A Prelude To Violence

[Connor Lacuna]

"It was the skeleton of a civilization. The expedition was searching through the shells of ancient buildings, and it was hard enough just getting around the place. The jungle's foliage was more sparse in the city, but there was still as much shadow as light, and plenty of places to hide. The rain came in waves and lightning flashed every once in a while. I was sitting more or less under a tree by a pile of rubble and trash. The little fuck I was guarding, named something Elvish, with more vowels than I can pronounce, he was digging through every pile of shit he came across, taking out pieces of old pots and urns and shouting out 'remarkable' every fifteen seconds. There were two others following us, neither of them doing much to help. They poked at rubble, I guess. The tree wasn't making very good cover from the rain, so I was still soaked. I was wearing, at the time, a full suit of armor, a helmet, and a pair of sandals. I wasn't wearing my boots because I've heard the stories of footrot, and wasn't too keen on that idea. Still, I hate sandals, and they weren't at all helping my situation."

I take a sip of my beer, and by now even the bartender looks like he's genuinely interested. Him, I think, I hooked in with the sandal comment.

"Finally, after the elf kid finished poking through that pile of trash, we were moving. We came across a hole in the ground that looked pretty much like something came through and tore a hole in the ruins. Somewhere along the line, a giant spider came along and I lost one of my axes when it ran away, but that's not the interesting part."

I almost forgot about that axe. That was a really nice axe, damn it.

"Anyway, the kid took one look down that hole and just about shit himself with excitement. He didn't see anything down there, mind you, he just figured there would be something. Naturally, I had my reservations, but the kid was paying me for this, a flat rate plus a percentage of what we found. The other elves, they followed pretty loosely and one bugged out as soon as he saw the spider, dropping his finds and, as far as we were concerned, giving up his share. We climbed down into the hole with a rope, searching each level on the way down. He thought it'd be better to go straight down and sweep our way back up, but I didn't want to get surrounded and killed, so we did it my way. Him and the other scholar kid scraped through the floor and took anything fancy, shiny, magic, or with writing on it, while I peeked around corners and beat rats and bugs over the head. We moved down to the last floor without too much going wrong-- The kid's companion, or whatever he was, cut his arm on something, and had to bandage it up, and I almost got bit by rats a few times."

I'm onto my second drink now.

"Then, well, I guess you could say that things got hairy."

[Connor Lacuna]

The spider had come back. I was taking cover behind a busted pillar while the spider pawed at me and spat venom. I peeked around the corner to check if my axe was still stuck in the spider's ass, but I couldn't tell. The kid, he was doing pretty much the same thing I was at the time, only, without dignity. He was just about sobbing behind a pile of rocks. Usually, spiders like that don't stick with one prey too long. If it hides, the spider moves on to something that it doesn't have to wait on. I hoped that this one wasn't too pissed to do the same. The spider reached for me. I sidestepped. I swung for its leg, and I nicked it. I charged under it. The spider turned around. My axe was gone. I hacked a leg off of it, and it lunged for me. I rolled underneath it, and buried the axe in its jaw. I tore it back towards me.

The spider dropped to the ground, and the elf kid poked his head out. My axe was nowhere in sight. The kid looked pathetic. I eventually convinced him that there wasn't any shame in soiling yourself as long as something was trying to kill you. The kid saw something. He pushed a brick or two off of a pile and pulled out an amulet, some kind of bone set in silver. He told me it wasn't worth too much, since there was no writing on it. The kid flinched a little, and brushed it off when I asked why. I didn't think much of it. I took the amulet by its chain and looked at it. It was definitely bone, and there was a carving on the front as intricate as anything I'd seen. It was untouched by whatever destroyed the area around it, as well as the time it had been since its creation. I told the kid to put it on, because if nothing else, it was a lucky charm. He was reluctant, but put it on. He was probably trying to make up for pissing himself. He looked around a couple times, and rushed to a spot a few yards away. For the first time, he skipped a couple places, ones that looked kind of promising. He lifted one rock and took out a vase that had maybe two chips taken out of it. The best thing we'd found, said the kid's friend. He was talking to himself the whole time, and grinning. He started trying to tell us something, but he kept jumping back and forth between sentences, and what came out was gibberish. He flinched, looked at the far wall, and froze.

"Break it down," he said. I did what he told, because this was all suddenly becoming very interesting to me. I kicked a hole in the wall big enough to crawl through, and I lit a few torches on the wall. This room wasn't touched by whatever it was that took out the civilization that lived here. The torches still had fuel, the statues were perfect, and the floor was clean. When the elves got inside, I couldn't tell whether they were shocked or excited. "Yes. This is the place. It won't work for me anymore, you have to take it," the kid said. I was only half-listening at the time, but I put it on, and I started hearing whispers around me. The kid told me that I was hearing it talk to me, but I couldn't understand any of it.

"Your fate speaks to you," I heard. "You are going to die young."

[Connor Lacuna]

"Fate doesn't control me," I either said or thought. I'm not sure I even knew at the time. "I am my own man."

"And you think you have the power to stand up to your own future? You're too arrogant for your own good. Alas, that'll be what kills you, Connor. Don't let it get too far into your head."

"Fuck off."

"Keep defying me instead of looking behind you." I looked behind me. Somebody was cutting up the spider, taking out organs and things. He saw me, and drew a strangely-shaped blade from its sheath on his back. His face was painted, and he barely wore any clothes. He held his hand up, made a bird call, drew a second blade. "There. You've saved your life once. I'll talk to you when you're not busy," the amulet said.

