A dragoni's true heratage

[Atenathon]

Atenathon Hero Sing, A half draconian and half human. Or so he thaught.

In the time that he spent after he left the christian monestary hidden in the mountains, Atenathon, who thought that he had no name at the time, had found that people fround upon the fact that he was a half bread. As most know, draconians genrealy have dark beliefs. So a dragoni, who is half draconian, is presumed to be just as dark. This has caused a whole bunch of problems for Hero.

Fortunately Hero did not let his people's heratage to stop him, or define him. Hero belived in the Lord God, the one that the monks taught him to belive in. This has given Atenathon strength of character so he could deal with the persicution.

The dragoni learned to deal with the people and what to do. People might not like draconians, but they fear them more than they hate them. Atenathon hid his face and let the people presume he was a draconian. People do not fear dragoni (because there is only a few) but they fear draconians. Atenathon used it to his advantage, (but only in the taverns) and got a place to stay. Atenathon found work and was almost settled when news of a draconian looking for his son came to Atenathon's ears.

Atenathon Hero Sing left for the capital Radasanth and met his father. But neither one was sure that the other was who they hoped they were. Hero and BrissenSing, the draconian, fought. And through the fight they could see what was in each others hearts. What Atenathon saw was that Brissen was his father, and likewise, Brissen saw that he had found his son.

Atenathon learned about his mother and that he was not half human, he was half angel.

Learning this, and that his mother was being held captive, Hero left to train with his father in hope that he might gain controle of both his hereditary abilities.

Atenathon now nurtures and develpes the dragon within......

[Atenathon]

Deep in the mountians, within Corone, lies a village of Draconian. Atenathon HeroSing and his father BrissenSing train to develope the dragon within Atenathon. The soul of the dragon has already been awakened and now Atenathon has gained a strength that is a blessing of his God.

"Atenathon!" BrissenSing called up the stairs. "Its time to go!"

"I'm already set to go." Atenathon HeroSing said from the front door behind BrissenSing.

Brissen turned around. "Oh. Well lets go." Atenathon smiled and the father and son left the small cottage.

"Father, why is there a village of draconians in the mountian and how is it that everyone is so different from the draconians of the rest of Althanas?" Atenathon asked.

Brissen smiled and looked at his son. "The people of this village have been protected from their hearatage since child-hood. They know nothing but kindness and love, and that is why everything is so different." Brissen looked back to the road and sighed. "These people are kind, granted still a little stuborn and hot headed at times, but still loving. Some things cant be helped because of our race. But we mold our lives and our selves so we might make the most of the lives we live."

Atenathon reached down to Lightning, his tiger cub companion, and pet his head. lightning was getting bigger and was not the little cub he use to be. "How did we get way out here in the mountians?"

"Our grandparents were just children at the time and still living in Dheathain. It was just a small group that grew up in the mountian caves that sit next to the swamps. Their families couldn't aford a home because they were so poor, so they had found a cozy cave that wasn't too wet." Brissen sighed and looked down at the path, then back up tward the skies. "We were found by a dragon tamer and he made a deal to breing us food if we take care of his dragons. We agreed to the deal and worked for several years with him. Then one day another dragon tamer started a fight with him for a very beutifull draconian. The dragon tamer that was taking cair of us died, and the winner came and raded the cave. But worst of all he took the children and stole our wings. Then left the women and children out in the grasslands. They made their way to the port city and got a ship out of there. Eventualy after several months of travaling and scrounging for food, they came to the island Scara Brae. Unfortunately they had landed themselves in Neverscale Beach. With what little food they had, the people mad it half way. The mothers started giving most of the food to the children at that point and eventualy, the women starved themselves to keep their children alive."

Atenathon, who was listening intently, noticed the sun was setting. "We better set up camp. It will be dark soon."

"Good idea."

After camp was set up, Brissen started a fire and continued the tale as they ate dinner.
"So how did the children survive the rest of the march?" Hero asked.

"They passed out near a small caravan of monks, the same monks that started the hidden mountian monestary you were rased in. The had been on a journey to find a place of silence so as to devote the rest of their lives to the study of He who has no name. They found the children and took care of them. They taught them what was right and what true strenght was. Eventualy the group of monks journied to Corone and into the mountians."

"That is when they created the monistary, isn't it." Hero said

"yes it is, they created the monestary and the children grew up and made the small village that I was rased in." Brissen replyed.

[Atenathon]

The next day, Brissen and Atenathon left camp and headed for the forest. "So what do you have planed for today's traning secion?" Atenathon asked.

Brissen turned and faced his son. "You are going to be working on staying in the dragon armer for longer periods of time."

