A Ghost from the Past

[Bloodrose]

Almost immediately a dozen steel blades appeared in the hands of Tony's crowd, the eyes of his assembled guests narrowing darkly they moved to approach the black-clad old man who'd dare stumble into their meeting. Teric stopped smiling and blinked rapidly several times, wondering why in the world he couldn't seem to focus on any of the armed men and women stalking him down from across the tavern.

"Woah, easy folks." Tony placed himself between the blade-toting rebels and Teric, his arms outstretched. "This is Teric Barton, the man we were just planning to free from prison." That statement drew a few mummers from the crowd, the people still gathered leaning in to talk to their neighbors. There was a lot of grumbling, some finger pointing, and some nodding, but the people seemed to take Tony at his word.

"What's he doing here?" One of the armed rebels asked Tony, jabbing a finger at Teric. "He broke himself loose or something?"

"How should I know?" Tony shot back, turning from his brothers-in-arms to face his friend. "Teric, what do you mean you're here to kill... are you ok?" The barkeep's words trailed off into a question, but they were all a mumbled mess to Teric, who was finding it harder and harder to stand up. The burning in his stomach, what he had originally believed to be the pains of a glorious meal, was intensifying, and not lessening - as one would expect it to as the food was digested. The burning made the bile rise in the old warrior's throat, bringing a panicked look to his face.

"I don't feel so..." The veteran made a gagging, choking noise as he vomited, emptying the half-digested contents of his stomach onto the floor on the tavern. The people gathered in the room started, jumping back from the old mercenary as if he carried the plague. Teric stumbled to his knees, almost falling face first in his own puke as the haziness in front of his eyes worsened.

"What's wrong?" Tony's voice seemed far away, as if the man was calling to him from deep inside a cave. "What happened to you?"

I don't know. Teric wanted to answer, but he thought the words rather than spoke them as another heave sent more of his dinner onto the floor. The smell of bile was everywhere, surrounding Teric as it clawed at his eyes and his nostrils. The stench burned like sulfur, and the third time Teric vomited, he vomited blood.

"I think I've been poisoned." The mercenary's brow furrowed in concern as the words spilled from his mouth alongside the blood and bile trickling down his chin. There wasn't any sense of urgency or fear in the old man's voice, just a tone of surprise. The look on his face was like that of a small child who doesn't understand what's happening, and no matter how hard he tried, Teric just couldn't seem to focus long enough to care.

"That was fast." Those were the last words that slipped out of Teric's mouth as he passed out, falling forward into his own mess as darkness rushed in around him.

[Ataraxis]

Quest Judging
A Ghost from the Past

This was definitely not what I expected would happen after the events of The Ancestral Home, but I’d say you managed to write a successfully surprising second chapter to your story. There were some things you did better than in the previous instalment, but others that fell behind as well. I suspect a similar score as the last time, but I’ll let the rubric speak for itself!

STORY

Continuity ~ 7.75/10.

Since this was the second chapter, after all, I’ll be lenient with the score. You did well in reminding the reader why Teric is such a big deal in Lothiaan, which also served to set a heroic mood at the very beginning (and that contrasted well with the following post where the purported ‘hero’ tried to keep time in a prison cell with his bowel movements). I did, however, have trouble remembering details on the key moments from the first chapter, which would have helped get any prior reader back into context. For example, reminding the reader of the how Teric had met Charles in the previous thread when Teric encountered him again in this one, and how their acquaintance turned sour (as that led to Teric being arrested, after all). When Tony Vaka was mentioned, a short passage where Teric remembers going to his tavern and then talking in his office about the very ‘Sons of Lothiaan’ that Amelia had just mentioned would have also been perfect. The quote from the previous thread seemed a bit clumsy for a flashback, and somewhat broke the flow as well, but it served its purpose.

Setting ~ 7.5/10.It is getting a bit harder to gauge in comparison to your previous quests, but I think your efforts consistency were better here than in The Ancestral Home, and you did have a number of more engaging descriptions (mostly during the dinner scene and his walk down the hills and back to Lothiaan). You gave less specific attention to the unusual parts of Loathiaan since Teric wasn’t exactly in the kind of place that would allow descriptions of the train tracks and the incomplete palisade to make much sense, but as a whole I felt that the choice of things mentioned in the setting didn’t breathe as much life into the story, this time. I did enjoy the amount of detail you put in the library becoming a makeshift dining room and the rather alluring description of the food (though I might be biased due to skipping supper). Mind you, it wasn’t lost on me that you shifted from the first quest’s ‘general’ use of the setting to this more specific and personal use, where colors and scents of much small places and objects are detailed, among other things. I particularly enjoyed the, ah… salacious focus on Amelia’s many captivating assets and scents.

