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I'm going to keep quotes and emphasis in italics, turn titles into italics and underlines, and drop other languages (Welsh included) into 'quotes'. Hopefully that should get it all settled down.

hS

I think it's an excellent portrayal of the 'personal growth' side of an Ordeal - and I say that as someone who's not written anything of the sort in my own Ordeal story, so bonus points there. :) You've written a believable reaction/moving-on story.

I think if you topped and tailed this with the wizardry/wizardy half of the story - the act of wizardry that only she can do, the one the Powers offered her the Oath to achieve, in order to slow the rise of Entropy in the universe - you'd have a truly excellent Ordeal story. (Heck, it could even be topped or tailed - you could either keep the in media res beginning, or let it end with the knowledge that having beaten off the Lone One's attempt to stop her, she can finish her task now.)

Plus then there'd be a spell in there that I could draw a circle for. ^_^

hS

Is the general chat section of the Discord particularly abandoned? ;) It seems to be somewhat graffitied, judging by the sheer number of images that show up in every log I've seen, but there's people there amongst it.

hS

And while one of them was asking if people wanted more of them (and you got one response). I would strongly suggest you either a) wait a little bit before posting your next one, and b) probably make it about a different fandom other than 40k, like all of your current ones are.

I'm not saying these 'adventures' are a bad idea. I just think you should tone the frequency of them down a little, and maybe change it up a little bit. It's not like any of your threads beyond the first has really had much of a reaction. There is such a thing as too much.

Novastorme

'I can smell the blood on ye, hound! Ye blasphemous wolf, dripping in the blood of the innocent and the wretched! Away, away, I say!' Larf J. Stockins waved his crossbow, his trusty Finch, in the air. It groaned and whined and was a single knock away from exploding into woody shards. This was fine for Larf J. Stockins, who tended to have more various injuries on his body than he did clean water. But it certainly wasn't for the courier.

'Errrrrrr,' said the courier, clutching the message, hunching down. It had actually not been particularly difficult to track down Larf J. Stockins, on account of the small battalion of carnivores that always seemed to follow him everywhere. You had a lot of things to follow - tracks, signs of destruction and struggle, blood, horrified villagers.
It was these signs that he followed, to here - a desolate coastal field, the wind battering the thin grass, sea mist swirling around the knifelike grey stones at the bottom of those warped layered cliffs. His hair was flowing, and his tunic, and the message flapped in his hands, trying to escape. It didn't seem very baronial. It might have made a good spot to dump the body of a baron you didn't like very much, but that was it.

'Don't make me shoot! I will do it, sir! And even though I am entirely unable to restock my supply of bolts, for sheer lack of resources, shoot I will, if I find it necessary!'

The messenger was trying to sweat, but the wind kept pulling it off his face. 'Sire, uh, Larf, I have a message for you.'

'And I to you!' he, again, waved the crossbow at him. It groaned like a dying man.

'You have become a baron, sire.'

'Er?' Larf J. Stockins tilted his head.

'It says so right here,' said the messenger. The note spasmed in the wind, but it could be clearly seen that it included the word 'Baron', the name 'Larf J. Stockins' and the seal on it. It was a collection of things Larf J. Stockins was certain he would never see together. It looked unjust, somehow.

'Really? Why?'

'I don't know!'

'But - why?'


((La Wunj is still an abandoned city sort of thing, isn't it? I could picture him scavenging for bare survival living around there, at times. Shack and all and such.))

I've not seen such colours captured on mere fabric before! The reds and pinks, as burning as the evening sun, the green and brown, as the fields of dry grass beneath it, billowing in the wind - in a sort of, sandwich of nature's sublimity!

Hopefully I won't have to pawn it off for food for too long!

(Scape you absolute champ, mate. I couldn't have come up with a better concept for a flag. Goooood stufff!)

• Volcarona
  - Infernape
  - Victini
  - Heatran
  - Torkoal
  - Charizard
  - Arcanine

But first, so Silenthunder doesn't have to wait until the end: I think I could do the best job with Oberon, and maybe Robin Goodfellow or one of the six actors.

