Heroes Motivation List
Compiled by the Gothic Writers Chapter

The Complete Inventory of Dark Secrets and Mysterious Motivations for Gothic Heroes:

• He killed a man in his past
• His first wfe died mysteriously. He knows why, but also knows no one will believe him.
• Or he doesn’t know why and believes it might have something to do with him.
• He sired a child who he believes is lost to him forever, either dead, missing, abducted or ill for some arcane reason no doc can diagnose.
• Accidents befall anyone who gets close to him–he doesn’t know why, but this has made him a loner.
  
• Everyone he has ever loved is dead for different reasons,
  making him feel he is somehow responsible.
  
• He has a step-relative of some kind who is psychotic
  (Make it “step” so it’s not in his line).
  
• He sees ghosts.
  
• He believes he is responsible for some devlish act because whoever actually did it made it seem the hero was responsible.
  
• Mysterous incidents, seemingly or actually weird, surround him and those close to him.
  
• There’s a family curse that no one has ever broken.
  
• There’s a history of shapeshifting in his family.
  
• A ghost haunts him, making him afraid he’s going crazy because
  he doesn’t believe in ghosts.
  
• He is hiding somone for what he feels is a good reason, but it isn’t.
  
• He has a malevolent enemy who is either a person he knows or one
  he doesn’t know. Or else this enemy is a supernatural being of some kind.
  
• He was raised by a monster of a parent, who blamed him for everything going wrong in the father’s life and abused him as a result.
  
• He’s scarred physically or emtionally by an accident he thought he was responsible for causing another’s death.
  
• He’s involved in work which he can’t talk about which makes him seem more mysterious or sinister than he really is.