# ready for a new round of Ceramic DM?(judgements in, check in for finals...)



## alsih2o

sign in if oyu are ready and are pretty sure oyu have time to do it.
 real life happens, but look down the road, i am hoping this summer thing (for those of oyu who share a hemisphere with me) may relieve some of the school pressure. 

 we need at least 8, but can do with more. who is in?


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## Drawmack

Als,
  How about publishing the winner on open forum?


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## alsih2o

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *Als,
> How about publishing the winner on open forum? *




 there is an idea and a half!


 winner gets published in my open forum thingy on rpoes-http://www.suryvial.com/openforum.php


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## Desdichado

I'm interested -- I read barsoomcore's victory thread.  Just to make sure, the point is to compose a work of fiction out of the elements you post as pictures, right?


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## alsih2o

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *I'm interested -- I read barsoomcore's victory thread.  Just to make sure, the point is to compose a work of fiction out of the elements you post as pictures, right? *




 exactly, the opposite of how a book is usually done, you get illustrationa and you have to make the story match them


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## Desdichado

OK, well like I said, count me in!


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## Gregor

I would REALLY like to try my hand at this.  I know I am new around here so I would not want to steal a spot from a vet enworld board member who would also want in.  However, consider me for a spot.  Im definitely interested.

Could someone link me to a past ceramic DM thread so I can see what the general expectations are?   I'd appreciate it.  

Cheers


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## mystraschosen

count me in potter!   hehe mohammed alsih!


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## alsih2o

Gregor said:
			
		

> *I would REALLY like to try my hand at this.  I know I am new around here so I would not want to steal a spot from a vet enworld board member who would also want in.  However, consider me for a spot.  Im definitely interested.
> *




 you are in gregor, we are all on equal ground here 

 here is the last one for a link- http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47638&highlight=ceramic


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## Gregor

Cheers Alsih2o.  Im looking forward to this!


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## Mirth

You want me to compete or judge this time around, Clay? I'm up for either, although this upcoming weekend will be kinda busy for me what with HeroesCon and Father's Day.

If anyone wants info on other Ceramic DMs, check my sig...


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## alsih2o

your call mirthman, your call


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## Gregor

> rules:
> 
> treat the illustrations as if they were the illustrations for your story
> 
> length- not an issue, but i have the attention span of a mayfly, so a novella will get chucked
> 
> once it is posted, no editing
> 
> the illu's will be numbered , please indicate by number where they belong in your story.
> 
> 72 hours form the post of the illu's for you to post your story. times will be using the timestamp on your posts, no credit for turning anything in early, disqualified for 1 minute or more late (c'mon, you have 72 hours!!)
> 
> an adventure is acceptable, as is a story, but applicability to the d20 3e genre is the rule
> 
> good luck, count off




These are the rules as they stand right ALsih2o?


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## Maldur

I just arrived back from the con 

Count me in as a Judge


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## alsih2o

well, gregor the newbie has posted the rules for oyur incompetent matchmaster


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## Gregor

Whoops!  Didn't mean to steal your thunder.  

Im just a little nervous / anxious about this (seeing the fierce competition of the past matches) so I wanted to make sure I got off on the right foot with all the rules clearly in my head.  I was just curious if any new rules have been developed since the first contest...

Cheers!


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## Mirth

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *your call mirthman, your call *




Well I've got on my black robes and my gavel's in my hand, so I'll let you figure out what that means


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## AuroraGyps

OK, I'm in.  I need something to take my mind off of looking for a job.


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## Drawmack

what the hell, count me in


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## Maldur

Woohoo, here we go again !!


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## alsih2o

Gregor said:
			
		

> *Whoops!  Didn't mean to steal your thunder.
> 
> *




 no thunder stolen, i actually am incompetent


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## Drawmack

I wanna call Maldur out, just cause I can't resist smack talking someone with a name like that.


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## alsih2o

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *I wanna call Maldur out, just cause I can't resist smack talking someone with a name like that. *





careful, maldur is a judge, not a participant


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard

Hmm...a little busy for the next few weeks...keep wanting to try my hand at it. I'll wait it out until you do another.


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## Goobermunch

I'm taking the bar this summer.  Otherwise, you'd all be toasty.

--G


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## Taladas

I am ready to give it another try. Let's do this thing.


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## Kahuna Burger

I got nothing better to do, no good movies playing....

And I know Clay's always up for really messed up pictures, so there's a morbid curiousity factor...

Kahuna burger


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## alsih2o

welcome aboard to taladas and kahuna burger!

 2 more and we can start tomorrow morning


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## barsoomcore

Gang, I have to sit this one out -- work is stupid crazy busy and we're just finishing up post-production on Le Movie and so...

No can do.

Will cheer from the sidelines! Woot!


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## Dagger75

I will do it.  I have no writing skills, can't spell and my writing aint so well but what the hey.


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## Maldur

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *I wanna call Maldur out, just cause I can't resist smack talking someone with a name like that. *




Whats wrong with my name?


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## NoOneofConsequence

The glutton for punishment puts his hand up.


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## Drawmack

Maldur said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Whats wrong with my name? *




It's just easy to rhyme with which makes it easy to smack talk - Catious Clay style


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## Maldur

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *
> 
> It's just easy to rhyme with which makes it easy to smack talk - Catious Clay style *




I hope your not calling me easy, mister!!!!


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## Drawmack

Maldur said:
			
		

> *I hope your not calling me easy, mister!!!!
> *




Since you're a judge this is just an example but I could say something like

Round one will find the sleazy 
with myself winning easy
Round two will reveal
whose fate is sealed
Round three leave me
standing by a tree
With our fine maldur
lying under a boulder.


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## Maldur

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Since you're a judge this is just an example but I could say something like
> 
> Round one will find the sleazy
> with myself winning easy
> Round two will reveal
> whose fate is sealed
> Round three leave me
> standing by a tree
> With our fine maldur
> lying under a boulder. *




My pronounciation is much different, so it would not fit


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## alsih2o

looking like this-

 josh dyal vs. gregor

 mystras chosen vs. auroragyps

 drawmack vs. taladas

 kahuna burger vs.dagger75

 with nooc as a backup



 i am ready to start when each emmeber of the pairings havs checked in.


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## Drawmack

I'm ready


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## Drawmack

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *looking like this-
> drawmack vs. taladas
> 
> kahuna burger vs. taladas
> *




my thinks als made a mistake.


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## alsih2o

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *
> 
> my thinks als made a mistake. *




 o.k., did noone get the bumbling incompetence memo????


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## Kahuna Burger

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *
> 
> kahuna burger vs. nooc
> 
> i am ready to start when each emmeber of the pairings havs checked in. *




yo.


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## Gregor

Hey... I literally just rolled out of bed.  But Im here and Im ready!

Don't trounce me too badly Joshua....I am ever so fragile 

edit - its too early...me no speak good


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## Taladas

Ready to give it a go.


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## AuroraGyps

Howdy, hope I'm not too late.


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## alsih2o

first round

 drawmack vs. taladas

 pic 1


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## alsih2o

drawmack vs taladas

 pic 2


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## alsih2o

drawmack vs taladas

 pic 3


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## alsih2o

drawmack vs taladas

 pic 4, 72 hours from this post folks...


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## Gregor

You guys have a great set of pics........Best of Luck!!


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## Gregor

You guys have a great set of pics........Best of Luck!!


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## Maldur

Good luck you two!


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## Drawmack

Thank you very much guys

*taps temple with a $20.00* I've already got an idea brewing and I'll bring the pizza to round II if I'm invited.


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## Desdichado

I'm having lots of trouble with database errors -- I hope this deadline won't be too rigid if trouble with the boards continues?


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## Thimble the Squit

*Another great set of photos, alsi!*

*alsih20*, you continue to surprise me with your visual eye.  Those piccies are magnificently evocative and I really look forward to seeing what your two victi -- er, contestants -- will do with them.

* Nods to *NoOneOfConsequence*, who knocked me out of the heats in the last match. *


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## alsih2o

round 1

 pic 1

 joshua dyal vs gregor (if there are still problems we will be abit flexible with the deadline)


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## alsih2o

joshua dyal vs gregor

 pic 2


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## alsih2o

joshua dyal vs gregor

pic 3


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## alsih2o

joshua dyal vs gregor


 pic 4, 72 hours form this post folks...


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## Gregor

an interesting selection to say the least, but I am looking forward to the challenege.  That last pic is too funny!  

Best of luck Josh, see you in 72!


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## Maldur

Another great batch, good luck you two!!


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## barsoomcore

Always good to see a new round of ceramic dm starting off with such a cavalcade of pictures. Clay, you're a freak.

And I mean that in the nicest way.  

*eagerly awaits the outcomes*


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## NoOneofConsequence

Checking in. Boy I thought I was gonna be stuck as alternate yet again there.

 

I wish everyone the best of luck, which is to say, I hope you're all lucky enough to do your best without beating me!


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## AuroraGyps

How long do you usually wait for someone to check in Clay?  Is there a time limit?  Just wondering.


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## Desdichado

Sorry - I saw the pictures hours ago and haven't officially checked in -- I'm already at work.


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## alsih2o

normally we gove a day, but things have been screwy the past few days, so i am tryign to be patient


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## Angcuru

Aw, dung.  I only just noticed this thread.  I was hoping to be able to compete in the next C.D.M.  Oh, well.  Better Luck Next Time. *spectates*


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## AuroraGyps

ok, just checking.  I'll check in tomorrow morning.  Have to get a good night sleep so I can submit more job applications.


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## Gregor

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *Sorry - I saw the pictures hours ago and haven't officially checked in  *




If this is the case, perhaps Alisih should pull our pics until you officially check in so that we are on equal footing?

Cheers


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## Desdichado

Gregor said:
			
		

> *If this is the case, perhaps Alisih should pull our pics until you officially check in so that we are on equal footing?*



I was considering my last post to be my official check-in -- the only point of that is to verify that we saw the pictures and are ready to go, right?


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## Gregor

I would imagine so.  I just wanted to make sure that you have as much time as I do.  

If your last post was your check in....then best of luck to you and I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.  

Cheers!


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## Speaker

Just saying hi, folks.

After having to duck out last round, there is no way I would have tried to compete again this round.  But I wish all the writers luck, and I remain an avid reader of the tales.

Great pictures, as always, alsih2o .

Cheers.


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## alsih2o

because of yesterdays sowness i feel the need to give our 2 latecomers some time, at least a couple of more hours...


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## AuroraGyps

I'm back and up to the challenge.  I'll be home all day due to a bad knee and awful weather.


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## alsih2o

well, i sent out emails wihtout replies, i just emailed nooc, and if he shows i will start him aginst auroragyps, and whoever else signs up against kahuna


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## Angcuru

I'm in. 

This should be interesting.

My anal-retentive attention to detail should prove useful.


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## alsih2o

round 1

 angcuru vs auroragyps

 pic 1


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## alsih2o

angcuru vs auroragyps

 pic 2


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## alsih2o

angcuru vs auroragyps

 pic 3


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## alsih2o

angcuru vs auroragyps


 pic 4, 72 hours form this post!


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## Angcuru

I must say, those pics are, while individually Bizarre, put together, downright wacky.  This'll be _verry_ interesting, indeed...


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## alsih2o

Angcuru said:
			
		

> *I must say, those pics are, while individually Bizarre, put together, downright wacky.   *




 trust me that i say this with all due respect.

your problem, not mine mwuhahahahaha!


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## Gregor

Geez.....I thought I had it tough!  

I cant wait to see what you guys put together for this one!!!!

Cheers

edit - I accidently put a mad emoticon....im not mad...im in a super happy fun mood.


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## alsih2o

Gregor said:
			
		

> * I accidently put a mad emoticon....im not mad...im in a super happy fun mood. *




 too late! all the judges saw it and are now angry with you!! woe be to he who uses the wrong emoticon!!!!


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## mystraschosen

Sorry here I am ,been under the weather the past day or so and have been napping alot.But I am ready to go ...that is if I am still in.


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## alsih2o

round 1

 mystras chosen vs kahuna burger


 pic 1


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## alsih2o

mystras chosen vs kahuna burger

 pic 2


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## alsih2o

mystras chosen vs kahuna burger

 pic 3


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## alsih2o

mystras chosen vs kahuna burger

 pic 4, 72 hours from this post-


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## Drawmack

My round I entry is completely written. The print out is sitting on my desk at home waiting for a proof read. It'll be posted in the next couple of hours. 

I know there's no brownie points for having it in early - but it does give the judges a bit more time with it, which can be good or bad - but I'm anal so getting it in early is good for my mental health.

then again chocolate is also good for my mental health.


hmmm I wonder what would happen if I subbmitted early while eating chocolate.


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## alsih2o

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *
> hmmm I wonder what would happen if I subbmitted early while eating chocolate. *




 a msart man would worry about submitting early while the judges eat chocolate


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## Gregor

Or maybe submit some chocolate with your entry? 

A little bribery never hurt anyone.....


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## AuroraGyps

Clay, you're just evil.   angcuru & I have our work cut out for us.  However, playing Ceramic DM might be bringing me some luck... Office Max called about my application today.   Ok, off to brainstorm I go.

Forgot a quick question for ya Clay: in Pic 4, is there supposed to be a little white square in it or is that a glitch?


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## Drawmack

*Ceramic DM Round I Drawmack vs. Taladas*
_The Search for Alonda, Part I_
*By:* J. Thomas Enders
The sun beamed in through the window striking me in the face and waking me up as it did most mornings. The village was calm and peaceful as my mother washed her face in the spring out front (1). She always cleaned up after making breakfast. This morning’s meal was cockatiel eggs and wild boar. The day seemed perfect as if nothing could go wrong. I grabbed banjo and went to get Andre. We were going out foraging for berries this morning. Neither of us could have foretold the horrors this day would hold.

We started by going to the familiar picking spots. However, we found them mostly picked clean, which is to be expected from this time of the year. Straying farther and farther from the village in search of ripe berries to take home we eventually came to the barrens. There was nothing really different about this area. It was called the barrens because no one, not even the adults, were supposed to enter it. The mystics told of great wonders and greater horrors that lay beyond the divide. Andre and I decided that getting berries for the night’s meal was more important then some old superstition and crossed the divide entering the barrens. Not ten steps in the bounty of the place became apparent.

The trees sprawled out before us reaching up into the sky like towering giants with manes of green. The bushes littered the ground like humungous rabbits sleeping in balls. The ferns stood as tall as us. We began to muse about the berries we would find here.

“I bet we find cranberries the size of our feet.” Said Andre.

“One blue berry is probably enough for ten pies.” I responded.

“You could eat off that for a week.” Shouted Andre pointing to an apple hanging high in a tree.

Then we were startled by the sound of a horses galloping and men speaking. Strangely, the men sounded winded. Why would men on horseback be winded? Andre and I quickly hid in the underbrush and watched what came down the path. There before out eyes were half man – half beast creatures. We heard about these in the myths of old, now taken as nothing more then children’s stories. These were centaurs, so named for being the centurions of the forest.

“Did you see that?” I asked

“I – I – I think those were centaurs.” Replied Andre

“But centaurs aren’t real, they are just creatures from children’s stories” I said

“Apparently they are quite real, or a very powerful wizard is playing tricks on us.” Andre offered in response.

“But magic isn’t real either. I feel like I’m asleep and dreaming the myths from fairy tales into being.” I said

At this very moment Andre smacked me across the face. 

“OUCH, What the hell was that for?” I yelled

“Well if that hurt then you can’t be sleeping.” Andre responded

It was then I smacked Andre.

“What the hell was that for?” Andre asked.

“I just figured I’d make sure that you’re not dreaming either. Now let’s be about our business“ I stated.

It wasn’t much longer until we found a patch of blue berries raspberries and grapes. We attempted to pick fruits but found them too large to manage. We decided that taking these berries home would tell the ancients where we were. Fearing the wrath of the ancients we decided to leave the fruit and suffer punishment for going home empty handed. Then that we heard the voice of an old man.

“You boys seem to be facing quite the dilemma, as if you have found the proverbial rock and the hard place.” The old man intoned as he stepped into sight. 

He was a wretched creature. His skin hung on his frame like hides made for a fat man being worn by a child. Wrinkles saturated his pale white face and he was stooped from the battle with gravity. He walked with a staff that looked as if it could barely hold his weight.

“I might be able to help you boys.” He said with a toothless smile.

“You could help us? However could you possibly help us?” I asked

“Well my boys an old man doesn’t live in these enchanted woods without learning a few tricks.” The man said.

“What tricks do you know that could help us?” I asked.

With a wave his staff a blue light erupted from the end surrounding a nearby blueberry bush. The light turned green and dissipated leaving a normal sized blue berry bush. 

“What do you want in return?” I asked.

“Well it seems that time has caught up with me. I fear I am no longer able to live as a hermit in these woods. The twilight of my life has arrived and I would like to live out my days in a village. Life will be easier there. You boys just take me back and tell the leaders you found me wondering in the forest. I’ll help you get all the berries you need.” The man responded.

Seeing this as our only way out of trouble we jumped at the chance. In short order, and with full bushels, we headed back to the village. The old man slowed our progress but we planned to use his frailty as an excuse for being late. Upon arriving back at camp we took the old man, Zacharia, to meet the ancients. As Zacharia spoke to the ancients the real man and his real intent was revealed.

With a few words Zacharia grew tall and broad. His skin became ruddy. His face looked like it was touched by devils. He filled out the robes that previously hung on him. A charm, the tear of ancients, appeared around his neck. (3) He spoke his intent very clearly.

“Through myth and forbiddance you keep the children from the barrens. As you have learned today robbing children of truth is not the road to peace and harmony. True peace and harmony only come through enlightenment. It is enlightenment I now bring to your people. You will worship me or you will be decimated.” Zacharia spoke, his voice reverberating through the forest with the power of gods.

Michalin, the oldest and wisest of the ancients, addressed Zacharia. “You were banished for embracing dark arts and blighting the forest. You were banished never to return.”

“Michalin, my old friend, do you forget your own banishment? I was banished until such a time as the innocents of your village welcomed me back. Today Andre and Zimmer welcomed me back when my providence avoided their punishment. Now that my banishment has ended you will bow before my might and lift me to my rightful place as ruler among your people or you will pay the price.” Zacharia retorted.

“We will never revere the evil that is you.” Michalin stated harshly.

“Then you will pay, all except those who ended my banishment.” Zacharia announced.

With that he did a quick incantation. At the culmination of his incantation he vanished in a cloud of thick black smoke. The smoke began to spread with fire at the edges. Michalin told us to find Alonda. Then the blight enveloped the ancients who screamed in tones that startled the deaf. The fire blight spread over the entire valley. (4)

When the blight was done Andre, myself and Banjo were left standing in the middle of a dry, cracked and barren desert where our proud forest home once stood. (2) We headed out to find Alonda, whatever that was.


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## Drawmack

well there she is in all her glory, or infamy as the case may be. May the best contestent move onto round II


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## Maldur

Good luck to anyone I havent wished it to


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## NoOneofConsequence

I appear to have become invisible. I can see my own post (back on page 2, before KB and Ang) but Clay appears to have missed it and signed my place over to someone else.

Please tell me this is a mistake and not because of something I said, did, didn't say or didn't do.


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## Maldur

Why is there an empty post here? Just like on page 2???


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## Kahuna Burger

NoOneofConsequence said:
			
		

> *I appear to have become invisible. I can see my own post (back on page 2, before KB and Ang) but Clay appears to have missed it and signed my place over to someone else.
> 
> Please tell me this is a mistake and not because of something I said, did, didn't say or didn't do. *




I would be willing to ceed my place in the round over - I just (finally) got a job and I'm gonna be a bit more busy squaring things away before it starts than I was when I signed up...

Kahuna Burger


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## alsih2o

nooc, i am a blind and deaf schmuck, can you step in for kahuna burger the recently employed? (congrats to kahuna!)


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## barsoomcore

Ah, the chaos and mad scrambles of a Ceramic DM competition! The crazed images (where DOES he find those?) and frantic confirmations. And at last, the stories, creative and always so much fun to read!

Good luck to everyone (even Drawmack the Speedy), and I look forward to reading the results!

Hey Clay, is it alright if spectators post comments on stories after judge's decisions are in?


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## alsih2o

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> *
> Hey Clay, is it alright if spectators post comments on stories after judge's decisions are in? *




 yeah, especially former champions


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## Maldur

barsoomcore, dont be silly. Offcourse you are


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## Drawmack

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Hey Clay, is it alright if spectators post comments on stories after judge's decisions are in?