The man with the face paint charged at me. He leaped at me, swinging both blades. I cut him open. A scream echoed through the hole in the earth. Ropes descended all around the sides of the hole, and more started down. One swung. I disarmed him, killed another with his blade, turned around, and crushed a head. One drew a bow at the top. I went into the room. One followed, and I sliced his back open. I took his blade and stabbed another, pushing until the sword ran through into another of them. I left it in and grabbed my axe, kicked another savage, and cut open his head. That looked to be the last of them. I walked back towards the spider's carcass, but the archers were still up top. I told the kid to wait where he was, and walked through the corridors back to the top of the hole. I was only one level underground, but the only way up was the way I came. Right in their view. I grabbed the rope and climbed back up as fast as I could, but it took a few seconds because I was wearing armor. The armor did deflect most of the arrows, though. All but one, which cut all along the side of my right foot. I took cover behind a rock and looked at it. I hate wearing sandals. I pulled out my axe, and sprinted to the first one, who I kicked down into the hole. I hacked at the gut of the second, then ran and cut open the last one. I yelled down at the elf kids, and they were back before too long, even though they could barely get up the rope. We started walking the way we came into the jungle, towards the coast.

"It spoke to you too, then. What did it say?" the kid asked.

"Doesn't matter. What about you?"

"It told me I was going to become more than I should have thought possible. That I'm going to be a great man."

"Then you'd better hope it's right," I said.

[Connor Lacuna]

"Anyway, we packed everything up and got quite a bit for it. I think that kid even regretted giving me as big a percentage he did. He told me to keep the amulet. I don't know why, but he started acting weird about it, so I took it. He probably would have sold it for quite a bit, too."

"So, you still have it?" someone asks. I take it out from under my shirt and show it around. Nobody tries to touch it.

"Yeah. It's been a help, kind of. Sometimes it just tries to convince me I'm going to die, and sometimes it actually says something useful. I'd get rid of it, but I have a feeling I'm supposed to keep it."

"What do you mean?"

"The hell if I know. I just don't think I should sell it." I decide that this is a good enough time to end the little story, I pay for my last beer, and leave.

"You were right."

"God damn it, what do you want?"

"You aren't supposed to sell it."

[Duffy]

A Prelude To Violence
Featuring Connor Laguna

Plot ~ 14/30

Storytelling ~ 4/10 – your score here comes from the lack of development through the prologue. I can only urge you to take on board the comments herein and work on something longer – in fact, I implore you to do so. I am tantalised by the refreshing nature of your writing, your character, and how you portray his ideals. Give flesh to the bones, and you’ll have a fully formed bard soon enough.

Setting ~ 4/10 – whilst everything was concrete, in place, and simple to understand, you lacked the advancement of the scene through the senses. A rock was a rock, not a moss stained precipice smelling of damp. A bridge was a bridge, not a portcullis to the beyond carved in ivory. Utilise all five senses, and perhaps more than that, and draw in the reader with the multitude of sins you can describe with the same zeal you use to portray Connor’s axe loving fanaticism.

Pacing ~ 6/10 – pacing tends to lend to itself when brevity is concerned. If you maintain this quality in longer posts, and in a longer thread, you, good sir, will soon be flying with the best of the best. Be careful when you jump between posts. Again, whilst this thread is short, don’t take liberties with the juxtaposition between here and now – we get the impression Connor’s a madman, but that’s not to say the reader can follow his logic quite so well. Keep it simple, keep it safe.

Character ~ 16/30

Communication ~ 6/10 – conveyance of ideas was appropriate, brief, and brisk. I felt like everything said, internal or otherwise, was true to character and appropriate. I must express score here is related to the unnaturally short thread – traditionally, a solo would be 10 posts, or 7000+ words in length to be considered ‘standard’, so the rubric reflects that. Be more forthright in how you put across your ideas, and you will hit higher scores with ease.

Action ~ 5/10 –

Persona ~ 5/10 – I got the sense of who the man was, but none of the substance that sets him out from the crowd. Persona is a difficult fish to fry in such a short body of work, but to improve on the limited canvas; splashes of colour in between the mission (the axe) are really all you need to utilise to set yourself from the crowd. Think about who Connor is, why he is who he is, and compress that into appropriate, simple, and blunt sentences to pepper through your thread.

Prose ~ 16/30

Mechanics ~ 4/10 – several continued errors throughout the thread afforded you this low score. The most noticeable of which was a full stop on the wrong side of the speech mark. The use of simple sentences, broken structure, and violent paraphrases helps you communicate your character’s ideals, but it made the technical side of your writing weaker for it. If you format your work properly, and consider comma use with more hindsight, this score will raise itself.

Clarity ~ 6/10 – for a short thread such as this, you portrayed your ideas, intentions, and direction clearly. The only detraction was the use of internal speech, broken dialogue, and a quick paced and off kilter alteration between the two. It’s a strong technique, but be careful not to overuse it.

Technique ~ 6/10 – it’s difficult to judge technique for such a short thread, but your jittery technique, internal dialogue, and hammer blow style speaks for itself. My one critique to help you increase this score would be to flesh out this style with more concrete action, dialogue, and the traditional pacing one might expect. Whilst you express that this is a prologue piece, you need to find literary devices to convey this to the reader.

Wildcard: 6/10 – for what it’s worth, despite the brief nature of your submission, I enjoyed it well enough. Everything concurs with your character’s profile, and runs smoothly with what I came to expect from your character. All in all, there is promise here. Branch out, expand on the groundwork you have covered, and see your writing bloom and blossom! I especially liked the centralisation of focus on the axe – a good choppa is a man’s best friend, after all! Welcome to Althanas, Laguna, and if you have any questions, do get in touch!

Total ~ 52/100

Spoils:

Connor receives 260 experience, and 50 gold.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.