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Kalanna Rai
Assassin for Hire
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 Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 1:58 am Post subject: The Hero and the Assassin |
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Hello, If you're just joining us for this tale you might want to check out this link and save yourself the trouble of reading all these chapters. That way you can inform yourself of all the important moments in the story without taking too much time before you can start playing. Just scroll until you see the 'Caution' sign. Synopsis Here!
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The Hero and the Assassin
Chapter One: Shame of the Fallen
The two guards were little more than lumbering shadows in the darkness, the linen sheet between them a silent cocoon. They slowly made their way to the edge of the pit and on a three count tossed the body over. It took a long time before the splash.
The bigger of the two men shook his head. "Well that's one I have some respect for Irmy. She got 'im good before she went down."
"Yeah Rill, somebody should say some words over her." The big man nodded and then was stunned as his companion bowed his head and chanted in the Elder tonge. With a swift motion he grabbed him by the shirt collar only to have his hands knocked away. "What are you doing Rill? Get you're hands off me!"
"You spoke in the Tonge Irmy! Yer' flith!" His friend only winked at him.
"Blasphemy for the blasphemous Rill, you didn't think I was actually one of," Irmy's eyes widened just a bit and he began to laugh. "You really did think it didn't you! Oh Rill you're a lug you know that!" Rill started to laugh too now, realizing just how well Irmy had played the part.
"You got me good kid! Gave me a heart attack you did!" He swung his arm over the little man's shoulders and practically drug him down the dark passage. He was so busy laughing and talking he didn't notice Irmy glance over his shoulder at the pit and surely didn't read his thoughts.
'Damn you Shade, you were our last hope! How could you go and die on us! What's the rebellion supposed to do now...fold! I didn't sacrifice everything to get here just so I could watch our best fail again and again! And now you too....Rest in peace old friend...it's more than any of us can expect now.' Irmy pretended to laugh and if Rill thought those laughs were hollow...well he blamed it on the tunnel.
Down in the pit, under the murky surface of the dead still water, the slithery things were moving. The preditors and scavengers who had been without a meal for a day or so now crawled from their nests among the bones of former meals to investigate the new addition to their realm. Yet they did not consume this prize as they had all others.
Instead they bouyed it up, making it rise in the water instead of sink, taking not a single bite from it yet savaging each other in an attempt to get closer. They peeled away the cloth shroud that wrapped the body, driving the winding sheet down into the bottomless depths of the abyss. They brushed and caressed this new-comer, sliding smooth scales against silken sking and supple steel.
Then, with the sudden energy of a summer storm, the body jerked into motion, head breaking the surface of the water with a silent gasp. The slithery things milled in confusion, keeping the creature ever floating even as it now moved to do so it's self. One hand then another trailed against them in the water, imparting silent thanks to them, something never given them before. It ment the world to them.
She brought a hand to her face to wipe away the water that streamed down from her brow...and stopped dead. Nobody would ever call her beautiful again. She realized why she could see only darkness...she no longer had eyes. Her face was swollen, and tender there, with cuts trailing away from the corners of her eye sockets across the edge of her high cheekbones. A smaller cut carved a crescent moon at the curve of her jaw on each side.
She wanted to curse and to scream! Her eyes were gone, her EYES! Had it been a finger or an ear she could have replaced it with only a thought and a mumbled word but her eyes...she'd have to earn them back. And everyone knew you couldn't earn much without honor.
Yet the slithery things under her seemed charmed and wooed by her presence. That aspect of herself had not deminished with the loss of her sight, nor, she realized, had any of her others. With a deft movment she reached into the water for the hem of her cloak...only to have a slithery thing press something else into her hand.
She ran her fingertips over it again and again, feeling it's dry surface...underwater! It was something rare indeed and she brought it to her lips...tasing the magic within it. Oh rare indeed was this gift! After tying it aroung her damaged face, securing it by looping it around her hair, she reached into the water for the slithery thing that had brought her the strip of cloth.
It was shy at first then became more bold when her quiet patience and simple offer of friendship remained extended. It slunk up her arm and wound itself around her bicep, locking on like a magical arm-band or the like. She gently touched the top of it's head and knew instantly what it was.