Or you could email them to me (webaster@suryvial.com) now if you felt so inclined.

As far as the speedy comment goes. There were two contirbuting factors.

1) I miscounted and thought the dead line was this morning not tomorrow morning.

2) The pictures blended into this story immediatly for me.


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## barsoomcore

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *As far as the speedy comment goes. There were two contirbuting factors.*



You know, when I was writing final exams at university -- these were English exams so eassy questions so you got little booklets to write in -- I'd always double-space my writing and only use one side of each page. And I'm a really really fast writer. So ten minutes into the exam I suddenly stand up, walk to the front and grab another booklet, keep writing. Ten minutes later, stand up, walk to the front, grab another booklet, keep writing.

Other students are half-way through their first book and watching me, thinking, "Holy crap! I'm way too slow!"

Keep it up, D.


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## Gregor

So YOU are one of the people I want to hurt while I'm writing exams?


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## Angcuru

Hmm...now that I've actually come up with a basic idea of how to blend these pics into a story(no small feat), I need to find time to write it up.  Seeing as how tomorrow is right out, (Prom night, busy busy), I have tonight and saturday morning to do this.  OI!


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## AuroraGyps

> how to blend these pics into a story(no small feat),




Tell me about it.  I think Clay's out to get us.   The other groups of pics were much easier than ours, I think.  Oh well, I'll give it my best shot.  

PS. Have a nice Prom Angcuru.


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## Gregor

Ok judges, get your red pens ready, my entry should be up in a few hours.


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## Angcuru

AuroraGyps said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Tell me about it.  I think Clay's out to get us.   The other groups of pics were much easier than ours, I think.  Oh well, I'll give it my best shot.
> 
> PS. Have a nice Prom Angcuru. *




Seriously, It took 5 hours of brainstorming on an empty stomach to actually put something together.  Perhaps Clay blundered and posted up the final round's pics by mistake. Let's show him what gamers with a lot of time on their hands can do. 

Yeah, I hope so.  It's probably going to rain. A lot.  Just picked up my Tux.  $150 to rent a suit I'm going to wear for more or less 5 hours, sheesh.  Luckily, my dad picked up the bill there.


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## blackshirt5

Really?  Violetta said you said you weren't going.

Are you going alone?


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## arwink

Hey, when did ceramic DM start again?

Dammit. I'm not spending anywhere near enough time on the boards if I missed this starting 

_Settles into couch with popcorn and the expectation of a good evenings reading_


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## Gregor

*Here is my entry for Round 1*

*The Price of Kindness*

The day ended as it usually did.  The sun slowly dipped into the horizon and with its descent, cast its deep amber light across the valley.  Long shadows slowly spread from the field of trees which blanketed the vale like dark narrow fingers, spreading their grip and claiming this territory for the night.  As the evening blanket of shadow crept up towards the rocky hills which skirted the valley, Eamon MacCumhail moved as fast as his weathered form would allow.  Up through the narrow stone halls and rooms in which he had made a home for himself over the years, he pressed on, limping occasionally and bracing himself with one hand on the wall.  Feeling the smooth stone run along his fingers as he moved, a smile permeated itself upon his face for he knew what was to come this evening – a special treat that only the deep light of sunset during the summer months could produce.  Panting slightly, he reached the uppermost hall, which progressively opened up into the wide valley below him.  Continuing to brace himself against the nearest wall, his smile grew to a grin.  He was not too late.  Above, beside and all around him, the stone walls shone and glittered with a myriad of colours and shades as the various minerals and metals which still clung to the stone reflected the light.  Pouring in from the many holes and crevasses in the upper most portions of the hallway, the sunlight bathed the walls in its warm farewell [pic 1].  Eamon did not blink an eye, for his admiration of this natural wonder was absolute.  Deep reds, gold and purples bathed him in their presence and he closed his old eyes, feeling the warmth of the light against his skin.  Despite the fact that he had lived in these caves for more than thirty years and had seen this phenomenon hundreds of times, he never grew tired of it.  Eamon knew that these caves, the whole valley in fact, had once been deep under the oceans and in its slow and ancient recession had left these water-smoothed cave walls painted in resources.  A less artistic person may not have enjoyed the event as much as Eamon did – but nobody was more artistic than he.  Nor benevolent for that matter.  Yet it was his benevolence that eventually led to his downfall.

Early the next morning, Eamon rose from his slumber in the pre-dawn darkness, scratching the sleep from his eyes and running his other hand through his long tangled grey beard.  Blinking rapidly in the blurred darkness, he felt around on his bedside table for his spectacles.  Finding them, he placed them on his face and watched as the room slowly came into focus.  It was a modest room, clothed only in his bed, a few trunks along the wall, a small wooden desk and chair near the door and a large hearth which made use of one of the many passages in the rock walls, allowing for smoke to rise up and out of the room.  Noticing that a few embers still glowed among the ashes of the previous night’s fire, he exhaled deeply and rose to his feet.  Crossing the room in a matter of steps, he picked up a small amount of kindling and wood shavings that lay in a few small piles by the door.  Navigating across the room again, he lay the shavings down upon the ashes and blew gently.  He watched as the new flames licked at the wood and over the next few minutes, he layered the kindling and had a fresh morning cooking fire.  Placing a few stout logs upon the fire before leaving the room, Eamon paused only to gather up a small blanket from one of the trunks.  He exited his room and started to walk up the same path he had the night before.  He passed his workshop, which was directly across from his room, his kitchen, and then came to a left turn in the hall, which swung upward towards the main entrance.  Immediately upon turning to his left, he spotted the large feline pacing, stopping only to sniff and claw at the space below a door.  Hearing the old man hobble around the corner, the Tiger quickly lay down in a feeble attempt to appear innocent.  Eamon merely smiled and patted his faithful pet upon the head.  

“I thought I told you to stay away from the pigs you sneaky feline!” Eamon chided.  “If I catch you sniffing and clawing around here again it’ll be back in cage for you Murphy!”

Oblivious to the fact that he was being chastened, Murphy merely licked the old man’s hand and stood up to follow him the rest of the way out of the cave.  Eamon checked the lock on the door.  It was still secure and the door’s structure had not been compromised.  His final assurance came from hearing the small pigs running around in their pen on the other side of the door.  Giving Murphy one final cutting glance, he began his march once again – the tiger close on his heels.

The sun was slowly ascending into the sky when Eamon plunged into the small pool just outside of his cave.  Every morning the old man would wash himself in the crystal clear spring, removing the layers of dirt and dust accumulated from simply living in the hills.  Surrounding the small pool lay a humble vegetable garden and a modest wheat field.  Turnips, potatoes, carrots and other easily grown produce sat in the morning sun, still too young to be harvested.  Living off these vegetables and the number of pigs he purchases and raises whenever he is in town, he is able to feed himself easily. Moreover, asides from using the wheat for flour with which to bake bread in his hearth, he saves a large number of the plant stalks for use in his art.  For Eamon, art is a melding of agriculture and creativity, the fusion of man’s labour and artistic ability.  Using wheat stalks he is able to create functional baskets and frames, as well as many decorative works.  This summer he was already deep into a series of pieces with which he would then sell in town in the coming Autumn.  Pulling himself out of the icy water and reaching for the blanket to dry himself off, he noticed that Murphy was pawing at something by the wheat field.  Draping the blanket around his shoulders and running a hand through his slick, wet hair, he strolled over to the curious tiger.  

“What have you got there?” he inquired.

Eamon was not a superstitious man, so one can imagine his surprise at what he saw at Murphy’s feet.  Lying in a clump, clothed only in what appeared to be burlap rags, was a small red creature.  He was devoid of hair and his crimson skin glowed in the sun.  Emaciated and apparently unconscious, the small figure rocked lifelessly with the force of the Tiger’s prodding paws.  Eamon’s heart stopped beating for a few moments when his brain finally registered the strange and monstrous figure that his eyes were falling upon.  Whatever this thing was, it was obviously not human.  Its ears were longer than a human’s and its bestial fang-like teeth protruded from under its lower lip.  In one ear, a large metal ring pierced the flesh and hung from its dark red lobe.  Its closed eyes appeared to be recessed into its skull, but upon closer inspection, Eamon identified that the skin surrounding them was merely black [pic 2].  With one hand gently upon his lips, the old man suddenly noticed that he was breathing heavily and despite being dry from the pool, lines of sweat began to roll down his temples and back.  He was terrified.  

The figure was no more than 3 and-a-half feet tall and could not have weighed more than fifty to seventy-five pounds.  After gathering up enough courage, Eamon kneeled down and began to scoop up the figure into his large muscular arms.  With some effort, the old man had the figure in his arms and he was standing up – visibly taxed.  Looking down at his tiger, Murphy shot him a return glance of pure innocent curiosity.

“Im scared Murphy.  I don’t know what this thing is but we can’t just leave him here to be picked at by birds or wolves.  We’ll take him inside and clean him up a bit. Come now…”  He explained as he slowly trudged up towards the cave, struggling with this new load upon his old legs.

Sprawled out on the old man’s bed, the small red figure stirred.  Across the hall, Eamon worked diligently at this summer’s art project while he waited for the creature to regain consciousness.  His cooking fire had been blazing brightly when he returned with his newly found cargo.  Murphy, as usual, was tagging at his heels.  After laying the burlap-clad humanoid onto his bed, he moved immediately to put a large black iron pot over the flames.  Hanging it from a hook upon the hearth, Eamon began to fix a stew.  Gathering some dried pork, vegetables and fresh water from his kitchen, he had combined the ingredients and left them to boil.  It was the warmth of the room and the delicious smells of the cooking pot that roused the figure from his slumber.

Opening its eyes to a blurry alien environment, it rose slowly, clutching at its rags and bearing its teeth in a fearful grimace.  Peering across the hall, the figure had its first view of its rescuers.  Clothed in a striped red shirt and wearing strange shiny plates over his eyes, the bearded man was busy working at something.  From its position, the figure became only more afraid.  The sun, cascading down from the ceiling and into the room in which the man was standing, shone upon a strange many-stranded sphere, causing it to glow eerily [pic 3].  Unaware that this was merely a work of art, the small figure feared the worst and huddled towards the back of the bed.  Noticing that it was awake, Murphy rose from his prone position at Eamon’s feet.  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and a curl grew in his lip as he bent into a defensive posture.  Feeling the tiger’s tension immediately, Eamon cast a glance into his bedroom across the hall and upon the red figure now huddled against the headboard.  Placing a hand upon Murphy’s back, Eamon walked slowly out of his workshop and into the hall.

“Easy lad.” He assured Murphy. “Its alright.”

“Do you speak common?” Eamon inquired while moving across the hall and towards the doorframe of his bedroom.  He held up his hands up innocently as he walked.

The figure merely gazed at him, wide-eyed, afraid and confused.

“Eat? Hungry?”  Eamon asked as he mimed the action of eating from a bowl.  “You need to eat something.”

Moving slowly over to the hearth, he gathered up a bowl and ladled some of the steaming stew into it.  Smiling, Eamon raised the bowl to his nose and took a long breath in through his nose, smelling the stew and rubbing his stomach with his other hand.

“Mmmmmm.” The sound reverberated off the old man’s lips. “Its good.  Here eat.”  Eamon had moved over to the bed and was now holding out the bowl to the frightened creature.  Overcome by hunger and the tempting smells of the bowl, it snatched the bowl from his hands in the blink of an eye. The figure began to slurp at the stew quite noisily.        

“Careful its hot!” Eamon warned, but the figure apparently paid no attention to the temperature of the meal.  Murphy stood at the doorway, still locked in his feral pose. 

When it had finished consuming the stew, the figure appeared to be more at ease, releasing his death-grip upon his burlap rags and relaxing the tooth-filled grimace which filled his face during his opening moments of cognizance of being in Eamon’s home.  Now, his lips rested naturally, although now covered in a layer of broth.  Smiling gently, Eamon backed up and away from the bed, allowing the figure to relax even further.  Closing the door behind him, Eamon walked back into his workshop and was soon working to the sounds of the rhythmic breathing of the sleeping creature in the next room.  The old man smiled.  

He never did manage to teach the creature to speak, either because he was too poor a teacher or his student was just never capable of learning.  After five years of existence under Eamon’s care, Wolf, for that is what the old man came to call him, had grown larger than his new father and had large patches of charcoal black hair growing along his body.  His red skin, long ears and black fur made the creature appear to be a crimson wolf-man of some infernal origins.  Moreover, Wolf’s behaviour and instincts began to become as feral and savage as his cosmetic appearance.  Despite Eamon’s incredible benevolence in saving the poor wretch, ensuring it was fed and clothed, Wolf would randomly explode into rages, tipping over furniture or rampaging through the kitchens without disregard.  For Wolf, his feral, demonic or otherworldly origins were too much for him to control.  

One evening, becoming fearful of these destructive acts, Eamon was driven to bar the locked door into the pig farm so that Wolf’s rage would not lead him in there one day.  However, much to Eamon’s horror and Murphy’s satisfaction, Wolf’s strength and bulk allowed him to easily bash through the pig farm’s door one afternoon while the old man was out picking vegetables.  Upon his return, Eamon stared blankly at the shards of wood and twisted beams of metal that lay on the dusty floor by the shattered doorway into the pig pen.  Dropping his load of fresh vegetables onto the floor, he hobbled forward, dodging the rolling produce as it raced down the slanted hallway.  Peering into the pen, his heart jumped into his throat.  Lying on his side, Murphy, bloated with consumed pig-flesh could barely move.  The pigs, oblivious to what had just recently occurred, crowded around and even over top of the gluttonous feline [pic 4].  It was his satiated hunger and successful consumption of the pigs which he had longed for that had induced the Tiger’s snoring, audible even as Eamon walked on down the hallway.

The old man found Wolf in his workshop, continuing his rampage in there.  With wide- eyed shock, Eamon screamed for the creature to desist.  Blinded and deafened by rage, the creature smashed through his father’s works of art, showering every surface with wheat stalks.  Enraged by witnessing his life’s passion torn to shreds, Eamon leapt forward with the speed of a man half his age.  Bounding over a barrel which had been tipped aside by one of Wolf’s mighty sweeps of the hand, Eamon approached the still-oblivious creature.  Gripping him by his furry shoulders, now coated in a fine layer of wheat dust, Eamon pulled with all his might, easily tossing the beast to the ground as years of farming had made him stronger than he appeared.  Landing with a crash, Wolf roared with pain as his massive form smashed through a wooden box of carving tools that broke his fall.  Stunned by what he had just done, Eamon knelt beside his son and reached a hand out towards him, his heart pounding in remorse.  However, Wolf’s feral rage had reached its pinnacle. His massive red hand closed over a chisel found among the remnants of the tool-box and he spun around towards Eamon.  As fast as one could blink, Wolf was upon his father, driving the chisel deep into his chest.  Grabbing hold of Wolf’s hand, Eamon gazed into his eyes, tears welling up and blurring his sight, his son’s dark red façade rippling away into a watery visage.  He coughed and a spray of human blood cascaded onto Wolf’s skin where it was barely visible against its red tone.  Moaning in pain and heart-wrenching sadness, the old man rolled off of his knees and onto his side.  Whatever humanity existed within Wolf, acquired from his years spent living with Eamon, came to life.  Pulling his hand away and slouching back against a work desk, he lowered his head towards the ground as a child would after being chidden.  Raising his eyes slightly, he gazed at his dying father.  The old man’s life force dripped down his chest and the line that ran down his chin expanded further with a few wet blood-soaked coughs.  Roaring in frustration and fear, Wolf leapt towards the door and bounded up the hallways, wailing in lamentation as he fled the caves.

Eamon dragged his failing blood soaked form up the smooth stone hallway, his matted clothes covered in wheat stalks stuck among the congealed blood.  Coughing involuntarily, he moved slowly past the pig farm, offering a quick glimpse at his still-bloated pet, banishing the thought that if he had not been such a greedy cat he might have been on hand and helped him restrain his son.  Clutching at the chisel which still remained embedded in his chest with one hand, he braced himself with his free hand against the wall.  Arriving at the utmost hallway, at the peak of sunset, he slouched to the floor exhausted and defeated.  Gazing out onto the valley in hopes of spotting his confused bestial son, Eamon experienced his summer phenomenon one last time.  Blanketed in reds, purples and golds, he managed a smile as his eyes closed and he felt the warmth of his last Summer’s sunlight.  

Illustrations:
[pic 1] – the coloured caves
[pic 2] – the red bestial face
[pic 3] – the old artisan and his art
[pic 4] – the tiger and the pigs


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## Gregor

Well there is my entry.  It is definitely not as good as I wanted it to be, but that blasted real life kept getting in the way.  I also did not get the chance for a proper edit, but that's the way it goes sometimes 

Right now I have to get dressed and out the door.  There are a bunch of friends who just came in from Ireland and want a good night out.  Unfortunately I have to work tomorrow 

Joshua, I wish you the best of luck and I cannot wait to see your entry.  May the best man win!  

Cheers


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## AuroraGyps

> Yeah, I hope so. It's probably going to rain. A lot. Just picked up my Tux. $150 to rent a suit I'm going to wear for more or less 5 hours, sheesh. Luckily, my dad picked up the bill there.




I went to three formal dances when I was in HS and got a new dress each time (damn puberty).  Guys have it much easier. 

After we post our stories, we'll have to compare notes.


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## NoOneofConsequence

I'll step up for kahuna - can I get a little extra time though? Thanks.


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## Drawmack

/me is glad I'm not facing Gregor this round


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## Desdichado

_”If you don’t take your seat, you can’t have any pudding!
How can you have any pudding if you don’t take your seat?”_

*I.*

"Brothers and sisters, we are all sinners before Almighty Jesus!" bellowed the country pastor.  "We are all unworthy!  We are like snot to be blown out of Jesus' nose!"  He was a rail-thin man, with grizzled, wispy hair around a bald crown.  He had thick glasses, and a small mouth; he was a poster boy for mild-mannered.  But when he was behind the pulpit of the little country church in Lulabel, Ohio, he was suddenly a different man.  He seemed to grow to an unnatural stature, huge, dark and foreboding.  His eyes gleamed, reflecting the very hellfire that he called on the populace to avoid by lives of absolute purity.  And his voice pounded the entire building, stentorious, billowing in its depth and power.

"I'm unworthy!" said old man Kowalski.  "I'm a gambler, a fornicator!  Give me peace, sweet Jesus!"  The pastor bellowed at Kowalski.

"Forsake your sins, man!  You are hurting the Almighty Lord with your iniquity!  _You cause him intense pain on the cross!_  He will burn you at the last day, you will rot in hell!"  The congregation moaned and chanted.  Old man Kowalski fell to the floor sobbing.  An undertone of repeated "Praise the Lord!"  "Hallelujah!" and other interjections created a ripple throughout the church.

Only a few people in the back didn't seem quite as swayed by the hysteria of the rest of the congregation.  Horace Lumley was one such -- a middle-aged man, round about the middle, with a thick, long gray beard.  He was wearing glasses, and has a wide, gentle face -- many of the local children say he's Santa Claus.  Horace liked church, but he's never been a participant _per se_; he never confessed his sins publicly, he never chanted or sang -- but he liked to sit in the back and listen to the preacher, and observe the townsfolk he'd known most of his life.  Horace is a loner -- he has a small farm away from the tiny town, and he raises pigs and vegetables.  In his spare time, he restores furniture -- actually a more lucrative endeavor, but one that he still views as a hobby, not a profession.

The townsfolk know Horace as a quiet man, a harmless man.  He lives alone, but is nice -- he usually has a pocketful of hard candies for the youngsters when he sees them about town.  One thing the town does not know about Horace is his secret, lifelong love of Melissa Burgess.

He watches her even at the church -- she also sits in the back, more absorbed with her husband -- her third, he knows -- than the service.  She's always come to church too, but except for a brief time in her early
twenties, she's never been one of the more rabid members of the congregation.  She's now a lean woman of forty-five, with short graying hair and a lined but strong face, with a sweet smile on it most of the time.
She's careworn, but unbowed.  Horace thought she was just as beautiful now as she was in her early teens, when he first loved her.

"The devil is everywhere, sneaking' around, looking for ways to drag you down to hell and chain you to that awful lake of fire and brimstone.  The only way to stay outta his way is CONSTANT VIGILANCE!  Never let your guard down for a minute!"

Horace was distracted by the pastor and glanced away from Melissa for a minute.  As his eyes panned the church, he caught a glimpse of a glare – a glare directed at him.  He didn't recognize the face -- a stranger, and when he looked back, the moment was gone; he couldn't see the face looking at him anymore.  But he had had a glimpse -- something had been there.  He shivered momentarily, feeling a sudden wash of inquietude.  The congregation was now on it's feet singing.

