Fortnightly Writing Competition: A Fresh Start (Results)

Started by Sinitrena, Tue 05/04/2022 08:06:30

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Sinitrena

A Fresh Start





The last few times, the FWC didn't have a lot of participants and not a lot of votes. Don't you all agree that we need a fresh start?

Well, while this might be true to some degree, this is not what this topic is about.

This topic is about characters that decide to change something in their lives and the consequences of this decision. Maybe it's the classic New Years Resolution and the protagonist finally wants to start jogging every morning, or someone gets a new job in a new city, is a colonist on one of the first spaceships going to a new world, or an abused partner leaving.

The point is that the inciting incident, the change in the character's life, should have happened right before the story starts or be at the very beginning of it. The plot itself should revolve around the new life (in the most general sense). It can be a positive or negative change, but it should be based on a decision the character makes, not a random event.

Get your stories in by the end of 19. April (or some days later, but then you have to ask for an extansion).

Happy writing!


Mandle

THE LAST LIBRARY

The room stank of gasoline.

Here were the books that had meant the most to me over all these long years alone.

I had read every one of them time and time and time again until The Lord Of The Rings was nothing more than a mere stroll down to the corner store to me.

Every chuckle I used to utter from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy felt like cold ash in my throat when I tried to find the fun I had felt on my first fifty reads.

Near the top of the pile, the cover of The October Country stared back at me, as if daring me to release the tension from my index finger and flip the match along the striker strip.

Shamefully, I hesitated for a moment, but then found the courage of my convictions and my fast fingernail scraped the leading edge of the matchbox's striker strip, hit the bulbous end of the match, and launched it, fizzing, end over end into the haystack of books before me.

They went up with a blue WHOOSH, spreading all over, that quickly turned to an orange blaze of Nazi-esque fury.

I stepped back, my face flushed with the heat of the best and last thoughts of humanity, and closed the steel door forever on what had been the concrete room of my library.

The door pulled itself inwards away from my hand with a slam-hssss.

The books were already burning the oxygen out of the room and leaving behind a vacuum befitting everything that has been lost.

Then I went to my typewriter and started the only book that mattered anymore with the sentence:

"When the sirens sounded and the hatches opened, birthing their abominations of silver missiles, with their towering smoking afterbirths high up into the sky, I ran for the steel door in the ground of my yard where my cans of food and water and my books would keep me safe and sheltered."

WHAM

Hat, meet ring. I've begun writing something for this one.
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Mandle


WHAM

The Wasteland

Once, long ago, a great war tore apart the sky, the sea and the land.

Precious few found shelter below the land, deep enough, where the great tears could not reach.

The air burned lungs and water scorched the tongue, but the few survived on.

Never could we return above.

Never should we see the sun.


--

Tikemas wound the rope tighter around the handles of the door, securing its two halves so that they could not be opened. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he worked the thick strands tighter and tighter. Once finished he reached down for the small bucket carrying a thick, sticky syrup which he poured over the knots he’d created, sealing the portal of the Elder’s Palace. As he stepped back to inspect his work, his eyes scanned the two-tiered structure that nearly reached the ceiling of the vast cavern his people called home. Banners that had once displayed many colours hung, ragged and heavy, off the walls. Three doors led in and out, and were now all sealed. None could get out for a long time, not without great effort.

But it wouldn’t be enough. The people were too stupid and stubborn to see their own good.

Tikemas turned and slipped away, knowing he still had some time before the long fuses he’d prepared would run out. He’d prepared the narrow streets between the crude mud huts that housed his people, his own wife and child, and the few hundred others who called this dank underground cavern their home. He’d had his brother help move the carts aside so the main passageway was clear all the way up to the Forbidden Stair.

He smiled as he ran, hand reaching up to brush across his forehead and face, then flicking away to send the salty wet droplets scattering to the dusty stones that made up the passage.

“Almost time, brothers.”

As Tikemas reached the corner of his home he slowed his pace and leaned forward, hands pressed to his knees, to draw ragged breaths.

“Husband?” -came a delicate voice from the alley. Tikemas straightened his back and gestured feverishly, drawing his wife and son into view.

“My love. It is done. We are ready. Make for the stair and be ready, the others will soon follow.”

“Will they, truly?” -she asked, disbelief and distress in her eyes. The young boy beside her, only eight years of age, clutched her hand.

Tikemas reached into his robe and pulled out the slip of marked skin. The markings were difficult to read in the dark, with all the overhead fires atop the clay towers dimmed and dead for the hours of rest, but the message was of great importance to Tikemas.

