The Wandering Isle

[Warpath]

There was a storm of words in Flint’s head, a war of his own conflicting ideologies, his own loyalties. He had some vague memory of his own recent ascent to power but this was different, and more than any magic he’d ever witnessed or heard of. Luned was altering reality on a whim, or one man’s place in it, and the results were disquieting. She was going to kill him, and as he looked at her sidelong he knew she didn’t care.

He didn’t blame her. Aurelianus would be defiant to the point of suicide, Flint knew – it was the only thing he admired about the tiefling. Luned was declaring herself now, pushing back against the universe, and how could a nascent goddess brook defiance? There was a line here, and Flint saw it being crossed.

Bleddyn’s words came unbidden, a plea to preserve the girl they knew, and the notion harmonized with Flint’s heart: she wanted this now, in the heat of this moment, but if she killed the man would she regret it? Would the power and the rage frighten her, once they faded? Would her heart harden, and her soul darken?

But there was the cold side of him, the side he’d been forging since he was a boy, the side that saw a world full of monsters like Aurelianus, and the only way to overcome them is to be like them. No child wants to grow up, and the first step is always the hardest, but innocence is made to be lost and if one is to be evil then let that evil be necessary.

So Flint watched as Luned put Aurelianus through a wall, and he did nothing. He turned his eye to her and waited, knowing the moment was coming: she was going to kill him. He was going to let her. They’d be the same then, put on the hard path he’d already chosen for himself decades ago. She’d understand him fully, and he’d understand her.

And then the bumbling, criminally negligent fairy appeared. Flint sneered, dismissing her, but Luned didn’t. He turned back to the pile of rubble that housed the tiefling, and then spun around again, shocked, when Agnie shrieked, tumbling through the air and colliding with a far wall. Ornaments and paintings fell with her, and Flint’s brow furrowed. “What are you…?”

“Your guest is a psychopath,” Luned said, ignoring Flint, jaw tense. “Your guest tried to…he...your guest!”

She spat the words, clenching her fists at her sides. Flint looked from Luned to Agnie, and the fairy raised her eyes, and there was something new there. It wasn’t fear, but maybe concern. The floor lurched, and Flint felt his blood run cold. Dust crumbled from the ceiling, and the air itself grew heavier. Luned's anger was a physical thing now, a force filling the room and pulling it in on itself, and it was directed at everyone and everything.

And then he knew that he was losing her.

Luned’s fury was coalescing, and Agnie began scooting back across the floor cautiously, suddenly unsure of what, exactly, she was looking at. She didn’t have a concept of her own end, but that wasn’t going to stop Luned from trying to teach it to her. She might have, if Flint didn’t step in behind the scribe and press the Mark gently to the back of her neck, curling the paper on her skin. The spell caught, blazed, and the paper fell away blank.

The tension in the room faded by a degree, and all at once Luned turn on Flint and slapped his armored forearm away. “You traitor,” she hissed. “You…”

But there was confusion in her eyes now, and maybe pain. She felt the power slipping away from her, coiling up inside her, and in its absence she regained her senses.

“What did I…?”

“Get out,” Agnie said, murderously quiet. “Get. Out.”

“Agnie I…”

But then the fey charged Luned, pushing and shoving at her. Luned raised her hands to defend herself, struggling to escape, begging her to wait. Agnie whipped a door open, and with a powerful shove put Luned through it just as Flint appeared to drive them apart. Only when Luned was gone did he realize what Agnie had done, and with a harsh growl he plunged himself after her. Agnie didn’t care. She swung the door closed.

The door slammed, and the fairy panted furiously for a long moment, fuming. And then slowly, gradually, realization dawned on her. She opened the door again, but she already knew they wouldn’t be on the other side. They hadn't been returned to the ship, or to any other doorway she had in her network.

Somehow, she’d lost them.

They were gone.

[Warpath]

The cold was so intense that it burned before the numbness set in. Flint surged out of a pile of snow roaring, and then he clutched his arms to his torso and hunched against the arctic wind, and his mind reeled. Something had gone wrong. He was not where he was meant to be.

He cursed, and his breath clouded, and there were snowflakes in the cloud and in his eyelashes, and he felt the strength sucking out of him. He was sure that he’d never been so cold – that nobody had ever been as cold as he was now. No, he told himself firmly. No, this is just because the transition was sudden. This is just the winter.

He shivered violently, hissed, and then spread his arms out wide and leaned against the wind, forcing himself to accept the biting cold. He’d been born in a blizzard, grown up on the crown of the world, slept in snow dens. He was a child of the north, and no true north man dies from cold.

Luned!

He leapt and bound this way and that, digging at the snow. He knew she was here, somewhere. Certainly she had arrived before him, but he knew they had not been separated. He wouldn’t allow it. He found her and dug her free, muttering worriedly at the color of her lips. He bundled her up in his arms and hoisted her out of the snow cursing, stumbled just once, and then looked out at the horizon. It was day, but the clouds were grey and uniform, and he could not guess at where the sun was. Hadn’t it been night in Radasanth?

“I have you,” he told her. He didn’t know if she could hear. He didn’t know if she was breathing. “I can do this. We can do this.”

He turned around in a circle, willing what little warmth he had into her. He pulled her head gently up to his neck, and winced when her nose touched his skin. “Stay with me, I…”

He paused, and felt his heart flutter. “Wait. Wait I know this place. Wait.”

He started bounding through the snow, growling as his feet sank into the drifts. He could not lift his legs high enough, and even when he could he only sank farther at the next step but he pushed on, panting.

“Stay with me,” he begged her. “I can do this.”