_"Just build my mansion, next door to Jesus
And tell the angels I'm coming home
It doesn't matter who lives around me
Just so my mansion sits near God's throne."_

Horace decided he had had enough religion for a Wednesday night.  He stepped out into the cool autumn night and started walking for home.

*II.*

It's funny how dark it can be at night out in the country.  Horace could barely follow the pale ribbon of the packed earth road, with the massive oaks, elms, alders, willows -- all lining the road like an honor guard, or perhaps grim spectators, like the kind that always gather around an accident.  His feet rustled the fallen leaves on the side of the road steadily.  It was the only sound save the occasional sighing, groaning or blustering of the wind, which picked up leaves and made them twitter madly through the air.  Even the birds and the insects seem to have fallen completely silent.

Horace suddenly stopped in surprise.  There _was_ another sound, actually -- very faint, but very alien.  A sound that seemed like an interloper, a stranger, like the one he saw at the church.  Looking up, he saw a faint glow in the sky.  It was near the town -- there was always a glow there -- but different somehow, more intense, closer, encroaching on the countryside like a spreading plague.  He stood still for a moment dully, then decided his curiosity had got the better of him after all.  He quickened his pace, crossed the road, and took a small trail through the woods, crashing through the brush and branches like a bulldozer.  He stumbled momentarily, his knees wet with the moldering leaves that coated the ground.  Then he burst out of the woods and looked out over the small town.  Below him was the Save-A-Lot, and in the vacant lot behind it...

A carnival had arrived and was setting up shop.  Large trucks stood, mostly idling or shut off now, but there nonetheless, and a number of Ferris wheels and vomit comets were glinting dully in the starlight and reflected harsh lamplight from the parking lot beyond.  Horace chuckled softly to himself.  He realized he had been holding his breath for some reason; as if afraid of what he would find here.  Partially to shake off the lingering doubt and tinge of unreasoning fear, he decided he'd leave the woods and stroll through the lot where the carnival was being set up.  

Occasionally he saw one of the carnies hard at work, but for the most part, even they seemed to be gone, as if breaking for dinner, or perhaps even they were ephemeral; vanishing like bad dreams with the coming dawn.  The carnival had the air of a ghost town -- the wind whipped through the nearly abandoned stalls and attractions.

But suddenly Horace did feel a presence; a very live presence.  He could hear a strange sound that wasn't caused by the wind, but as if by some huge, pacing body on a trailer.  Ahead of him he could see a thick cage, set apart, so spectators couldn't get too close -- and inside was a huge tiger, it's yellow eyes gleaming at him like hellfire; like the pastor's impassioned gaze.  A deep rumble growled in the beast's throat, and Horace stared back transfixed.  Even with the cage, the loneliness of the place made him feel vulnerable, a victim the tiger was eyeing like a deer or wild boar in it's native India.  Horace backed away slowly, never taking his eyes from the creature.  He backed over a thick guideline attached to the funhouse and fell over backwards.  With a hoarse pant he scrambled to his feet and ran away from the tiger, from the killer, made his way back towards the woods.  There he nearly collided with a man -- a stranger.  The same stranger who he had seen at the church.  The man did not move aside, nor excuse himself, but simply glared at Horace, who gulped and panted, running past him.  He didn't stop until he reached the road.

The world seemed normal again -- the loneliness was the comforting one he was used to, not the strange, alien loneliness of the carnival.  Horace was doubled over, his throat burned with each intake of the cool night air, and a stitch brought him to his knees.  He rolled over to his back, his eyes staring at the brilliant night stars as his breath and heart slowly calmed down to their normal pace.

Why had the tiger so unsettled him?  And who was that stranger, and what did he want?  Why was he always following him?  Horace pulled himself stiffly to his feet, his body now cold, wet and dirty, and walked the mile or two back to his house.

*III.*

Horace sighed and sank back into his chair.  He was in his workshop now, the comforting glow of the naked light bulb chasing away the darkness of the walk home.  That tiger -- there was something evil about that tiger, something blasphemous.  He was a killer, a man-eater, Horace would swear to it.  He didn't understand how he knew, but he simply did.  Horace, despite his quiet lonely ways, was of course, very close to the forces of evil and death, and could spot one from afar.

He looked over again at the ethereal smoke creature that floated above his workbench *(picture #1)*.  His own personal, pet demon, the fiery, smoky, familiar of hellfire and brimstone, his best and only friend, and his hated reminder of his days as a student of the occult.  Smoky, as he unimaginatively nicknamed him, has been his prisoner, his companion, his jailer.  They're relationship was complicated -- Horace feared the tiny creature, even as he nominally controlled him.  It had a personality and cunning as slippery as the original tempting serpent, but Horace was determined not to play Eve's role in that drama.  He had no interest in losing his soul to the devil, even as he took advantage of his minions for small favors.

But a dark thought had come to him, penetrating, painful -- like the rape of his mind by some blasphemous demon of the abyss.  He trembled at the thought -- surely the Lord couldn't sanction such a thing; didn't David get condemned for just that? -- but he couldn't eject the thought from his mind.  Over and over again it turned over in his head.  "I don't have to go all the way through with it, though," he thought.  "I can just scare him away."  He trembled more than before, and sweat pored from his entire body.  Soon the workshop was thick with the stink of it.

"OK!" he said, in a half sob.  Smoky bobbed up and down excitedly, like a dog being invited to go on a walk.  Horace sat listlessly on the ground, his eyes heavy.  Soon his breathing became heavy too, like the pumping of huge wet bellows.  And then, it stopped.

Horace could now see through the "eyes" of the smoke puff, the horrible demon pet that had lived in his house for the last twenty years.  And, to a certain extent, he could control where the thing went.  He could feel the tiny consciousness of the creature, arrogant, excited, malicious.  He could see his own body, slumped comatose in a sitting position.  Then he made the thing turn away.  He slipped through a tiny crack in the window, reveling in the sense of flying, of squeezing through the glass, of wheeling over the forest.  He flew so fast that the dark trees were a black blur underneath him.  And then there was a faint light.  He now zig-zagged through the carnival -- which was darker and lonelier than even before, but he no longer feared it.  With a mad cackle from the demon that he could hear faintly in his mind's ear, he ducked into the lock on the tiger's cage, caressing the tumblers inside until it popped quietly open.  Then, he ducked -- smoke-puff and all -- directly into the tiger's head.

Now he could see through the tiger's own yellow eyes.  His sense of control was shaken somewhat -- he was controlling the tiger through Smoky, and his control of Smoky was tenuous already.  He could feel the pent up rage, the bloodthirstiness of the tiger.  He knew he was right; this tiger had killed men before.  He tried to balk from his purpose, but his control of the demon wasn't firm enough -- or was it the tiger?  It was hard for him to separate the tugging insistent wills that were overlaid with his own.  Before he knew it, the door was open and the tiger was padding softly out of the carnival area and into the woods.

It was a nervous few minutes for Horace -- he tried to pull control back in, and consumed with his struggle of the wills, before he knew it, he was in front of the Burgess house.  The tiger stopped and looked for a few minutes to see what it had seen.  He could hear the shower running -- and the beautiful sound of Melissa, apparently singing from it.  He saw her husband Art, laughing softly to himself as he stepped outside to pick up a log from the woodshed.  The tiger started moving slowly towards him; Horace could feel the bloodlust rising in it's breast.  He tried desperately to grip the will of the beast.  He succeeded in keeping it from rushing headlong into a frenzied maul of the creature, but it still crept forward slowly.  Art was almost on his porch now.  _C'mon, Art!  Move it!  Get inside!_  Then with a sudden pop and a cackle of malicious glee from Smoky, his control was gone.  He wasn't even inside the tiger anymore.  He had concentrated too much on the tiger and not enough on Smoky, and the tricky devil had taken advantage of that to throw him out.  His last thought before finding himself dry heaving and sweating on his workshop floor was seeing the tiger, roaring like a locomotive and pouncing on Art, it's claws and teeth flashing.

*IV.*

Horace stumbled madly through the house, shouting in desperation and rage; tearing through books and papers.  He tripped over a coffee table, falling heavily and breaking his glasses.  He got up again with a sob, his eyes wild.  The broken glass of his spectacles had made a deep cut under his eye.  He didn’t notice the dripping blood that stained his carpet.

In his bedroom, under his mattress, was a book.  This book wasn’t like other books in the house; Horace never pulled it out or looked at it.  Frankly, it always scared him; it was a palpable presence in the house.  Even knowing that it was there, underneath him as he lay in bed, was often enough to keep him nervously awake at night, and he almost felt he could hear the book calling to him.  He couldn’t tell if it was lulling him seductively, or simply outright cursing him, but he could swear the book had a voice that spoke in the back of his mind, one that tickled his consciousness just enough to remind him that it was there.

Horace found that book now.  It was ancient and macabre – it was bound in a pale, smooth leather that always made Horace break out in a sweat, and the vellum that made up its pages was worn silky and yellow, like the strong teeth of a predatory animal – like those of a tiger.  With a frantic energy, Horace flipped through the pages of the book now, and he could feel it, laughing at him triumphantly; scornfully.  It turned right to the page he wanted, as if inviting him, as if it knew exactly what he came to it for.  The page lit up in front of his eyes, like a gaping sore, like a beacon of hellfire.  The most feared ritual of his occult days, the one he used to look at and titter about nervously.  Nobody he knew personally had ever done it.  But now he had to, for Melissa’s sake.  To save her from the grisly fate he had inadvertently brought to her.

Quickly, his voice tremulous and strangely high-pitched and squeaky, he read aloud the words, enacted the rituals – then he suddenly was not in his house anymore.

Before him was the landscape of Hell itself – close walls of scorched and blasted brimstone loomed over him, but a path was also clearly laid out before him.  The path he most feared to take.  The path he must take.  *(picture #3)*  Smoke and pale corpse-lights swirled around him, but Horace had no time to confront his fear.  He saw the pale forms of corpses shuffling along quietly in tight lines, their heads down, harsh taskmasters yelling at them as they went, forcing them into seats of pain, dribbling coagulated blood like pudding.  He simply swallowed hard, wiped the dank, stinking cold sweat from his forehead and moved forward.  Moved forward to the very master of Hell itself.

It was the carny he had seen at Church.  Horace blanched at the sight.  “You… can deal with me?” he said hesitantly.  Somehow, even knowing the deceitful nature of the devil, he had never expected him to come to Church, to foreshadow the terribly thing, the abomination, that he must do tonight.

The glaring man’s face crinkled into a smile.  His skin went red, his teeth grew, his hair disappeared – he was now a figure of complete horror *(picture #2)*.  “Would you prefer I take a more traditional look, Mr. Lumley?  Would that make what you come to do easier?”  He laughed a bit at Horace’s crestfallen face.  “What, you think I don’t know exactly why you are here?  My friend Smoky has been more clever than even you realized, Mr. Lumley.  Why do you think I was in Lulabel Ohio,” and he said the words with a contempt that felt like a blow to Horace, “if not for you, my dear sir.”

Horace tried to speak, but was only able to manage a hoarse croak.  He cleared his throat and rasped his request.  “If you know what I want, then will you give it to me?  I’m prepared to offer you something to save Melissa’s life; to stop the tiger before it kills her.”

The red-skinned man smiled; his face darted back to the face Horace had seen earlier tonight.  “Very well, Mr. Lumley.  The tiger will not kill Melissa.  In return, upon your death, my agent will be along to collect you.  Are the terms acceptable?”

Horace hung his head, and nodded weakly.  The devil laughed again.  “Well, then, you’ll be wanting to get back home, I imagine.  A pleasure, Mr. Lumley.  I hope we can do business again soon.”  He laughed again, hard, cold, pitiless.  Horace began to cry.

*V.*

His house looked like an earthquake had struck it.  Furniture was broken and scattered, overturned and scattered crazily.  The pigs were out of their pens, small pink ones, mostly – and they snorted and scampered about the house in a panic.  Horace stumbled weakly out of his bedroom, his body and mind weary and caked with the smell of fear and cold sweat.  On the floor in front of him was the body of the tiger, stone dead with staring eyes *(picture #4)*.  Horace’s head swam and his vision blurred.  Before he could stop himself he had fallen to his hands and knees and was vomiting on the floor.

A few minutes later, he came to himself in the bathtub, the shower running weakly over him.  He must have stumbled in in a daze, not even sure what he was going.  He let the water run on him for a good half hour more, until he felt strong enough to get up.  He stumbled into the kitchen and downed coffee straight from the pot, even enjoying the scalding burns it left in his mouth and on his throat.

There was a light tap at this door.  He looked out – the porch light was still on.  It was Melissa.  She paced nervously on his porch, her eyes red.  Horace was dumbfounded.  All the years he had known her, she had rarely acknowledged his existence.  Was it possible she guessed his role in the night’s tragedy?  He didn’t see how it could be.  Slowly he undid the deadbolt and slipped the door open a crack.  Melissa’s face looked in at him, vulnerable and hurt.  At that moment, Horace loved her more than ever, his heart went out to this woman who had suffered so much tonight, because of him.  The door opened wider.

Then Melissa’s face twisted into a cruel smile.  She pounced in on Horace, like a tiger herself, twisting him painfully to the floor, breaking his arm.  Then she laughed and spit in his face.  Horace was too stunned to even feel the pain.  “What?  I don’t understand…” he mumbled.

Melissa shook her head and rolled her eyes at him as if he were an exceptionally stupid child.  “Do you really think the Dark One was hear tonight because of you?  Pig-farmer!  Arrogant pig yourself!  That was quite a bit of luck on my part – I gathered already two souls tonight, and then you walk in uninvited and offer yours as well!  My Master will be pleased.  Oh, your arrangement did call for his agent to collect your soul on your death, didn’t it?  I suppose I’ll have to kill you to collect it, then.  The letter of the contract must be fulfilled.”  Melissa twisted his neck until the spinal column snapped.  Horace’s world went black.

~ Fin

*Note/b]  Actually, I just heard that Pink Floyd song while writing the last part of this, and thought I had to work in the imagery there somewhere.  That's the poorest fit to the story, but hey -- even a serious piece of horror fiction's got to have a moment of silliness here and there, right?*


----------



## Gregor

Drawmack said:
			
		

> */me is glad I'm not facing Gregor this round *




/me is NOT glad I AM facing Joshua this round 

Cheers for the compliment.


----------



## Desdichado

A lot of errors crept through my frenzied edit.  Such is the pressure of the deadline and real life, I'm afraid!

Good luck to my fellow competitors -- nice job on yours Gregor.  I thought it a matter of principle that I should write mine before reading yours, but it looks like we posted within only a few minutes of each other really.


----------



## Mirth

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *I thought it a matter of principle that I should write mine before reading yours, but it looks like we posted within only a few minutes of each other really. *




_Puts on judge's robes, grabs gavel..._ 

Actually, part of the rules for this contest is that you don't ever read your opponent's entry before submitting yours. 'Course it's the honor system 'round here, but...

Also, I'll post just a few formatting rules reminders that have come up before (and can cost you the competition on really close entries):

1. Always post your name vs. your opponent's name at the beginning of your entry.

2. Always notate in the entry what descriptions go with what pictures.

3. Grammatical and syntax errors will count against you, at least when I'm judging an entry. If you have the time, make sure you do a final edit before submitting.

4. NEVER, I MEAN NEVER, EVER edit your entry after submitting it. Now that I've said that here, I want everyone to know that I will automatically disqualify any entry that has been edited post-posting (of course I'm only one of three judges, so you could possibly still win).

Now the games can continue 

Jay


----------



## Maldur

I agree with points 1, 2 and 4 .  My own grammar and spelling are worse than what most of you can come up with, so Ill let that slide.

The most important thing is to get me to say:  "woow, now thats a nifty idea"

However you do that, is your problem (eh....challenge)


----------



## Taladas

drawmack vs. taladas


Much like the old woman the soup is bitter. The boys, Lemic and Asill still eat feverishly, scooping out the soup with crusty bread. 

	“Slow down or you’ll choke” She says. 

	“Yes, Grandmother.” The boys reply. And began to eat at a less frantic pace. 

She eyes them warily. The Boys never ate her food that fast. 

	“Ow!” Lemic cries just as he bites his fingers. He shakes his hand and quickly begins to eat again. 

	“Boys, what’s the hurry. What mischief are you planning?”

	“Nothing, we ah were just wanting to go to the lake and ah meet someone…” Says Lemic. 

	“Meet who?” 

	“Just someone we meet yesterday.”

	“Who did you meet? I will not have the children of my daughter associate with Axons! They murdered her and your father. They have worked to destroy our very way of life! And you will not go meet any Axon at the Lake!” 

She had Lemic up off the floor and was shaking him violently. 

	“Ohma, it’s just a dog. We found a dog by the lake.” 

She throws him to the floor. 

	“A dog!? A stupid dog! I…” 

She notices that both Lemic and his younger brother Asill are crying. The remains of the soup are spilled on the threadbare rug. She notices her hands are shaking. 

	“Forgive me. You know how I fear that you will end up like the others in the village that accept the Axons and even treat them as friends. They are evil invaders and they must be stopped.”  

The old woman pauses and looks on her grandchildren. 

	“Go to the lake and see your dog.” She smiles and pulls her boys close in a tight hug. “And remember that I love you.”

	“We love you, too.” The boys recite as tired rote. Still the old woman cries. 

She waives as the boys leave. When they finally go out of sight she quickly turns back into the hut. She grabs a large shallow bronze bowl and walks outside. She sets it on the ground and moves to the well. The woman draws out a bag of water and pours it into the bowl. 

	“The spell is so simple but everyone was too afraid to use it. They said the cost was too high. That demons may be easy to summon but their help is always cursed.” 

The old woman kneels before the bowl.

	“But I will bear any cost to eliminate the Axons from my land. My grandchildren will not grow up in a land ruled by outsiders.” 

She starts chanting in an arcane language and then thrust her hands into the water and rises up. (Picture #1)


The demon (Picture #3) eyes the old woman. 

	“What do you want?”

	“I have summoned you here to destroy the Axon invaders in my homeland. Do this and I will pay any cost.”

	“As you wish.” The demon smiles a wicked smile. 

A loud crack of thunder from a cloudless sky and a lightning bolt of fiery red strikes on the outskirts of town. It starts a fire that soon rages out of control.  (Picture # 4)

	“The fire will scour the Axons from your country. There will be no place that they will not be burned out.”

The old woman smiles a terrible smile. “They will know what it is to suffer like my people have suffered.”

	The demon turns to her and says. “You’re so refreshing. The humans that usually summon me are horrified at the suffering I cause. You relish in it.” 

	“They have taken everything from me and I will be avenged. The fire may scorch my land but it will also cleans it.” And my boys will be safe at the lake she thinks. 

“And now demon I will pay the price.”

	“You already have. Scry in the water old woman.” 

She drops to her knees and looks in the water. Picture #2

	“It’s my boys, walking in the dessert with some dog. What does this mean? What have you done with my boys!?”

	“Merely collected my price. Your grandchildren are to wander the desserts of Hell for eternity. This is the price too terrible to pay. This is the payment too dear to give. This is the debt your ancestors would not draw.” 

And then the Demon disappears. 

The old woman convulses and collapses. Gut wrenching cries come from her and she is oblivious to the flames as they come to consume her.


----------



## Taladas

You always notice the mistakes after you post.  Anywho there it is warts and all. 

I just wanted to say that participating is a real honor and I am always amazed by the calibur of stories in Ceramic DM. 

Good luck to all.


----------



## Maldur

I just mailed my result for the first two pairs to AlSiH2O! 

Where is the rest !!!!


----------



## Drawmack

Taladas,
   Our stories are on about the same level - from what I can see. Yours does show a bit better editing even though mine went through two revisions.

May the best ghoul win


----------



## Mirth

Maldur said:
			
		

> *I just mailed my result for the first two pairs to AlSiH2O!
> 
> Where is the rest !!!! *




Just woke up... I'm working on them now and should have them in fairly soon, although I do have to get my son ready for daycare and take him there. I'll post again once I've finished.