I'm having a bit of trouble with this review, honestly. William Shakespeare didn't write his stories to be consumed in the way that modern-day fiction is. Heck, the edition I have stressed that its presentation was meant to convey actors on a stage, rather than a fictional setting. Which annoyed me, because I always think of fiction as the events of another world. (This also confused me, for the record, when Goodfellow turned Bottom's head into that of a donkey, because the stage directions made me think he had simply placed a prop donkey head on Bottom, and didn't understand why the other actors freaked out so badly at a prop.)

But I'll try to talk about it in my usual way, if I can. As an ace-and-maybe-aro guy, I certainly appreciated the many ways A Midsummer Night's Dream mocked feelings of love and attraction for being irrational. I love that, in the confusion with the love-in-idleness nectar, both young en end up completely changing their feelings to the wrong lady. This, plus the detail that Demetrius was into another lady before he met Hermia, shows how shallow their romantic feelings are, but also how shallow their rivalry against one another is. I'm also amused by the fact that while Titania is smitten with donkey!Bottom, Bottom himself has no real reaction to the literal Queen of Fairies doting on him, and focuses all his interest on eating sweet food and having servants scratch his face during that time period. Bottom is my kind of guy; he's got a good, practical head on his shoulders, even though it's a donkey head for about half his page time.

I had heard about the so-called "Puck" as a character around the internet and such before reading AMND, so I was quite surprised to learn that it wasn't a name at all, but the species of fae creature he is, while his real name is Robin Goodfellow. And apparently Goodfellow was a "recurring" character in fairy legends of Shakespeare's time. It's interesting how a character who would have been recognized by nearly all of Shakespeare's audience in his time is now pretty much only remembered (in any general public sense) as a character in that play, and not even remembered by his proper name.

As far as I can remember, this is the first of Shakespeare's comedies I've read; all his other plays I've read so far have been the more serious drama ones. Honestly, I think I like the dramas better. They fit better tonally with the written medium, and just feel a bit more authentic and fleshed-out, like modern fiction presents itself. That said, I did like that the rhyming structure was more constant and structured in this play compared to his others I've read. (Or maybe I just remember the rhyming in the others well enough?) It was very poetic, and fit the tone of both the comic genre and the fae mythological elements that appear inside.

I can't help but feel that the Indian child Titania swapped with a changeling probably has a much more interesting life story than anything that actually happened in this play. I'd love to read an exploration of that off-page character some day.

I was expecting the play to end with all the effects of the love-in-idleness being erased, but it actually ends with Demetrius still enthralled. I was a little bothered at first, as it seemed weird that his marriage to Helena was being founded on mind-altering magic. But then I remembered that Demetrius and Helena had been courting before he met Hermia. I wonder if this is hinting that Helena is the woman Demetrius really wanted all along, and that he was going along with Egeus's marriage plans for economic or other reasons. The fairies, as a "force of nature" in a way, allow him to go back to thinking with his heart rather than his head, to allow him to marry for the right reasons, like he ought to be. Just a thought.

—doctorlit, nearly empty of scorpion venom by now

Hermia: What, can you do me greater harm than spoil?
Spoil me? Wherefore? O me, what news, my love?
What, can you do me greater harm than spoil?
Spoil me? Wherefore? O me, what news, my love?

You are Shas'Ui Vaed, a Tau in command of a completely average pathfinder team. You and your team have been sent to scout the lower levels of a contested Imperial hive. From a hallway to the left you hear speech in frenzied Gothic. From a hallway to the right you see a stairwell, from which trail faint tendrils of smoke. You and your squad are in a room with a rack of hazmat suits next to an airlock leading outside the hive. What do you do?

yes. Yes I would.

Lorson's used to a 'shoot first and ask questions later' approach and he's just a wee bit ticked at having to do this silly charge list nonsense. Especially since he's been reassured he won't normally be doing a whole lot of shooting in the first place. :P

And thank you! I originally created these two characters months apart and it was only after playing around with them separately I figured they'd be a lot of fun put together.

I hate it so much when a proper nerding session is interrupted by mortal peril.

