us its limitations. Far more often than not, the fully grey stories that are successful end up being character studies over anything else, simply because these are the stories best suited to support that specific morality structure.
Where dark fantasy is concerned, while good and evil doesn’t need to be portrayed in overtly black and white ways, we do need clear examples of morality displayed within our stories. Because the subgenre tends to have a lot of antiheroes and antivillains as the central characters, easily understood contrasts become necessary to help their complexities stand out. Moorcock achieves this in the Elric stories with Elric’s allies, his villains, and the dark cosmic forces that try to manipulate the former emperor of Melniboné. Arioch is Elric’s patron, granting Elric much of the power he’s able to wield. Arioch’s also undeniably an evil and self serving entity within the context of these stories. The same goes with the most frequently recurring villain in the series, Gaynor the Damned, who appears in a variety of ways across the stories which he’s present in.
Gaynor is most often displayed as a cunning and charismatic leader of some sort. He tends to rally like souls to him with promises of glory and freedom, often secretly conscripting them into his fight against the cosmic forces which hold sway over mortal existence. In reality, though, he’s shown in every case to be little more than a reaver who’s interest lies in destroying the fabric of the multiverse itself, thus ending all of reality. What makes him an effective threat is the fact that despite past defeats, he very nearly achieves his sinister goal on multiple occasions. What makes him an effective foil to the moral struggles of Elric, though, is the fact that his intentions are always revealed to be entirely self serving and destructive to those around him. He’s always proven a villain in the end, even when it seems like he’s trying to help the protagonists.
I find that what’s often missed in the writing of those who say that only morally grey stories can be interesting are the layers of morality that are supposed to exist within the varied shades of gray. What I then notice in those stories are some combination of the following patterns:
Victories for the protagonists are frequently shallow or pyrrhic. They’ve won, but it always comes at some cost to them, thus never allowing us to feel like the heroes we’re meant to root for have earned a proper victory for themselves.
Everyone outside the main cast is out for themselves. Everyone. Duplicity, underhandedness, manipulation, and so on, become the expected traits for secondary and tertiary characters to display, which leads to a tiresome reading experience because we, the readers, never feel like we can trust anyone in the story. (This issue becomes further compounded in stories where the main characters act this way, too.)
Virtuous characters are portrayed as stupid and naïve, so blinded by their moral ideals that they’ll make obviously dumb decisions that get them imprisoned, killed, etc. This is often where the cynicism of such writers shines through, causing their stories to feel less like stories, and more like statements in favor of the belief that there’s no such thing as true heroes.
Characters cease to feel believable. Ironic, considering these arguments for grey morality often hinge on the idea of a story feeling “more realistic.” The truth, however, is quite the opposite. The self serving duplicity and casual cruelties portrayed by everyday people in these stories doesn’t feel real because even if we struggle to actively recognize and articulate it, we know on an instinctual level that’s not how people generally behave. Some do, of course, but some is a far cry from all.
How many, how often, and how severely these patterns occur will vary. After all, not all writers of this type are bad at their craft. In some cases, such as the Vampire Hunter D light novels that the two movies were adapted from, the stories remain entertaining and engaging despite the fact that the first and second patterns are shown across many of those stories. Even so, the presence of such patterns is still unwelcome, as it makes for an annoying distraction at best, and a glaring flaw that can drive readers to give up on a story at worse.
Variety in Values, or, Returning to Shades of Grey
By now I think it’s pretty clear that dark fantasy writers face quite a few particular challenges when it comes to utilizing grey morality as both a concept and a tool. With so many big budget fantasy productions out there putting in an inordinate amount of effort to portray moral relativism within their stories, with HBO’s Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon adaptations being the single biggest examples and Amazon’s abysmal The Rings of Power being the most recent, it becomes easy for aspiring writers to fall into the trap of believing that this sort of grey morality is a necessary aspect of these stories. I’m here to tell you this is false, and that these pitfalls are entirely avoidable with a little bit of forethought and consideration of the moral values held by the protagonists and antagonists within your story.