----------



## Desdichado

mirthcard said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Puts on judge's robes, grabs gavel...
> 
> Actually, part of the rules for this contest is that you don't ever read your opponent's entry before submitting yours. 'Course it's the honor system 'round here, but...
> 
> Also, I'll post just a few formatting rules reminders that have come up before (and can cost you the competition on really close entries):
> 
> 1. Always post your name vs. your opponent's name at the beginning of your entry.
> 
> 2. Always notate in the entry what descriptions go with what pictures.
> 
> 3. Grammatical and syntax errors will count against you, at least when I'm judging an entry. If you have the time, make sure you do a final edit before submitting.
> 
> 4. NEVER, I MEAN NEVER, EVER edit your entry after submitting it. Now that I've said that here, I want everyone to know that I will automatically disqualify any entry that has been edited post-posting (of course I'm only one of three judges, so you could possibly still win).
> 
> Now the games can continue
> 
> Jay *



Ummm, with the exception of the no editing, none of those rules were posted earlier in the thread, you know, where the rules were specifically posted.  

EDIT: Actually I take it back, grammer and syntax aren't a rules, and that makes sense anyway, and noting where the pictures "occur" was mentioned as well.

The formatting of who vs who is _not_ mentioned at any point earlier in the thread, nor is the "no reading your opponents entry before yours is posted."


----------



## alsih2o

after a few of these we have gotten used to people just knowing the rules, so we may have slipped up there.

 don't read you opponents before posting yours, don't edit, the other 2 don't mean as much to me.

 i make spelling errors and mistypes all the time, and i know who oyu were up against 

reading oyur opponents and editing are cheating, and taken seriously by me.

 everything else is just being human


----------



## Drawmack

Waiting - somewhat patiently to be told I will not be advancing to round II.


----------



## Gregor

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *Waiting - somewhat patiently to be told I will not be advancing to round II. *




Join the club.


----------



## Mirth

mirthcard said:
			
		

> *a few formatting/rules reminders...*




Sorry for any confusion, meant to put that slash in there  

alsih2o is correct, so go by what he says, after all this is his court. 

Some of those were preferences of mine and when I'm judging they are criteria I use to differentiate entries, so I was just giving strong hints to people who want to make the most out of their entries  I will say that if a really good, yet poorly edited entry is up against a boring, but perfectly spelled entry, I will award the match to the former. However, if the two entries are close, grammar and syntax _will_ play a part in my final decision.

Now back to judging...

Jay

p.s. Drawmack, there have been times before where the judges have taken _*DAYS*_ to return their decisions. I've been on both sides of that fence, so consider yourself lucky


----------



## Desdichado

mirthcard said:
			
		

> *p.s. Drawmack, there have been times before where the judges have taken DAYS to return their decisions. I've been on both sides of that fence, so consider yourself lucky  *



Actually, that wouldn't bother me too much -- that was more work and more time-consuming than I thought it would be -- I could use a few days break!

Oh, and sorry for the angry face -- mirthcard.  Don't want to get a judge on my bad side!


----------



## Mirth

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *Oh, and sorry for the angry face -- mirthcard.  Don't want to get a judge on my bad side!*




Too late [hhjk?]


----------



## Desdichado

mirthcard said:
			
		

> *Too late [hhjk?]   *



But my cool custom smilies must count for something, right?


----------



## Drawmack

mirthcard said:
			
		

> p.s. Drawmack, there have been times before where the judges have taken _*DAYS*_ to return their decisions. I've been on both sides of that fence, so consider yourself lucky




I always wait impatiently, just part of me. I have planescape tormet installed on my laptop so I have something to do when I'm not on stage during role playing.


----------



## alsih2o

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *
> 
> I always wait impatiently, just part of me. I have planescape tormet installed on my laptop so I have something to do when I'm not on stage during role playing. *




 wow, we sooooo couldn't play together!


----------



## Drawmack

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *
> 
> wow, we sooooo couldn't play together!  *




but I'm the dm so none of the players even know.


----------



## Mirth

Sent in my judgment for Drawmack vs. Taladas a little while ago and _just_ sent in my judgment for Gregor vs. Joshua Dyal, so everybody in those pairings should hear something soon. I would like to state before they are posted that despite any harsh criticisms I may have provided, this competition is supposed to be fun. I don't mean any of it personally and I love all you fellow gamer-geeks  [Let the slaughter begin...]


----------



## Desdichado

Well, that's some pretty ominous foreshadowing...


----------



## Maldur

mirthcard said:
			
		

> *Sent in my judgment for Drawmack vs. Taladas a little while ago and just sent in my judgment for Gregor vs. Joshua Dyal, so everybody in those pairings should hear something soon. I would like to state before they are posted that despite any harsh criticisms I may have provided, this competition is supposed to be fun. I don't mean any of it personally and I love all you fellow gamer-geeks  [Let the slaughter begin...] *




Let the man win two ceramics and his head grows as big as a watermelon


----------



## Gregor

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *Well, that's some pretty ominous foreshadowing... *




Tell me about it 

But its all the name of fun and creativity so I'm looking forward to the results, win or lose.


----------



## Mirth

Maldur said:
			
		

> *
> 
> Let the man win two ceramics and his head grows as big as a watermelon
> 
> 
> 
> *




I know there's a metaphor about "spittin' seeds" in there somewhere, but Eric's Grandma might be listening


----------



## alsih2o

Drawmack said:
			
		

> *
> 
> but I'm the dm so none of the players even know. *




 you are gonna smoke a turd in pugatory for that one


----------



## Mirth

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *
> 
> you are gonna smoke a turd in pugatory for that one  *




Eric's Grandma is definitely listening now  You're such a tease Clay, I know these guys thought you had posted the results.


----------



## Maldur

So thought I   You aare a tease, potter !!


----------



## alsih2o

*drawmack vs taladas results!*

maldur-
Strangely both contestants interpreted the fire as a revenge thing. But
Taladas made it a cleaner and more to the point story. His use of the
pictures was also more concentrated on the story.
Winner: Taladas


alsih2o-
 taladas- pretty darned straitforward. good usage of the pictures, even without stretching them or reading too much into them. and a nice bit about 2 boys in hell 

 drawmack- again, no real stretch wiht the pictures, it seems both of oyu used these similarly, and i am gonna take that as a bad mark on me 

 overall,i have to tip the scales towards drawmack, as the stories are essentially so similar but his maintains a more classic fairy tale feel abd he is bold enough to try the "3 tied in stories" method.


 mirthcard-
*Drawmack:* I like the hook of the story and the
way that it plays on our expectations as an audience.
When the kids take the berries from the old man, we
want to scream at them not to do so, because we
already know how this is going to end. The description
of the old man was nice too, especially given his
eventual transformation into alsih2o's picture.
However, even though you made good use of that picture
in that instance, you may have overused it in the end.
In all of the DM competitions (Ceramic, Iron, etc), it
is imperative that you give equal time to each of the
ingredients assigned. All of them should be integral
to the entry and the removal of any ingredient should
cause the entry to fall apart. Unfortunately in your
case, you have really only made good use of one
picture, number 3. The first picture is a throwaway in
the beginning and is never referred to again. Numbers
2 and 4 are tacked on at the end, barely illustrating
the last moments of the story. Number 3, on the other
hand, is responsible for the antagonist, the plot, the
exposition of said plot, the action, the resolution,
and so on. You easily could have given time that you
wasted on centaurs and berry picking (why were those
in the story?) to further develop the impact and
meaning that the other three pictures had for the
story. Also, the ending left me cold - apparently, the
kids could care less that they essentially brought
about the destruction of everything they had known,
everything that they had held dear to their hearts.
Well, except for the dog, I guess. 

*Taladas:* I enjoyed the setup here. Knowing the
warnings, knowing the evil she is dealing with, the
old woman is blinded by hate so much that she, in a
way, becomes more evil than that which she hates and
that which she summons. Yet this great setup seems to
resolve itself too quickly. I'm not a fan of overlong
entries (hear that everyone?), but this one comes to a
screeching halt. And, like Drawmack, your use of the
pictures is uneven. Pictures 1 and 3 are used well,
but 2 and especially 4 are more like throwaways.
Beyond that, the story made me really pity the kids,
which I don't think was intentional. A couple of nice
kids who try to help a lost dog are fed gruel by their
abusive and racist grandmother and then doomed to walk
hell for eternity when said grandmother tries to use
her 'concern' over them to justify her causing
genocide through devil worship. Man that just plain
sucks.

*mirthcard's decision:* In this tight race, I
give it to *Taladas* for the more active plot of
his story and the more balanced use of the
ingredients. However, I think both competitors could
have done better.


 looks like taladas in a split decision...


----------



## alsih2o

*joshua dyal vs gregor-*

maldur- 
Again a similar use of the images, the craftsman as the main character, and
a not so happy end. But it seems Gregor did create a simpler and more to the
point story. While Joshua's story was nice, I thought the "window-dressing"
like the church/preacher and the Carnival were not really necessary, even
distracting from the real story. So my vote goes to our newbie.
Winner: Gregor.

 alsih2o-
 gregor- i really liked this. the pictures were used well( i assumed everyone would make the tiger harmless, like toothless in the old lassie cartoons) and the old man magical, maybe it is just how you broke from my expectaqtions but i fely right at home in oyur story. eamon will show up in my cmapaign at some point 

 josh dyal- wowza what a wacky story! i like how the devil pic was used, and the tiger pic had some real promise.

 gregor made a better match with the pics to me, but joshuas story was wacky-come-goodly, i have to give it to joshua, with a nod of the head to gregor for having enough sand to step into competition so soon after joining the boards 

mirthcard-
*Gregor:* That was a tough set of pictures to
deal with, I'll give you that. What you managed to do
with them was quite inventive, if a little bit forced.
I liked the character and characteristics of Eamon
that you lay out for us - a gentle old soul who likes
cornhusk art, farming, raising pigs and beautiful
sunsets and just happens to live in a cave with a
full-grown tiger and a demon-child  It sounds
like a really messed up personal ad now that I think
about it. All of the pictures are used well and fit
the plot of the piece nicely. So where does this entry
falter? It's a bit too long. That's always a tough
line to draw, however. Not enough and the judge will
say it's skimpy, too much and the judge will get
bored, which I very nearly was, especially given the
slow, methodical pacing. You worked quite a bit of
descriptive text into your entry and although it is
very well done, to me it was overdone. We already have
the pictures to go by, we don't need to be told every
detail in the picture over again. But herein lies
another problem, if you took the descriptive text out,
you're not left with much of a story. The plot seemed
a bit threadbare to me, only serving to loosely
connect the (admittedly difficult) picture ingredients
together. The piece has its strengths and weaknesses
and ultimately come out so-so for me.

*Joshua Dyal:* Nice, nice, nice. I really like
this JD. The character of Horace comes through so
strongly in the first part, that you think you've got
him nailed. But then comes the left turn at Albequerue
in part two. Suddenly, Horace is LaVey Jr. Who knew? I
really didn't see that coming. Things just tumble on
from there. The stranger, the love, the tiger, the
little demon puff - these are all really nice touches.
Although your piece is a bit long too, I didn't find
myself wanting to skip ahead. This entry held my
attention throughout. I thought the pacing jumped from
introspection to desperation and back again
effortlessly. The twist at the end was nice also,
although I would have liked more exposition of
Melissa's character before she became an active
participant. She seemed almost too convenient a
villain. Your use of picture 3 seemed tacked on as
well. All in all, I couldn't find much to criticize
here. Good job. Oh, one more thing, I believe the
lyrics are: _If you don't eat your meat, you can't
have any pudding; How can you have any pudding, if you
don't eat your meat?_ To me, they fit even better
than the ones you posted.

*mirthcard's decision:* In a blistering show of
force, *Joshua Dyal* blazes past his opponent.

 split decision again, joshua dyal moves on to round 2...


----------



## Drawmack

congrats taladas


----------



## Gregor

CONGRATS to Joshua for that amazing piece of prose.  I'll be cheering for you from the sidelines.  This competition is yours, go get it!

I want to thank the judges for taking time out of their busy schedules to offer this competition and to provide us with some constructive criticism on our stories.

It was an honour competing in this event and I will definitely be back for the next one!

Cheers!


----------



## Drawmack

*Re: drawmack vs taladas results!*

I have to take exception with some of the judgements.


			
				alsih2o said:
			
		

> The first picture is a throwaway in
> the beginning and is never referred to again.




How much does a child have to care about their mother to notice that she's washing in the fountain first thing in the morning, even though that's what she does every morning.  Would have been mentioned again in parts II and III, remember the name is part I.



> Numbers 2 and 4 are tacked on at the end, barely illustrating
> the last moments of the story.




Excuse me, the revenge is the point of this first piece. The two pictures are used to illustrate the means of carrying out said revenger. They illustrate the climax and aftermath of the story. If climax and aftermath are not integral to a story then I do not know what is.



> Number 3, on the other hand, is responsible for the antagonist, the plot, the exposition of said plot, the action, the resolution, and so on. You easily could have given time that you
> wasted on centaurs and berry picking (why were those in the story?) to further develop the impact and
> meaning that the other three pictures had for the story.




It is not responsible for all that. It is responsible for the betrayal. It is the character you hate. Being the character you hate the reader puts more emphasis on that then the rest, but that is not the authors fault.



> Also, the ending left me cold - apparently, the kids could care less that they essentially brought
> about the destruction of everything they had known, everything that they had held dear to their hearts.
> Well, except for the dog, I guess.




The children are in shock. The ending to part I of a trilogy is intended to make you keep reading. You have yet to see these children morn, they are looking for something but they have no idea what and on top of all that how are they going to survive in a world that is apparently much more then they know?


----------



## Mirth

*Re: Re: drawmack vs taladas results!*



			
				Drawmack said:
			
		

> *I have to take exception with some of the judgements.
> 
> 
> How much does a child have to care about their mother to notice that she's washing in the fountain first thing in the morning, even though that's what she does every morning.  Would have been mentioned again in parts II and III, remember the name is part I. *




Drawmack, please remember not to take this personally, as it seems you are. I'm only trying to offer constructive criticism, not attack you. That said...

I didn't choose to use that picture as the mother, you did. I am offering that you should have used the picture in a different way, specifically in a way that would have added to the development of the plot or story, not as stage dressing. This all might stem from a misunderstanding of the way that the competition works, however. All the submissions for each round should be self-contained and complete as well as being balanced in their use of the picture ingredients. I can only judge the story that you submit now, not one that you _might_ submit in the future. I can't be expected to read your mind.



			
				Drawmack said:
			
		

> *Excuse me, the revenge is the point of this first piece. The two pictures are used to illustrate the means of carrying out said revenger. They illustrate the climax and aftermath of the story. If climax and aftermath are not integral to a story then I do not know what is. *




We don't know anything about this story until the old man transforms and tells it to the ancients in a long diatribe. It is not set up in the first part of the story at all. Basically, the villain steps forward and says, "Here's the plot for those that don't know, and by that I mean everyone." Plot should be something that is developed, not something that is told about in a monologue. It's the old show-don't-tell mantra that you may have heard about.




			
				Drawmack said:
			
		

> *It is not responsible for all that. It is responsible for the betrayal. It is the character you hate. Being the character you hate the reader puts more emphasis on that then the rest, but that is not the authors fault.*




We don't know he's the villain until he tells us he is, in fact we didn't even know there was a villain until he tells us. The plot doesn't reveal itself until the villain steps forward and tells us what it is. The plot even resolves itself at the same time that it is revealed by the villain. This was a bad narrative decision that you as the author made and I am simply calling you on it. 



			
				Drawmack said:
			
		

> *The children are in shock. The ending to part I of a trilogy is intended to make you keep reading. You have yet to see these children morn, they are looking for something but they have no idea what and on top of all that how are they going to survive in a world that is apparently much more then they know? *




How are we the readers supposed to infer that the children are in shock from what is written. To me they seemed nonchalant about the whole thing. They came off as saying, "Well our loved ones were just destroyed by this guy we brought to town... Let's get out of here." I will again reiterate that you may not have been aware of the nature of the competition, which you don't seem to be if you consider your entry to be the first part of a trilogy. You yourself prove the points that I was making. Only one of the pictures is developed and it is developed to the detriment of all of the other pictures. I cannot see the future and predict what you are going to do with the pictures later. And honestly in this contest, you don't have the option to develop it later.

I hope that this has given you a better sense of what I was trying to get at in my earlier criticism. Try to take this as a live and learn experience. Next time you enter, hopefully you will fare better. Good luck and PLEASE don't take it personally.

I LOVE YOU MAN 

Jay


----------



## Drawmack

*Re: Re: Re: drawmack vs taladas results!*



			
				mirthcard said:
			
		

> Drawmack, please remember not to take this personally, as it seems you are. I'm only trying to offer constructive criticism, not attack you. That said...




Wasn't taking it personally I was simply pointing out what I felt were weaknesses in the critique.



> I didn't choose to use that picture as the mother, you did. I am offering that you should have used the picture in a different way, specifically in a way that would have added to the development of the plot or story, not as stage dressing.




I will admit that picture use, taken on it's own in this single story was weak.



> This all might stem from a misunderstanding of the way that the competition works, however. All the submissions for each round should be self-contained and complete as well as being balanced in their use of the picture ingredients. I can only judge the story that you submit now, not one that you _might_ submit in the future. I can't be expected to read your mind.




No you can't but you can be expected to know that the story isn't finished. In the tilogy of the rings what is resolved at the end of the first book? It ended with a hook.



> We don't know anything about this story until the old man transforms and tells it to the ancients in a long diatribe. It is not set up in the first part of the story at all. Basically, the villain steps forward and says, "Here's the plot for those that don't know, and by that I mean everyone." Plot should be something that is developed, not something that is told about in a monologue. It's the old show-don't-tell mantra that you may have heard about.




This does come across as an attack. I'll not take it that way, just pointing to it. Diplomacy is important when reviewing someone's work - it's almost like criticising their child. 

Yes, I should have built to it more. I had the over arching story too much in mind. In the over arching story the loss of the child's inocense is the imporant thing in this part.  However, I should have taken greater pains to show that.




> How are we the readers supposed to infer that the children are in shock from what is written.




You're not, you're supposed to say WTF and then read the second part to find out  WTF.



> To me they seemed nonchalant about the whole thing. They came off as saying, "Well our loved ones were just destroyed by this guy we brought to town... Let's get out of here." I will again reiterate that you may not have been aware of the nature of the competition, which you don't seem to be if you consider your entry to be the first part of a trilogy. You yourself prove the points that I was making. Only one of the pictures is developed and it is developed to the detriment of all of the other pictures. I cannot see the future and predict what you are going to do with the pictures later.




I believe this contest can be done with the story working as a trilogy and I will continue to enter and I will continue to write trilogoies. I do understand how this game works. I also understand it is more difficult to do in trilogy format. This is my second attempt at doing it that way. In the first attempt I got passed the first round but was left flat in the second. So I attempted this time to hook into a sequel better and did so to the detriment of the first story. It's a learning process and I am learning. Eventually I will take the crown and I will do so with a trilogy.



> And honestly in this contest, you don't have the option to develop it later.




This is a personal attack thinly veiled behind stating the truth.



> I hope that this has given you a better sense of what I was trying to get at in my earlier criticism. Try to take this as a live and learn experience. Next time you enter, hopefully you will fare better. Good luck and PLEASE don't take it personally.




What you wrote about my story did not come off as constructive criticism for one reason and one reason alone. You talked down bad points without praising good points and offered no sugestions on how the bad points could have been fixed. Without those elements you do not offer constructive criticism you simply offer criticism.


----------



## Mirth

Drawmack,

I'm sorry if you think I am personally attacking you, I sincerely am not. I did praise what I thought were the good points in my original critique of the story and I did tell you ways in which I thought things could have been done better. The second response that I made was simply an extrapolation on your exception to my judgement. Other than what I've already stated, I'm not sure what else to say. If I've angered you, I do apologize. Really I do. I don't think we need to belabor the point(s) here in the thread anymore than we already have. If you'd like to continue this conversation further, feel free to email me: mirthcard@yahoo.com

I think that anyone who sticks their neck out to be creative in a public forum like this, especially given the shocking selection of pictures , the dastardly deadline and the onerous judge(s?), should be highly commended. My hat is off to you Drawmack, sir. You are quite the brave man to bare your creative soul in such a fashion. 

Jay

p.s. I'm headed to HeroesCon for the day tomorrow (Saturday) and then I have a feeling that my family has something up their sleeve planned for me for Father's Day, so I'm not sure that I'll be able to get back to judging until Monday. Have a great weekend everybody and to all you Dads out there - Happy Father's Day!!


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

*In the hope that I'm not too late.*

Nooc vs mystra's chosen

The child mystic’s head lowers slowly down upon the anaconda’s body and soon the little boy seems almost asleep. The massive python, easily twice the height of a grown man when stretched straight, coils itself about the little body. Yet, in spite of the apparent danger, the watching crowd makes no move to take the boy away. Instead, with bated breath, they watch as the boys breathing slows to a gentle, flowing rhythm and the snakes muscular coils begin to pulse with that same rhythm (pic 3).