And that was a proper nerding session- I love how they worked through the question, trying to reconcile old knowledge and new, Old Magic, High Magic, and Wizardry, and fiction and narrative and reality. It didn't come across as an info-dump at all, or that they were being pushed towards a specific conclusion.

Structurally speaking, there's a lot of different ways you're using italics- for Speech, for Old Speech, for quotes, for titles, and for emphasis in spoken English- the only other use that comes to mind is for emphasis/effects in the narration. This chapter is pretty clear, but last chapter was less so- please be careful and deliberate with how you're showing how they're being used? There's room for an awful lot of confusion from overloaded italics.

While it wasn't immediately obvious, Marisa didn't really have friends. Even if she hadn't found the Manual, she would have grown up always that slight distance away from other groups, a third or fourth or sixth wheel, not quite a lone wolf but never anyone's sleepover buddy either. Instead, having a Manual, and that wizardly connection, meant she was funneling almost all her non-school-or-family reserved attention and sense of connection with her computer (she knew other wizards existed, but didn't feel pressured to meet with them. And oddly, there seemed to be a dearth of wizards 'her age' in North Carolina, and that turned her off on the concept as well). As a result (combined with the fact that she was somehow still on Ordeal, something that never bothered her, even if Marisa got the impression that her Manual thought something was abnormal), she was left with somewhat of an... unhealthy, fixation on learning her Manual's motives, what it thought.

Her Manual also had to deal with the worst of her temper; the AR quizzes never went away, though there was an increasing sense of dissonance on Marisa's part, between what she knew was the right answer and what she felt like saying. Intergroup dynamics, global warming, the rise of cell phones... it was all beginning to grate on her, somehow, and the worst part was that she knew her reactions didn't make sense!

Her Manual's answers, sometimes delivered in the guise of 'recommended readings' that would come up when she finished with a quiz, usually cut through her mental noise - but she didn't have that safety net at school. Despite the application of an IEP plan, once Marisa was overloaded, or decided she just didn't like something, she went off completely and could only offer apologies afterwards, if she could articulate herself by that point.

Her parents grew concerned (not for the first time), knowing they would have to do something if she landed in-school-suspension, but there were other potential consequences for saying what she felt - Marisa knew that some of the thoughts broiling within her were very un-wizardly in nature, and if she ever voiced them and meant it?

Well, the thought of what could happen was enough to make her hold her tongue, whether it reflected reality or not. This amount of restraint in a pre-teen, however, could not last forever.

'Cause for a moment I thought we were going to have an emerging Power, there! ;)

I'm kidding; fortunately, the Lone Power appears to have shown up instead...

Having the 'kill the Stu as soon as plausible' mindset bend a little is probably gonna be the goal of this character arc.

Very smooth dialogue play, by the way! When it comes to banter, they seem to be settling into a nice back-and-forth.

I'm really happy with how it all came together- even things I had only vague plans for ("where do you see yourself in five years?" and then not listening for an answer) or ones I thought were throw-aways ("please work, please work, please work,") ended up looping right back into the big themes of the thing.

That spell is glorious and looks just about exactly right. I love how even though it's just squiggles, it really looks like it has distinct phrases, and the arcs in the two intersecting circles that happen to line up perfectly- they really suggest connections and shared information between the two.

And... Yeah, the massive crack through the naming loop is accurate too. I couldn't hide from something as big as transness without giving up on huge chunks of the future and present, and forgetting bits of the past.

Thank you for the feedback! This is just about the fastest I've written six thousand words, and I'm really happy it comes across well.

Everyone, quick! swap out DOGA flashpatches for pictures of cute dogs!

Don't worry, the agents will love it.

I'm really pleased that you finished this. I feel like the story hangs together very well - it's quite tightly-plotted (where PPC writers as a whole have a tendency towards side-quests, myself wholeheartedly included).

... and then I left this sitting up for half an hour while I sketched out the big, broken spell:



The crack has cut right through the 'future' section of her name, but has also obliterate most of the 'present' and a few pieces of the 'past'.

hS

"Jacob."