'Small child of the ocean king why do you sleep here?' The small serpent hissed quietly before flattening against her arm and becoming utterly still. So her familier he was determined to become? So be it. She would have precious few friends left after her failure this night...the spy could not have failed to inform them.
Now she turned her mind to the task at hand. She hummed a few bars of a melody and listened to the way they bounced upward, the spiraling echo's telling her just how deep the pit was. Under her the slithery things were beginning to grow tired, needing rest from their exertions that had failed to get them a meal.
She was loath to use magic here, he would sense it for sure. With deft movements she patted herself down, checking to see what else he had taken along with her eyes.
Her swords were gone naturally. She quaked with rage at the thought of him weilding her beautiful blades Akeiri and Daelani and then a smile curved her lips. More likely he couldn't touch them and was right now having someone else hang them on the wall. Her babies would have to protect themselves until she came for them...them and her eyes.
Yet the rest was promising. Her armor was still on her, the spells on it still intact and strong. Her belt and all the contents of it's many pouches. Her war gloves...that's it! Her war gloves weren't like the others that were tucked into the other side of her belt. They were hand to hand offensive weapons with six inch flexible blades running the length of her fingers and extending into talons beyond that.
Unbreakable blades...she slipped them on. Then there were her boots. They too were built for silence and speed, yet also for battle. They had razors in the sole that only needed a hard tap in just the right place to reveal...and they were already locked into combat position.
Slowly swimming to the wall she swung her fingertips at it with all her might, kicking as hard as she could with one foot. She felt the wall give before her blades and tested her weight...it wouldn't be the first time she'd scaled a wall like this.
A few hours later she managed to haul herself over the rim of the pit but she didn't allow herself the luxury of resting. Instead she began to humm, listening to the way the echo bounced back to her, using the map she already had in her head to match up those sounds. Slowly she swung in the direction of the tunnel and began to pad along it, all her remaining senses on high alert...and who has better senses than a highly skilled assassin...nobody.
She made it all the way down the long corridor, the darkness and strange shadows it twisted leaving no impression on the blind woman. To her it was just another tunnel, not a living creature from some dark dimension. Reaching it's end she continued to hum, continuted to follow her sonic map.
Slowly she edged through the dungeons, and up into the cellers where she took some food she knew to be good. Couldn't fool her sense of smell or her innate 'poison sense' she'd developed long ago under a cruel master. She wound her way through a darkened part of the kitchen, having a near miss when she nearly intrrupted a tryst between a serving boy and a scullary maid.
Yet now she was faced with an option. She could move upward, onward to the lower halls where exits were plenty and cover was sparse, or she could take the kitchen door to the outer garden and try to make her getaway through that rotten jungle of evil life, plant abominations created by twisted magic.
Decisions, decisions. Time was running out and she couldn't pause long...which was the best way to go? With a snap she made her decision. She had to go...
_________________
"It's not just about living forever...the trick is living with yourself forever..."
"Music makes you braver."
Last edited by Kalanna Rai on Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:07 pm; edited 29 times in total
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Shady Stoat
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| Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:41 am Post subject: |
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Wow! A third storygame. Excellent start Kalanna 
A blind assassin with sonar senses and a strong instinct for survival. I think she should stick to the shadows, like any good assassin would.
Unfortunately, that means going out into the deadly gardens, but she already has poison sense, so the worst effects of the plants should be lessened in her case.
Once she's escaped (presuming she does), she has to look to her continued survival. She needs better weapons, a way of disguising herself, preferably her own swords back and revenge on whoever tried to have her killed in the first place.
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| Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:42 am Post subject: |
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Nice start there Rai!! 
I say go through the jungle. She sounds like she can take care of herself, eyes or no.
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Kalanna Rai
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| Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:50 am Post subject: |
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Who said anything about poison in the gardens Shady...but it's a better idea than what I had in mind...
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| Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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'ted.
