Grantaire

Reviewed Prisoner of the Red Star. Sorry for the lateness, I had some severe reviewer's block on that story.

Official Short Stories Critics Club review! Apologies for the delay, but this proved to be that story that I kept on putting off reviewing.I had to remind myself who Gaardus was at the beginning, because I'm totally not a 2010 loremaster, at all. So basically what i read here was all I knew of the guy. He sounded fairly interesting; not too developed, but this was to be a FF entry, so you have excuse. Nonetheless, he was decently dimensional. The Kestora were good as well, even though they didn't sound formal enough for my tastes; I would have thought them above common slang and phrasing that they use in small amounts.The plot was very simple, so I can't really say much on it; it's how Gaardus got to the Red Star. However, there's a lot of mystery behind it, and references to past events that are not expounded much upon; sounds like a great groundwork if you want to write more about Gaardus.The writing style was not exceptional, nor was it bad at all; rather, you told a story simply, and allowed the reader to picture it well without too much description. Reminded me somewhat of the Bionicle serial style of writing.As to formatting, I have one suggestion. Size 14, please, 18 just looks wrong. Also, for effect the first words (the dialogue) of the story could be italicized and perhaps centered? Optional, but it'll look a little more aesthetically appealing. In all of these, you used periods instead of commas. Also, it should be name's (since he's shortening 'the name is Gaardus' into 'the name's Gaardus') not names.Overall, this was a short but decent story, and made for a nice read. Good job.

Well, I am by no means a poetry expert, I greatly enjoyed this poem. It was written plainly, but it had a flow that I grasped just by reading it once. It's not large or massive, but simply a word-picture of Autumn. As a person who hold autumn to be his favorite season, I really liked how you described it all.For the silver issue, perhaps a combination of words might work? For instance 'dull-grey' or 'grey-black'.

Picture a gruff knight slamming his fist on the table and barking it; It's a quote from a book, and that was the context of it.I had no attempt to characterize, and I really didn't want to. The point was to give a little backstory to a novel I'm writing, and write a battlescene. I can do characterization somewhat well (in fact two of my other Templar fics, one that I wrote just yesterday, and another which is only posted in the Ambage write off blog focus heavily on characterization), and might have focused on it more, but for the fact that halfway through the story I decided to enter this for the FF contest. This isn't my best story, but it's decent. Thanks for the review.