"And what about my other skills at energy manipulation?"
"I'm afraid that you would have to go back to the mosk for that. But for now, lets develop your dragon spirit."
And so, Atenathon and Brissen trained all that day till night

[Atenathon]

The next month was nothing but training. Hero and his father have been doing nothing but getting Hero's stamina up for holding the dragon scale longer than half an hour. Each time Atenathon had the armor, Brissen would attack even harder to break the armor. One day Atenathon and Brissen ran into a merchant and his caravan. The merchant knew that draconians were strong and fierce so he hired them to protect his wagons.

"But ser, don't you have any other guards?" Atenathon asked. "Why pay for even more unecisiary protection?"

"Because my young draconain." The man said, looking at Atenathon with his dragon scale on, which made him look a lot like an average draconian. "No on would dare to chalenge a draconian, so having you and your father would ensure my safety and the safety of the goods." Some of the curent guards who over heard the conversation gave the merchant dirty looks but moved on when they noticed the draconians.

"Alright, we'll take the job." Brissen said. "Now, about our pay."

The merchant winced at the word pay, even though he new it was coming he still didn't like leaving his gold pieces. "Yes, ofcourse, name your price and I will pay it when we get into town."

Brissen thaught for a moment. "Seventy five gold pieces, each."

"We'll if thats the price it takes, then I'll pay. But only when we get to the city and not a moment too soon."

"Deal."

[Atenathon]

Travel on the main road was quiet for the most part, minus the occasional comment on the two new editions to the caravan. Many of the guards seemed obliged to voice their generous opinions on the two draconians. Others seemed grateful for the extra protection and the easy pay. Evening came quickly as the caravan rolled to a stop in a small field. Atenathon and Brissen stood guard at opposite ends of the encampment while everyone else set up. As night fell, campfires kept going and a guard shift started patrols around the entire encampment, minus the spot Atenathon and Brissen chose near the woods.

Atenathon sat on a tree stump next to their camp fire and Brissen, pulling out his weapon and cleaning kit. "Well that was easy." Atenathon announced as he started working on his weapon. "I think we should do this more often."

Brissen snuffed a cloud of smoke at the idea. "Right now your training will give you more than this will ever. Your skills will be sharpened by hard work and dedication. This caravan is only a small break for you so we can resupply and return to the wilds." Brissen picked out his pipe and started packing it with tobacco. "we will split the night in two shifts, you will take the first one. I don't want any one to notice that you aren't draconian, since you can't yet use the scale armor when you sleep."

Atenathon looked up from his sword. "Thank you father, for looking out for me."

"Thats what fathers are for." Brissen lit his pipe, unrolled his bedding and laid down for the night, pipe in mouth. "Night my son."

Atenathon kept a diligent watch during his shift, keeping a close eye on the woods. He kept his steps quiet whenever he patrolled around the camp to make sure that all was well. On the third shift in he noticed that there where fewer guards than the others. Atenathon walked into the fire light to find one of the guards on shift. "Hey, aren't there suppose to be more guards on shift?" Atenathon asked.
The man he spoke to was large and muscly, with a rather dumb founded look plastered on his face. "An' what's i' t' you?"

"Just curious." Atenathon answered.

The man spat in Atenathon's direction. "Draconian o' not we's can still andle any ting dat you could." and he stormed off into the night.

Atenathon moved back to Brissen to wake him, and as he approached their spot, Atenathon noticed a guard carefully step into the woods.
"What is it my son?" Brissen said, rising from his sleep quickly.
"Somethings going on, I am going to check it out, can you take over for a while?" Atenathon explained.
"Of course, and be careful." Brissen replied, and started patrolling the encampment.

Atenathon stepped lightly in the grass, carefull not to alert others of his presence. As Atenathon approached the edge of the woods he noticed some of the brush rustling. He drew his weapon slowly and quietly. The bushes rustled again and Atenathon created a light sphere to see better, and just as it materialized three guards rushed him. Atenathon jumped back, parrying a thrust and turned to block a club coming for his head from the second guard. The third guard took advantage of the opening and swung at Atenathon. The Dragoni pushed the club to the same side the ax was coming from and shot his light sphere at the club wielding man, knocking him to the ground. Atenatnon returned his attention to the two guards that now assaulted him, the ax to the left and a sword thrusting from the right. with strained muscles and skill Atenathon parried a thrust from a sword and blocked an ax swing that came from the other side, and then side stepped an overhead slash that came down into the brush. Atenathon punched the man in the jaw, knocking him onto the ground and leaving him dazed. The man with the club came in from behind, snapping twigs left and right alerting Atenathon to the attacker returned. The ax man once again took advantage of the opening of Atenathon's back. He swung down into the earth, but was two slow and miss as Atenathon moved out of the club man's way. The ax man's weapon sunk into the ground, and he was plowed onto his back by his fellow guard. The wind knocked out of him he laid there, trying to recover.
Atenathon concentrated on the last combatant. He knew the brute was getting tired, and that his own endurance was running thin. Atenathon side stepped and kicked as the last man charged him. The man fell down to his side and Atenathon left. Sheathing his sword and beliving that the brawl was over he exited the woods, but the man with the club would not accept defeat. He dropped his weapon and chased after Atenathon with an enraged battle cry swinging madly. Atenathon turned and cursed under his breath as he barely dodged, losing both cloth and skin to the berzerker. He drew his weapon and swung, taking the man's hand off. He charged again and Atenathon gave a fatal strike to the heart, piercing from side to side.