When you put a poll up it's a good idea to add a comment saying so, then it brings the story back to people's attention. I would have missed this, but I have logged on and off a few times, so the 'stories since last visit' thing is messed up for me now and I am trawling through the forums trying to catch up.
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Kalanna Rai
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:30 am Post subject: |
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Sorry Chen, was tired when I put up the poll so...
HEY EVERYBODY!!!! COME AND VOTE ON THE FATE OF A BLIND ASSASSIN!!!!
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:28 am Post subject: |
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Hey Kalanna,
Intriguing opening chapter. She's clearly highly skilled already and I look forward to finding out just how good she is in a tight spot. I'm not convinced her humming is going to help when it comes to a fight.
If she's as good an assasin as it appears then she should have no trouble in making her way through the house and to one of the many exits quickly, rather than wasting time trying to get through the garden.
However, I might have voted for the garden by mistake  - erm.. can you pretend I voted for house
Happy Writing.
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Kalanna Rai
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:31 am Post subject: |
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I was wondering when you'd get around to reading this...and yes I'll add a vote for the house just in case you made a mistake...
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Kalanna Rai
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:54 am Post subject: |
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The gardens are winning eh??? Thanks for the warning...
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| Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Cool story. I voted for gardens, and await Chapter 2.
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| Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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Hmm, an interesting story, Rai. I love the idea of a blind assassin. I am going with the majority here, and heading for the gardens. Like Smee said, if she is supposed to be as experienced as implied, she probably will come out fine, whichever way she goes.
But also, I don't see her going the quiet way at the present. She doesn't seem to be that cautious right now.
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| Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2006 4:28 pm Post subject: Chapter Two: Midnight in the Garden of Evil |
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Okay we're going with twisted plant abominations here...
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Chapter Two: Midnight in the Garden of Evil
She had to go into the gardens, had to choose the saftey of the shadows over a speedy exit in these circumstances...not that she couldn't handle anything she would have encountered in the halls. Now was just not the time to risk a second confrontation with anything that might report back to him...not that the plants wouldn't.
The door to the gardens opened easy enough under her touch and she slipped through into the heavily perfumed night air...and the endless rustling and whispering of a million sentient plant-beings. Clearly her humming wasn't needed, using her ears instead of her eyes to guide herself was going to be useless as noises came from everywhere. Her sense of smell too wasn't going to be of much use as all she smelled was flowers.
That in itself was a problem. She smelled the poison that those cloying scents covered, smelled it like one would smell a rotting corpse under their floor. She groped about blindly, no pun intended, for a moment before her hand encounted a staff of polished wood. Some gardener had left a savage pruning hook next to the door. For a moment she debated it's use as a weapon then realized that there was a much better use for it.
In a voice as pervasive as the scents on the breeze and in a language that no plant, no matter how twisted, would fail to understand she spoke quietly to them and them alone. "Here me prisoners of this garden. I come not as another who would harm you, but as a simple traveler. I wish none of your secrets for my own, nor do I seek to take anything, but myself, from this place. I wish only safe passage through your domain." With that she snapped the cruel blade off of the pruning hook.
With only a simple staff of wood in her hand she began to tap on the ground, as she'd seen every other blind beggar do, and feel her path through the garden. Too soon she was deep among the rustling leaves and the deadly blossoms, praying that the plants would let her pass.
Suddenly a stout vine barred her progress, ivy from the twisting feel of it. "Who are you?"
"Only a foolish blind woman caught out after dark with no other way home." Slowly the vine turned her to the left.
"Then this is the way you must go, the other path ends only in death." She bowed low to the vine and continuned in the new direction, her stick tap-tap-tapping as she went. Suddenly a huge leaf tickled her chin with it's sharp edge.
"You are recently blind and well armed as well, foolish you may be but what else are you?" This was dangerous ground she would have to tread softly.
"What I was concerned only the animals that slumber beyond your soil beds. My blades were not made for trimming and pruning the likes of your kind, but for parting the flesh of the likes of mine." The sharp leaf trembled a moment with indecision the moved to gently buffet her a little to the right.