‘We are right. Green and life. Water flowing. Light. Blinding. Joyous.’

It was the message wrapped tightly around a stone, which had rolled down the Forbidden Stair a week ago. The symbol pressed at the top of the message marked its writer: Tyrinej. Tikemas’ brother. The one who had dared climb the steps higher than any other, and had promised to send word of what he found above.

“The Elders are wrong!” -Tikemas exhaled, the words ragged with tension. “They are too stupid to believe, or too fearful. But he found out, and sent us this to tell us.”

“Then why not go, my love? Why all this?”

Tikemas felt a piercing pain in his soul. He knew it was guilt and worry, but he shrugged away the sensation as a drop of sweat from his coarse black beard.

“And abandon them all? For the foolishness of the Elders? How cruel would that be, my Deimas, my love? To leave them to eat insects and mushrooms and stale water, when we could be above, in the light, and reclaim the world of old!”

Tikemas had painted images of the world above, in words and colours. Some laughed when he spoke in town meetings, others were silent and hopeful. None dared oppose the word of the Elders, who claimed the world above was full of death and nothing more. Tikemas could see the world above as it had been described in the old writings: full of green and blue, of life and motion and flowing clean water. With light other than those cast by the smoky watchfires, warmer and purer.

“We must go.” -Tikemas declared, and the three began to move toward the Forbidden Stair.

They were a short dash away from the first steps, closed off with braided ropes and seals of the Elders, when the first scream echoed from behind them. Tikemas hurried his wife and son ahead as he turned to look back. A fuse had ended, and the fire-brew in the pot had burst its vessel. The food storages would soon burn. The workshops would be alight. The Elders Palace would explode from within and the Elders words would never again poison the minds of another generation!

The pain of guilt shot through Tikemas again, and he bit his tongue to distract himself.

“Quickly! Fire! Fire! Run fast!” People stumbled out of their homes to witness the destruction of their old lives. Some, who believed in Tikemas, already ran to the Forbidden Stair. Others sank to their knees and had to be pulled up or carried by those capable of action. “It is not safe here! To the stair if you wish to live!”

Some never moved. They clung to the old ways and ran to the Elder’s Palace to seek wisdom, but found only a blazing husk of a building, with screams instead of commandments. As they clawed at the sealed doors to try and save the Elders, their time ran out and they perished.

The Stair was long and winding, passing through many doors and seals placed to ward off the foolhardy, but now the doors were cast open and the seals torn down. Tikemas himself had gone far up before, cutting off the ropes to prepare the way.

This night he witnessed the highest landing for the first time with his own eyes. Great doors of metal, covered in arcane symbols and locked away by great wheels. Except the locks were undone, and the doors were split apart with a gap just wide enough for a young man to pass.

“Now! Push them apart! Hope awaits!” -Tikemas shouted, and the believers rushed ahead to press their bodies to the metal, forcing the ancient mechanisms to yield and grant the exiles their freedom. Bright light poured in through the widening gap, and Tikemas cried. His wife cried. Most could not hold back their tears, whether they be out of fear and disbelief or hope and fulfillment.

Tikemas stepped out first. He could see a wide open field and a sky of blue, dappled with fluffy white clouds. He kicked off his shoes and pressed his bare feet into the soft dirt, feeling the blades of green grass. It felt like heaven to him. Off in the distance he could see a bright glimmer that could only belong to water!

“Heaven!” -he cried out, and many voices answered in kind, with more joining as they stepped out into the light the like of which they had never witnessed in their lifetimes.

One voice, however, screamed in fright. Then another.

Tikemas turned to these voices and found them staring at the exterior of the great doors through which they had just passed. He rushed past the men and women pointing and gesturing. The pain stung his soul again as he saw what they were looking at: a dead body, Tyrinej, lay curled up in the grass beside the door. His eyes were sunken, his face twisted by agony. The robe over his body had frayed, as if worn by a lifetime of use, so that his dark skin could be seen through the frail strands.

Tikemas knelt beside his dead brother, mouthing silent words of disbelief. What could have done this? Tyrinej’s right arm was outstretched, the bony fingers clutching a stone with a piece of marked leather wrapped around it. A message undelivered.

Tikemas unwrapped it and read the few words.