Lights from the small camp began to gather towards the forest side of the camp. Atenathon finally noticed that the dragon armor had disappeared. [I] BLAST, I must have used the last of my energy on the light sphere.[I/] Atenathon pulled his hood low to hide his face, and prayed that they would not notice his hands. A small hand full of guards came up, lead by Brissen. "What is going on here?"

"Three guards jumped from the brush and ambushed me in the woods." answered Atenathon.

"So then why's dat one dead? EH?" Said a rather disgruntled guard.

"I did the best I could to stop them without harming them, but he kept coming." Atenathon defended himself, a little more than slightly annoyed by the

"So tha' give ya da right ta go an' kill who ever ya please?"

"I do not need to explain my actions to accusing idiots who do not want to listen to the truth, and I will suffer no fools who think they know better than a man raise in moral standing!" Atenathon stated, and he moved back to the spot where he and Brissen laid out their bedding. Brissen followed as the rest of the guards pulled the two dazed men out of the woods and started tending to the dead body. Brissen started tending to Atenathon's wound.

"You did fairly well. Just try to keep your temper, it is a warriors downfall." Brissen advised.

"And sometimes it can be his salvation." Atenathon responded.

"Not with an angry mob."

"Then a feather can stop the tides?"

"No my son, but a gentle word can turn away wrath, and humility doesn't hurt either." Brissen started applying a burning salve to the wound and retrieved a needle and thread from his bag.

Atenathon cringed as the salve was put on the wound and clenched his teeth while the cut was sewn shut. "Yes father. I am glad that they did not notice the change in appearance though."

"Rest for now, you need your strength for tomorrow. And try to restore your qi."

Atenathon laid down and drifted into blissful rest.

[Atenathon]

The next morning was filled with men packing up camp and pack animals complaining and protesting under the weight of their loads. Atenathon and Brissen took up their places on either side of the caravan. Everyone felt kind of edgy with the attack from last night. None of the guards new weather they should trust the two draconians, or even to trust each other. The trees started closing in around the caravan, nearly swallowing the line of wagons in the forest.

Then several men jumped out of the tree line and started attacking the guards. Atenathon drew his sword and parried an overhead strike from a great sword. The blade struck the ground and Atenathon was greeted with a fist to the face. He stumbled back and regained his balance just in time to dodge another attack. The opening created allowed him to thrust his sword into the man's side below the rib cage. The swordsman fell and Atenathon moved to help a guard that was having trouble. Atenathon came in behind the man with the club attacking the guard and slashed across his back. The man reeled back in pain and the guard gave the finishing blow.

"Thanks, I think?" The guard said.
"no time, more bandits." Atenathon replied and rushed to help more guards.

The tied of battle slowly turned as Atenathon waded through his enemies. Several of the guards fell as the fight continued and Atenathon was forced to take their place, sometimes against two enemies. Atenathon parried one and slashed at the other, or got one to swing at his fellow bandit and used the opportunity to strike. Atenathon was getting weary, he could feel the collective pain of all the scratches and bruises that he had gathered. Atenathon abandoned his dragon scales before the fight began, and now he was wishing he had used it.

Fed up with the bandits, Atenathon put his sword away and drew his Light Blade. He concentrated on a spot on his palm and created a sphere of light. In a group of three bandits and two guards Atenathon shot the light sphere into the small band and hit one man. knocking him off his feet. Atenathon charged into the fray, being fueled by rage he started slashing left and right. one of the two left standing swung one of his small axes at the young dragoni, grazing his left should. Atenathon spun with the ax and thrust his sword into the ribcage of the ax wielder.
The fallen man got up and was now fighting with one of the guards as the other standing man was fighting with the other guard. Atenathon went for the closest bandit and snuck in a stab to the kidney. The other guard lost his footing and fell to the bandits two swords. Atenathon closed the distance between the bandit and himself and started swinging like a mad man. nothing else mattered, nothing else was important, nothing else felt so good as the fight at that moment. Atenathon parried a thrust and brought up his weapon to block another strike and parried anther thrust. The thrust left an opening that he exploited and followed his sword up the mans sword and arm to his neck and opened his throat.