In 1307 the knights Templar were arrested by the thousands in France, and tortured into giving confessions of blasphemy, idolatry, and other charged not fit to be mentioned here. Many were executed, others imprisoned. This story follows the possibility of one escaping. -x-x-x- The wind was cold and chilling, whipping the freezing rain directly into the face of the traveler as he stumbled along. He was dressed in muddy and ragged clothing which had once been white, a thick mantle draped about him, sodden with water. Red shreds of cloth hung in tatters from where it covered his left breast and his face, partly covered by the cowl, was scarred under the thick beard, the blood on it washed away by time and the driving rain. His features were set in a mixture of determination and despair, and his eyes were filled with a bleak anger. In his hands for a staff was a javelin, but no shield hung at his back, and no helm crested his brow. Wearily he trod along, setting one mud-caked boot in front of the other. Life was not good to the traveler, and was not likely to get better. He peered at the scene ahead, the muddy road leading through the black trees, and the evening-dark overshadowing even the rain, turning it into a dark-silver curtain. No color could be seen except dimly the brown of dying leaves still in the trees, falling rapidly to the ravaging winds; there was nothing that did not match the despair of his stony heart. There had been a time before he had faded into a wasting shade, a time where he had traveled brilliant and powerful, high above the common folk, looking down upon them from his war-steed. His clothing had been white, his heraldry a blood-red radiance. But that time had gone, with intrusion, arrest, imprisonment, torture, and finally that which enstoned his heart; the betrayal, the turning and trodding upon every oath and belief he had ever held. He had trampled it, his marks increased by those of the rich who pressured and tormented, and the pope who turned his head away, leaving him to fall into the pit of his own heart. Even so, had that been the end of it he would have rotted in a quiet dungeon-cell, safe and somewhat warm; at the least fed. But he had not been content to rest like this, branded as a heretic, blasphemer, and idolater, although in his mind he had forgotten that fleeing would hardly change that. He had escaped then, and fled, armorless, with only the clothes on his back, torn from prison and flight both. He had decided after his rage had subsided that he would die quicker in this manner; in prison, he would last a year and more, even if the prison-climate overcame him. Here, it was just a matter of wager as to whether starvation, cold, or bandits would smite him first. He cared little now, a deadening of his heart the only real feeling he held; it was as if on the day he had slashed apart his mantle-cross to hide who he once was and what he hand once stood for, his heart had left him. It was as if the brilliance of that symbol had taken part of his soul away with it, leaving he himself in shreds. The forest darkened even more, but the rain still beat down, filtered somewhat by the arching branches. It was not a place to be at night, even for an armed knight; for a wearied traveler, it was akin to near suicide. Bandits and murderers, thieves and outlaws, they all lurked in the woods, and at night they roamed unchecked. The traveler cared little though, his eyes fixed on the muddy road, his thought fixed on not thinking, of averting through lack of reason the pain of his sin. Ahead figures moved, and at a harsh call the traveler looked up both warily and wearily. Exhausted in mind and body, he made little attempt to avoid the arrow which flew through the air, piercing him in the breast. And as his own red blood stained the mantle, mixing with the red of the shreds of cloth still there the emotions sapped for so long returned; the traveler collapsed, body wracked by grief and remorse, even as life gladly slipped out of him. -x-x-x- Okay, this will be my last Templar fic for a while, I promise!Basically, I saw the Flash Fiction pathfinding picture, and after that a birthday card with a Templar clad in a ragged surcoat and mantle, and yeah, it popped out.Also, for those f you unfamiliar with Templar garb, they wore a red cross at the left breast of their mantle.

You wrote something! So much for your 'writer's death'. XDYes, I really missed your writing. This story reminded me a little of River, oh River, Flow Gently For Me; it was vivid, set very well in our world, and overall... Well, vivid; it's very easy to see through the main character's eyes. And even though neither of those stories give the opportunity for a lot of character building, the people do not seem 2D at all.I have also lost all hope in winning this flash fiction contest.

Honestly, after reading this I came to the conclusion that this story needs a lot of work. It has a decent, albeit very much used foundational theme of the hero who is somehow more powerful for whatever reason (In this case, it’s because he’s a 1.5 robot). However, it fails to execute this foundation well in many ways:First, on grammar. I cannot point out specifics—that would take several posts—but overall the grammar needs a lot of redoing; not only lack of punctuation, but also sentence structure and bad phrasing. Next, length. IMO, you could easily expand what you have here a lot; as it is, the chapters are very brief, too much so. Tell us some more backstory, give some character thoughts, stuff like that greatly improves a story in length and quality. As it is, all this could be merged into a single chapter easily.The plot. I am not very taken with this; okay, so this much more powerful hero is made… But how is he more powerful? The (very little) descriptions of him and his weaponry don’t sound very outstanding, nor do his tactics; any Hero could have at the least held his own against that sim. The training part was short and confusing; why is he thrown into that, who are the other heroes fighting? You could have made training several chapters, drawing out how X is more powerful than most heroes, and then throw this boss in at the end, after there’s enough buildup. Maybe even have X volunteer to fight it. But as it is, the fighting and the story need quite a bit of work. Come to think of it, confusing and oversudden describes most action in the story.And, characters. I’m finicky about characters; they have to be imaginable at the least, and preferably they have to be unique. I’m sorry, but I could not see your heroes, at all. You could, and should, have focused on characters more, and made them even 2D; as they are, you show them so little that I would call them 1D, if such a thing is possible.Expand the plot, build up the characters more, and focus a lot on grammar, and you could have a quite good story going here. As it is, I’m not too pleased with this story.