‘We are wrong’

The words registered, then blurred before his eyes. The voices around him became dull and droning. Cold sweat oozed onto his forehead and his breath became short. Tikemas’ head felt soft and light and the very world before him appeared to tilt off to the side. He could barely make out the voice of his wife, asking questions he could not answer as he wavered beside his dead brother, the pain in his soul and chest too great to overcome, forcing the very consciousness out of his body. He fell like a child's doll, collapsing amids screams and shouts and confusion.

Had he doomed them all?
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Sinitrena


Sinitrena


Mandle

I do have an idea for a second story actually. But dunno if I will get it done.

Baron

Guh, I've been ill lately.  Not even covid.  I knew those regular germs were just waiting in the wings all this time....  I can probably throw something together with an extension to Thursday.

Stupot

An extension would be useful to me too, if possible. I only managed to make a start on a story today, and didn’t get very far. But with an extra couple of days, I stand a chance of finishing it.

Sinitrena

Extension granted. (I don't feel like typing long replies right now anyway. It probably wasn't the best idea to deepen the relationship between my finger and a hammer...  :-\)

New deadline: Friday 22. April


Mandle

With the gracious extension I will write my story too, it won't stop bugging me.

Be more careful of your own extensions, Sini. It would be a loss to the world if you couldn't write anymore.

Baron

It's a bit of a last-minute hash, but at least I was able to throw something together.   (roll)

The Unleavened Truth

   Coriander P. Tarragon had always been a bit of a hot-head.  You had to be in order to survive the jab-and-thrust of life in the imperial kitchens.  He had started as a scullion boy at the age of 7, where a good measure of inner rage was handy in helping to scrub the char from abused pans.  By twelve he had made commis, surviving a literal trial by fire involving a particularly nasty flambé.  By sixteen he had climbed to saucier despite a jealous poissonier trying to poke holes in his ambitions with a two-pronged meat fork.  And by nineteen he had made sous-chef, the springboard to the upper echelons of the culinary world.

   Unfortunately for Coriander, he was even more passionate about the beauty of Sage Cardamom than he was about cooking.  She was a sumptuous woman with spicy wit and searing beauty.  But while Sage was duly impressed by Coriander's fiery temperament and his olive complexion, she had certain needs that a mere sous-chef was entirely unable to fulfil: money, and lots of it.  Their courtship was therefore in danger of falling more limp than a deflated soufflé.

   But then the most unexpected news arrived in the capital: gold was found in the eastern deserts!  Little bits of it, here and there, spread over the delta of a dried river bed like sprinkles on a cake.  If a man was quick enough to find an unclaimed acre he could be rich as chocolate mousse in no time.  Men were thronging in their hundreds to join the eastern caravans to make their fortunes in this half-baked scheme.  Impulsively Coriander quit the imperial kitchens and was soon tenderising his own bacon on a mule chasing the sunrise.

     The journey was more fraught with misfortune than letting a toddler spread soft butter unsupervised.  They were attacked in the night by bandits - fortunately Coriander’s mean kitchen upbringing had trained him to compulsively sleep with a boning knife to hand.  They got lost in the Confounding Wastes - luckily Coriander was able to follow his nose to the cookfires of a merchant camp to ask directions.  They ran out of water in the Salt Flats of Erdnuss, but of course Coriander knew an old kitchen trick for separating fresh water from brine by filtering it through a thin slice of porous wood.  And they ran out of food in the Famished Mountains, but cooking mule was second nature to Coriander by that point.  At long last the few survivors straggled into the Shining Desert.

     And indeed the legends were true!  There was gold enough for all of them, if they would only exert the effort to dig it up.  A man working sixteen hours could easily earn thirty dinars a day - perhaps much more if he were lucky!  Compare that to standard wages back home of 2 dinars a day and you can see why men salivated at the prospect.  Coriander and his few remaining camarades quickly claimed adjoining acres and set to their work with zest.

     But despite his dreams of fortune being now served to him on a silver platter, Coriander was not satisfied.  His fingers were minced by the sharp stones of the desert as he laboured through the dusty days, basted in a marinade of his own sweat and blood.  The flies tormented him like little burns from hot oil spattering from a frying pan.  The sun broiled him like the searing heat of an oven.  The air was drier than an overcooked steak, and the company smelled worse than rotten cabbage.  Like dishes after a wedding, it was a dirty job that someone had to do.  Coriander just wished it wasn’t him.

     This problem was compounded by the fact that his 30 dinars a day was pared down considerably by outrageously priced goods.  Being at the end of a spectacularly long supply chain, the men in the gold fields paid exorbitant amounts for everything.  A new pick handle cost 15 dinars - it was either that or lose 60 by walking a day each way to the nearest town.  A sack of potatoes cost 20 dinars, a twenty-fold mark-up, but it was hard to work when you were starving.  The meat was so tough it could serve as body armour, and cost just about as much.  And the only thing fresh about any of the vegetables were the newly inflated prices day after day.