"You must follow this side of the path else you fall into the mulch pile." She again bowed to the plant who steered her on, a philodendren in this case. There were many more such incidents, each plant asking a question then turning her path aside from where it had been. She knew they could be leading her in a circle yet sensed they were not.
Finally she heard the rustling begin to diminish and she began to hum. Yet there was no door before her, only a large shrub with long cruel thorns...a giant rosebush...now doubt the leader of the plants in the garden. She heard it's long vines run past her, enclose her in a cocoon of sharp thorns, if she moved even an inch she'd be pierced and even if the wound wasn't fatal itself the poison on the thorns would most likely do her in.
"You are neither young, nor are you like any of the others in this place of bloody soil and dark magic. The one who calls himself our master is much like you...yet weaker in too many ways. You have artfully answered our every question...yet you have told us nothing. Now I will ask you for the last time. Who are you?"
She slowly smiled. The plant was to shrewed to be fooled, that must have been why the others had steered her here. The serpent was pressed on her arm so tightly that she was forced to move him to a pouch on her waist, a hard thing to do with all those thorns so close to her skin.
"My name? Is that what you want? Or do you want to know what manner of creature I am? Or what profession I have accepted? Most likely you want to know it all. Therefore, inquisitive one, I will proffer you a deal." The thorns constricted the points so close she could feel their proximity.
"You are in no position to make any deal..." The rosebush fell silent as an unseen force, the same that caused the slithery things to lift her out of the water, pushed it's thorns away from her. Slowly it moved from a threatening position into an enclosure. A ball of rosewood with no way out. "All right. The terms of your deal."
"I will tell you my story and you will let me go." The rosebush shook for a moment.
"We will listen to your story and if you tell us the truth we will let you go in good stead...if you lie we may be forced to let you go...but you will wander in the garden until someone finds your bones one day..."
"Fair enough." Slowly she setteled on the ground, serpent in lap, and began...
I was born on an isle far from here, years before your ancestors first put roots in this thin northern soil. Then I was called Adaria, or beautiful. Until I was twelve I led an idyllic life of peace and tranquility. I learned the arts of painting and dancing. I could ride and use a bow fairly well. I showed promise as a healer and had a great gift in the magical arts. My father was even teaching me buisiness, a shocking thing in those times."
"Then it all changed. One summer night a man in black came into my room with a knife his intention to cut my throat. He then encountered the full force of my gift, the one that turned your thorns aside. He was barley able to bring me back to his master a man named Shyl. What I endured at that man's hands need not be recounted. His vision was a warrior that blended the stealth and cunning of an assassin, the battle presence of a Nord warrior, the spells and tactics of a Weaponsmage, and the abilites of a Combat Healer."
Her smile turned brittle. "He forced me to take poison so that my body would develope a resistence to it, slowly upping the doses so that a leathel dose for me was impossible to achive. Then he started with exotic poisons, things he mixed himself or made me mix. Some of them had adverse effects. My eyes, when I had them, turned a startling shade of brilliant green, like a jeweled forest apple. My hair, as you can tell, turned the brillaint blue of an Azure Drakon. My skin as slick and hard as bone and a shade paler too."
"I learned to turn the world into a weapon, a delicate string became a stout man's garrote. A simple stool a leathal weapon that maimed men. My master succeeded after years of training to create what he had set out to make...a perfect weapon. Yet even as he did this I rebelled. I continued to learn, to read and write many languages, to become a skilled merchant. He felt proud of me, considered me as near to complete as he could get. One night he even gave me a new name...Shade. Then, one day, a rival killed him leaving me free to do what I wished."
"For a time I sought out the most skilled masters of the battle arts be they mage or warrior. I learned arcane spells and fighting skills, and drove myself to limits many of my kind had not dreamed of. Then, one day, when all this battle had left me feeling grimy and useless, I returned to my first love...dancing. I became a bard, as laughable as it seems, and wandered the world."
"For a time all was well...then somebody tracked me down...a relation long lost. He was my younger brother, my father had survived the assassin that long ago summer, and continued his family. He'd never given up searching for me and had found me only by my voice. Even at twelve my bardic talents had been promising...as an adult they were rather apparent. Aside from that I sounded just like my mother."