Name: ZaraynaTheme: PathfindingWord Count: 1,000 words.We Wanted Those Infidels Dead!

Hast seen the white knights as they march past? Tell me, hast sighted the black footmen that follow as night follows day? Hast seen the cross of blood that binds them together? Tell me, have you seen the Order of the Temple? -x-x-x- The night was deep, and there was silence on the part of men; only the sounds of nature could be heard on the old path that ran through the forest. Day was done, and most travelers were well indoors, in inns or the homes of farmers who would house them for the night. For it was perilous to be about in the dark. But the sound of hooves could be heard, and the slapping sound of mail and padding. The lone horseman was clad in a black mantle, the hood back from his brimmed helm. The mantle was drawn close about him, and the red cross at his left breast stood starkly out, even in the night. He traveled at a brisk cantor, and neither man nor horse seemed at ease, despite the arms on man and horse. The night was perilous even for the brave and knightly. His gaze roved from one side of the forest to the other as he rode, almost expecting arrows to fly from the shadows; any native to this land would have told you how likely such occurrences were, even for armed soldiers. But perhaps this soldier was held higher than the others, or else he was plain lucky, for the forest yielded none of its perils, and presently he reached a clearing, reining in his horse and dismounting. Although he was not now alone, he seemed to be more relaxed. Five men stood off the road; four clad the same as the rider. The other two were clad in while mantles, and wore sugarloaf great helms. One of them spoke as the black rider walked forwards. “Is the location spotted and scouted, brother?” he asked, his voice deep, with a courtesy that seemed inherent to it. “I have looked, and have found it to be so, lord commander; the bandits have little regular sentries, and are fattened by their latest raids.” “It is well then,” the white clad commander said. “We can move out, take them unaware. Come, lord brothers, On behalf of God.” “On behalf of God,” came the muted response from the others as they mounted; the scout without complaint despite the lack of rest. But although they were swift in leaving, they moved at a relatively slow pace. The white clad knight leading them beckoned the scout to his side. “What approach shall we take, brother?” he asked. “The brigands have set their camp in the foothills, commander; it has good tree cover, and several caves. They have set up their main camp in a shallow valley between two spurs of mountain, where they have a fire pit, and several crude cabins. Normally, they would have one or two sentinels, but tonight they are too wasted from their raiding to care. One drunken sentinel badly placed, mayhap two.” “It will not be the easiest target, brother. Not all are drunk, and they greatly outnumber us,” the commander cautioned, more to himself than to the scout. His brow set in a frown under his helmet. “We will arrive in a minute, commander,” the scout said softly. In response, the knight held up his hand and gave a sharp, but still muted, command to halt. “Brother Sergeants, you will follow on foot. The knights shall lead the charge. The infidels are smitten by their greed, and offer no organized watch. We shall scatter and confound them, and you shall smite upon them.” “On behalf of God,” the others responded, and they set off, the sergeants leaving their horses behind. The camp gradually spread out in front of the riders’ eyes, the glow of a few fires through the spaced out pines, the dim shapes of a few buildings; most importantly, the sounds of human life. The two knights quickened their pace, shifting into a swift cantor. To the bandits, there was nothing more startling; one moment the peace of the night and the warmth and heat of the fires enveloped them, the next horsemen crashed through, scattering the fire and thrusting several unlucky brigands through with their lances. Bodies crashed about, to their feet or to the ground, some stumbling around drunkenly, not knowing whether to fight, flee, or just collapse. The knights vanished out of the fire area after the charge, leaving the bandits a few seconds of respite, a chance that was lost in the general confusion. Skillfully maneuvering, the two knights split and charged back into the clearing, one from each side. Two more bandits collapsed before they were gone. Even still, they had not yet routed, now trying to form some defense even in their unreadiness. The knights’ tactic of hit and run, while confusing and line-breaking, could not achieve the carnage that a pitched attack would have, and there were still over a dozen men left. But even as they—somewhat—armed themselves, the main Templar force arrived. Bolts flew out of the trees, piercing two more bandits, and even as they looked towards this new threat the four black-clad warriors charged headlong into the fight. Outnumbered three to one though they were, they had a clear advantage over the unarmored, ill armed ruffians they faced. Several fell in the first clash, and the cries of the wounded outweighed the sounds of weapons clashing. Hardly a half minute into the fight, and the six remaining bandits broke, fleeing for their lives. Surprisingly, the four Templar did not pursue, quietly watching the ruffians flee. Two of them unslung crossbows, reloading them. To them, the fight was done. Cries rang out from the forest, and the Brother Sergeants knew that the fight was done for those remaining brigands, ended on the points of the swords and lances of the two Templar knights lying in wait. -x-x-x- Mayhap not fitting the theme Pathfinding that well, I needed the flash fiction goal to get me to finish this. The title goes to my brother, who also tused 'infidel' in the same sense as this story (bandits being infidels, sorta a loose usage). But I'm rambling.