     One day a camarade of Coriander - a man named Basil - came over from his adjoining claim to complain.  “I work my fingers to the bone out here day in and day out, and I don’t seem to get any farther ahead!  At home 30 dinars would keep me for a month, but here it lasts barely a day.  And for what?  Food you can’t even eat!  I’ve seen seagulls swallow trash more easily than I choked down that mouldy old potato yesterday.  I know it’s probably just the heat-stroke talking, but I would pay you 10 dinars for some of that delicious Mule Surprise you served us back in the mountains!”

     Coriander laughed at his friend’s joke, but soon noticed that Basil was quite serious.  As an intellectual culinary exercise he considered the cost of a mule at the nearest town - about 100 dinars and a day’s walk each way - and how much meat he was likely to scrape off of it - enough to feed one meal to twenty men.  So 200 dinars gross and 100 dinars net for two long days of work - not bad… if he could sell Mule Surprise to twenty of his neighbours.  But if he brought back two mules he could double his take.  Or indeed he could bring back something cheaper and more palatable, like goat!  And he could stretch the meat by serving relatively cheaper potatoes.  And he could pay someone else 30 dinars a day to walk back and forth to town so that he could focus on the more lucrative trade of serving real food at ridiculously inflated prices…. 

     That very night Coriander sold his pick for 50 dinars and his claim for 200 dinars.  Within a week he had 50 men subscribing to his 10 dinar daily dinner service, grossing 500 dinars a day and netting close to 200.  Within a month he had 300 subscribers, and he had added a cold-lunch surcharge of 5 dinars for those willing to pay.  This cost him a bit more in terms of a small staff of underlings working for the local standard of 30 dinars a day, but he was now netting close to 1500 dinars per day.  Soon Coriander’s Kitchen was famous throughout the gold fields as the tastiest and most affordable eatery in the Shining Desert, and its proprietor was easily the richest man in the gold fields.

     Not long afterwards he sent word to his beloved Sage that their financial problems were as passed as the salt.  All said, Coriander did not fare too poorly when he turned over a new leaf.  In the churning rotisserie of life, it pays to remember where you came from.

Stupot

I’m sorry everyone, but I haven’t managed to find the time to write much and will not be able to finish my story.

I quite like the idea though, quite X-Filesy, so I’ll finish it in my own time and share the story at a later date.

Mandle

Yeah, I ran out of time as well, busy with... other stuff.... I will save my story for another time as well.

(P.S: Thanks for the lovely two days away together, Stu! No wonder your name is one letter away from "Stud"! A "fresh start" indeed!)

Stupot


Mandle


Sinitrena

Sorry I'm late. I forgot what date I put as the deadline.

Anyways, we have the following three entries:

The Last Library by Mandle
The Wasteland by WHAM
The Unleavened Truth by Baron

Now it's everyone's job to vote, this includes entrants and everyone else reading this. You have 10 points total to allocate to the three entries - no half-points please and no unused points. Send your votes as PMs to me and comment as much as you want in this thread. Voting deadline is 28. April.

Baron

Well those were some short but sweet reads - I can't remember the last time I read through all the entries in only twenty minutes!   ;-D

As Mandle prefers his feedback in invisible radiation form, I shall post my thoughts in hide tags:

Spoiler

Ah, it burns!  IT BURNS!!!!!1!!!!    :-X

Just kidding!  The burning doesn't start for another hour, but by then it will be too late....  :P

@ Mandle:  I like the passion - I really do.  That dude loved those books, just as a man loves his lover.  But then he marries the girl and they spend a couple of decades together and all the little flaws keep hen-pecking at him like a circling school of baby sharks, gently at first, but dude those sharks start to grow over time!  I'm sure the books at first were all like "I love your cooking.  Sure it's burnt, but I can taste the love!"  But over time they were like "the faucet's dripping again so I put a towel over it instead of acknowledging the problem and doing something about it" and eventually like "I can't be arsed to put your tools away so they got rusty out in the rain."  I guess the lesson is that passion is a fleeting flame, kind of like the taste of that first potato chip.  You can remember that taste, you can crave that taste, but you just can't keep that taste going forever.  But does one then burn all the potato chips left in the world?!?  That seems a bit short-sighted (insert nearsighted joke here!) - surely the books could have simply been stored someplace indefinitely without being acknowledged in the slightest, kinda like those bibles in hotel rooms?  I get that without the mindless Nazi-esque destruction we don't have much of a story, but it feels more like burning bridges than burning hatred in the end.

