Round 2: Vigil Vs Jonah T Barnham

[Jonah T. Barnham]

The cane’s second impact against his ribs, and the scarred places were ribs should have been, shocked a yowl of pain past Jonah’s too-big teeth; a pain stronger than the distant, abstract throb in his jaws and knuckles. Bones – lighter than they should have been, to compensate for his shifting - snapped beneath the blow and he hit the ground hard, almost vomited on the frosted ice at the hurt, the burning sensation shifting deep inside his chest. His fists clenched against the feeling, talons nicking his own skin, the knives forgotten and out of reach.

Don’t just lay here. Don’t just take it.

He groaned, struggling to inhale as he worked his slow, painful way to his feet, utterly torn between the animal instincts yelling for him to lunge at Liam’s throat and the human need to beg for mercy. He tried to inhale, only got half a lung-full before Liam was on him again. The old man’s open palm smacked across the side of his head, and he might have laughed – he could barely feel the sting over all the rest – if it wasn’t for the boot slamming into his shoulder, shocking what little breath he had regained out of his lungs.

He didn’t have time to for a new breath before Liam pinned him to the rock-hard ground, a shallow ridge of ice digging into his back, snow biting cold through his shirt, numbing his shoulders. He could feel his injured ribs grating, broken bone harsh against broken bone, and bit out in terror and desperation –

Only to slam his head back against the ice when the fist hit his nose. He managed a shaky, shallow gasp as dizziness flooded through him, nausea on its heels. He could feel steel against his neck, the edge over his windpipe and jugular, and he let his body go utterly limp under the older fighter, half tempted to lift his neck, bare more of his throat. Wordlessly taunt the man into finishing what they started…

But the conviction in Liam’s bright green eyes and in that one ground-out word kept him still. He lay there, feeling the frigid chill seeping through his clothes before he let the thoughts that kept the changed features in place slip away. His jaw slid into the correct place, the talons melted away, the green tint faded from his skin, leaving bruised, pale flesh in its wake. He tried not to whimper when he closed his eyes, still half-expecting the other warrior to slash his throat wide open.

“Y-yield.” The word came out in a low rasped whisper. “I y-yield.”

[Silence Sei]

Vigil/Jonah


Story 8/8: Great intros from both parties, the rising action (AKA, the tension of what was to come) was completely awesome, and the climax had me leaning on my seat, begging for more. The only thing that made the both of you miss your marks was the lack of a conclusion. Try to make sure that you have time enough to get all elements of a story out so you can aim for those 10s next time, people!

Continuity 8/7: Vigil gets an edge because, while I felt you both did well including motivations for characters and whatnot, I felt that Jonah could have given us a little more insight for what he’s doing here in the first place. This seems to be a guy who relies mostly on his familiar/other dinos to do the work for him, so something like a tournament doesn’t really seem like his cup of tea.

Setting 8/6: Vigil gets another category due to his vivid, clear descriptions of everything. I easily envisioned everything he described, and Jonah gets an above average rating because while he managed to describe the setting sufficiently enough, things like the taste of food really motivated me towards an extra point. A good tip Jonah is to try and find things that would. There could have been an excellent opportunity from either of you to reflect on the fact that they were getting a bit sunburned (snow reflects about 85% of ultraviolet rays, after all), that never came through. No docking for that, just something I thought would have been interesting to mention.

Creativity 7/8: Jonah gets a point in creativity for not only bringing a dinosaur to perhaps the worst possible place to bring a dinosaur, and also transforming into a half-dino thing during the battle. It was a gamble, and would have paid off better if you would have reflected the cold bloodedness of your creatures more. Vigil gains above average points for being so friendly and kind to begin with, and then showing how truly vicious he could be around the end.

Character 8/4: Unfortunately, I found it hard to believe that Jonah could essentially kill his familiar without any qualms about it. As mentioned before, dinosaurs were cold blooded (at least most science tends to lean towards that way) and as such, it would have been a death sentence regardless of whether he felt he couldn’t survive without him. Furthermore, if Jonah had somehow died before meeting Vigil, he’d leave a vicous, ravenous predator roaming the mountain. I would just expect someone with even the slightest archeology background to consider such things.

Interaction 5/5: Your interactions were good, but nothing particularly amazed me from either of you. Sure there was a few great descriptions here and there, but it wasn’t enough to warrant docking or gaining points from either of you.

Strategy 7/4: Jonah, you lost a few points here because Vigil did at least 3 moves I can think of that would have floored most normal men for the rest of the fight. Most notable was the pelvis hit. I don’t know if you’ve been hit in the pelvis, but it hurts, a hell of a lot. I can speak from a personal experience that if something hits you hard there, you don’t get up, at least not for several minutes, which would have been plenty of time for Liam to secure a win. Honestly Vigil, I kind of expected a ‘killing with kindness’ method from what you wrote at the start of this fight, with Liam just being kind and generous to Jonah until the latter decided he couldn’t bring himself to ‘hurt the old man’, as it were…

….Then you could have stabbed him in the neck.

But that didn’t happen, but what panned out was still a well written and obviously thought out plan. Good job.

Mechanics 10/10: Vigil, I counted one error from you (you wrote ‘more greener’ describing Jonah’s skin) whereas I counted 2 from Jonah. Jonah, if I had caught one more error, it would have been a 9 for you, and a 10 for Vigil. I fought with myself whether or not to give the 2 of you 9s or 10s, but finally decided that 3 errors out of a 10 post thread was not bad enough to dock either of you. Great work!

Clarity 8/7: Vigil, as I mentioned before, your setting was clear, and your motions in the fight were also pretty good (Although admittedly, I did have to retreat back a few paragraphs during the conflict to make sure I was aware of certain moves). Jonah, you wrote less but were still clear enough to make sense. You lost the point because Jonah’s transformation was quite confusing to me. I didn’t really understand what was going on there just from reading in this thread, and chalked your character up to being some sort of weird ‘were-dinosuar’.

Wildcard 6/7: Would have been a tie if Vigil had not missed his deadline by a whole 2 minutes. Jonah, you seemed to run the clock on this battle, and I’d be weary of doing such things. Sometimes, that will make the entire difference of a battle if your wait til the last minute. Just one decent slip up like using the wrong account to post can screw you over in the end. Overall, it was a good thread and a good battle, but the lack of a conclusion killed it for me. Please let me know what happened in your next round!

Total:

Vigil: 75
Jonah: 62

Vigil gains 700 Exp, 100 GP

Jonah T Barnham gains 130 exp, 200 GP.

Vigil Advances to Round 3!

[Silence Sei]

Exp-GP Added!