From her vantage point in the inn’s portico, just behind the crowd, Kalanthi watches as the small boy, barely four years of age, begins to whisper words from his trance. The attendant priest, his blue and orange robes dusty from crouching on all fours near the ground, relays every word to the crowd. The words come slowly, but no one rushes the child or leaves from impatience. Fascinated by the foreign ritual, Kalanthi listens to the priest’s relayed pronouncements. After hearing the dire warning of impending doom in the countryside, she heads back into the inn proper. Behind her she hears the sounds of the priest beginning to gently awaken snake and child from their trance, and the sound of coin being tossed by the crowd into the serpent’s basket.

“Civilized folk are always scared of what’s in the countryside,” she thinks to herself. “And they pay to hear bad news?” Kalanthi’s tribal heart cannot fathom the ways of the Eerkha, the ‘civilized folk’.

Walking up the inn’s three flights of stairs, Kalanthi walks down the corridor to the room she shares with her companion, Torodesh the Mage Most Magnificent. As she steps through the doorway, she sees the mage ‘Most Magnificent’, scrabbling about in the dust on the wooden floor. Light streams in the window from the late afternoon sun and the motes stirred by the mage’s prostrate fidgetings dance in the golden shafts. In the space on the floor where the light strikes the wooden boards sits the object of the mage’s attentions, a two and a half pound, leather-bound block of enchanted crystal, his “eye of the mage”(pic 1). He throws some more dust into the air, this coloured a deep blue and drawn from a pouch at his belt, so that it dances in the sunlight and then falls upon the surface of the crystal, there to be absorbed by magical forces beyond Kalanthi’s understanding.

“Who would have thought that a common inn room would have such marvelous light?” Torodesh says by way of conversation. “Hah! How many arcane crafters, stuck in their drafty marble towers would be jealous if they only knew what I know?”

“A room is a room is a room,” says Kalanthi with a shrug.

“Primitive! What would you know?”

“I know there’s a boy predicting the future through the coils of the snake down outside,” Kalanthi replies, not stirred by the insult. Kalanthi understands that Torodesh is Eerkha and therefore has no real understanding of honour. Among her own people she would have already struck down the fool who insulted her thus.

“It is neither the boy nor the snake who predicts, actually,” Torodesh pronounces sagely. “The two together form a temporary confluences of earth forces, a ley-junction of sorts, and in this junction the priest utilizes a latent geomantic talent to read the future.”

“So it is the priest who foretells the future?”

“Or the earth itself,” Torodesh offers. “You could argue that either is the case.”

“Why use a child?” asks Kalanthi, coming to the heart of her confusion about the ritual.

“A grown man’s heartbeat is far too strong for the serpent’s sensitive hearing. The creature would be deafened and the ritual disrupted. Sometimes they use small women, with light bodies, but usually it is children.”

Kalanthi was sure that she had heard that snakes were deaf but again she didn’t waste breath arguing with Torodesh, an Eerkhahiri. “How much longer do we wait?” she asks.

“Patience, barbaric maid, patience,” chides Torodesh. “Soon I will have gathered all the power that I will need. Then we will confront the earth giant and I will bind him.”

“You mean I will confront it,” Kalanthi thinks, but she says nothing.

----

Four days from the inn, Torodesh and Kalanthi look down a long corridor of worked black, stone. The corridor is nearly perfectly square, so great is the quality of the workmanship. Hanging at regular intervals from the ceiling are globes of fine glass, each one glowing with a magical light brighter than the brightest oil lamp (pic 2). The corridor is lit as if in full daylight and Kalanthi extinguishes her burning torch, its feeble light made to seem inadequate and small by this magic.

“A marvel isn’t it?” breathes Torodesh. “Behold the crystalline power of the mages who bound the earth giant here centuries ago.”

“If they bound it here, why are we going to release it?”

“Because, my wild warrior maid, I am going to rebind it, to my service,” says Torodesh, as though explaining something simple to a child. “Now go down there and do as I said.”

“You want me to break the seal?” Kalanthi confirms.

“That’s it! A big seal of glass set into the stone. Crack it, the binding will be broken. Then return to me and when the giant awakes I will bind it to my service.”

“Why can’t you break the seal yourself.”

“Because I must prepare for my magic, between the plinths,” Torodesh points back out to where the carved stones stand like a gateway at the tunnel entrance. “That is where the confluence of geomancy and heliomancy is strong enough. I explained all this to you.”

“This is servant’s work,” Kalanthi complains, but heads down the corridor regardless. She pulls a miner’s pick from her 

“Do not be churlish,” Torodesh chides as he heads back out into the natural daylight and hefts his wizard’s eye crystal by its leather strap.

----

Torodesh has only just taken up his place between the ancient standing stones when Kalanthi bursts at full pelt from the tunnel mouth. She skids the half dozen yards to the first stone plinth and then rounds it, sword drawn, hiding behind the rock.

“There’s no need to hide like a frightened child,” says Torodesh.

“Oh, shut up fool and do your magic!” 

Torodesh shakes his head and is about to rebuke the superstitious barbarian when an enormous groan issues from the tunnel mouth. The Mage Most Magnificent turns his head in wonder when the enormous bulk of the earth giant erupts from the tunnel. The worked stone of the walls flies in all directions and Torodesh is forced to duck as a piece the size of a small pony almost takes his head from its shoulders. With unimaginable force, the giant levers itself to full height and charges through the plinths. 

Kalanthi darts backwards as the giant fists shatter the first of the standing stones, the one she was hiding behind (pic 4). She holds her sword ready in her hand but makes no foolish attempt to use it. 

Hands trembling at the awesome power of the creature, Torodesh lifts his wizard’s eye and focuses his will. A beam of condensed sunlight lances out from the crystal block and strikes the giant straight in the chest. To Torodesh’s everlasting horror, the mighty being merely stands and absorbs the heliomantic energies. Though it would seem impossible to imagine, the giant grows even taller and its limbs become more mightily thewed than before. Its feet kick over the last of the standing stones and then it strides into the foothill forest towards nearby farmland.

“Well,” says Kalanthi, coming to stand next Torodesh in the settling cloud of dust that had once been standing stones. “It’s headed towards the Eerkha lands.”

“Yes,” agrees Torodesh, glumly, failure settling on him like a heavy winter cloak.

“I wonder if this is the doom in the countryside that the mystic predicted?” Kalanthi muses. Torodesh groans as if in great pain.


----------



## Taladas

I just read the results and am a little surprised that they came in so early. Wow I advanced to the next round. 

To Drawmack, Thanks.  I enjoyed your story and believe you when you say that you will one day take the crown. 

Clay, when is round two to start, after all of the round one judging? 


Mirthcard, you wrote that the ending was a little abrupt and I get that alot.   I was wondering what you might suggest to expand the ending.


----------



## Desdichado

*Re: joshua dyal vs gregor-*



			
				alsih2o said:
			
		

> mirthcard- Oh, one more thing, I believe the
> lyrics are: _If you don't eat your meat, you can't
> have any pudding; How can you have any pudding, if you
> don't eat your meat?_ To me, they fit even better
> than the ones you posted.[/B]









  You're right!  And my ending with Melissa was kinda forced -- I was running out of steam by then.  I had a good twelve hours left, but I had to sleep for 7 of them, and work for another four or five, so I had to just blaze on to the end.  In the ideal world, with perhaps one more day, the ending would have been much more polished.


----------



## AuroraGyps

*Auroragyps vs. Angcuru*

Jessen’s Tale
By Andrea Vecchione


	Life was good for all that lived in The Warrens.  The inhabitants that dwelled in the underground city were members of the human race, but tended to be smaller than those that resided above ground.  Their ancestors had left the open skies many generations before in favor of the snug tunnels that ran underneath the land.
	Jessen was one of these people.  He was a boy of thirteen that lived a regular life with his regular family.  They were a happy family that consisted of his three sisters, his mother and father, and himself.  They were all content with their lives in the Warrens, except for Jessen.  He dreamt of clear, blue skies over his head and soft, green grass under his feet… things that he’d only read about in books.  No one from The Warrens had been above ground for ages and everyone Jessen told his dreams to always made sure to remind him of that fact.  Still, he hoped that someday he would see the world his people had left so many years ago.
	One morning, as Jessen’s family was cleaning up from breakfast, a great uproar could be heard echoing through the tunnels outside their home.  His father opened the door just as one of their neighbors was passing by.  She stopped and came up to the door.
	“What’s going on?” his father asked.  “Why is everyone making such a racket?”
	The woman rung her hands in front of her.  “Oh, it’s terrible.  This morning, the watch was making it’s rounds of the perimeter tunnels and they ran into something… something awful!”  The woman was extremely upset, nearly hysterical.  “Only one man made it back to warn everyone and he was badly hurt.”
	Jessen’s father stayed calm, so as not to worry his family, and asked,” What do you mean ‘something’?  Didn’t the watchman say what it was?”  He figured this was just one of the usual threats The Warrens occasionally faced.  A raid by surface dwellers or perhaps one of the few dangerous creatures that lived below ground had crossed the perimeter and caused some trouble.
	“He didn’t know what they were.  ‘Monsters’ he said.  At first, the men thought there had been a cave in when they saw large boulders in one of the tunnels.  Then they got closer and saw that the boulders had hair! (#3)  One of the men went to touch one of the things and it lurched towards him and crushed him against the tunnel wall.  And the hair… it wasn’t hair, it was tentacles.  They reached for the man and the blood pooling around him.  They were sucking it all up.”  The woman was hysterical now and she talked in a rush.  “More of the monsters came at the watch and they tried to fend them off, but they couldn’t.  Oh, it must have been so horrible!”  The woman burst into tears.
	Jessen’s mother reached past her husband to put her hand on the woman’s arm.  “Come in and sit down.”  She headed back into the house and the woman followed blindly.  
	Jessen’s father looked at his wife.  “I’ll go find out more information.  You will all stay here until I get back,” He stepped out the doorway and shut the door behind him.
	Jessen took a few steps to follow his father, but a look from his mother changed his mind.  She continued to speak with their neighbor, trying to calm her down, while they all waited nervously for Father to return.
	Several hours later, Jessen’s father walked into the house.  He had a concerned look on his face.  His wife went to him and steered him towards his chair by the hearth.  After a brief silence, he took a deep breath and began to tell his family what he’d found out.
	“These things have been seen before, many years ago.  The Elders found a record of the incident.  Fifty watchmen were killed before they managed to dispatch just a couple of what they call spherids.  These things are extremely tough with thick leathery hide and spongy interior.  Hammer blows bounce off.  Puncture  wounds seal up quickly.  Fire doesn’t seem to hurt them much except for causing the tentacles to shrivel up and those grow back almost immediately.”
	“What are we going to do?” asked his wife.
	Her husband rubbed his hand across his eyes.  “Tonight, one hundred men are going to try and drive the spherids back out of The Warrens and we’ll go from there.  The Elders are looking for more information.”  He looked at his wife with tired eyes.
	“You’re going with them, aren’t you?”
	“Yes,” he replied simply. 
	Jessen stood up out of his seat.  “I’m going too.”
	“No, you’re not.  You will stay here with your mother and sisters,” his father answered back sternly.
	“But…”
	“Jessen,” said his mother, “Listen to your father.”
	Jessen fell back to slump in his chair.  Around him, his mother and father gathered together anything that might be useful against the Spherids.  His sisters and their neighbor did busy work to try and stay distracted.  As for Jessen… he thought hard about what he could do to help.

	The next day, silence reigned in The Warrens.  All one hundred men had been lost while the spherids had only been pushed back a small distance.  People everywhere were packing up whatever they might need, plus a few irreplaceable possessions, in order to move to a more defensible place.
  	Jessen’s family moved as if in a dream, while he sat on his bed paused in his packing a satchel.  His eldest sister came over and whispered harshly,  ”Jessen, now is no the time to be daydreaming.  Get your things packed.”
	He didn’t seem to hear her, so she grabbed the shirt he held in his hands and stuffed into the bag.  “What else are you taking?”
	He glanced at her. “Hmm?  Oh, nothing else.”
	“There’s not much in here,” she observed. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be holed up against those things.”
	He let out a long sigh and looked her in the eyes.  “I’m not going with the rest.  I’m going above.”
	Her eyes opened up wide.  “What?  You coward!  You’re just going to run away?  Now, when the family needs to stick together?  Just to go off and experience you stupid dream?”  Her yelling had brought the others and they stood in Jessen’s doorway.
	“I’m not running away.”  He sounded quiet and calm.  “I’m going above to see if there’s something up there that can stop these things.”
	Before she could tell him that he was crazy, their mother walked into the room.  “Jessen, are you sure about this?” she asked calmly.
	“Yes.  One boy won’t make that big a difference down here, but maybe up there…” He looked at his mother and she returned his gaze, while his sisters looked at the both of them.
	Their mother took a deep breath.  “If you feel you have to do this, you should.  Maybe you can find people that will help us, if anything else.”
	Jessen stood and embraced her.  “Thank you Mother.  I promise I will do my best.”
	She kissed the top of his head.  “I know you will, Jessen.  I know.”  Her daughters joined them in the hug and they remained that way silently, for a while.

	Later that day, Jessen and his family stood at the junction of three tunnels, to say good-bye.  The right tunnel led to where the inhabitants of The Warrens were going to barricade themselves against the spherids.  The left led up to the surface and it was illuminated to mark this fact.  The family quietly hugged each other and split up.  (#4)
	It took several hours to get to the surface.  Once there, Jessen took a moment to take in his surroundings and then headed off in the direction of the setting sun.  He walked day and night, stopping for a few minutes ever once and awhile.  
	One day stretched into two, two turned into three, then four.  Jessen kept going, thinking only of his family.  He saw no one until he came upon a monastery.  He wearily walked up to the door and knocked as loudly as he could.  A minute later, the door was opened and a bespectacled, elderly nun looked up at him. (#1)
	She grinned a warm grin at Jessen.  “Hello my child.  You look weary.  Come in and rest.”
	Jessen shook his head.  “Thank you Sister, but I only seek information.  I live in The Warrens and they have been invaded by boulder like creatures called spherids.  Many men have been killed and more people, woman and children, may be next.  I’ve come to look above to see if I can find something that will drive them back out of our home.”  He leaned against the doorway and hung his head in exhaustion. 
	“Ah, yes… I have heard of such creatures.  A great battle was fought against them many, many years ago above ground.  Many good men lost their lives until a weapon was found that turned them away.”
	Jessen looked up excitedly. “A weapon?  What sort of weapon?”
	“It was a horn.  The kind that is used by huntsmen.”
	“A horn?  Just a horn?  Do these creatures not like music?  You make fun of a boy that is trying to save his people!”  Jessen said angrily.
	The nun placed her hand on his shoulder.  “No, my son, I speak the truth.  Come inside and while you rest, I will explain.”  She gestured towards the doorway and they both entered the building.

	The next day, Jessen stood on a hilltop overlooking the site of the battle that the Sister had mentioned.
	“The call of the horn hurt the creatures,” she had said,” and they left the people alone from that time on.  You will know the battle site, and the horn, by the Lattice Star.  It was the emblem of the people’s Lord.  Objects bearing the star lay scattered about to this day.”
	Sure enough, Jessen could see several stars adorning various objects that lay about.  He headed down the hill to begin his search.
	Hours later, he hadn’t found the horn among what lay above ground, so he began to dig up the earth, hoping it was just hidden underneath.  With shovel and pick he tore up the turf. (#2)
	Jessen was getting ready to give up, thinking that time was running out and that he’d be too late, when the rising sun glinted golden upon something to his left.  He scraped away the soil to reveal a golden hunting horn that was engraved with Lattice Stars all around the bell end of the instrument.
	Though he was exhausted beyond belief, this discovery gave him an immense energy.  He jumped to his feet and ran off towards the nearest entrance to The Warrens.

	Finally Jessen was back underground and he moved quickly through the tunnels.  They were eerily silent.  As he got closer to the location that his people had chosen for safety, he saw scattered weapons and dark stains littering the floor.
	At last, he saw a large group of spherids up ahead.  The creatures turned at the sound of his quietly echoing footsteps.  Jessen stood frozen as one of the creatures started to roll towards him.  He suddenly came back to his senses and quickly brought the horn up his lips.  The spherid that was moving stopped.  Jessen took a huge breath and blew the horn as loudly and as long as he could.
	At first, nothing seemed to be happening, but then the creatures started to shiver.  Jessen continued to play the horn.  The sound echoed and grew in the tunnels.  The spherids started to shake violently and suddenly their surfaces burst apart.  The spongy insides started to dissolve on contact with the outside air.  
	Finally, all the creatures were destroyed.  Jessen stood stunned with the horn held at his side.  People started to come from all directions, while carefully stepping around the remains of the spherids.  His mother and sisters ran up and embraced him.
	One of the Elders looked closely at what was left of the spherids.  Then he looked over at Jessen.  “Well done, my boy.”
	Jessen looked back blankly.  “But, they were just supposed to leave.  I wasn’t trying to kill them.  How could a horn kill them?”
	The Elder walked over and took the horn into his hands.  “This was used above to drive spherids away?”  Jessen nodded.  “Well Jessen, I would guess that the tunnels that make up our home caused the horn’s effect to be increased, by making the sound coming from it echo.  Whatever the case, we are all safe now.  It is unfortunate that the creatures were destroyed, but it was an unforeseen thing.”
	“I guess you’re right Sir.”
	The Elder nodded.  “Now then, you will go back home with your family and rest.  When you are recovered from your adventure, we will speak.  I would also guess that there will be much celebrating done in your honor.”  He smiled at Jessen who smiled back grimly.
	Jessen’s mother gathered up her children and they all headed home.  “What was above like dear?” she asked him while they walked.
	Jessen hugged her as they walked.  “It wasn’t home.”


----------



## alsih2o

Taladas said:
			
		

> *
> Clay, when is round two to start, after all of the round one judging?
> 
> 
> *




 yessir. probably get all the judging done, take a one day break, and then start round 2


----------



## Angcuru

I am very sorry to say that I have to drop out of this one.  

I had been near-finished with my story before I left for the prom last night, and was planning on putting on the finishing touches and posting this afternoon.  Unfortunately, my computer decided to be a @*($&)!! piece of junk and delete the directory in which I was storing the file sometime during the night.  Stupid Win-Wiper mistook the directory to be defective or something and deleted it, not to the recycle bin, but to nothingness.  Damn it, I say.

I would have probably lost anyway, I just read AroraGyps' story after I found mine was hosed and, well...hers was better. Too bad she has to win be default. 

Good luck in the quarter-finals, Andrea.


----------



## AuroraGyps

I'm sorry your PC ate your story Angcuru.  I did enjoy the challenge of writing something using the pictures Clay provided us though.  If possible, I'd like the judges to still read my entry and tell me what they think.  I look forward to the next round Clay... I must be nuts.


----------



## alsih2o

mirthcard and maldur- let's judge nooc vs auroragyps, then we can have a 2 round final, starting with three, eliminating one, then 1 on 1


----------



## AuroraGyps

Um, I'm ok with that.  Of course, I think *I* like NOOC's story better than mine.


----------



## Desdichado

Yikes!  Jumping straight to the finals, eh?


----------



## seasong

I don't know how I missed this.  

Joshua and Taladas, I'm rooting for you this round! Very nice!


----------



## alsih2o

seasong said:
			
		

> *I don't know how I missed this.
> 
> Joshua and Taladas, I'm rooting for you this round! Very nice! *




 wanna take on the nooc vs aurorgyps winner in  the semis?


----------



## Maldur

Im confused.

Who is playing again who, and why???

 

What story is to be judged against what story? And whats seasong doing here?(not that he isn't welcome)

I just dont get it anymore??????


----------



## Angcuru

Maldur said:
			
		

> *I just dont get it anymore?????? *




Neither do I.  

Alish20, STOP BLUNDERING!


----------



## Mirth

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *mirthcard and maldur- let's judge nooc vs auroragyps, then we can have a 2 round final, starting with three, eliminating one, then 1 on 1  *




Well, I went by Clay's request here and just sent in my judgment. I hope that was the right thing to do.


----------



## Taladas

A two round final. What's that a bi-final, a semi-final-final, three quarters final?

Well I'm ready, confused  but ready.


----------



## seasong

Maldur said:
			
		

> What story is to be judged against what story? And whats seasong doing here?(not that he isn't welcome)



I'm an audience member.