But let’s get into some specifics. What can you do to avoid repeating the patterns I mentioned above? First and foremost, don’t be afraid to utilize absolute morality within your stories. Whether presented in an overt or subtle manner, it’s important to have a firmly established idea of what the people in your setting consider good or evil, legal or illegal, and acceptable or unacceptable. Knowing these will allow you to construct a framework of moral values for your characters to work within. This can then help you to establish both the values held by individual characters and how those values can be challenged, be they by external forces such as the story’s antagonists or disagreeable choices made by allies, or internally from decisions they were forced to make which go against their values.
Secondly, remember that it’s not a bad thing to have characters who act as paragons of virtuous morality, even in dark fantasy. It’s likely that such a character won’t end up being the central character in your story as it can be challenging to give paragon characters the level of depth we like to see in our central protagonists. In the role of secondary or tertiary characters, moral paragons such as Gandalf, the book version of Faramir, and Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Uncle Iroh, can act not just as examples for the other characters to strive towards; but also as advisors, mentors, and great characters in their own right.
Finally, recall what it is that makes the “dark” in dark fantasy effective: the presence of a sense of hope. If the people your heroes are fighting to save are all conniving and untrustworthy, there’s no sense of hope there because there are no innocents for them to save. As I discussed in the first essay, if the dark elements of dark fantasy - which is to say your monsters and villains, the violence, the body horror, etc. - are being used recklessly, then they’ll lose all meaning and impact and devolve into nothing more than shock fiction.
When discussing it previously, I focused on balancing how often and how heavily you use these elements in your stories. This time, we need to consider the portrayals of the people suffering these horrors. If the people of your setting are largely portrayed in a morally vague light, then our inclination is going to be to focus on their negative traits over their positive ones. When that occurs, readers lose their inclination to care about what’s happening to the average merchant, farmer, or serf. However, if the interactions with these background characters showcases them to be largely innocent and decent folk, readers will be far more inclined to feel invested when your protagonists put their all into trying to save these people from the machinations of the Dark Lord.
This, I believe, is what many people who praise grey morality and moral relativism in fantasy fail to grasp. These concepts can, and often will emerge naturally in stories that feature clear portrayals of black and white morality. They won’t be showcased in every story, nor should they be. We should have space for stories that hold to and portray strict black and white moral values. The Lord of the Rings, Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane stories, Gladiator starring Russel Crowe, the first two Captain America movies, the original Star Wars trilogy, and Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series all showcase strict examples of black and white morality that help in presenting us with interesting and engaging stories.
If all we do is focus on the grey, if we zoom in close and fill our stories with nothing but what exists within that tiny view, then we fail to see the forest through the trees. To do this is to limit your stories. Instead of enhancing them, you’ll find yourself left with an end result that most readers will find either boring, frustrating, or both.
As a good many do, given the tyrannical and debased nature of the Melnibonéans.
Pronounced “oh-nah”
The Black Library is a term used to describe the full collection of fiction, short and longform, written for the different Warhammer franchises. If memory serves, the term is taken from a location in Warhammer 40k.
Dan Abnett alone is responsible for the much beloved sixteen-book-deep Gaunt’s Ghosts series and going on ten-book-deep Inquisitor series; which comprises the Eisenhorn tetralogy, the follow-up Ravenor trilogy, and the ongoing Bequin trilogy.
Xenos is the catch-all term used to describe the various aliens in the 40k universe.
Or black and white morality if you prefer.
Great article! I confess that I'm not a fan of dark fantasy, being both a woman and a wimp, haha! But I hugely appreciate your unpacking of the genre here, and how you have to have that black and white spectrum. Gray goo doesn't make for compelling characters. Like you said, gray characters don't care about anything, so why should we care about them? I feel like I got enough of those kind of characters reading Hemingway in high school. (Mr. Hemingway, can one of your run-on sentences involve all of your characters dying in a fire? They all deserve it.)
Interested to see how you view Lord Omasa and Nedal, both in their beginnings and growth starting from Twin Suns Of Carrola and Treads Of Vengeance. Though they are quite villainous, something, and I don't know if you recognized what exactly, is indeed accelerating their character change. That is, not changing their inner core, but rather polishing them, reminding them of certain... virtues.