I review Short Stories and EPics. Depending on why I'm reviewing an epic, I will either review it once (ECC) or every chapter, if it's an epic I'm relaly interested in following.

IC - Boran:"Some little of it," Boran replied. "We go to the Outpost, an we go farther. We go until the mists die, and then farther. We follow a vision, and visions are never clear.""We have a good amount of travel kanohi here, else I would have demanded more direction... and not gotten any.""Zazius will travel with you, Ketyren. Aylan will take me, and Monik, you get to teleport on your own. We meet at the gate of the outpost central."OOC: travel time. Zazius is the NPC knight with the sugerloaf helmet who I'm working on turning into a PC.

Hi. I'm writing a short story, and I arrived at one point where I find it necessary to quote a line from a Psalm; the Templar's chant before battle (Psalm 112(113):9). I know that biblical quotes are illegal in signatures; my question is, can one be used in a story?

Honestly, after reading this, I would rate the story between mehish and okay. I liked the introduction, but I felt that the story did not live up too well with it.The writing, while not terrible, was riddled with quite a bit of spelling errors, and on the whole was not the best; I found it hard to really get into my head what was happening. Stories are words used to paint pictures in the reader’s head, and if that can’t be accomplished properly, then there’s something wrong. Not that this is unchangeable; when you write a scene, particularly a battle scene, it is very important that it makes sense in the text, not just in your head.Next, the characters. Okay, I haven’t seen much of them because the main character has basically been caught in a long series of battles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it doesn’t leave much character development in the readers head. Overall, I’m not very pleased with the characters, as they seem, well, 2D. Again, this could easily be because we haven’t seen much of them.When it comes to combat, you have my all out biggest problem with this story. In all honesty, the combat was extremely poorly done. The hero was far too overpowered, and although you mention him being wounded etc, he never seems to be effected. The next problem I had was the lack of description. So why can his sword slash through steel with ease, while a blade 10 times as powerful can’t slice straight through his shield? My biggest problem however, was with invulnerability. Your character gets shot with lasers, acid, massive blasters, and crossbows, and he’s hardly affected. The team leader gets hit repeatedly with a sword that cuts through armor like butter and yet is hardly effected? I will not mince words; the combat was dull and boring for me; it needs complete reworking. Also, swords are not throwing weapons.When it comes to grammar, my biggest problem was not so much spelling errors as it was the overall writing; run on sentences I notice quite a bit, and it does not do a good job describing the narrative. Also, you switched from present to past tense in the first chapter, which was confusing. So I would not say it needs individual touching up on specific spelling errors as it does a nice paint job, if you get what I mean.Lastly, formatting. I have two problems; first is you seem to switch between font size. Second, you need to master URL linking.Review TopicStory TopicThis is very simple:1: Copy the URL for the topic ( I will use Review Topic as example).2: Write 'Review Topic,' or whatever else you want to title it, in the post.3: Select what your wrote, then click that handy little URL feature right below the size option. Paste your URL into the text space, and hit OK.My overall thoughts on this story: It seemed to me that it was almost a draft more than a finished story; it has a decent framework, but the building built out of the frame needs to be redone, and painted better. Do some rewriting on the overall wording, and do a lot of reworking on the fighting, and this

IC - Boran:"Well, it seems I'm getting as full retinue," Boran said dryly, a little irked. "Come, lord brothers, let us be on our way," he said, moving forwards. Aylan and the newcomer fell in a single row behind him, leaving the last two to take the rear.