Alsih2o, do you mean as a judge? Or do you need someone to fill out a slot? If it's a slot, only under the proviso that I don't get to win - if I haven't played all the way through, I haven't earned it.


----------



## alsih2o

maldur-
Even as its really hard to judge different picturesets against one another.
My vote goes for NOOC, his story just is the stronger one of the two. Its
more a single story instead off several parts kitbashed together.

Winner: Nooneofconsequence.




alsih2o-

auroragyps- really liked the use of the spherids pic, but the rest seemed a bit on the bland side treatment-wise. it seemed like oyu were trying to fit a lot of story in a small space.

nooc- i am liking this oen a lot. from the readings from the snake/child to the magical focus for the crystal, all of this seems to work for me. the lighted hallway maybe could have been used a little more imaginatively, but who notices under this cool little ditty?

 i have to go with nooc

 mirthcard-

*NoOneOfConsequence:* This piece was nicely done
- a very tightly paced story that gives full shrift to
all of the pictures. We understand the protagonist's
place in the story immediately as well as her
relationship to her employer, the mage. The bits of
flavor text do just that, giving us enough of a taste
to add depth but not too much so as not to overwhelm
the whole. I was all set to detract points for using
the boy and the snake as a throwaway, but in the end
the prophecy they dispense is shown to be
self-fulfilling. The only piece that seems a bit
forced is the crystal, but the mage spends so much
time trying to explain its somewhat convoluted place
in the magic that I bought it. Seeing it through the
female warrior's eyes as so much 'bullhockey' was
refreshingly funny and helped me suspend that part of
my disbelief. Not too much to criticize here as this
was sharp and focused all around.

*Auroragyps:* I liked the setting of the Warrens
and the heroic nature of the boy, Jessen. There was a
nice feel of children's folktale about the piece that
gave it a nice rhythm. I was especially impressed with
the boy's sorrow at having killed the enemy instead of
simply driving it away. This loss of innocence in the
face of adversity came across really strongly. I did
notice that two of the pictures were mislabeled 3 was
4 and vice-versa, but it didn't bother me enough to
count against you. Your picture use as a whole could
have been a bit better, as I will illustrate. Picture
1 (the nun) was just way too convenient. She's the
first person that Jessen finds on the surface and she
knows everything about his enemy and how to defeat it.
This was way too easy and caused me to roll my eyes
when I read it. Picture 2 (star) really seemed forced.
If it had been a picture of a horn instead, then it
would have been wholly appropriate to the story. As it
was used however, you could have taken the lattice
star out completely and the story would not have
changed, which is not a good use of a picture
ingredient. Picture 3 (tunnels) is fairly well used as
illustrative of the Warrens in which the story is set,
but when the actual picture is described in detail in
the story it seems very forced (ie. the family went
right and the boy went left). Finally, Picture 4
(spherid) was well used as the enemy, although I
thought the name was a bit silly. In addition, I felt
the pacing was stilted and choppy with several
sentences sounding like a court transcript, "Subject A
went here and did this. Subject B replied with this
and then went here. Subject A left and went here to
talk to Subject C..." and on and on. In the end, I
felt the idea was very strong (and touching even) but
the execution was rough.

*mirthcard's decision:* It's hard to decide
between stories that have different picture
ingredients, but in this case I award it to NoOneOfConsequence.

 unanimous decision, nooc goes on to our screwy final....as soon as all 3 winners have checked in we can start it


----------



## Desdichado

I'm around.  I'm still not sure I understand how this is supposed to work, but I guess I don't really have to, do I?  I get's me pictures and I writes me story.


----------



## Mirth

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *I'm around.  I'm still not sure I understand how this is supposed to work, but I guess I don't really have to, do I?  I get's me pictures and I writes me story.   *




Don't worry, JD. I think only Clay's mind is dysfunctional enough to understand how this is supposed to work


----------



## AuroraGyps

Well, I'll be the first one to admit I'm no writer.  I have tons of cool ideas, but putting them on paper is like pulling teeth for me.  The judgements were fair... congrats NOOC.


----------



## alsih2o

AuroraGyps said:
			
		

> *Well, I'll be the first one to admit I'm no writer.  I have tons of cool ideas, but putting them on paper is like pulling teeth for me.   *




 why do you think i just hunt pictures ?


----------



## Taladas

Checking in.


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

Checking in!

Added: a nod to Auroragyps - tough break being judged against each other with different photos. Mine clicked for me but it isn't always that smooth. Let us meet again on an even playing field and perhaps thou shalt unseat me.


----------



## alsih2o

ok, here it is- 5 pictures, all 3 of you write a story or miniadventure and judges will eliminate 1 and we will due it again til 1 remains


----------



## alsih2o

joshua dyal, nooc, taladas-

 pic 1


----------



## alsih2o

joshua dyal, nooc, taladas-

 pic 2


----------



## alsih2o

joshua dyal, nooc, taladas-

 pic 3


----------



## alsih2o

joshua dyal, nooc, taladas-

 pic 4


----------



## alsih2o

joshua dyal, nooc, taladas-

 pic 5, 72 hours from this post contestants 

 good luck to all.


----------



## Desdichado

Alright, I've seen 'em at least!


----------



## Mirth

A true mack never neglects his fur, baby  Big pimpin' there, Clay


----------



## Taladas

Interesting pics, hopefully I will have an interesting story to go with it like I am sure my opponents will have.


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

*Here goes.*

Garrinfeth and Hobard left the Ducal castle through the main gate and re-emerged onto the street. On either side of the gate the well dressed guardsmen stood at attention. The audience with the Duke, to pay the “adventurer’s duty”, had been less painful than they had anticipated and Garrinfeth in particular was happy with the outcome. He pulled the tan leather hood of his cloak up over his head, to protect from the chill wind, though his companion, Hobard Half-dwarf, resolutely refused to acknowledge the weather. The two men looked up and down along the street, searching for the third member of their small company, who should have been waiting for them.

“Hobard, old friend,” the swarthy wizard said casually. “Can you tell me why everyone is waving at us?” Garrinfeth raised his hand uncertainly to return the waves of a dozen different peasants along the street.

“Dunno,” replied Hobard. “Maybe they heard ‘bout your special talents, eh? ‘Specially ‘tween the sheets!” The half-dwarf smirked.

“Aye, perhaps, though many of those waving are in fact men.”

“Liberal minded folk, these,” quipped Hobard, and guffawed at his own humour. From further down the muddy street a crowd was growing and many of the waving people pointed the two adventurers in that direction. The two freebooters began to make their way towards the crowd.

“I have an unpleasant suspicion,” said Garrinfeth.

As they rushed towards the crowd they could see, in the midst of the throng, that a square of sorts had been set up by stringing two rope lines between two huge long-haul wagons. Standing near one of the wagons, stripped to the waist, was Orrifed, a young farmer’s son turned warrior and the third member of the adventurer’s cabal. From the way he was waving his arms and squatting to warm up his legs, it was clear that Orrifed was preparing for a wrestling match. Pushing his tangled blonde mop of hair out of his eyes, the young man caught sight of his two companions and waved to them cheerfully.

“Hola, you two!” Orrifed called. “You’re just in time to watch me!”

“Watch you do what?” asked Garrinfeth archly.

“Wrestle,” answered Orrifed simply, smiling all the while. “Apparently they’ve got this local bully who’s never been taken in a match. When I told some folk that I was a fair hand in the ring, they put me up to it. Good way to make a bit of a name, what say?”

“A local bully?” breathed Hobard, aghast. “Boy you have no idea what you’re in, do you?”

“Oh don’t be so serious, Hobard,” chided Orrifed pleasantly. “You said it yourself, I’m a great wrestler.” He slapped himself on the chest in a gesture of manly confidence.

Hobard ignored the young man’s words and turned instead to Garrinfeth. “We must stop this!” he said, a genuine note of panic rising in his voice.

“It may be too late,” answered Garrinfeth, noting that another shirtless man was stepping now into the makeshift wrestling ring. He was tall, but not especially so, and genuinely obese. He had small black eyes and a bald head. He grinned at the cheering crowd and then at Orrifed. One could not tell it from looking, but Garrifeth knew that the man was half bred too, with the blood of ogres in his veins. The wizard addressed his young companion.

“Orrifed you have been deceived,” Garrinfeth said earnestly. “That is Kal-Kinnoh. He is champion of all this region and with good reason, for he is part ogre by birth. He draws strength from the very earth. No ordinary wrestler could defeat him. He is brutal with his victims. The crowd has tricked you; you’ve been lured into a contest that could be your death.”

“Surely you don’t mean that?” replied Orrifed, doubting the words but persuaded by the wizard’s demeanour. Before Orrifed could receive a more detailed explanation however, the eager crowd pressed him forward to the ropes and into the ring. Once inside, Orrifed gave no thoughts to doubt, concentrating instead on his opponent, and his youthful confidence soon reasserted itself.

Garrinfeth and Hobard pressed their way to the ringside, watching the match develop. At first, Orrifed circled about the fatter man, dodging back and forth and landing stinging open handed blows. Kal-Kinnoh took the strikes almost with good humour. Then, thinking that he saw an advantage, Orrifed dove at his opponent and laid a shoulder lock upon him. The young warrior’s look of focussed strength changed suddenly to one of shocked horror, as Kal-Kinnoh exerted superhuman strength, and pulled Orrifed’s arms away from the shoulder lock with the ease that a father pulls away a wrestling child. While Orrifed was still trying to comprehend what was happening to him, Kal-Kinnoh felled him with a single over hand blow. The stout young man was knocked to his knees in the dirt and before he could recover his wits, Kal-Kinnoh had gripped him by the throat and was beginning to squeeze. Orrifed let out a single grunt of pain as he tried to break Kal-Kinnoh’s brutal grip. When it became clear that he could not the young man slapped at his thigh, the conventional sign of submission, yielding Kal-Kinnoh the victory. In spite of his opponent’s surrender, Kal-Kinnoh would not stop.

“Yielding,” called Hobard desperately from the sideline. “He yields!” But the half-dwarf’s voice was swallowed by the roaring of the crowd. The two adventurers watched in disgust and horror as the brute Kal-Kinnoh murdered their friend in public view. When at last the young man’s neck cracked loudly and collapsed under the obscene hands. Kal-Kinnoh pushed the body down into the mud and looked to the two at the sidelines.

“This is what we does with cocksure loudmouths in this town,” he declared savagely, and the crowd cheered louder. Then the champion wrestler left the ring and accompanied by flunkies and hangers on, stalked back to a bench outside a local tavern, where he still had a tankard waiting for him.

“We can’t allow this to stand,” said Hobard angrily.

“And so we shan’t,” agreed Garrinfeth. Reaching into one of the many small pouches on his belt, he drew forth the mystical components for one his magics and then began to walk slowly through the dispersing crowd to where Kal-Kinnoh sat, ‘holding court’. Garrinfeth stood silently in front of the small crowd, apparently studying the inn and tavern in front of which they were sitting. Kal-Kinnoh drained his tankard in a draught, foam spilling down the sides of his mouth, and then fixed his eyes in a threatening stare at the pair of adventurers.

“What do you want?” he asked sneeringly.

“Tell me,” said Garrinfeth, his fingers moving surreptitiously. “What do they call this tavern?”

“The Orc’s Dagger,” said Kal-Kinnoh. He looked over the shoulder at the tavern’s entrance and pointed at a plaster hand of an orc wielding a dagger, apparently protruding from the wall above where the name “The Orc’s Dagger” was written in faded gold lettering. It was a gruesome blazon and entirely suited to the kind of rough house that Kal-Kinnoh and his crew would frequent. “It’s plain as day you stupid foreign…”

Kal-Kinnoh’s abusive words choked off, as he stared in horror at the plaster figurine. All about him looked as well, but they could not see what he was seeing. In Kal-Kinnoh’s vision, the orc’s hand had separated itself from the wall of the tavern and was now flying through the air towards him. He leapt fell back from the table and cried out as the phantom blade slashed near his throat. The others seated about him exclaimed in surprise and alarm as a line of blood, as of a blade slash, appeared on Kal-Kinnoh’s skin, seemingly from no cause. The half-ogre jumped to his feet, eyes darting about, seeking escape from a terror only he could see.

“Here,” said one of his companions to Garrinfeth. “What you done?” Hobard fixed the man with a steely glare.

“Take care he don’t do it to you!” warned the half dwarf and the man and his friends stepped back cautiously.

Meanwhile, two more cuts had opened on Kal-Kinnoh’s skin, and he fled screaming into the tavern’s taproom and up the stairs to his own quarters. From outside, the adventurers and the wrestler’s companions could here him roaring about his room, dodging and hiding as best he could.

“Will it kill him?” Hobard asked as the street began to clear around them. 

“Perhaps, but it is unlikely,” answered Garrinfeth. “But I have thought of something more fitting. Why don’t you see to poor Orrifed’s body while I finish up here.” Hobard nodded and walked back to where the farmer’s son’s body still lay in the muddy street.

Garrinfeth took a long pipe from his belt pouch and stuffed it with a strange smelling tobacco, purple in colour. He chanted something as he lit the pipe and then began to puff on it methodically. No smoke came from the pipe’s bowl however, though the tobacco was plainly alight, glowing as it did with each puff. Garrinfeth continued to puff as he scanned the street, looking especially to the rooftops. Soon, on the branch of a tree that grew in front of one of the houses, he spotted what he was looking for, a small bird. Holding out his finger, and still puffing on the pipe, he silently called the bird to him. The little creature flittered to him and alighted calmly on his extended digit.

“I have a favour to ask, little one,” said the wizard, his pipe still in the corner of his mouth. Then he removed it and breathed smoke from his mouth into the little bird’s face. The creature sat stock still for a moment. “Go deliver that for me, would you?” instructed Garrinfeth, and the little bird flew from his hand. It circled a few times and then headed up to the window sill of Kal-Kinnoh’s room. Standing on the sill, it opened its beak as if to sing, and instead spewed forth the magical smoke. It came in gentle puffs and as it entered the room, the noise of struggle within subsided. Then the little creature flew off back to its tree. Happy with his work, Garrinfeth walked off to assist Hobard with Orrifed.

The next day, when Kal-Kinnoh’s erstwhile companions thought to look for him, they found him in his room. He was dead, and his body was encased in a block of solid glass. One of his hands was pressed against the surface of the glass, as if against a wall, hoping to get out. His face was contorted in fear and his mouth opened to scream in terror. Lying on the top of the block of glass was a scroll, upon which was written in a fine hand;

“This is what WE do to those who would slay the innocent and unwary for sport.”

Kal-Kinnoh’s friends left, never to return to the tavern. The tavern keeper, having suffered many years under the hands of Kal-Kinnoh and his friends, was not displeased to find the half ogre so slain. Rather, he had the glass block mounted upon a stone out the front of his tavern and the words of the scroll carved into the block. He changed the tavern’s name to “The Judgement Rendered”, and his establishment prospered for many years.


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

*Here goes.*

Double post


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

Sorry, forgot to write the picture numbers into the story. 

Pic 1: first paragraph

Pic 2: final pragraph

Pic 3: third last paragraph

Pic 4: in the middle

Pic 5: scene out front of the tavern.

Hope that's ok, I know we can't edit stories once they're up.


----------



## alsih2o

wowza, this is turning into a quickdraw contest


----------



## Sniktch

Man, a smoking bird and I missed it  

Looks like I have some reading to do to figure out what happened this time around.  Sorry I wasn't there for the beginning


----------



## Maldur

NOOC, really did race through his required time?!?!

I wonder how his story holds up against the others


----------



## Gregor

This is getting exciting.  I want to read the other entries!


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

Maldur said:
			
		

> *NOOC, really did race through his required time?!?!
> 
> I wonder how his story holds up against the others  *




Me too! This is a hellish busy week for me - I'm chasing my PhD supervisor to get her to approve the changes to my thesis so that I can graduate in Sept. I'm finishing off my submission to WotC for the Maiden of Pain, I'm working full time and my poor eighteen month old son is sick as a dog.

As soon as I had the idea for this story I dashed it off at work, with just a once over for spelling or grammar errors. Let us hope that it stands up to scrutiny.


----------



## Desdichado

We've got 'til tomorrow night, right?  <whew>  Been scrambling the last few days -- I know what I'm going to write, but I don't have a word of it done yet.


----------



## Desdichado

We've got 'til tomorrow night, right?  <whew>  Been scrambling the last few days -- I know what I'm going to write, but I don't have a word of it done yet.


----------



## alsih2o

tomorrow around eight pm...check the timestamp on the last picture to be sure for oyur time zone


----------



## Desdichado

OK, almost exactly 12 hours to spare... I got more done last night than I thought I would.

*Taladas vs. NoOneofConsequence vs. Joshua Dyal*_
Entry #2: Strip Poker_

Far, far to the north, where the unforgiving snow and ice never melt and where half the year is enclosed in a frozen and desolate nightfall, there’s a jolly little place called the Smeeblesnort Occultery School (otherwise known as S.O.S.)  Alright, so it’s got a pretty silly name and all that, but it really is a pretty clever little place.  For one thing, the great wizard Blackleaf lives there (no, he really is alive); in fact, he’s turned the place into a great school for wizards, warlocks, witches, sorcerers and the like from every spot on the globe.  The place is cheery enough, if you ignore for a moment that it lies right in the middle of a glacier swept year round by howling, Boreal winds.  It’s made of sturdy stone, like a little castle – or complex of castles, really, and its halls and dorms are lit and warmed by cheery, magical fires of red, and gold and lavender.

And of course, any place that’s home to a couple hundred teenagers learning to do magic is bound to be interesting.  For one thing, their magic still kinda sucks, so spectacular and disastrous mishaps are almost commonplace at S.O.S.  Of course, Blackleaf and his staff are quite adept at putting things to rights after these kinds of things happen, so they accept it patiently.  What exasperates them considerably more is the fact that they are teenagers.  Blackleaf and his staff accept that fact with varying degrees of patience.  However, the venerable wizard believes that teenagers have to have an outlet to be teenagers if they are to maintain health in body, mind and spirit, so he turns a blind eye to some of their more harmless shenanigans.  In fact, at least one shenanigan has become an institutionalized tradition at S.O.S, taking place every year at that point when it’s almost a little bit warmish outside, and the sun hangs perpetually over the horizon for weeks at a time.  And to kick off this one officially sanctioned moment of hooliganism, as the deputy Headmaster Queeble likes to call it, all the students, from the pimply-faced and gangly freshmen to the almost men and women seniors gather in the great assembly hall for Blackleaf himself to address them.

Colin filed in with his friends.  His dorm was one of the last to arrive, from the looks of things; the assembly hall was already teeming with kids from all the dorms.  As was somewhat traditional for this event, at least, the girls and boys sat on opposite sides of the assembly hall.  Colin looked out at the girl’s side, wondering who would be picked this year.  Idly he dreamed of Genevieve standing up against him; he could see her now, a straight-backed freshman with long golden hair and a few freckles under her piercing green eyes.  She was talking excitedly with her friends, tossing glances towards the boys’ side as well.  Of course, he’d never tell his friends that he thought Gene (as she was generally known) was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen – it simply would _not_ do for a junior to be mooning over a freshman.  Even more so that Colin was one of the better looking guys at the school himself; trim and fit, with olive skin, dark hair and shockingly blue eyes that were perpetually lit up with a ready smile.  No, he was supposed to go in for girls like the twins Helga and Heidi.  Yeah, so they were hot chicks, and he knew for a fact that boys all over the dorm fell asleep with the two of them (often at the same time) in their dreams.  But, those two were also insufferably boring and arrogant, and frankly he wondered how they had the intelligence to be accepted into S.O.S. in the first place.

“Wassup, Colin and Co.” said a voice below him.  Colin’s friend Duane was high-fiving Leif, a chubby and pimply faced senior.  Duane promptly turned into a miniature panda bear at the contact.  

“Whoops!” laughed Leif.  “Forgot to turn that off after Polymorphology this afternoon!”  The rest of the crowd joined in guffawing Duane’s plight.  He growled at them, apparently in an attempt to talk.  “Don’t worry,” Leif said.  “it’ll wear off in a half hour or so.”  Leif leaned over closer to Colin at this point, whispering conspiratorially.  “So, how you feelin’, Colin?  You ready for this?”  Colin shrugged and smiled.

“Not much getting ready to do, I guess, is there?” he said.  “And we’ve got a week before the actual Big Day.”

Leif scowled a bit.  “Wonder who they’ll put you up against.  I could do without the sight of Blanche in all her… uh, glory.  If its her, you’ll throw the match, right?”

Colin laughed.  “I dunno.  I don’t really fancy standing up there starkers myself y’know.”