Pacing ~ 6.75/10. It began rather well with the townspeople announcing the return of Barton to whoever cared to listen. I expected more sudden twists and turns in this second chapter though, especially considering how the previous one ended: it announced that the gears had just been set in motion. However, this felt more like an interlude than a driven kind of read. The focus on Amelia made me think there would be great intrigue, but how Teric found out that the true plan was stupid felt a bit like a cop-out (and even if I end up learning that Amelia was just leading him by the nose and feeding him lies to make him eat the poison, I still felt a bit disappointed by the encounter in itself). There wasn’t much tension save for the sexual kind, though I admit that having her offer her body to Teric in exchange for his services was an interestingly bold move and a pretty good twist. Overall, I didn’t feel compelled to read this thread in one sitting due to certain parts dragging on, but the beginning and ending did work as compensation. You hang the lantern over a lot of things though, and even if you feel it protects you from potential plotholes, doing so can sometimes only draw more attention to them without benefitting you quite as much as you’d have hoped. Some of the lantern hanging was well done though, notably near the end when Teric just feels something’s not right.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 7.25/10. Considering how most of this quest revolved around the interaction of Amelia, Teric and Charles, I think you did pretty well here. I did get the impression that Amelia was on some level the typical, young but apparently cunning new boss who ends up being someone else’s pawn, and Charles suddenly seemed much more of a stickler on etiquette than he seemed in The Ancestral Home (though that might be just because he harbours inappropriate thoughts for Amelia). Teric kept in character, and you even added some interesting situations that lead to rather enjoyable dialogue: the prison scene comes to mind as a good opener, and his announcement right before entering Vaka’s was a surprise – as was the sheer simplicity of his thoughts on being poisoned near the end. Some parts were a bit hackneyed and Charles sounded too often like a prude butler instead of the man he was in the previous instalment, though.

Action ~ 7.25/10. It’s the little details that made this realistic. Teric wanting to get punched in the face only to break the tedium of his prison time, how he felt so self-conscious of his B.O. the moment he stepped into the library/dining room where Amelia was already seated. His ravenous appetite as he ate also was good thinking, as many would refrain from it just to have their characters look composed. After eating so little in prison, and when smelling so horrible to start with, table manners aren’t exactly a man’s first priority. Everyone being so infatuated with Amelia’s oozing sexuality and perfection did get old rather fast, though: I understand it was all leading up to the offer of sex in exchange for Teric killing Tony, but it got to a point where it all felt exaggerated. I’m not yet sure what to think about Teric being willing to kill an old friend like Tony for a one-night stand, and I’m actually pretty sure he only said yes so that they’d let him leave (since he did say he was going to warn Tony), but I’m still wondering if Teric had only been joking when he told Taka he was going to kill him. All in all, there’s a fair bit of intrigue there, so I’m looking forward to elucidations from chapter 3.

Persona ~ 7/10. I wouldn’t go as far as saying you went a step back in terms of Persona, but I did get much less of an individualistic feeling from each of the characters you used. Teric thought things out in a much more simplistic manner than he had in previous quests, being a mercenary who’s been in every venue and who’s met every kind of person there is to meet in business. Granted, he did just spend a lot of time in prison without much bread or water to go on, and the idea of checking his food for poison doesn’t really strike at anyone after that. Amelia, Charles and Taka also didn’t exactly feel like integral parts to the story, despite being the characters driving it, strangely enough. You could say that they did things as is expected of their role in the story, rather than as their own characters, which somewhat shadows their individuality. If the characters slipped from time to time, and went outside of their assigned moulds (as in, Charles slipping and telling Amelia what he honestly thinks in a bout of rage, or Amelia showing signs of reluctance instead of acting without a fault as this flawless trophy girl) would have enlivened this category a fair bit more. Also, Taka was almost an afterthought in this chapter, when I expected he’d be a key character.

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 7.25/10. To continue on the Technique comments of your last solo: I think you did well and there was quite a bit more effective imagery and devices than before. It was an engaging read as always, though the flow wasn’t as good due to the pacing.

Mechanics ~ 7.5/10. There were more issues in Mechanics than I had expected. Some of the things I put in the notes were present in The Ancestral Home too, but I’d forgotten to include them at that time. You can find out more in the notes below.