"Thus my brother had been sent to fetch me and I returned home...yet I was no longer the innocent little maid they had sought so long to reclaim. I was jumpy, edgy, a creature to fey even for my own people. I was never without a weapon and in that community it sowed only unrest. Soon I was asked to leave and, surprisingly, my brother went with me."
"We traveled for a time but now that my story was known nobody would take me as a bard. When I caught my brother stealing it was the last straw. I went to some people I knew and returned to the night, went back to being an assassin."
"My brother sold himself out as a blade-mage for a time and then...one day he vanished. I looked high and low but by the time I found him he was already well on his way to the shadowlands. All he asked of me was to take care of his wife and son...a human wife at that. Knowing that a half-blood would be even more ostricized from our people than I was I travled to this village where the woman lived."
"She had moved on and taken her son with her, gone to a city in the south and married an innkeeper there. The boy was not well treated yet there was nothing I could do. In a city that big I was constantly forced to defend myself from myriad challengers and counter assassins. I was forced into more jobs than I could handle, the boy with all the beatings he took was better off than I was."
"Then one day I was called across the sea by a council of Elders. They gave me an option. I could turn my skills to good, or I could die on the spot. I happen to have a very good sense of self preservation so I accepted to be their 'holy hit man'. I spent several centuries putting down cults of the dark god with the weapons they gave me...a pair of enchanted swords said to be made from the fangs of the twin Dragon god's themselves."
"I went back to the isle for a rest nearly five hundred years ago...upon waking I found that a tyrannical ruler had killed all but the Council and myself and that even we were being sought out. There was a resistence, but not much of one. I busied myself helping them and sent many young men to their doom to fight this fanatic of the dark god. Yet none prevailed."
She paused, feeling daylight through the rosewood, and swollowed hard. "I then picked up my swords and went myself. I battled with him in his lair, as an equal, and was struck down by trechery. As a trophy he took my eyes, casting me into his dungeons as he would do with any corpse. My swords he kept for himself."
"If you have not already guessed, rosebush, I am the assassin sent to kill your master. I failed this time but I will not the next time. If you let me go then I will only return to finish the job, reclaim my lost swords, and restore my vision."
The rosebush, the entire garden was silent. Then the chamber of rosewood moved and opened. "The way out is straight ahead of you. We have only one request, o last of a noble and ancient race."
"Ask." A thin tendril of the rosebush, a fledgling runner, curled itself around her free arm.
"Take us with you." It was a dangerous request. Yet could she refuse it? Under the circumstances the best solution was to...
_________________
"It's not just about living forever...the trick is living with yourself forever..."
"Music makes you braver."
Last edited by Kalanna Rai on Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:54 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Shady Stoat
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| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 12:55 am Post subject: |
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I like the feel of this story. It's definitely original! 
Hmm... is it possible to take the plants with you? They don't seem evil... but neither have they declared their loyalty, one way or another. You could be taking the dark lord's spies out into the world, to sow their mischief.
How about demanding their story in return for yours, before you make the decision?
If that won't work, I think you should take one runner-vine (or whatever) with you, just so that you can get out of here alive and unharmed. It would be dangerous to refuse the request, even at this point.
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| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 1:44 am Post subject: |
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Nice chapter!
I f5 Stoat, or of course you could promise to come back and release them at a better time. Carrying a lot of plants when you have no eyes and are surrounded by enemies is probably not the safest choice!
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| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:50 am Post subject: |
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are they asking you to take all the plants, or just the small vine?
thats what i thought it was saying - either way they have you surronded so refusing completely is not an option, though lying could well be
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| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 10:57 am Post subject: |
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A page turner as usual, if this were in book form, Rai.
I am asking the same question as Lordie here. I don't know if would want to be caught carrying a rosebush with me. It would just a tad bit suspicious. LOL. A part of it would not be a problem. It would be just like carrying the water sprite she picked up in the sewers.
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Kalanna Rai
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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It's a scout vine guys...kinda like the serpent. And if Smee will nix the poll I'll get the new one going...