Leif waved aside his objections.  “Yeah, but if it’s someone hot, you better come through, y’know?  It’s not like I’m very likely to see a hot chick naked ever again.”  Colin tried to stifle a laugh.

“I’ll do my best, Leif, I promise,” Colin went on to take his seat.  

At that moment, it looked as if the proceedings were about to begin.  Two guards came through the doorway at the back of the auditorium, and the Headmaster and his deputy both walked out onto the stage *(picture #1)*.  Blackleaf himself was a dark-skinned man, dressed in a fine robe of golden thread, with a fleeced hood.  “Ladies and Gentlemen!” he said in a loud voice that carried as well as thunder quieting all conversation.  “Welcome to the kick-off of our annual Strip Poker match!”  The hall burst into cheers.

“For you freshman (and exchange students) out there who are unfamiliar with the grand tradition of Strip Poker, let me explain briefly what it entails.  Strip Poker is a game.  An ancient game, from our most ancient of ancestors, with ritual and religious significance that we can only echo palely today, I’m afraid.  Indeed, many of the details of the game are lost to us now, but we carry on as best we can with it – to honor the gods of the ancients as the Grand Theogonist would say.  But I,” and here he leaned forward and winked to the crowd, “sometimes wonder if it wasn’t really just a hoax that some horny young lad came up with to try and get a gander of some girl he liked.”  The crowd laughed appreciatively; the deputy Headmaster looked scandalized.

“So, we do the best we can with the rules,” continued the Headmaster.  “We know it was a card game, and the cards had great significance.  We know that each player got five cards, and could trade some of them in once before playing his hand.  And we know that the two hands were then matched against each other to see which was the most powerful, and the loser had to lose one article of clothing – one at a time until someone was completely naked!”  The crowd was completely silent at this point.  They were, after all, teenagers, and the thought of someone of the opposite sex naked had a sobering effect on them all.

“Other than that, though,” continued Blackleaf, “we’ve had to fill in the gaps somewhat as to the rules the ancients actually used.  So, we’ve made our cards magical.  Depending on what you get, you can use up to five of the cards in your hand to try a summoning spell that conjures a being of come kind; a magical being of pure energy – what you get depends on which cards you put in the spell, and your own native magical talent of course.  These two summoned creatures then battle until one of them is dissipated at which point that hand is over and the loser takes something off!  The rules are also strict – two pieces of outer garments and two inner – that’s all you're allowed.”

“We do it with two champions, one from the boys side of the school and one from the girls, and in the great arena the two will stand on tall towers for all the school to see and face off in their game of Strip Poker.  The champions are already selected, and if you haven’t heard by now who they are, you surely will – traditionally they are not announced, but everyone always figures it out ahead of time anyway…  I never really saw the point in that tradition,” Blackleaf rambled to a halt.

Of course, Colin was the boys’ champion.  He had played a number of poker (without the strip) qualifying heats with the other boys' dorms, and apparently his native talent for summoning magic (or his skill at poker – a dubious prospect at best) made him the best shot the boys had this year.  He was especially eager to win – this was his third year at S.O.S., and the boys had not yet won in that time.  So he was keenly interested in who the girls’ champion was to be – he also sincerely hoped it wouldn’t be Blanche.  Apparently, she had had a crush on him for several years, at least according to the jibes and gossip that floated back to him.  And, like Leif, seeing her naked was not a prospect he relished in the least.  Once again, his thoughts drifted to Gene, but she was only a freshman.  Nobody that young ever got picked.

“So,” continued Blackleaf, “I expect all of you to continue to pay attention to your classes over the next few days, and don’t become too distracted by the coming event.  We’ve got a few days to get the arena ready, and magically warded anyway, so everyone, back to the dorms!  Spit-spot!”

With that unceremonious dismissal, Blackleaf turned and left the arena, and the buzz of excited conversations leapt to life all over the auditorium.  Colin walked with some of his friends, who were busy describing to themselves what they imagined a naked girl looked like to each other (Colin rolled his eyes and didn’t participate) as they filed out into the frigid night air.

Then, huffing and puffing, little Dennis came running up to him.  “Colin!  Colin!” he cried.  “Congratulations, Colin!  Good luck!”  Colin nodded and thanked the freshman.  “So, have you heard the latest?  Seems some freshman is the girls’ champion, crazy, huh?”

“Some freshman?” said Colin sharply.  “Who?”

Dennis quailed a bit under his gaze,  “Umm, some girl I don’t know; her name’s Jen or Gene or something like that.”  Colin’s face flushed under the nighttime sun, and he felt a sudden desire to bury his head in the snow; it felt feverishly hot.

“Gene?  Genevieve MacPherson?” he said in a quiet voice.

“Yeah, that's the name…” said Dennis uncertainly.

Duane, still a furry panda, now covered with flakes of snow grunted at him.  His other good friend Geoff looked at him too.  “Yeah, what’s wrong with you, Col?  You’re not losing your nerve over a freshman, are you?” he said incredulously.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” snapped Colin.  “She just can’t be ready to do it, that’s all.  That’s crazy to put a freshman into strip poker.”  Duane-Panda seemed to suddenly shake with laughter.  Then Geoff caught on as well.

“Ohmigosh!  You like her!  A frikkin’ freshman, and the most popular guy in school is sweet on her!  Well, this is your big chance to get a look then, isn’t it?” he laughed.  Colin stomped away angrily. 

“Bunch of idiots!” he shot back at them.  As he feared, he didn't hear the end of it all that night, though.

~*~

The night of the tournament was a clear one, and the arena was filled to the brim with students, already yelling, jeering and cat-calling from the boys side to the girls and vice versa.  Colin arrived a bit early and climbed his tall wooden tower to a massive cheer from the boys’ side, and boos and hisses from the girl’s side.  Of course, he preferred the boos and hisses.  The appraising glances and rather more vulgar comments that came up towards him made him blush a bit in spite of himself.  On top of the tower was a bucket of snow (what was that for, anyway?) and a small podium from which the cards would be magically dealt to him.  Feeling a bit cocky, he smiled and waved to the girls, and flexed his arms at them.  The catcalls grew worse.

But within moments, Gene climbed up her tower too.  When she came up, the girls cheered, but the boys were quiet – each looking appreciatively at her slender legs and beautiful golden hair.  _It’s about time the rest of these morons realized how hot she is_ thought Colin with a sense of some satisfaction.  He smiled and saluted her.  She in turn, looked at him briefly, gave a hesitant half smile and salute, then threw back her hair and cracked her knuckles.  And then, the game began.

Five cards magically appeared on Colin’s podium – and four of them were garbage.  He put them back down, and they disappeared to be replaced with four others.  He glanced dubiously at his hand – two cats-eyes was a decent start, but not enough, and the zebra and the Card of Death were difficult to read.  He put together a hand as best he could, and tossed down those four cards, waiting to see what it gave him.  To his delight, a magical tiger appeared – roaring into existence on the sands of the arena.  Gene put down her cards, and half a dozen pink piglets appeared.  Colin laughed, but for some reason, Gene had a smug smile on her face.  What was she thinking?  The tiger was about to make pork chops out of them.

On fact, the tiger was already racing towards them, when suddenly the pigs let out a massive “hiyaa!” and leapt into kung-fu formations.  Colin watched dumbfounded as they hammered his tiger in a dazzling and acrobatic display of the finest martial arts he had ever seen.  Before long, the tiger was down on the ground out cold, pigs walking all over his cold form, even as it disappeared again *(here’s a bonus – picture #4 from my last story)*

The boys were also silent and open-mouthed, but the girls were cheering wildly, and someone started a chant (it sounded like Blanche): “Take it off!  Take it off!” and soon all the girls had joined in.  Colin shrugged, and pulled his shirt over his head.  Underneath he had a skintight tank-top of an undershirt, so he wasn’t really hurting yet.  He twirled his shirt over his head a few times, shaking his hips and getting cheers from both sides for his display of bravery in the face of such a monumental defeat, then he tossed the shirt across the arena to Gene, who caught it deftly with one hand.  His cocky smile faded and his face turned white when she tossed it to Blanche, however, who sniffed it deeply.  Gene gave him a wink and smile.

The cards were up again.  Gene would keep her pigs, since they were undefeated, but Colin got a new hand.  He thought it was a good hand, but when he threw down the cards he was shocked to find a mummy in a glass box.  “Crap!” he shouted.  “What’m I supposed to do with that?”  *picture #2*  The girls were all laughing at him, including Gene.  He broke out in a cold sweat.  There was nothing for it, though – the pigs were already approaching the shrunken little dead man packed tightly in the glass case.  To everyone’s surprise, as the pigs approached it, it fell over crushing three of them.  Gene’s laugh was cut short, and Colin himself had a wild hope to pull a victory out of this hand.  But the remaining pigs made short work of the mummy, and it soon vanished.  A bit more sullen this time, and without the cocky smile (but not without the wild cheers and catcalls from the girls’ side) Colin pulled off his undershirt and hunched forward to get his next deck of cards.

The Feast card, the Wolverine, the Wrestler – this was shaking out to be something he could actually work with.  He threw down the cards again, and a massive brick of a man, with golden hair and a small pair of shorts appeared in the arena.  “Bacon!” he yelled, and within a few seconds, the pigs were all gone.

All of the boys were holding their breath now, and the girls were muttering.  Gene shrugged – surely she didn’t expect to come away completely clothed, after all, even if she hoped to win – and her shirt came off.  Her underwear was lacy and black and quite tiny.  For a few seconds the auditorium was absolutely silent, then a thunderous cheer erupted from the boys’ side, nearly blowing Colin off his tower.  He found he had to concentrate to wipe a silly smile from his face.  Gene rolled her eyes and drew her next cards.

She had a pursed look of disappointment, and was absent-mindedly chewing on a fingernail as she threw down the cards, and an audible groan escaped her as her magical champion appeared – a tiny black bird – a thrush, who’s breath was already steaming from the cold northern air *(picture #3)*  Colin’s champion laughed and made short work of the little bird, which was so cold that it barely seemed able to avoid his clumsy grabs.  He crushed the life from the poor creature with his bare hands, and it reformed into the magical energy that spawned it.  Gene was noticeably red-faced as she pulled off her trousers – her panties were even smaller, lacier and blacker than her bra had been.  The taunts and whistles from the boys were a tremendous wall of noise.  Colin found himself suddenly embarrassed for them; for her.  Earlier he had fantasized about her being on the tower, losing one article after another of her clothes, but now that it came right down to it, he found it pained him to see her going through it.  He frowned.  Gene caught his eye, and gave him a small understanding shrug and smile.  She had accepted the risk when she agreed to be the champion – this was the way the game was played after all.

She regained her smile somewhat as she drew her next hand, though – and when she threw them down, she too had an enormous fat man – not unlike Colin’s own, but hers had no hair, and was fresh.  The two combatants slammed into each other like express trains, but Colin’s fell to the ground first.  Quick as a striking snake, Gene’s wrestler leapt on his back, and choked the life from him *(picture #4)*

Another thunderous cheer from the girls, and mutinous rumblings from the boys.  Off came Colin’s pants, and he stood shivering, but not from the cold.  He had run out of clean boxers a few days ago, and been forced to wear his much smaller underwear.  Why oh why hadn’t he done his laundry yesterday?  He caught a glimpse of Blanche standing in her seat to get a better look, and he angrily looked away.

But his next hand was a goldmine.  His face surely betrayed him for a moment, a look of triumph or joy flashed across it.  He threw down the cards, and a small form appeared – an iron statue of a man with an apron and a chef’s hat, and an iron cauldron along with it.  The iron statue moved suddenly, and picked up a cleaver from under his apron.  The powerful Iron Chef magic – Gene’s Mr. Clean was going to struggle to do much against him.  Indeed, Gene was already nervously biting her lip, and she winced as Iron Chef chopped her champion to bits, literally.

Now, the entire assembly was silent as a grave.  Most of the boys were leaning forwards in their seats.  Slowly Gene reached behind her back and unhooked the clasp of her bra, letting it fall to the floor of her tower.  There were a few hoarse breaths from the boys’ side, and then they let out the most wild and raucous cheer Colin had ever heard.  Colin himself suddenly understood what the bucket of snow was for, as he was forced to dump the entire lot into his own pants to keep his reaction under control.  After a moment, he found he was able to look at her, mostly by concentrating on her face.  She had a grim look, but a determined one.  She was the first freshman ever to make it to Strip Poker, and she was playing her hands as they were dealt her, with bravery and a poise that were quite admirable.

Suddenly Colin was flooded with a sense of… something.  He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but he had never felt it before.  It wasn’t the crush he had on her before, it was something else, something much more powerful.  And suddenly his face fell.  He couldn’t stand to see her lose her last bit of dignity; her last tiny bit of clothing, and stand exposed before all the lewd and greedy eyes of his fellow classmates.  In an instant he knew what he must do.

She had drawn her cards and thrown them down – a floating green hand appeared out of the air; a hand grasping a long serrated knife *(picture #5)*.  Yes, the Grim and Ghastly Ghost Hand of Death was a powerful combination indeed, but the Iron Chef would surely resist the knife blows regardless.  Unless…

The hand struck out at the Iron Chef in a vain attempt to penetrate its solid iron body.  With a gasp of utter shock and disbelief, the knife plunged deeply into the Iron Chef.  The golem gave a shudder and began to crack.  Chunks of it began to fall to the sand little by little, then larger chunks until the entire construct dissolved into magical energy again.  Somehow the Iron Chef had been defeated.  Unnoticed by all, on the floor of Colin’s tower, was a ripped card – the armor card that gave the chef his iron nature.

The boys groaned in disbelief and amazement, the girls let out a wild cheer.  Blanche actually fainted, apparently from excitement.  Gene quickly pulled on a robe as Colin finished taking off the last of his threads and stood completely exposed to the entire student body.   Somehow, though, the sounds and sights seemed to fade from his consciousness – he was only aware of one person, one face.  Gene was looking at him as her friends shepherded her from the arena.  Before she left, he saw an intense look of complete puzzlement on her beautiful features.

~*~

Just a few days later, Colin found himself after supper outside watching what appeared to be the sunset (of course, the sun wouldn't truly set for several days, if not weeks.)  He sighed and pulled his ankle-length overcoat closer.  He liked this spot – not too far from the school, but surrounded by tall firs that gave him quite a bit of privacy.  Having lost that tournament had made life a bit more difficult for him in many respects.  Leif couldn't even talk to him; he just sputtered in indignant rage every time he saw him.  Most of the girls he passed in the halls on his way to classes giggled uncontrollably as he went by.  And he hadn't even seen Gene since the day of the tournament.  That was the worst part of all.  The feelings he had churning inside of him had only turned worse; he couldn't bear to hear the lewd descriptions of her some of the boys were making now; in fact, he had been in an actual fight with Aberforth earlier today, which was only broken up when he had inadvertently turned Aberforth's head into a cabbage.  He sighed again.

"Colin?" he heard a small voice call for him.  He turned around to see a slim figure in a great overcoat like his.

"Yeah?" he said flatly.  The figure came closer and sat next to him.  Colin stiffened slightly and his pulse started racing.  It was Genevieve.  She didn't say anything for a moment, she just looked out over the faux sunset with him, the orange light streaming through the branches of the nearest trees, giving her face a look of burnished gold.

"Colin," she said finally, "I know what you did the other night at the tournament.  Why did you let me win?"

He sputtered for a moment.  "I did no such thing!" he exclaimed.  "You won fair and square; I didn't have strong enough magic to keep the Iron Chef going."

Gene smiled sardonically at him and pulled something from her pocket.  It was a ripped armor card from his deck.  "Colin, we both know that Grim and Ghastly Ghost Hand of Death is a powerful combination, but nearly useless against the Iron Chef.  I found this on your tower later in the night.  Please tell me why you did it."

Colin was silent for a moment.  When he spoke, it was in a low voice, almost a whisper.  "I just couldn't see you up there, for all the other boys to gape at.  You're not the kind of person who deserves to lose all your dignity just so a bunch of losers can get their jollies for the year.  I just couldn't see that happen, that's all."

Gene stood up then, and Colin stood with her.  "That's very sweet, Colin," she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek.  Colin felt as if he might have to undo the clasp on his coat – he suddenly felt very hot.  "But there's one thing that bothers me about the whole thing, really.  You took my place as the scapegoat, and you didn't get the prize you deserved.  So I've decided to bring it to you personally."

"What do you mean?" said Colin, his head swimming.  In answer, Gene opened up her overcoat herself.  Underneath it, she wasn't wearing anything at all.

"I… uh…" Colin said in a strangled voice.  Under the circumstances, he thought that was actually quite witty.

Gene's bare skin erupted with goose bumps in the cold northern air.  Colin on the other hand, could literally feel the snow melting all around him.  He swallowed and tried to speak again, failing as much as before.

Then Gene closed her coat.  "Thanks again, Colin!" she said brightly with a smile, then turned and walked back towards the school.  As she was almost out of the clearing, Colin called to her.

"Gene…" he said hesitantly.  "I… err, I think I love you!"

She smiled at him again.  "I know, Colin.  See you around."  She blew him another kiss then disappeared into the trees.  Colin suddenly whooped for joy and fell backwards onto the snow, a stupid grin on his face.  Somehow, now, he knew that nothing anyone at the school said to him about his loss at the strip poker game would matter anymore.  He wondered idly where Gene was going on her summer break…

Fin

_Author's Note:  This is actually a re-adaptation of a story I wrote year and years ago and posted on a rather obscure website for about half a dozen people or so to read.  When I saw the pictures, something about them brought it back to mind, and I stole the basic premise and a few of the details of the plot from my older story.  Of course, it's hardly complete copy of that story, and that one wasn't written with the same time challenge on it or constraints to fit into the pictures I had.  In that regard, in some ways, the original is a better story, I think.  For the curious, the link to the original story is still active, and can be found here._


----------



## Desdichado

Also, congrats to NOOC -- now that I posted, I just read your story, and I think it's excellent!  Very good and natural use of the pictures; not a one of them feels forced.


----------



## Taladas

Taladas vs. NoOneofConsequence vs. Joshua Dyal

	The streets of Rockhold are bristling with people. The Harvest Festival is to start tonight. Entertainers are entering the gates of the city with great flourish. Making a parade of acrobats, clowns, wrestlers, animals and their trainers. The peasants and gentry alike are finishing last minute shopping. And then through the noble gate comes a tall man followed by the Captain of the Watch. 
(#1) “My lord, what an unexpected visit. May I ask why the King has sent an emissary such as your esteemed self to Rockhold, milord?” The Captain of the Watch says. 
	“My business here is private. Prepare a room. I will stay through the Harvest Festival.” Says Lord Sean. 
“Of course, milord. Everything will be prepared.”

	A fortnight ago. Lord Sean descends the dark staircase with a torch in his hands. The air is foul and dank. He reaches the bottom and walks with purpose to the figure on the pedestal.  (#2) Lord Sean quickly sets the torch in the wall. He then gestures and whispers in an arcane tongue. The figure in the glass stays motionless. 
	“I have some questions about the Duke, Powell?” Says Lord Sean. 
	The figure doesn’t move but a voice comes out from it. “So cold, I don’t get much company Sean. I wish you would visit me more. I am so lonely.”
	“I have cast many divinations and fear that something is going to happen at the Harvest Festival in Rockhold. The Duke seems to be in danger. “
	“Yes, he will die the first night by the Blade of Vishnau. Tell me about the outside, Sean.”
	“Who will kill him, Powell? How can I prevent it?”
	“That is for you to discern. Won’t you talk with me for a while? I am so lonely.”
	“The Blade of Vishnau, interesting.” Lord Sean waves his hand at the figure cutting off their magic connection. 

	Security is always tight around the Duke and the Harvest Festival. It is after all the most public gathering of the year. All of the performers are searched before they are allowed to appear before the Duke. Screened for magic and weapons they are thoroughly examined. The Duke sits on a balcony overlooking the plaza that the performers use as a stage. Of course hundreds of peasants line the plaza as well. Lord Sean being an emissary of the King sits with the Duke. 
	The entertainment is really quite typical. Fools and fire-eaters mill around entertaining the crowd between acts. Although quite bored, Lord Sean remains vigilant for any sign of danger. Even through both plays. They were both quite dreadful, but the title of one gave Lord Sean a chuckle. “The Dreadful Death of the Boisterous Baron.” The actual title was “The Dreadful Death of the Dashing Duke.” Performers often change titles like this to avoid offending the local nobility. 
	Then came the wrestling match. At first nothing seemed amiss. The wrestling of course was a bit staged but that was to be expected, especially on cobblestone. But then it hit him; they were performing a ritual. (#4) The wrestler with the red wristbands was the lead in this summoning ritual. His wristbands must have ratspurge on them. His hand movements tracing invisible but very real arcane sigils in the air. The large bald man is Vishnau in the ritual. The movements recreated the ritual perfectly, very clever. At the end they bowed to the Duke sealing him as the target of the spell. I of course cast a quick tracking spell on them. It would allow me to find them later and possibly they would lead me to whoever hired them. I am sure that they would start looking for him or her once the rotting curse started. 

