Assassination.

(This also could be titled, hello! I'm back!)

In the last few decades we've glamorized assassins: with video games, such as Thief, Assassin's Creed,  and with the over-saturation and distortion of ninjas in our culture. This sort of dramatic glorification is nothing new. The assassin stabbed his way into our hearts at his inception (and who knows when then that was?). I don't need to write a blog post on why we love assassins. It's obvious: we like pointy, stabby things with cloaks. Question settled. Instead, we will talk about how to do it.

Yes, I know this subject is getting morbid, but many writers show a manic delight in massacring their unsuspecting characters (take J.K Rowling, for example) so I'm sure you won't mind. We will now get into gory details. Assassination, sadly, is a lot easier then it looks. Assassins Creed persuaded us all that assassins would all fail without impressive combat skills. It lied. In reality, with the dubious exception of the Islamic Hashashin and the Japanese Ninjas, assassins often lacked finesse. In fact, the most important trait in an assassin is expendability.

Assassination is essentially a form of terrorism with low collateral damage. You pick a target and you try to kill him. Although some of these attempts fail, it's difficult to keep assassins out forever. They just keep coming: like the Terminator, a horde of zombies, or Mr. Darcy. Since assassins, unlike Mr. Darcy, fail: it's often best to keep sending one after another. They're expendable, remember? This is not to say that no planning or skill ever goes into assassination, but the average assassin doesn't live long, and as a result, you often don't spend much time training him.