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 12:20 am Post subject: |
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We were just asking that is all. Like I said it would be a tad difficult to hide the fact you're carrying a rosebush. Sorry it's really late for me, and I just finished posting up my last chapter for my storygame Truthseeker.
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 12:28 am Post subject: |
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Go Rave go! And as for the bush...yeah it might have been a little confusing but look at it this way...if the bush was big enough to enclose her in a sphere...how in the hell was she going to carry it...?
But yeah I'll admit to being confusing on that point.
Yet again way to go!!! I hope I'll complete one of my projects soon...but my stories tend to be long winded...I'm hoping to keep a few of them short...
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| Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2006 9:41 am Post subject: |
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It is hard to write a story in a only a few pages. Truthseeker may be only 9 chapters, but a lot of the chapters are very, very long. I think the largest is chapter 2 being 13 pages typed in Word, Arial, 12 point font.
I have a friend, who is a fellow writer, but not a part of this site, who also writes stories. She told me that to keep a story short, you have to avoid putting into many complications, or else it will turn into a novel. The beginning, middle, and end have to flow. And the middle has to be strong. Its like running a sprinting event. You have to stay strong throught the story, or else the ending won't be conclusive as you want it to be due to too many loose ends still left undone.
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| Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2006 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | It is hard to write a story in a only a few pages. Truthseeker may be only 9 chapters, but a lot of the chapters are very, very long. I think the largest is chapter 2 being 13 pages typed in Word, Arial, 12 point font.
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I totally agree with this! My only Short Story is "ARMS" which was my speed story game, written in 5 days, lasting 5 chapters. Previous to that, I could never manage a short.
Of course, it is just as hard to write a full novel.
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:00 am Post subject: |
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I do short story writing exercises like create a one page story, written by hand, and most of those turn out fairly well for me.
However what you guys are getting are embelished versions of my favorite freewrites. So remember, all of my stories your reading, except You Cant Take It With You, originally started as 52 word stories...
I've got the beginning middle and end...It's just a question of how much detail I add to them all....
This one's shaping up to be an epic though people...you're in for the long haul...
P.S. I do write novels...but I'm not going to put any of them on here for the sake of letting you people have a life...Maybe if people express interest, or I get really stuck, I'll post them but I think Key'd get kinda mad if I started posted fifty page chapters... 
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:22 am Post subject: |
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Maybe you can post them slowly in Linear.
Sector 507*, was a novel I started moons ago but, as usual, didn't get past the first chapter. Now I have started it as a storygame I have actually worked on it!
I have another** SG waiting in the wings which is also based on an old novel idea of mine. So I know what you mean! This is a great site to encourage writing***.
*Check it out, it is one of my non-humor stories, quite different to most of my stuff.
**Actually, I have about three waiting, but I am not going to start more until other have finished. Probably.
***Thanks Key!
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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Rai, you should do NanoWrimo this year. I normally announce it in October in my sig, and Open Forum. It's a writers' competition that has people write 50,000 words of a novel within the 30 days of November. Here you don't worry about quality whether it be grammar, spelling, flow, that all goes away. When I say 50,000 words of a novel, you don't have to write a complete story. I mean I guess you can end it in at the end of the month. I have done this for the past two years, and enjoyed it immensely.
My story for the 2005 competition reached 50,000 words right when I wrote the climax. I would post it here, but its 119 pages typed...
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| Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the tip Rave but I don't think I could do that...I'm just not ready to have other people rip my character apart. I've said it once before at least but I've been working on this story for eight years and so far I've only gotten the main character to a point where people don't have any more to complain about.
Maybe I'll put her in a short story for your viewing entertainment but the character I picked for my user name, well half of it, is a little to dear to me to bring out of my private little domain.
You'll understand I hope...
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| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 12:30 am Post subject: |
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Poll is up peoples!
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| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:46 am Post subject: |
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Great chapter
I think the threat of them being spies is enough to make the request for its own story reasonable.
It might not be that interesting a story, but maybe we'll learn something of its master that could help with the next attempt to kill him.