@WHAM:  This is exactly how I thought the book Ember should have ended (the book was fantastic, but my kids really got into the graphic novel version).  There is such dramatic tension between the elders and the dreamers, but honestly who is more likely to be correct?  People with lived-experience and a culture of probity based on real-world data, or people with snippets of information and a penchant for jumping to quick conclusions?  The dreamers remind me of the American Republican Party, fabricating their own alternative truths without regard for scientific fact or rigorous debate (to say nothing of the lengths they'll go to to prove the righteousness of their cause....).  Where Mandle's protagonist burned bridges to the past, yours burns the boats on the beaches: there really is no going back.  If only real life offered such obvious repercussions for ignoring reason - oh wait, the whole covid vaccination thing....  Still, stupidity seems to inoculate a large percentage of the population against immediate death, leaving the problem to carom down through the ages again and again and again.  So... I commend you on a thought-provoking story.  :)

[close]

Mandle

Cheers for the feedback, Baron! I like the rather fitting radiation form of it, considering my story!

Spoiler
I doubt the protagonist has many plans for the future after he has finished writing his, probably short, book about the war. But wait, isn't he also writing this story that we are reading which ends with him beginning to write the book?! Damn, now even I'm confused!
[close]

Sinitrena

A lack of votes makes the competition admin sad  :~(.
Come on, people, the stories are fairly short this round and votes are live. We need more love in this world!

heltenjon

Okay, I voted and will make some comments. I generally stay out of this one because it feels too much like what I do for a living. But when Sinitrena uses that dog whistle of hers, I tend to come yapping.

The Last Library by Mandle
Spoiler
It's a nice way to let us know how the protagonist reaches his quite stupid conclusion. The mention of book titles gives us an inkling of the love he felt for these works, and which we probably should feel, as well. (And we do!) There are lots of stuff unknown to us. Is he telling the truth in the book he's writing? Are there other people out there, or is he the last one? Is he writing the book for himself, for other survivors, or for future alien archeologists? Or is this the planet of the Apes? Note that this is how religions/myths/history is made - by destroying the other sources of information. But it seems unlikely this prepper can know his library is the last in the world, although the unseen narrator may know that. The obvious sibling text would be Fahrenheit 451, but I think this one only vaguely shares some themes. The censorship in this story seems not to be thought through and comes mainly from the protagonist's selfishness. I liked the story, as it gives an opportunity to discuss why people act like they do without regard for the consequences for mankind.
[close]

The Wasteland by WHAM
Spoiler
I liked this story, too. This reads to me like a story inspired by Plato's cavern fable, but with a twist - what if the great philosopher is wrong? I expected people to go back to the cave, echoing Plato, but instead, the story ends openly. We don't know what will happen or what the troubles in the new world is like. Fresh start indeed. The descriptions are detailed enough to give us a good picture of the underground world, with focus on small details, letting us fill in the picture with our imaginations. This worked quite well on this reader. This protagonist also turns out to have acted stupidly, but at least he acknowledges it in the end. There are things we don't know here, as well. Were the elders acting out of good intentions, or trying to keep their power? History have seen enough evidence to know that both are possible explanations. (The earth circling the sun? Sacrilege!) The main character believes he's doing the right thing, but doesn't take into consideration that he might be wrong. And why should he, given the message from his brother?
[close]

The Unleavened Truth by Baron
Spoiler
A story filled to the brim with food-centered expressions. I feel like that would be an even better fit the story was told in first person, but much of the other storytelling works best like it is. Basically, this tells the story of the gold rushes, where the prospectors generally weren't the ones to get rich, but the ones selling them equipment and entertainment. Swearengen vibes here. So it's a well told version of a familiar story, where the fresh start gets replaced by going back to basics and turning over an old leaf, feeding off other people's fresh' starts. I liked this one, too. Whether or not the reader likes puns with their buns will probably decide if this one is regarded as the crux of the biscuit or just the icing on the cake.
[close]

WHAM

I aim to send in my votes today. Apologies for being so late, it's been busy at work and elsewhere.
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Mandle

Quote from: WHAM on Thu 28/04/2022 09:53:54
I aim to send in my votes today. Apologies for being so late, it's been busy at work and elsewhere.