If Velox joins, I might revive one of my characters in there.

Dangit... Sorry to hear about this... Happened to me a year ago. I hope you and your family coup well with the loss.

You can have the NPC PC run into Anvor if you want; I inferred he was somewhat near station U.

Where are your characters, what are they doing?

IC - Anvor:I can't end my life, but I don't need to preserve it.The theme had become Anvor's motto since the start of this living karzahni, and he held grimly to it, even as he lowered his spear, watching as the rotter collapsed, a frozen corpse. It would have been easy to slip up, to allow the rotter to take hold of him and kill him; it would all have ended. But omission, the matoran knew, constituted offense in many situations, including these. He carefully stepped around the fallen zombie and took off down a corridor towards the distant station U; it had only been a lone rotter, but if he waited, more might come. Again, omission would constitute offense. Survival by code and necessity, not by want. That was his state.

So, finally starting out here.What's going on in the RPG? Anyone looking to interact with a half suicidal Onu matoran philosopher?

This entire story was inspired by the prison scene at the start of Piurates of the Caribbean 2; I tried to capture the feel that imagery gave me. I'm not overpleased with my writing, and this certainly could have done with polishing up; my writing of a year ago in nowhere near as good as my writing is these days. I have only one response to the grammar nitpicks (the rest were valid and true... I had nowhere near the amount of practice in first person then that I do now): Sorry, personal quirk of mine; none of my stories within the last year and more will have matoran, toa, rahi, etc capitalized unless it's being used as a title for someone. Mayhaps not quite proper grammar, but it's personal taste.At any rate, thank you for the review. I am glad to know that my attempt to create an utterly despairing story worked.

MY NEW FAVORITE HELMET SO MUCH MORE AWESOME LOOKING THAN THE NORMAL GREAT HELMET

OOC: Sorry for not replying at all... It seems I not only got writers' block but RPer's block.IC - Boran/Aylan:"Ketren, come back," Boran calmly said, even as Aylan zipped off."It is not a good idea to split up so quickly, before we've even reached the tunnels. But wait, my brother must summon another of my knights." He regarded Ketren with a keen gaze. The toa seemed rather unstable, and he was slightly irked at the Visionary. Several ideas popped into his head; the Visionary had his own life threatened in words by this toa, who talked of an invisible brother. Was this the Visionary's way of having him killed by either the knights or the dangers of the tunnel? The first was unthinkable, and the second extremely unlikely. Was he simply trying to get Ketren away from the city? Also a little unlikely. The last alternative made Boran frown; was the Visionary hoping that this mission could help him? Was he tasking Aylan and he to somehow cure this toa of whatever mental disorders he had? That, although the most logical, was not one Boran was particularly glad to know. He felt the wind of Aylan returning with another knight, even as he shook himself out of his spaced out stare to see where Ketren was.Aylan slid to a stop, releasing his grip on the knight he had brought. The knight was of a similar build to him, although a little more bulky and slightly hunched. Like Aylan, a black mantle with a white star covered him, but unlike the others his face was covered by a sugerloaf helmet. Two swords were strapped to his belt, their blades thick and slightly curved, with simple upcurved crosspieces. His hands were clad in clawed gauntlets, and dull red vambraces could also be seen. His feet however, unlike Aylan's were clawed. In his hands was a compact but strange looking gun.OOC: I'll write up a bio for him soon, but for now he's just an NPC.

D'aw, no long discourse? I'd write one... If I didn't feel so lazy.