Happy Writing
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| Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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| V'ted: I think you have a great story going on here Kalanna.
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Kalanna Rai wrote: | Thanks for the tip Rave but I don't think I could do that...I'm just not ready to have other people rip my character apart. I've said it once before at least but I've been working on this story for eight years and so far I've only gotten the main character to a point where people don't have any more to complain about.
Maybe I'll put her in a short story for your viewing entertainment but the character I picked for my user name, well half of it, is a little to dear to me to bring out of my private little domain.
You'll understand I hope... |
I think you misunderstand me, Rai dear. I don't know if this in reference to my suggestion to do NanoWrimo, but you should know that the characters are your own. Whether or not a reader likes him or her should not matter really. Don't change a character just because somebody else doesn't like them.
As for NanoWrimo, it's about writing something original. You're not allowed to continue writing something you may started a few weeks earlier. It is amazing how well some stories sound when you do it within a limited amount of time.
Voted btw. Don't know if I am on the winning side. Yay if I am, oh well if not.
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:46 pm Post subject: |
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Oh...
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| Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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*laughs* I love the poll here. It seems most of us don't really want to talk to a plant at the present moment.
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 1:23 pm Post subject: Chapter Three: A Rose that is No Rose. |
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Man you guys are even suspicious of a bunch of mutant plants...gee, can't my science fair project get a break?
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Chapter Three: A Rose that is No Rose
She hadn't lived this long by blindly accepting the first deal put on the plate. Though the roses sounded truly sincere in their plee trust was not in her nature. "How can I do this? Why should I shoulder the responsiblity of your actions when I have enough troubles of my own?"
"We could aid you in your travels. You have no eyes, let us guide you with our sense of the earth."
"And you think I have not other ways to see? You think I cannot sense the earth on my own?"
"Normal earth certainly, pure earth assuredly. Tainted earth...dose that not pose a danger to one as tainted as yourself?" These roses were no fools whatever else they might be. Tainted earth was linked to their master and she would rather he not know she had survived.
"You ask a boon beyond the deal we have struck. Am I not justified in asking you for something more than was bargained?"
"Yes. Ask and be it in our power, recieve."
"Then I ask your story in return and do not seek to lie! I have delt with many whos livelyhoods depended on their ability to spin falsehoods able to withstand scrutiney." The vines shifted and seethed, seeking a way free of their bargain yet failed.
Slowly, with hesitency born of shame, they began. "We were once beautiful blooms that grew in a twilight garden at the edge of the world. Surely you have heard of such a place for we know not the name by which men know it."
"Yes I know of the place you speak, continue."
The roses rustled and began their tale again. "People sought us out from time to time for our beauty and our healing properties...or so we were always told. We gave freely, unsparingly, and without the suspicion that now marrs our dealings with things such as yourself.
Then, one day like all the rest, an man in a deep cowled robe came up to us and begged for a cutting, just a small one, that he might take back to his garden and grow. He said there was a great sickness in his land and that, should we try to give him enough to cure it, we would surely parish.
We thought his intentions pure and noble, we thought his concern for our wellbeing and that of his 'people' true and touching. So a tiny seedling was bestowed upon him to take back to his home, to tend until it matured into a flowering bush.
We were frightened and often sought the comfort of our mother bush for reassurence. When he began to exert his magic upon us, he claimed we would be unable to survive in his land unchanged, we wailed out to our mother bush...but they could not help us.
Slowly we were forged into that which now grows here, like all the others in this garden. We have been forced to commit horrors and atrocities all in the name of our survival, our continued existence. We established ourselves as the masters of this garden, the leader of these twisted wreches that no longer remember what they once were.
We would have continued, unchecked, had a terrible thing not happened. One night, as he who calls himself our master, walked amoung us we reached out for our mother bush in terror...and they no longer recognized us. They shunned us and turned us away, their very presence a painful thing to us. And as we sat there weeping he came upon us and asked our ailment. When we told him...he laughed.
'You are evil now! None will ever look upon you as things of life and beauty again. Men will burn you in fear and hatred, they will seek to stamp you out wherever you grow. Only here in my garden are you safe. But don't worry my beauties...soon the world will be my garden.'