"Yes, Lise?"

"Did you just lie to Will Stanton?"

Jacob waited before replying, watching the five children ahead until they passed out of sight around the corner. "I'm not even sure I did," he said, turning to her at last. "I mean, we're not of the Dark."

"No, we're of the Light." Lise pulled out her Manual and flipped it open at the Oath. "It says so right there in black and white - 'guard growth', 'ease pain', that's definitely the Light."

"Is it, though?" Jacob opened his own book. "The Light exists to fight the Dark. I think our remit is much broader than that."

"Maybe," Lise allowed. "But the High Magic? What even is that?"

"Good question." Jacob chuckled. "I wish I had the books with me… I almost brought them on holiday, but…"

Lise slapped her forehead and set to leafing through her Manual. "Where is it, where is it… aha." She tapped on a page, sketching a few changes to the spell diagram there, and then spoke it rapidly: "I need a small-aperture claudication to coordinates arbek-nine-three-one…"

The by-now-familiar hush of a spell being enacted barely had time to set in before it broke, and Lise was reaching through a hole in the air to somewhere where the light was much brighter. After a few moments rooting around, she pulled her hand back with a triumphant grin. "Ha! … no, bother, that's Wrinkle in Time."

Jacob bent slightly to look through the hole. "Is that… your house?"

Lise nudged him with an elbow. "Pretty sure you're not meant to spy on a girl's room," she said. "But yeah. Pretty cool, huh?"

"It is…" He waited while she pulled out another book - The Chronicles of Prydain - and went back for a third. "Did you say you can pass a spell to my Manual?"

"Not while it's running… aha!" The girl waved a book in his face. "Third time lucky - Silver on the Tree." She let the spell lapse, then tucked the novel under her arm and held out her Manual. "Find a blank page and press it down on top of here."

Jacob did as he was told, and a moment later had his own copy of the wormhole spell. He fiddled with the coordinates while Lise leafed through Silver on the Tree, spliced in his name, and had the spell running before she found what she was looking for.

"Here we go," she said, as he dug through his bookshelf. "It's early on, when Will's with his family - hey, that was quick."

Jacob pulled his own copy of the book through and glanced at her. "Come again?"

"I thought it'd take you longer to get the spell working…" Lise shook her head. "Don't worry. Will says, Although in the world there is the Old Magic of the earth, and the Wild Magic of living things, it is men who control what the world shall be like. But beyond the world is the universe, bound by the law of the High Magic, as every universe must be."

"Right, and that's us." Jacob shut down his spell, tucked his Manual away. "Or wizardry, rather. It's the cosmic magic, not that of the earth."

Lise kept reading. "Beneath the High Magic are two poles, that we call the Dark and the Light. The Dark seeks by its dark nature to influence men so that in the end, through them, it may control the earth. The Light has the task of stopping that from happening."

Jacob had found the page now, and was studying the passage. "So you think the Dark is the Lone Power, from the Manual's stories?"

"Stories…?" Lise waved the thought off. "It sure sounds like it. And the Light is… life, and everything the Oath stands for. That's what I think."

By silent mutual agreement, the pair started walking, following the path Will and his friends had taken. "So we are of the Light and the High Magic at once," Jacob concluded. "And Will is…"

"Of the Old Magic and the Light." Lise flicked through Silver on the Tree, glancing up occasionally to avoid tripping. "Old Ones, the Old Speech, the Old Ways from Dark is Rising… I mean, talk about a theme, right?"

"Right." They rounded a corner, following the path into a wide, shallow valley of rain-damp ferns. "One thing I don't get, though."

"Only one?" Lise grinned at him. "I've been at this ten times longer than you and I barely get any of it."

"Cheeky." The path started to rise again, climbing towards a low ridge. "If the Lone Power is the Dark, then how come we're still worrying about it? Remember the poem? And where the Midsummer Tree grows tall, By Pendragon's sword the Dark shall fall. That's now, in, like, the seventies or something. The Dark should be long gone by our time."