I will also be voting over the next few hours... had a few issues.

EDIT: Voted and here's some brief feedback:

Spoiler

WHAM: Loved the world-building and the vivid scenes of carnage once the plan was underway. The exodus seemed a little rushed, and the ending needed at least a hint of what the danger was, and I didn't think it needed the final sentence. Felt a bit like the tropey question-mark after "The End" in old horror movies. Overall though an excellent little bite-sized tale.

Baron: You managed to pull off all the food metaphors without it getting intrusive or annoying. The story could pretty much be read smoothly whether the references were paused upon and considered, or not. This is quite the feat! The story was nice enough. Felt a bit like a proverb with a lesson to be absorbed, which is not a bad thing but not exactly my cup of soup.

I ended up voting equally for both stories as both had really strong points as well as slightly weak ones for me.
[close]

Sinitrena

I'm still missing WHAM's votes, so I'll wait a few more hours. Everyone else is also still welcome to cast their votes and to comment, if course

Sinitrena

I received WHAM's votes, so it's time to close this round.

We got an astonishing 5 people voting (not including myself), so a total of fifty points for our three entries. Thank you!

But first, some comments from me:

Mandle: Short but sweet little story, maybe a bit too short. I'd have liked to see more of the consequences of the character's decision, rather than the execution of the decision. While the burning of the books, of history and knowledge and art, is a powerful image, a bit more characterization of the protagonist would have been nice. Does he write to start a new creation mythology for his world, wants to show a better future or is he just really egotistical and doesn't want anybody else's work to survive?

WHAM: Like Mandle's entry, yours rather shows the decision and the process of the decision than the consequences, but considering that the one, final consequence here is death, I'll let it slide  ;). I like how this story shows what not keeping your citizens informed can lead to and that Tikema actually tries to do the right thing but ultimately fails because he lacks knowledge. What I don't get is why they had to burn down their dwelling, why destroy any chance of survival for those who want to stay in the caves? It seems unnecessary and rather drastic - they could have just slipped away in the night.

Baron: This story comes closest to what I had in mind for this topic - we actually get to see what the character's new life is like. The food-stuff is an interesting writing exercise but I don't think it adds anything to the story. I like that Coriander's solution to his lack of money in the new job is falling back onto his old one - cobbler, stick to your last! But don't forget to try something new once in a while.


I had such a clear first, second and third place and then WHAM comes along and casts his votes. Now I still have a clear winner but also need to cast a tie-breaker:

WHAM wins first place with 20 points - Congratulations!
Baron receives 15 + 1 tie-breaking point for his second place.
Mandle gets a good third place with 15 points.

Thank you all for entering and voting and congrats again to WHAM - Over to you!

Baron

Congratulations WHAM!  A well-deserved victory.   (nod)

Mandle

YAY! Awesome work WHAM! Hope to see more and more of you in future rounds as your stories are always a joy!

Just one question Sini, and this is not a complaint or anything, but why did you feel the need to break the second place tie? I know it wasn't anything against me. I'm not suggesting that, and I would be asking the same question if Baron's and my positions were reversed. I suspect it was just motivated by neatness but, in the future, I think it might be best to just allow ties to stand. I am in no way butthurt about it, but newer and thinner-skinned participants might take offense if the host of the contest bumps them down a notch retroactively. I think it's fine for the host to also secretly vote but when it's done openly with just one point to "change" the results I can see it causing problems for some people.

WHAM

Holy heck, thank you folks! I tried to keep the story short enough to read comfortably in a single go, and wound up with a hasty ending, but apparently that wasn't too bad this time around. I purposefully left a bunch of stuff vague, so the reader had room to inject their own interpretations and ideas, while trying to provide just enough to work with and make things interesting and impactful.

I'll get the next FWC set up later today so you can get to work!  :-D

Quote from: Sinitrena on Fri 29/04/2022 18:23:48
What I don't get is why they had to burn down their dwelling, why destroy any chance of survival for those who want to stay in the caves? It seems unnecessary and rather drastic - they could have just slipped away in the night.

I tried to convey a character who was so fundamentally sure in their beliefs that they felt it would be nothing less than a crime against all to let anyone stay behind in the caves, if they could be made to leave. The Elders, and their closest followers, were the force keeping the people down in the caves in their "false sense of security", placated and unwilling to work for something greater and grander. I wanted the character to represent that kind of religious fervour that some might mistake for working for a true and just cause, but which might just as easily slip into destructive madness if not checked by facts and wisdom.
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

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