Beneath the Mire

[Karuka]

Well, this thing was certainly a long time in the making, and you obviously spent a lot of thought and effort into making it what it is. That said, on with the fun number crunching part.

Continuity: 7

I liked how you made this a very important part of Ranger's story, and I liked how you incorporated some of Althanas's larger, more ancient history into it, but Osato seemed like little more than a pawn. I don't know much about his past, or anything about his future.

Setting: 4

I only ever had a hazy idea of the environment, and there wasn't much interaction with it.

Pacing: 6

The buildup dragged on a little bit, and I would have liked to see some wrap up at the end, but I thought that events flowed fairly smoothly from one scene to the next.

Persona: 5

I know Ranger a little better at the end of the quest than at the beginning, and Osato not very well at all. I noticed that you tried to tell the reader about their personality traits and what drove them, rather than showing. A reaction can be much more powerful than something like "He was speaking to my vanity. He had me hooked." It was also a little hard to tell Ranger and Osato apart, aside from Osato's use of first person.

Action: 6

The action in this quest stayed pretty smooth throughout, even during times of intense combat. Try opening your characters a little bit more, so that a reader can really invest in them and see the story better through their eyes, rather than feeling as though the characters are merely actors in a movie or play.

Dialogue: 6

There were some good lines in there, really solid stuff, but nothing especially memorable and a lot of monologues during combat.

Mechanics: 8

You do a lot better here than most, but you do tend to switch homophones and stick apostrophes on plural words and not on possessives.

Technique: 9

This is probably the best use I've ever seen on Althanas of taking the various threads of a plotline and weaving them together so that there weren't any plotholes left at the end. What you took the time to mention and emphasize, you used in some logical way over the course of the thread. The only things I was left wondering about was the one steady star that the squire mentioned as "his" and what ever happened to the mage that had been harassing Osato at the beginning.

Clarity: 9

Everything was nice and clear.

Wild Card: 7

Total: 67 Congratulations!

Rewards

Osato gets 1,750 EXP, 400 GP and his spoils
Ranger gets 3,370 EXP and his swords, with the change that they are made of mythril instead of adamantine. He also gets the head of his spade back.

EXP/GP added! Osato levels up!