Judgment

Story

Revenant: 19/30
Lorenor 17/30

One of the stronger parts of this battle, for me, was the story element. I find this to be quite rare in a Citadel battle. It wasn't so much that the plot was particularly complex, but that you both did a good job of portraying and using the history between William Arcus and Lorenor before, during and after the battle.

Revenant, I felt you did particularly well in setting the scene by putting William Arcus through a set of difficult trials at the behest of the Ai'Bronne monks. Even though the main battle took place in post four onwards, the work you did in the opening section was excellent and fun to read. You were original with your arena, creating a pseaudo-nightmare with all sorts of terrible traps and testing pitfalls. In particular, I was a big fan of the wax trap, a result of having your war form forced on you due to poor lighting. You then introduced a little of your past with Lorenor to the fray without overindulging on big details, which left me wanting to read more of your history without feeling starved, and you filled the subsequent battle with hints of nostalgia (including a nod to the Orlouge way of doing things which didn't go unappreciated). Your conclusion made sense without being spectacular, but it at least gave the reader something to think about.

Lorenor, you were also strong in this category. I felt you provided more detail than Revenant with regards to Lorenor and William's history, referring more often to memories and shards of the past to add splashes of colour to Revenant's own work in this department. At times it felt more of a collaboration than a competitive fixture, which is testament to the way you both write together. However, and this is a big however, I do have one gripe. Given that the Citadel's entire purpose is to battle without the fear of permanent death, your conclusion made very little sense. An act of self sacrifice in a place where resurrection is more or less guaranteed seemed pointless and really detracted from the otherwise fine work you did in getting to that point. I could understand the conclusion a lot more if this were a battle outside of the confines of the Citadel, especially as the ideal aligns nicely with what Lorenor is now about, but knowing that you will revive as soon as the battle is over anyway sort of makes Lorenor's selflessness a moot point. I'd also like to see you utilise setting a bit more - I felt Revenant was carrying the thread on the back of his use of the arena, which is not to say you did a bad job, just not as good a job as him. That said, there were plenty of positives in your overall performance. You worked hard, wrote an otherwise enjoyable piece and with a little work you can really make a difference to that score.


Character

Revenant: 20/30
Lorenor: 19/30

Lorenor, for the most part I think you did a good job with the paladin persona. There was an obvious emphasis on the difference between Mutant Lorenor and Paladin Lorenor, and it easy to see that his good nature shines through a lot. I did feel that perhaps there was a little personality clash halfway through when Lorenor mentions being a monster, but overall, considering the history, it didn’t feel too jarring. I’ve said before in previous judgments that I think you would benefit from finding one particular direction in a thread with your characters and sticking to it, and on this occasion you probably got as close to that as you can do with the effort applied. The obvious exception was jumping back and forth between that little bit of Mutant Lorenor and then the odd conclusion, which highlighted minor inconsistencies in Lorenor’s persona.

I mentioned this in your last judgment, but I did like your use of internal dialogue to allow the reader to follow his way of thinking. You were a little more conservative with your spoken word than previous battles and I actually think it helped you here because this particular bout had story connotations that verbally needed to be addressed, but without the long, dramatic monologues.

Revenant, the one thing I love about the way you write William is that you leave very little grey area when it comes to his persona. Almost every nuance, every line of dialogue and action that he took was consistent with the type of person he is – powerful, intimidating and intelligent. Again, I believe your shortcomings stemmed mostly from small things – perhaps I expected more of a showcase of William’s abilities – but these were few and far between.

Your actions absolutely defined you here. I loved the fast back-and-forth combat and especially enjoyed little details like William acknowledging the effects of his de-weighted warscythe on his balance. The outstanding “Snapping Turtle” technique filled my head with all sorts of Orlouge related nostalgia, and generally the way you carry Arcus around the arena, utilising the setting to further the action and even bits of his persona, was superb. Dialogue was kept to necessary lines only, really, and one criticism I have is that it might have perhaps been nice for the reader to crawl into William’s head in the same way Lorenor allows the reader to do so with use of internal dialogue.

Prose

Revenant: 24/30
Lorenor: 18/30

Lorenor, let me begin by saying that you have improved vastly since my last judgment for you. There were still spelling and grammatical errors which interrupted the pace of my read a little and threw me slightly off kilter, but it was nothing like threads of the past. I always fully understood what was happening and what you were saying or doing. Again, it wouldn’t hurt to run your work through a spell-check to eliminate as many “silly” errors as you can, just to help improve the overall quality and feel of your writing.

Your technique differs to Revenant, but your delivery of the writing itself is still of a good quality. You used some nice literary devices but I believe you could profit from perhaps using a few more to add splashes of color to your work in the right moments. There was very good use of paragraphing, but I do believe you could have perhaps benefited from separating out your dialogue from the main body of text to ensure it has the appropriate impact on your reader. An improvement of your technique by combining the above could really take you onto the next level because you are a good, creative writer with plenty of tools in your box.

Revenant, I thought the overall technique employed was fantastic. I could really visualize every small detail of each attack, the employment of the arena itself and even the detailing on the wounds given and received as they occurred. I’ve said this before but you have a natural gift for bringing everything to life with your vivid descriptions and you gave this thread the texture it deserved with some of your more potent devices. A personal favourite was the way you described the traps at the start of the thread, and how William dealt with each one. I almost felt the consequences of that wax trap from where I was sitting!

Mechanically speaking, my gripes are limited to basic things and seem a bit nit picky but are still relevant. You suffered from a few typos and a couple of grammatical errors, but nothing major. There were one or two questions on punctuation as well. None of these issues stem from a lack of understanding of mechanics but I suspect instead were simply overlooked. A quick spell-check and read through might have eliminated these issues entirely, but they were present nonetheless.

The final word was on your clarity, which was pretty much spot on. Rarely (other than in the case of the issues highlighted above) did I not understand what was going on. Good work.

Wildcard

Revenant: 7
Lorenor: 7

Gentlemen, I am awarding you both equal points for collaborating to provide us all with a very entertaining piece of writing. I enjoyed seeing a continuation of William and Lorenor’s past and look forward to seeing more from both of them in the future!

Final scores

Revenant: 70
Lorenor: 61

Revenant wins!

Revenant receives 4200 EXP and 85 GP!

Paladin Lorenor receives 1050 EXP and 40 GP!