He began climbing a hill, praying that he wasn’t going mad.

“We’re not far,” he promised her. “I’ll hurry. I’ll get us there. Don't leave me now.”

Her hair flew in the Salvic breeze, brushing his upper arms, the only semblance of warmth here. He clutched her tighter.

“You can depend on me.”

[Mordelain]

Thread Title: The Wandering Isle
Judgement Type: Light Commentary
Participants: Luned, Warpath

Plot ~ 19/30

Story ~ 8/10 – You took a simple, wayfaring adventure, and turned it into a believable unfolding of madness. I have to commend you on using simile and metaphor in a conventional manner, but applying it in an unconventional way. You made briny teeth important. You made sea dogs heartfelt and human. You lured me in, completely, and delivered an excellent parting of ways.

Setting ~ 6/10 – The setting was developed enough to be visualised, but, once more, there was so much talking that did not acknowledge this environment, that it was lost in the wayside often. This was not helped by the use of entirely reflective, narrative, and internal posts, such as 86, where Luned could quite literally have been anywhere on Althanas as she tinkered away in her eternally conflicted mind. Nobody expects purple prose, or Tolkien-esque detailing of genus, leaf, and flora and fauna, but be mindful of focussing setting too heavily in one post, and abandoning it through the scene on the assumption that we have been satisfied.

Pacing ~ 5/10 – developing plot, narrative, and technique over such an expansive body of work is never easy. However, each scene of the thread placed, concretely described, and easy to follow in terms of pacing…the transition between them, and the sense of time between them stretched the reader too thin and wore on the senses. Strength lied in the middle, but the beginning, and the ending, contorted the general flow of events as they unfolded.

Character ~ 25/30

Communication ~ 8/10 – The thread builds on outlandishly solid communication in every post. It was a delight to hear every character, PC, and NPC voice even the minute opinions that keep us on our toes and getting through the day to day. I especially appreciated the accents to each sentence; Muir’s hair flicking, Luned’s stomping, and the crew’s movement around each dialogue. It was every bit the living, breathing, spoken word powerhouse.

Action ~ 8/10 – When the siren comes on deck and the switch between ‘general sea adventure’ and ‘realms of fantasy’ happened I fell in love. This thread managed to maintain momentum not just between characters, but the players and their environment, throughout its entirety. Keeping action concrete, detailed, and interesting for this length of time was a feat in itself.

Persona ~ 9/10 – This score is commendable because it ties together dialogue, character, and technique. Every character's emotion was believable. Muir's demure nature, Luned's admiration for Bleddyn, and Flint's grizzled background slapped me around the voice. If it were not for the menagerie of faceless NPC's, and fleshed out accents to your PC's tale, this would have readily been a 10. I would be hypercritical to even begin to attempt to offer advice - you know your characters better than anyone, and indeed, better than you probably know yourselves.

Prose ~ 19/30

Mechanics ~ 7/10 – This thread had near flawless and practical application of mechanics throughout. A pointer, however, to improve upon, is the use of colon and broken thought adjoining speech. When “Flint is coming,” she said, wistfully, and with broken speech, can be clearer with “Flint is coming,” she said. Her voice was wistful and broken, go for the more paced and defined approach. Luned errs on the side of longer sentences, so be careful of run on – post thirty in particular: The crinkles at the corners of her eyes, which Luned had liked so much, displaced to the furrow of her brow, and it aged her. The same said for the introduction of post 41, fragments of post 61, so forth.

Clarity ~ 5/10 – The primary issue here grounded in the communication, and dialogue heavy background of the thread, is the obfuscation it causes. Whilst you both made every effort to detail the speaker, the frequency of changes and the action on-going in every scene lost me, in many places – like a Game of Thrones-esque epic, the number of NPC’s, pennames, and places became difficult to follow. I would encourage you both, in the future, to consider the relevance of references, and wherever or not it would be better to slow things down to keep clarity and ease of reading in mind.

Technique ~ 7/10 – You both use simple, short, and comic statements to highlight the disbelief in your characters. You have a solid grasp of literary techniques. Post 80-90 was a highlight, and though you could have developed a greater impact of Muir’s scream, it did its job effectively and really made me cringe.

Wildcard: 8/10 – Never have I read something so long, and yet so wonderfully written on the history of Althanas. Though it was lumbering, and the focus on dialogue was too great, it was truly enjoyable. I have a soft spot for merchant navy, sailors, and fantastical seaborne adventures, and you did not fall for clichés and metaphors that many do. My only advice is to work on the consistency between your posts in terms of presentation. I have an inkling you worked closely on plot, dialogue, and narrative, but the technique and use of contraction and elision varies in places, and it disjoints the reader when you switch between literary and colloquial styles.

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I would be happy to develop on the points above, or provide more in depth examples based on those notes if requested. cydneyoliver@gmail.com, or my Mordelain inbox are both appropriate avenues to do.

If you have any concerns, doubts, and worries, and do not wish to speak to me directly for whatever reason, then I am sure another member of staff will resolve the matter on your behalf. I am perfectly amenable and open to feedback, as the judge has to develop, as much as the writer put under the scrutiny of the rubric!

Total ~ 71/100

Luned receives 5200 experience, and 400 gold.

Warpath receives 4200 experience, and 400 gold.

Aurelianus receives 300 experience, and 75 gold.

Spoils: Flint's hat refuses to leave you alone. Not only does it suit him well, it always seems to find it's way back to his side, no matter how far apart they become. Maybe it's magical, or maybe, just maybe, it's something to do with pirates needing the correct headgear? We'll never know!

[Mordelain]

Experience and gold added.