The Duke slept up in his room unaware of the doom that awaited him. I didn’t tell him because I knew that he would panic and do something stupid. I find it easier to do my job alone. I rode up to his window on the breath of a songbird. (#3) I entered as smoke and materialized. A simple spell put the Duke in a deeper sleep and another to hold the door shut. I did not need any distractions. It was fifteen minutes before the Blade of Vishnau spell activated at the 13th hour, 1 A.M. I prepared diligently, sprinkling the wight’s dust in a rough circle around the Duke’s bed. I then sat in a chair waiting…    I then got up and got the platter from the Duke’s late night snack. I went to his bed and put it over his chest and fixed it in place with the bedsheets. 
	Then I sat down and waited. My hands fixed in arcades en guard position. The watchtower signaled that it was one o’clock. In a flash the Blade of Vishnau appeared and stabbed down at the sleeping Duke. I completed my incantation swiftly but heard the blade strike the platter. I was glad that I had put the platter there otherwise the Duke would have died. The King would have been furious. 
	I examined my prize the Blade of Vishnau along with Vishnau’s hand. (#5) I now had in my possession one of the most powerful artifacts in existence.  I must take it back to my laboratory to examine. Perhaps Powell will be able to give me answers. But first I guess I must track down the assassins before they completely rot. 
	He then put the blade in a secret place in his cloak and turned to smoke. Moving out the window he meets the waiting bird and became its breath.


----------



## Taladas

I am going to be gone friday thru sunday so if I make it to the final round could we hold off until monday?

Good luck to my estemed opponents.


----------



## Desdichado

Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I think my story was kinda cheap in a way.     I mean, I stole the premise and the ending from an older story I wrote (although it is a story _I_ wrote, so I'm not sure "stole" is really the right word) and the premise guaranteed I'd be able to use just about any picture I got and make it fit!


----------



## Maldur

Jury is working on the results : be patient!



(AlSiH2O, next time we do the judging from a tropical island )


----------



## alsih2o

Maldur said:
			
		

> *Jury is working on the results : be patient!
> 
> 
> 
> (AlSiH2O, next time we do the judging from a tropical island ) *




 i am much more a mountain hide-away kind of guy, never been one for the beach much.

 hmm, maybe we could compromise somehow?


----------



## Gregor

You guys could find the rare and elusive beach atop a mountain?


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## Mirth

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *
> 
> i am much more a mountain hide-away kind of guy, never been one for the beach much.
> 
> hmm, maybe we could compromise somehow? *




I peep what your stressin', brutha. Never been a beach man much myself. I'm tucked away here on 16 acres backed up against a dip in a ridge between two mountains. Simply beautiful. Sorry Maldur, you're gonna have to come on up to the woodsy lands.

BTW, I'm working on the judging too.


----------



## Mystic_23

Great stories all.  (This is a rather late post from a Spectator-Come-Lately and includes all of the stories on the thread).  You have kept me entertained while I should be working.  I can't wait to hear the results of the judging.  

It's good to see you all having fun with this.  Maybe in one of the future C-DM's I'll give it a go.


----------



## Desdichado

Less chatter, more judging!


----------



## Mirth

Just sent in my ruling. Hope I don't end up on anybody's ignore list...


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

Have the judges all fallen victim to a fatal disease?

*This is a "what's going on?" bump*


----------



## Taladas

I'm back. 

So make with the judging already. 


I hope everything is alright, no crisis or anything.


----------



## alsih2o

maldur-

Taladas wrote a very short story about one of the kings mages, very nice
idea but I have seen him do better on the actual writing.
NoOneofConsequence's story on revenge, always a popular theme in the ceramic
contest, was better.
But Joshua wrote a longer, but also much better story. 

So reading the stories the order should be:
1:Joshua Dyal
2: NoOneofConsequence
3:Taladas 


alsih2o-
 nooc- wow, i really like this bit. i like the use of the arm, the wrestlers, the frozen guy, the smoking bird. the story isn't exactly shocking, but the way it uses theses images to convey a classic feeling story just does it for me 
 joshua dyal- what an odd story, possibly a bot too long for ceramic dm, but it held my interest the whole way through. i kept waiting for it to fall apart into a poor harry potter ripoff, or a sexual farce of a story, but it was actually pretty darned good. the pictures were all used the same way except 1 though, i liked HOW they were used, but it seems to slightly cheapen them to use them all the same way.
 taladas- good pic usage, but i couuld have stood for a lot more fluff, maybe some more detail and distraction. it just felt a little rushed.

 for my money, nooc and josh dyal move on 

mirthcard-
*NoOneOfConsequence:* Again, nicely done.
Balanced and clever use of the pictures. Maybe a bit
too clever? "The Judgment Rendered," indeed. Don't be
cheeky, mate. I don't read any storyhours (I probably
should), but this piece is what I conceive of a good
storyhour to sound like. It's a game scenario that
doesn't read like a game scenario. We're all gamers
here and we all love a good game, but how easy would
it be to capture that game as short fiction and not
have it sound trite and hokey. Not sure what else to
say. You are proving to be one hard cookie to break.

*Joshua Dyal:* I'm just going to come right out
and say it. I really hated the premise. The combo of
Harry Potter/Pokemon (or is it Card Captors or is it
Digimon, who can tell?)/Oversexed Teens/Strip Poker
left me really cold, so to speak. I can't buy a bunch
of adults sanctioning/overseeing a stripping contest
between underage kids anyway. All of that coupled with
the fact that it just went on way too long made this
piece extremely difficult to get through. I like your
writing style, your characterization and your pacing,
but that premise just drives daggers through my head.
Your picture use seemed a bit contrived as well. All
but one of the pics was a force of magic in the game,
which easily could have been replaced by anything else
(for example a bunch of pigs and a tiger) and would
still have worked just as well. The one pic that
wasn't part of this grouping wasn't used especially
well either. Even when I take the time to try and get
into the story, things keep throwing me back out again
(i.e. Colin knew he was going to a stripping match...
he knew that the girls had won for several years
running... the odds are that he will have to strip...
he DOESN'T have any clean pairs of his normal
underwear?!?! I just don't buy it!) All in all, this
entry seemed cheesy and contrived, something I
honestly wasn't expecting from you.


*Taladas:* Your imagery (and your use of the
pictures) is quite nice - the oracle incased in glass,
Lord Sean sitting bored at the festival play, the
breath of a songbird - all of these details are really
well done and draw me into the tale. Yet my confusion
outweighs my interest because your main character's
point of view shifts so often. From third person to
first person, from passive to active voice - this
story is all over the place. It's so hard to follow
that I find myself not caring about what happens. It
seems as if you rushed to get this in on time. A good
reread and some strong editing could have helped this
piece get unstuck from the mire that it has instead
become. As it is, I can't read it.

_mirthcard's decision:[/b] NoOneOfConsequence and
Joshua Dyal advance to the finals. The former for
obvious reasons, the latter because even though I
found the subject matter distasteful, it was readable,
whereas Taladas' entry was not.

 unanimous, josh dyal and nooc go on to the finals._


----------



## Maldur

Mirthcard, please read the original story by Joshua. It really is a nice story


----------



## Taladas

Congradulations Nooc and Joshua! I look forward to reading your new entries.


----------



## alsih2o

Taladas said:
			
		

> *Congradulations Nooc and Joshua! I look forward to reading your new entries. *




 thanks for playing taladas, come back anytime


----------



## Desdichado

alsih2o said:
			
		

> *Joshua Dyal: I'm just going to come right out
> and say it. I really hated the premise. The combo of
> Harry Potter/Pokemon (or is it Card Captors or is it
> Digimon, who can tell?)/Oversexed Teens/Strip Poker
> left me really cold, so to speak. I can't buy a bunch
> of adults sanctioning/overseeing a stripping contest
> between underage kids anyway. All of that coupled with
> the fact that it just went on way too long made this
> piece extremely difficult to get through. I like your
> writing style, your characterization and your pacing,
> but that premise just drives daggers through my head.
> Your picture use seemed a bit contrived as well. All
> but one of the pics was a force of magic in the game,
> which easily could have been replaced by anything else
> (for example a bunch of pigs and a tiger) and would
> still have worked just as well. The one pic that
> wasn't part of this grouping wasn't used especially
> well either. Even when I take the time to try and get
> into the story, things keep throwing me back out again
> (i.e. Colin knew he was going to a stripping match...
> he knew that the girls had won for several years
> running... the odds are that he will have to strip...
> he DOESN'T have any clean pairs of his normal
> underwear?!?! I just don't buy it!) All in all, this
> entry seemed cheesy and contrived, something I
> honestly wasn't expecting from you.*



An obvious risk; the theme was a bit on the dodgy side.  However, the reason I _like_ the story, if I can say so myself, is that it is a fairly universal to a "teen spirit" -- I doubt many teenage guys would fail to identify with it, at the very least.

As far as it's suitability as a Ceramic DM entry, it's clearly weak in that regard, as I acknowledged earlier.  It's a story that almost allows me to "cheat" my way through the use of the pictures.


----------



## Maldur

Well done everyone!

Good luck on the new round.

JD: I have to say I like the original Golem story better , but you rewrote it enough to make it a different story


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

Is this what baseballers call the seventh inning stretch?

I've never made it this far before - the end is in sight, the crown awaits.

Of course I could just fall in an embarrassing heap. 

Bring on the "endgame".


----------



## Desdichado

Maldur said:
			
		

> *JD: I have to say I like the original Golem story better , but you rewrote it enough to make it a different story  *



Truth be told, so do I.  Then again, I didn't write it under the same constraints.


----------



## alsih2o

da' finals! 

 nooc vs joshua dyal

 pic 1


----------



## alsih2o

nooc vs joshua dyal

 pic 2


----------



## alsih2o

nooc vs joshua dyal

pic 3


----------



## alsih2o

nooc vs joshua dyal

pic 4


----------



## alsih2o

nooc vs joshua dyal


 pic 5, 72 hours from this post gentlemen, for all the marbles!


----------



## Maldur

Great pics 

Good luck You two !!


----------



## Desdichado

Friday morning?  OK...


----------



## Taladas

Wow, nice pics. I can hardly wait to see the entries to come out of these.


----------



## NoOneofConsequence

*One last tilt at the wheel*

“So this is kind of like a ‘God-playing-dice-with-the-universe’ thing, then?” asked Horode.

“No,” replied the sorceress. “This is an undead-blue-ogres-can-screw-up-life-the-universe-and-everything kind of thing.” She continued to wave her hands in an intricate series of arcane gestures while facing the door of her hall closet.

“I was thinking I might be able to stay,” ventured Horode, taking a long, purposeful drag upon his cigarette. Being dead, he lacked the breath to suck in the smoke, or air for that matter, but with conscious effort, he could force his undead lungs to suck the smoke down his windpipe in a fair approximation of smoking. When he had first awakened in the mighty metropolis of New York, still in his body in spite of the demonstrably fatal sword wound to his head, Horode had felt quite disoriented. Now though, having found clothes and cigarettes, he was starting to feel like he might be able to make a go of it. Though he doubted that his undead body would be able sweat enough to justify his wearing a “sweat shirt”, he nonetheless was quite taken with the animal design on his new garment and he felt that the colour was fetching. [pic 2]

“You can’t stay!” the sorceress declared. “I’m barely able to function here without disrupting everything; your presence would be unspeakably corrosive. This is New York! We don’t have ogres; we don’t have blue ogres; and we most definitely don’t have undead blue ogres!”

“Not even in the Greenwich Village?” Horode had never found the fabled village of Greenwich, but while walking the streets of the strange new city trying to find his bearings, every stranger he had met had assumed that he belonged in this magical village within the city and had said so in no uncertain terms. Horode had come to the conclusion that it was probably on the ethereal plane, like the fey villages of his own world, and had spent much time looking for a faerie circle to cross into the ethereal. That is how he had found the sorceress, who had undertaken to help him, though she insisted on sending him home.

“Even in the Village you’d rupture the fabric of reality. You’ve got to go back!” The sorceress turned to face the walk blue skinned corpse crouched against the wall in her hallway. As she watched, he took a loud, deep suck on his cigarette, then, pinching his nose closed with his free hand, blew the smoke out through the horrible hole in his head. “What on earth?” she stammered.

“Skull fracture,” said Horode with a smile and a shrug. “Pretty ‘cool’, huh?”

“Ugh,” said the sorceress, turning to face her cupboard door once more and turning the handle. “Of all the idioms you could have picked up in your time here; ‘cool’? Pfeh! Right, in you go.”

“That’s your cupboard,” Horode protested, poking his head past the door.

“It was my cupboard,” the sorceress corrected. “Now it’s an extradimensional space.”

“A what!”

“Oh just get in there, will you.” Heaving all of her weight against the ogre, the sorceress shoved him through the doorway.

“Oh I see,” said the ogre as the sorceress stepped through the cupboard door behind him. “A hall of mirrors.”

“No, not a…” the sorceress gave up, frustrated. “Oh alright, a hall of mirrors.”

The place where the two stood was not in fact a hall, nor a room, at least not in the conventional sense of the words. Rather it was a blank space, enclosed on every side by what appeared to be mirrors. No two of the mirrors occupied the same plane, but each stood at an angle to all of its fellows. Horode and the sorceress were reflected in every mirror, but in each one the background was different, so that it appeared that they simultaneously stood in hundreds of places at once. One of these places was clearly recognisable as the sorceress’ hall cupboard, the hallway visible beyond the open door.[pic 4]

“Ah,” said the sorceress, peering between the images. “This is where we’re going!”

Suddenly the pair were standing on an endless, flat plane, covered with water about a foot deep. In every direction, to the horizon, there was no geographical feature to see. The only objects at all were two dead trees, poking their way out of the water, their leafless branches bleached white. While Horode and the sorceress watched, a shaft of light broke from the sky, bathing the trees in golden light. As it did so, small buds appeared upon the branches and tender green shoots emerged from the bark. [pic 1]

“Stop that,” came a weary voice at the base of one of the trees. The green, new life suddenly shrivelled and died away.

“Who’s that?” asked Horode, as he followed the sorceress towards the tree. 

“That’s who we’ve come to see,” she answered. “Death.”

“Death?” Horode repeated, momentarily perplexed. When he drew close to the tree he saw a skeleton seated in the water at the base of the tree. In the skeleton’s lap, resting on the surface of the water, was a huge leather bound book. Opened to a specific page, Horode could see tiny figures walking about the book as though it were a piece of geography. It was fairly clear that the tiny people did not know that they were in a book.[pic 5] “What’s he doing?”

“I am reading,” answered Death, though his skeletal jaw did not move.

“That’s the Book of Ineffable Certainties,” explained the sorceress. “Death reads from the Book, measuring the days of all living things, until the end of Time.”

“Oh right.” Horode nodded, clearly not understanding any of what he saw. “Why are we here?”

“Because you belong to me,” said Death.

“Why?” asked Horode, then he raised his hand tentatively to the sword wound in his skull. “Oh yeah, this. So…um…what happens now?”

“I have a task for you.”

“What’s that?” asked Horode. Though Death’s face did not move, it seemed from his tone of voice that he was smiling when he answered.

“Apocalypse!” Amongst the figures in the book, a gout of green flame erupted from the page.

----

Doffhered staggered and collapsed to his knees as the ground shook and green flames, taller than the tallest trees, erupted from the spot where the High Priest had stood only a moment before. Something had gone unspeakably wrong with the ritual. In ever increasing horror he watched as from the eldritch flames an unending stream of skeletal warriors emerged.[pic 3] Armed with swords and maces, the skeletons set about the surviving priests, slaughtering without restraint. As his comrades fell, Doffhered was suddenly confronted by a blue ogre, over seven feet in height. It was dressed in an alien manner, though the blazon of a bull was plainly recognisable on the strange surcoat. The monster wielded a mighty, ironbound cudgel and from its mouth protruded a short, burning stick. Most shocking of all was that the side of the beast’s head had been cut away. It’s brain was clearly visible and smoke intermittently puffed from the hole. 

“What are you?” asked Doffhered in complete shock.

“I’m a warrior of the Apocalypse, apparently,” answered Horode. “Cool, huh?” Then he brought his new club down in a single stroke and slew the cowering priest. Horode didn’t feel too bad about killing this man he’d never met; after all, he was dead and it had been real hoot so far.

----

Some time later, Death watched as yet more of his infinite army emerged from the emerald flames to spread across another dying world. He had read many such annihilations in his time and expected many more such before he reached the end of the Book. He turned the page. New York sprouted from the vellum and he observed the sorceress closing the door to her hall cupboard. His fingers skipped to the next page; he’d finish that story later. From the infinite skies above, another shaft of heavenly light fell to the tree behind him and another round of fresh green shoots sprouted.

“Oh, bugger off!” said Death, annoyed. His skeletal finger touched the tree and the new life perished instantly.


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## Maldur

Allready??  dang your fast !!


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## Desdichado

A humble question for the esteemed judges...  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  This evening I closed on a house.  Although I expected everything to go smoothly and quickly, in reality the last two days have been a Chinese fire drill for me, running around gathering last minute paperwork that I didn't know I needed to go through underwriting, and faxing it to my mortgage company.  In addition to fairly busy days at work and in the evening here at home as well.

So, although I have a story in my head, I haven't written it, and I'll really struggle to get it done in the time frame listed -- I can certainly have it done within a few hours of that time, but I don't know honestly if I can get it done at the time stamp on the post, as I also know I have a fairly busy morning tomorrow.

So, if I don't quite make it in time, am I automatically disqualified, or can I beg for a little clemency here?


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## Mirth

JD,

I would say that from a rules standpoint, you'd be out. BUT if NoOne decides to give you some slack, you could still be in. However, Clay should really have the final say in all of this. Just my plug nickels...

Jay


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## Desdichado

OK, checking back in briefly.  As much as I hate to do it, if I have to have it in by 9:39 AM my time tomorrow morning (which is what my time stamp says) I'll have to forfeit.  I simply can't get it in that time thanks to all the stuff I've had to do these last few days that I didn't anticipate.

However, if I can have just a few more hours, I'll have something in.  I'll keep working on something until I hear otherwise, although I have to get up from the computer and do some other things tonight as well.


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## Mirth

JD,

Just emailed Clay, so hopefully he'll post over here with his thoughts...

Jay


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## NoOneofConsequence

If my vote counts for anything, I can wait.

I'd rather compete in a full contest than win by default.


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## Desdichado

OK, here's some more news:  I really hate to do this, as I was excited to participate and make it to the finals and all, but because I left work early yesterday for my closing appointment, I've got a buttload of stuff to do this morning, and will be unlikely to get a story done until sometime this evening at best -- which even I feel is unreasonably long.  This closing thing, which I probably should have seen coming, was a much more involved process than I anticipated, even though I tried to plan ahead of time to avoid a lot of this headache.

Anyway, I feel the only thing to do at this point is bow out with as much dignity as I can muster and apologize for not giving our viewers at home the grand finale they were hoping for.


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## alsih2o

crap. i think this is the second time in a row this has happened. it is getting very frustrating indeed.

 well, nooc, i am very sorry we could not provide you a final match. but i cannot force people to finish. sorry.

 nooc takes the final by default!


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## NoOneofConsequence

To quote H. Simpson, "The two sweetest words in the English language; de-fault, de-fault!!"

Can I prevail upon the judges for a response anyway?

I'd rather have won a different way but a victory is still a victory!

My sig-line will be adjusted accordingly!


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## Angcuru

Nice story, NOOC!   Reminded me of that scene in Beetlejuice where all the dead dudes are waiting in line.


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## alsih2o

NoOneofConsequence said:
			
		

> *To quote H. Simpson, "The two sweetest words in the English language; de-fault, de-fault!!"
> 
> Can I prevail upon the judges for a response anyway?
> 
> *




 i think you deserve it nooc, i will try and get mirth and mald in


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## Maldur

Nooc Your story is a bit odd. I get it and all, but something does bug me about it and I cant put my finger on what.

It might be that death has a apocaliptic army? but im not sure.

Your writing is good, but your theme doesn't really work for me.


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