"How should I know?" Lise closed her book, concentrating on the increasingly narrow path. "Maybe Will and Bran only banished the Dark from the Earth. Maybe they just got rid of all Its creatures." She glanced at him, sidelong, her eyes twinkling. "Or maybe - crazy thought - it didn't get it quite right because it's just a story."

Jacob rolled his eyes and went to elbow her in the ribs. Laughing, Lise dodged, darting ahead. The path crested the ridge, and below them they saw a wide bowl caught between the mountains, the grey sky as its lid, the dark, lily-strewn waters of the Bearded Lake at its heart.

Then they saw the great serpentine neck thrusting out of the water, and the small girl standing defenceless before it. And then they heard the scream.

---

Author's Miscellaneous Notes:
-Or, 'how do you reconcile two magic systems?'.
-We'll get back to proper, Manual-based magic next chapter, don't you fear. I just needed to do a bit of timeline-juggling.
-Teleportation and wormhole-type portals are something of a speciality for Lise, but that's from necessity, not innate attunement. We'll see that side of her later.
-It should be moderately clear by now that Jacob has a linguistic specialisation; he's essentially got an innate understanding of the Speech which lets him do everything a lot faster.
-Kaitlyn informs me that she didn't actually own an omnibus Prydain; however, I wasn't sure if the individual books had enough name-recognition, so wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

hS

Lorson Rho and Dax get their first mission together into Harry Potter and Star Wars. They end up getting along juuust fine.

Would people be interested in me running another "choose your own adventure" thread?

Unfortunately life is busy at the moment, and apt to get busier (because college, naturally). |D

I am looking forward to this, though!

"Lords and Ladies, knights and civilians of Plort, I don’t know even half of you half as good as I should, and I don’t like half of you even half as much as you probably deserve – nah, wrong canon."

Hieronymus the hermit stood on the highest top of the Auriantym Chain, practising the address he hoped to get away with never actually delivering. He didn’t quite remember how he had gotten there. This was probably the price he had to pay for delving into magic, bartering the ability to stay in one place – and visible – over an extended period of time for the ability to travel instantly to any place he wanted to visit, and go unnoticed until he revealed his presence.

Last he knew, he had been at Los Taelis, thinking about some constructive details of the Halley-Talia-Barracks and the Echo-Kat-Shooting-Range. There they got onto him – about a dozen knights and barons with an odd civilian in the mix. He didn’t stand a chance, and his boss didn’t help at all. Might she even have been part of that conspiracy, sending him to Los Taelis in the first place? Nah, he thought, that’s paranoid. Mylady Neshomeh has always been benevolent.

So now he was a baron, looking over the land that had been thrust into his hands, and strange thoughts whirled through his mind. Far to the east, beyond the fructuous fields and lush meadows of the Riding of Sittorese, a dark line loomed above the horizon – the edge of the Kar'eer Forest. I thought I had that left behind. For Kanun’s sake, I’m retired! If Baroness Juliette wants to keep the Southeast of the Riding, she can have it.

(to be continued)

---

In other words:

The Sozeri may be a natural border, but Juliette absolutely deserves a part in the Riding of Sittorese. Just draw a line from the forest’s western corner (is that river the Meibot or a southern tributary?) southward to the coast, and we are good. (We may need to name the bay or cape where that line ends, but I’m not good at that. Is that grey line there the Coastal Ridge, and does it end where I expect the border to be?)

I didn’t notice any gulleys, crags, pine trees and wild dogs in the Riding of Sittorese (the crows though, the crows!), but then I never visited the north-eastern region that was still a part of Iric when the Riding was designed to be Plort’s breadbasket. Baron Larf may be up for a surprise when he wanders closer to his western border.

I’m too tired to finish this today, and I’m not sure yet whether it is Part 1 of the New Tales.

HG

Old Ones instinctively use the Old Speech when talking to other Old Ones, and Will does the same thing when addressing servants of the Dark at various times. My notion is that he was basically startled out of it by Lise using English, whereas Jacob had been using the Speech, which came across as 'definitely not English but I understand it', which to Will equals the Old Speech.

I'll try to clean that up in post-production. :)

hS