Mors

Anyone else enjoying Sun/Moon?

<<<

Also not including my own entry for consideration, I'll vote for DR's story. I'm probably a bit biased. DR, when I first joined this forums year ago and started RPing with DR, I'll admit I didn't think particularly highly of your writing, but it's really wonderful to see how much you've improved since then. Your story was very well written, and I love the level of detail in your descriptions.

That's fair. I'll just use spoilers then.@Mors:

Spoiler

Great story, well-written, concise... It was a wonderful read. That said, I did have a problem with the setting. When I think of a story about 'powers', I think Sci-Fi. This felt very Fantasy to me. I'll wait and see what the others think/decide but other than that, I liked it.

@Emerald:

Spoiler

Since your story isn't complete, it wouldn't be fair to judge it just yet. What I will say however is, if your going to post using the format of a book, then you should also use indents at the start of every paragraph. The sentences start to bleed into each other without them.Speaking of your book, who is the target audience?

Submitted something real fast. It takes place in a homebrew wasteland fantasy setting for an RP I planned to make in the future, so I apologize if there's any confusion because of the lack of context.

The Widow's Kiss

A kiss woke me. A kiss pulled me from the dark depths of my dreaming. Lips touched mine, and lost as I was, I knew her.

“Lyra?” I called out her name. But someone else answered.

I opened a bleary eye and found myself staring out at the setting sun, the sky aflame beneath pouring clouds. A guard sat close by, sharpening his hatchet with a sandstone. Another stood a little way off where the cave dropped away, watching the sun go down, or pissing, or both. Their leader seemed to have disappeared, probably to check on his men. I struggled to get up, only to find my arms still bound tight behind my back. It was slowly coming back to me now. The bandits, and the ambush.

“Seth.” A dark, seductive voice. Lilith stepped from the shadows of the cliff. They clung to her, dark webs, not wanting to release their hold. She pulled clear as the sun kissed the horizon. She fixed me with eyes that held no color, only passions, set in Lyra’s narrow and exquisite face. Oil-dark hair framed her, falling in unnatural coils and curls. She wore Lyra’s form, had her face, her long dark hair, yet no one would mistake her for human. That is, if anyone besides me could see her.

Lilith stood behind the nearest guard, looking down on the dark mass of his hair and broad shoulders as he tended his weapon. “Well this won’t do at all, Seth.” She leaned to peer behind me at my hands, wedged behind my back and the rock. “The legendary Hollow Man! The Queenslayer! The Devil of Perdition Road, tied up!”

I couldn’t very well answer her without drawing unwanted attention, but I watched, filled with the dark excitement her visits always provoked. I knew she wasn’t Lyra, that she was just just an apparition born to torment me for my past sins, but seeing the world when she stood in it just took the edge off everything and made life seem simpler. I tested the bonds on my wrists. Still strong. She made life simple…but not that simple.

Lilith set one bare foot on the helmet the guard had set beside him, and laid her finger against the side of his head. “If you launched yourself at him and struck the top of your forehead against this spot…he would not get up again.”

I gestured my eyes towards the other guard, just ten yards down the slope.

“That one,” she said “Is standing next to a fifteen foot drop…How quickly do you think you could reach him?”

I gave a soft grunt in reply. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve argued it was impossible. I also wouldn’t have the nerve to try it, not even to save my own miserable life. But with Lilith looking on, an ivory goddess smoking with dark desire, a faint mocking smile on perfect lips, the odds didn’t seem to matter anymore. I knew then how Lyra must have felt when she battled with Lilith beside her. I knew an echo of the reckless spirit that had filled her when the night trailed black from the edge of her blade.

Still, I hesitated, looking up at Lilith, slim, taut, wreathed in shadows that moved against the wind.

“Live before you die, Seth.” Lyra’s last words, spoken in her voice. I looked into her eyes, whose color I could never name, and they filled me with unholy joy.

—-

It was not until three hours later when the bandit leader returned to the cave with the rest of his crew. There were maybe a dozen in total, all armed and sharpened by their life in the Wasteland. They stood around the body of their comrade, or rather, the body of their comrade stood around them, hacked into several pieces. “He’s escaped!” the boss growled, “Fan out and look for him!”

“Oh, there’s no need for that,” I called out to them, stepping from the shadows. I tossed something at them, and one of the bandits caught it - the head of the other one they left with me. He quickly dropped it in disgust. 

“He’s crazed!”

“You made a mistake. Once you found out who I was, you got greedy, wanted to turn me in for my reward. But you should’ve killed me when you had the chance.” I walked towards them. Several backed away, without knowing why - the instinct that removes the sheep from the wolf’s path.

“Pull together !” Their leader said. “The idiot is trapped in here with us.”

I gave them a sad smile, “So much in life is a matter of perspective. I rather think you’re trapped in here with me.”

—-

A kiss woke me. A kiss pulled me from the dark depths of my dreaming. Lips touched mine, and lost as I was, I knew her.

“You aren’t Lyra.” I said to her, though perhaps it was more towards myself. “She’s gone. You’re nothing but a shadow.”

She stood their smiling. Even with so many bloodied corpses strewn around her, she looked beautiful. “No,” she admitted. “But I’m all you have.”

Hm, almost the end of the month. I'll probably write something up before the end of the week.

It's the setting we used for most our old pokemon RP's (was complete with towns, spreadsheet for where to find pokemon, etc.). Though, I was the one who created the original region and I wouldn't mind helping you make a new one if you wanted. Just pm me.

Given all the pokemon-induced hype, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in an RP regarding that?
I've been informed of previous failures in attempting to run Pokemon RPs in the forums. Nevertheless, I still want to give it a shot.
Regarding the concepts I have, the first would be your typical pokemon adventure but instead of going through the grind of the cycle of encountering, capturing and training pokemon, we would make use of timeskips and focus on major events such as gym battles, maybe going against poachers or a team rocket-esque organization, and the like. I'm considering making it relatively realistic; so seeing a skinny ten year-old boy accurately hurling a pokeball towards a target 20 ft away would be unlikely.
The second idea would make use of a fantasy-like setting where players would be adventurers and mercenaries who make use of pokemon. This would be more realistic in the sense that people being attacked by pokemon wouldn't be uncommon. Bandits and criminals could use their pokemon to harm others.
Any takers?

@Mischief: Nutters will be nutters. I'll check it out. Though I must say you had an exceptionally well-educated childhood. My favorite book growing up was Captain Underpants, and I could barely slog through Victor Hugo's stuff when I was at University.

@Naifu: I didn't realize that, and guess I didn't see that X pointed it out to me. I'll fix it when I can, just assume I said it was a girl instead in my post for now.

You see, that's excessive.

No, I wouldn't want that. But sometimes I think on rare occasion that our youth need to learn that good doesn't always prevail. That the world in itself is often unjust in nature.

I don't see how it's any more excessive than a woman hanging and a man starving. And Disney movies already teach that without needing to be morbid. Its most recent movie, Zootopia, was essentially a long social commentary on inequality and racism. There are other examples i.e. Bambi's mother, but the point is there are tons of ways to deliver that lesson without having to depict something so needlessly bleak and depressing (ignoring the fact that it'd be a horrible business decision on top of everything).