-2 to Wildcard due to tournament posting rules.

Plot: (24)

Storytelling (8) – A very unique story, with a definite flair that neither made your characters seem helpless nor too competent. The questioning nature of your character gave it a very subtle, building horror and the ending was the perfect way to cap it off, with a sharp rise of horror before the off-screen visceral finish.

Setting (8) – You made very good use of the setting, varying the tree enough that it felt like more than simply a tree. The dead nature of the swamp and the moldering village was complimented quite well by the atmosphere that you built up, building a pallor of ancient decay that really brought the thread to life.

Pacing (8) – The bunnying that you two did with one another’s characters really made this thread flow very well. There were a couple of parts where putting the other’s characters bunnied actions in disrupted the general pace that you had built up, and this was something that you both did on occasion, but even those were minor and never really pulled me out of the flow of the thread’s writing.

Character: (20)

Communication (7) – What really gave you the boost here was the creep of Inwuhou’s mental degradation. The way you both described her problem and Erissa’s reaction to it really built up your character’s personalities. The hints of lightheartedness that I got, such as when Erissa woke and questioned Inwuhou’s consciousness, made a good relief from the action and horror of the previous scene without completely removing the reader from the flow of your thread.

Action (6) – To be honest, your fight with the undead on the tree limb was probably the weakest area of this thread. Things in that scene happened a bit too quickly to really get a good feel for it. Aside from that the only other thing in the thread that was jarring was how often Inwuhou’s closed eyes were mentioned. I think only confronting the issue once or twice would have made it a better story point.

Persona (7) – This character that this thread really focused on was Inwuhou, and you did that well. Not that Erissa’s character wasn’t developed, but I certainly didn’t get as strong a feel for who she was character-wise as the mentally time-travelling nun.

Prose: (22)

Mechanics (7) – I noticed one misspell and one wrong word as I was reading, generally not too bad but it did pull me out of the flow of the thread.

Clarity (7) – You did a good job of explaining the concept of Inwuhou sort of losing her grasp on reality was well-done. You did a good job of communicating the concept of the tree without losing me as a reader, especially with the exposition at the end to really tie it all together. In Inwuhou’s last post however, there was a bit of confusion on my part as to the nature of the stairs inside the tree and their relationship to what was going on. After finishing the last post I understood the creepy foreshadowing that was going on there, but in my initial read-through I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on.

Technique (8) – Good horror doesn’t constantly bombard the reader with the atmosphere and you pulled that off here. Each time you did something horrible to your characters there was a moment of lightness following it to lull the reader into a sense of security. The ending came at me completely unexpectedly since I was assuming, given your characters’ interactions after the first undead attack, that the battle on the tree limb was the action climax and that all that was left was exposition. The final lines really clinched the entire feeling of this thread.

Wildcard: (5)

Total: 71

Sagequeen receives 746 exp and 100 gp.
Inwuhou receives 355 exp and 60 gp.