We don't want to be his beauties, we don't want a tainted world for our garden. We want to go home, to put down roots in soil that dose not scream for our distruction. We want to be able to dissuade people from the path the evil one took...and we want to topple the evil one ourself.
Can you not help us? Will you not free us from our prison?" She considered their words.
"If what you say is true then the other plants are loyal to this master of theirs. Have they not already heard what we have said?"
"No words spoken have left the leafy bower you rest in. He built us for secrecy." Useful she must admit but still there were a few other problems.
"What of pursuit, once I leave what will stop them from telling him you let me go?"
"Watch." Slowly she felt the life-giving essence, present in even this most tainted earth, drawn out and into the rosebush itself. All that was left were dying plants who's own essences were soon leeched out into the rose. "They are dead and their kinds shall never grow again. Now will you take us?"
"One last question. If you give me a cutting of yourself, what will happen when he takes out his displeasure on those left behind?"
The roses shifted and sighed. "Once the cutting is given to you we shall die. It was decided long ago that it must be so. All that we were would live on and it would so please us to thwart the evil one thus. Now..." She felt a prickle in her scalp as a thin, strong vine put down tentative roots.
Without another moment's hesitation she began to hum again in the now still garden, clearly hearing the damage that the dying rosebush had wrought in it's last act. She walked to the stout door in the wall and put a hand to the handle.
It was blazingly hot yet she pulled it open anyway. She was sucked through the doorway, the door slamming shut behind her, the roaring of flames surrounding her.
"Be not afraid." The single rose bloom whispered. "One fire is illusionary, the other the futile ragings of a trapped monster. The monster is no happier than we yet she is just as unable to escape. She was set to guard against theives that might come to steal us."
"Then no doubt she will be furious at the sight of me as you are indeed my companion. Will she not think me a theif?"
"Can you not be as fearless of her flames as you were of our thorns?" Fearless was not quite the word.
"The force that protectes me cannot go unnoticed always. Sooner or later the evil one will sense it at work. I prefer not to trust to luck."
"How vile of you! In your pouch you carry the water beast the evil one trapped in a pool under his castle was he not kept against his will? We hold tightly to a root bond with you and do you not carry us to freedom? Why should you shirk your duty and forgo she of the fires for your own safety?"
"Who will return to fell the evil one should I fall? What stake have you in the plight of the flames?" She felt dry pressure as the serpent coiled around her arm again. Suddenly a light appeared before her. Slowly a watery sort of vision took place of that she'd lost.
She could clearly see the fires now, not as she would have seen them, but as the serpent saw them. In his vision she could clearly see which flames were real, which false, and at that moment a lonely cry split the air. A bolt of black lightning streaked from the highest tower window to strike at the creature that stood in the heart of the flames.
The creature shrieked once in great pain then fell silent. She felt rage tightening her shoulders. "Well?" The bloom inquired in a dry voice. With a swift decisiveness she made her decision...
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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Another highly enjoyable chapter Kal
She seems to have been sucked into saving all kinds of beasts and entities from this dark place. Why stop now? Perhaps they can help her, even if the Dark Lord notices her. If not, then at least she's being consistent
Let's hope this is the last one though. She wants to get clear of this place sooner, rather than later
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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No it would be really bad if the Dark lord notices her...things would get nasty quickly and not even all the powers in the universe could save either of them...also she cannot start a second conflict with him nor can anyone aware of her true idenitity...but more on that later...
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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Ya, coolo Rai!
Maybe try and help it, but ask it not to leave until after she is gone?
That's all I have. For now.
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| Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 4:55 pm Post subject: |
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Poor little roshbush.  I feel sorry for the horrors it had to go through.
I agree with Shady. Let us save another creature from the horrors of the monster. One more addition should not hurt I think. But let us up hope there are no more we must save. The plot must move on to somewhere away from this place.
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| So what will they do? |
| Another round of questioning? |
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| Differences lead to battle royale? |
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| Total Votes : 3 |
| Who Voted: dragon_fire372, DukeReg |
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