League A (Interdivision): BlueGhostofSeaside v. Lye

[Ashla]

Ashla watched- ...Well, whatever that was... Race towards her. She knew that she should scram, and fast! She could no nothing but either run or be killed. Ashla hated to admit that, but now it was her only choice. Ashla scrambled past whatever sorcery was headed towards her just barely! She stood up in an unorderly mess and glanced once more at her opponent. Ashla was cold, wet, and feeling just plain exhausted; she was bleeding in some places, and her throat felt stiff. Her arm was swollen by now, and it was her next plan to get to a medical center as soon as possible. How she wished he would never get away with this.

Her eyes were glowing their icy color, granting this man his wish to see her Icebreaker eyes in flame. She growled beneath her teeth, "You'll pay for this..." And she turned tail and ran under the thick rain; her sword was on the ground someplace else, but she would come for that again later. Now, she had lost. As embarrassing and disgracing as it was for her, Ashla had lost. At least she had been able to keep her life...


So it was that within the deep rain inside a thick forest of Raiaera; a short but violent fight had accrued that proved that sometimes, determination alone won't get you where you want to be. And that was that.

[Lye]

His whirring blades met nothing but rain, and the silhouette of the girl could not be distinguished in the downpour. Clearly, she had vanished and for the better.

"Coward..." he mumbled, whipping the sickle with finessed until it fell into a coil within his grasp. "It's a shame, but it's just not as satisfying to kill the young ones - especially the females."

Lye snickered. He gathered what he could find in the rain, including the blades she had cast aside. They were nothing of noticeable make or quality, nor were they worthy of joining him on his continued venture. Instead, he buried them firmly in the back of the elven corpse that lay cold as the rain that fell. Either it would appear as a framed murder to a passerby, or if the girl were to come back to this place, she would get one final reminder of her inevitable fate. Just because she fled for today did not mean that he would give up. For now, the assassin pushed himself back into the thickness of the woods. There, he would find shelter from this chilling downpour and do something about the lack of feeling in his arm. Someone wanted the Icebreaker dead, and he would make sure this happened one way or another.

[Zook Murnig]

BlueGhostofSeaside v. Lye - Judgment
Lye will be in red. BlueGhostofSeaside, appropriately enough, will be in blue.
Story - 14/30 13/30
Storytelling - 4/10 3/10
Lye, I'm given to understand from your opening post, and several mentions throughout the thread, that your character is in Concordia specifically to target Ashla, but not why or for whom you work, whether the organization or the patron. Your reasoning in choosing Concordia for the ambush, as well, is not given. Therefore, I have vague clues to why you were there and what you intend to do after this, but no specifics.
BlueGhost, your presence in Concordia is unexplained entirely, except that you have been tricked into looking for a fictional child by her fictional father. Everything you did was almost entirely a reaction to something that happened, rather than actively seeking a goal, other than general survival. Try to be more of an active participant in your stories, instead of just reacting to events as they take place.
Pacing - 6/10 5/10
This was a pretty quick read, and nothing was overdone as far as slowing the action of the scene. However, you should both note that your choice of words determines the impact of each action on the pacing. If an attack is sudden and unexpected, use short and choppy writing for it. Maintaining the flow of a battle is good, but breaking that flow makes if feel like a battle.
BlueGhost, I have to make mention of this because it's a hard habit to break: You restated a lot of Lye's actions, which broke the flow in a bad way. It's tempting to give your character's perspective of everything as it happens, but that is something that's better done in moderation, either by framing your own actions with your opponent's, or to emphasize a particularly emotional or striking event.
Setting - 4/10 5/10
The setting was passably used by both of you, though mostly as a backdrop against the action. Lye regularly mentioned the rain as an advantage for Ashla, and described the raindrops falling on him, but did not make direct use of the setting otherwise. Ashla, however, fell in the mud several times, and used it to her advantage early in the fight, making use of it as a slick surface to slide out of harm's way. BlueGhost, I must point out, however, that you repeatedly referred to yourself as covered in mud, but never described how it felt (uncomfortable, clammy, etc.). Remember, show, don't tell. You each made use of the setting in good ways, but not in complete ways, and the forest was all but ignored once the two of you met. Also, BlueGhost, it was stated early in the thread that you were fighting in Concordia, but in your closing post you said it was Raiaera, so that was a point off.