Clarity ~ 8.5/10. Rather than the writing itself, the plot of this chapter was a bit confusing. To be more precise, I wasn’t sure where this was going, and though a nice twist, the poisoning of Teric was a bit out of the blue, and a conjecture as to why they would have bothered telling him everything they did (even if they were lies) just to poison him afterwards would have made the cliff-hanger a bit easier to swallow.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 6/10. Not exactly what I had expected, but it was a great piece of work nonetheless and reading this was time well spent.

TOTAL ~ 72.75/100.

EXP Rewards

Teric ‘Bloodrose’ Barton gains: 2925 XP x 2 for completing an FQ thread before the deadline: 5850 XP!


GP Rewards

Teric ‘Bloodrose’ Barton gains: 140 GP x 2 for completing an FQ thread before the deadline: 280 GP!


Other Rewards

Teric ‘Bloodrose’ Barton gains: half-digested sweet corn and peas on his boots!

FINAL NOTES

I have a feeling I know where this might be heading, so I can’t wait to see the next chapter! Good luck!

 

Notes for ‘A Ghost from the Past’

Four days, That was the mercenary's latest guess, give or take a day. (2) the transition from internal thought to narration, then back to internal thought reads a bit strange. There’s also the part where you capitalized ‘that’ in the middle of the sentence. I don’t think I can make a suggestion here that wouldn’t drastically change your intent, so I’ll leave that to you.

It was unfortunate, though, that a prison diet wasn't very conductive to good digestive regularity (2) conducive

Too much protien, the warrior thought passively, not enough fiber... (2) protein

maddening; enough (2) a colon or an en dash would work better here, as the former introduces an explanation while the latter acts as an emphatic afterthought.

Charles was resplendid in his full dress uniform (2) A rather strange portmanteau of ‘resplendent’ and ‘splendid’, which leads me to believe it’s actually not meant to be one.

His eyes locked on to Amelia's, Charles would have sworn he saw (3) it would need a coordinating conjunction like ‘and’ in between.

rebels as quickly as possibly (3) possible

"See that you do." Amelia replied. (3) dialogue is separated from an interpolated clause by a comma, question mark or exclamation point, but not a period.

a small table not unlike one would find (5) “a small table not unlike one you would find” or, to stick to your style, “a small table not unlike what one would find”

"Let's not be coy with one another, Mr. Barton." Amelia was saying. (5) Same as ["See that you do." Amelia replied]

"I'd prefer if you called me Teric." Was the veteran's simple response. (5) same as above

pushing that cleavage of her's forward in a way any man would be hard pressed to ignore. (5) hers


"There is a dining room, you know - downstairs, right of the main entrance." Teric quipped as he approached the table. (6) Same as ["See that you do." Amelia replied]. In this case, you can see a comma is required since without it, it seems like the line of dialogue and the fact that he quipped are unrelated, wholly distinct things. This happens quite often later on, so I’ll stop mentioning them in the notes.

My name is Amelia Hawthorn, I am the serving Steward of this fief by grace of the Church of Ethereal Sway (6) a semi-colon or that comma followed by coordinating conjunction like ‘and’ would fit better than a simple comma here.

was the portend of bad things (6) I wasn’t sure if the verb portend could be used as a noun, and after checking it doesn’t seem like it can. Then I just realized you were going for ‘portent’, which is a noun and does in fact mean some sort of omen or augury.

follow orders without qualm or conscious (7) I know ‘conscious’ can be used as a noun, but it usually stands in for ‘consciousness’ rather than ‘conscience’, the latter being what I think you meant.
had adopted a grazing approach to her meal; as opposed to Teric's feeding frenzy (8) You use a lot of semi-colons for this kind of pause, but they’re not really supposed to be used for this purpose. They are stronger pauses than commas, true, but they’re used to replace coordinating conjunctions and periods, not commas. To emphasize the comparison, you could either use a comma or a dash.

To be honest it all felt rather staged, almost made up, as if none of this was really happening. It was a plot so convoluted, so fantastic in scope, that Teric half expected to find himself a part of some theatrical production. Only storytellers came up with this kind of political intrigue - it was never so complicated in real life. (8) Hanging the lampshade, I see. I’ll reflect on whether it was effective or attracted too much attention to the contrived intrigue when I’m done reading!

In the end Amelia Hawthorn has turned out to be just another pretty face (10) had

the eyes of his assembled guests narrowing darkly they moved to approach the black-clad old man who'd dare stumble into their meeting. (11) narrowing darkly as they moved

[Taskmienster]

Exp and GP added!

Bloodrose is now level 8!