The bandits that were left started fleeing into the woods again. Brissen had made his way to the other side to find his son and check up on him. "Atenathon! thank God your alright." Brissen embraced his son, nearly knocking the wind out of Atenathon. "The monks taught you well."

"Thank you father," Atenathon said and embraced his father back.

They bandaged up those who were still alive, and burned the dead. Then they finished their journey to the city. Atenathon and Brissen got their pay and an extra five for fending off the bandits, and went to one of the inns. "Atenathon, my son, I want you to go to Corone."
"Corone?" Atenathon asked.
"Yes, you need to explore the world. its a bigger pond than you know and knowing what its like can help you prepare in your training." Brissen explained.
"Ok, Corone it is then, but first a hot meal and some rest."

[Breaker]

Music: A Moth is Not a Butterfly by Hawksley Workman
Mood: Breezy

I enjoyed this thread for it's original flair and quick pacing, and I hope to see some more writing from you, perhaps a co-op thread or two, in the future. If you'd like clarification on any of the points I make or additional assistance, please PM me

The first piece of advice I'd like to give you is to do some serious reading. A good fantasy series like The Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire would do the trick. You could also take a look at some of the threads in our Judges Choice forum, or (shameless plug) click on some of the links in my signature and check out my work. Oftentimes reading up on some more advanced writing is all a player needs to make a significant scoring jump.

Plot Construction ~ 11/30

Story ~ 4.5/10 - Your first post was rather confusing, and didn't do much to lead into/set up the rest of the thread. Aside from that I thought you did a really good job of introducing your character and using his backstory to build rising action. The climax and conclusion were both abrupt and inelegant but present, and I believe you have a solid foundation of storytelling skills based on that and the way you write. It would behoove you to give more thought to the construction and length of your posts, and I'll cover all this more in the coming categories.

Strategy ~ 3/10 - While you did use many skills and abilities during the combat, your writing every where except the combat sequences was almost entirely "telling" rather than "showing". This means the reader misses out on all the cool things the characters were doing. You wrote this almost like a story on would tell around the campfire - they left town, they entered the forest, they made camp, they trained, they trained some more, they left the forest - but in prose we want to get into the details. How exactly do they go about finding their way in the woods? Does a draconian pitch camp differently than a human? What's their fighting style like? How does he use his magic? If you can use verb-based sentences to answer these questions in your next thread, you will score much higher here.

Setting ~ 3.5/10 - I liked some of the background you gave on Dheathain, and your representation of racism/intolerance on Althanas. However literally never knew what the setting looked like. I only got a vague mental image of what was happening on a couple fleeting occasions, mostly in and around the climax, and I wasn't actually sure which region you were in till the last post. (I think it was Scara Brae, is that correct? I'm going to archive this in Scara Brae. The Peaceful Promenade is typically situated in Corone, but since this is your intro thread it's cool.)

Often the best way of describing the setting is using your character's five senses, and their unique perception, to paint a word picture. I'd advise you give that a shot in your next work.

Characterisation ~ 11.5/30

Continuity ~ 3.5/10 - A few things like christian monastery hidden in the mountains (which mountains?) really threw me off. When you suddenly introduce something to the story for no specific reason (such as a pet tiger) it makes me automatically stop reading and try to figure out what's going on. I'd advise that you read up on current lore in Corone, Scara Brae, and Dheathain.

Interaction ~ 4/10 - Your use of dialogue was effective at times, but generally a fairly transparent plot device. Mostly I think you should work on other areas, and this will just naturally get better.

Character ~ 4/10 - While I liked the quirky characters and some of the things they did (like Hero appearing behind his father as he called up the stairs) there wasn't much coherence to their actions, especially the NPC's. I think this ties in to strategy, and that when you get more into writing your characters actually doing things rather than just saying "this happened, then this, then this happened" your characters will evolve naturally. Also just reading up on some really strong characters as I mentioned at the beginning will help.

Writing Style ~ 14.5/30

Creativity ~ 6/10 - As I mentioned before, some really funny moments, and there's something about your style that just made this easy and interesting to read.

Mechanics ~ 4/10 - You need to get a spellchecker gonig on, and invest some serious time in proofreading, preferably out loud. Your typos and captilization errors alone were enough to disrupt the flow of the story.

Clarity ~ 4.5/10 - On the few occasions (the combat sequences) where you actually described your characters' actions, you did a decent job of blending the showing with the telling. If you had done so earlier on, and used the backdrop of Althanas to and your characters' personas to supplement the dialogue-driven history, you'd have done much better here and overall. Mechanics comments apply strongly to this as well.

Wildcard: 6/10 - The fact that this score lower than average is outshone by the fact I enjoyed this thread more than most that score in the 50s or even low 60s. With a little work on your form, you could do great things.

Total ~ 43/100

Atenathon gains 300 EXP and 50 GP

[Breaker]

EXP / GP added, thread archived.