Characterization - 16/30 8/30
Persona - 5/10 4/10
I didn't get a whole lot from either of you, except that Lichensith is an amoral, possibly evil, assasin, and Ashla is a young girl who is maybe preoccupied with her appearance and wants, to a childish and naive degree, to help anyone who needs it. The particular mannerisms of Lye's speech and choices made his character more clear, however, so advantage Lye.
I did get a slight feeling that Ashla may be uncomfortable with her hybrid nature, but it was muddled amongst statements of elven grace and human clumsiness. An avenue you might explore with this in the future is that hybrids of two species tend to embody not only the best and worst of each species, often to lesser degrees, but that they combine a lot of those traits in unique ways. For example, a mule is a hybrid of a horse and a donkey, intending to bring the intelligence of a donkey into the strength of a horse. The resulting mule has those traits, but also embodies the, ahem, jackassery of a donkey, giving rise to the term "stubborn as a mule." What about Ashla's dual heritage makes her unique, and how does she cope with it?
Action - 5/10 1/10
BlueGhost, I gave you a pretty severe penalty here as a result of repeated bunnying and godmodding. Bunnying is the practice of determining your opponent's actions for them, whether making your attacks hit without their input, or outright making them do something without the other writer's permission. To avoid this in the future, either discuss the results of your attacks with your opponent and come to an agreement (in which case you should make an OOC note at the beginning or end of the post that bunnying was approved), or leave your attacks open-ended. An open-ended grab, for example, would state that you had reached for Lye's arm, your fingers bristling with freezing power, and Lye would make the decision of whether to accept the grab or to find a way to dodge it.
Godmodding refers to a similar practice of unbelievably avoiding attacks or dangerous events, either by repeated "luck," continually dodging, or simply ignoring or minimalizing attacks. While you did lighten up on this practice as the battle neared its conclusion, it was nonetheless present. You allowed yourself to be struck by one of Lye's needles, though it seemed to have little to no effect other than to make you bleed a little bit, and I was unable to find any mention of the bone-blade attack.
These two practices, bunnying and godmodding, are against the standards of Althanas, and most other roleplay communities, and tend to garner disrespect from other writers. It can be frustrating to write with someone who does this, so try to be mindful of these areas in the future.
Without the penalty, you would likely have received a 4 in this category, BlueGhost. You performed some interesting actions, and made good use of tactics given the situation, but many actions were simply said to have been done. Show, don't tell, every time. Don't just say that you froze something. Instead, describe the sensation of the ice flowing from your fingertips and the crystalline formations building on the surface, and the snap of sublimating air around it. A lot of this affected your Setting score, as well.
Lye, you performed adequately in this area, but not impressively. Your attacks were described as much as necessary, but maintained enough brevity to retain their punch. However, you often went straight from one attack to another, and didn't take the opportunity to make more of the abilities that you used. A definite exception here was your bone-blade, which was lovingly and disgustingly enacted, from its protrusion and the effects that had on your flesh, to the moment it sank back into your body.
Communication - 6/10 3/10
There was almost no communication, verbal, nonverbal, or internal, from Ashla, almost to the point that I could completely erase the character of Lye from your posts and replace him with a garden variety soldier and nothing would have changed. Body language, word choice, and emotion all encompass this category, and for such a reactive character, you didn't react very much to Lye other than to counter his attacks.
Lichensith had more to give, however, and even from his interaction with the operative in the opening post, I got a little bit here and there of who he was and how he worked.

Prose - 18/30 11/30
Technique - 6/10 4/10
BlueGhost's writing was technically simple, which makes for a relatively easy, but sometimes boring read. You stated a lot of things as having happened, but didn't describe them. I've said it several times so far, but only because it's so important: Show, don't tell. What do her icy eyes look like? Crystalline and sharp, piercing, inhuman? Describe sensations in relation to more familiar or distinctive sensations, and overstate things for emphasis. You used exclamation marks amongst your punctuation quite often, which is generally considered to be incorrect, for lack of a better word, within narration, with only a few exceptions (most notably surprises, sudden events, and onomatopoeic phrases like "Boom!" or "Splash!"). The use of exclamation marks in narration is a stylistic choice, however, and so it affected this category, rather than mechanics. I did recognize a lot of potential in your writing, but it'll take some work to bring it out. Developing your voice as a writer, and particularly developing the narrative voice of a character, is something that can only be learned through practice and study. Read works that feature characters like what you want Ashla to be, and keep writing. Read passages aloud to yourself and feel how they flow or don't.
Lye used a little more nuanced language, with a couple of metaphors and a bit of onomatopeia thrown in for flavor. Good work, but I'd like to see more of this. You're ready, I think, for more advanced techniques, such as more unusual sentence structures and mirroring. Be careful with these, however, as they can either pay off big, or fall flat, and if they're done wrong it can come out narmy or mechanically unsound.
Mechanics - 6/10 3/10
Lye's writing was almost completely clear of typos and grammatical errors, and your punctuation was rock solid. However, as noted in Technique, you could benefit a lot from more nuanced language, and those risks can pay off.
BlueGhost, I can tell that you made the effort at making your spelling correct, as there were no words completely misspelled. However, be careful when using a spellchecker, because they can only recognize when a word is spelled wrong, not when it is used incorrectly. Many times you used one word when you clearly meant to use its homophone, or made grammatical errors that a spellchecker wouldn't pick up.

Whoever the this guy was was murderer who intended to kill her for bloodthirsty purposes.

This sentence was the most egregious, but it's clear that you had an idea for where you wanted to take this sentence, and changed halfway through. Reading your posts through a couple times before hitting submit, or reading them later and editing out errors, can do a lot to cut down on problems like this. This affected your Clarity, as well.
Clarity - 6/10 4/10
Both of you were pretty clear in what took place, how you felt about it, and what you did, but neither of you took any real risks with regard to this. Further, grammatical and word choice errors affected BlueGhost's clarity.

Wild Card - 6/10 6/10
An above average thread, overall, with a lot of potential evident from both of you.

TOTAL - 54/100 38/100
Lye receives 1000 EXP and 65 GP
BlueGhostofSeaside receives 200 EXP and 32 GP

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!

BlueGhostofSeaside LEVELS to LVL 3!

Congratulations!