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Your Works-in-Progress

#201 User is offline   tiam 

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Posted 23 April 2014 - 06:42 PM

I dont think anyone will care but I just found a fight I wrote for last years Suvudu between Susannah Dean and Rake.

'Go then, there are other worlds than these'

Such a bold statement, while not her own, had never resonated with Susannah Dean as much as they did now. The peculiar circumstances that had gotten her into this situation aside, she had not expected this. A lord from a distant world she had been told. She had expected a young man, a master of the sabre or pistol, trained since boyhood in the combat suited to the landed gentry. While no doubt skilled Susannah believed training for the sake of training would stand against her skills as a gunslinger.

She had not expected this.

Her sense of scale had been jarred by a creature only once in her life. On that day she did not forget the face of her father. Her instincts had been true and she had taken her one chance, spurred by the training and faith of one man and her undying love of another. She looked up at the winged behemoth in front of her while waves of cold rolled off the creature, seemingly caused by the massive wings beating but Susannah believed otherwise. The waves that emanated chilled her to the bone and did not coincide with the beating of wings.

'Its the myth itself sugar. Cold eyes, cold heart and a cold soul this one' breathed Detta Walker in her minds darkest corners.

It was true the waves of cold embodied that draconic regard. However Susannah sensed something else from the bestial dragon in front of her. She sensed the cold inhuman stare from the seat of her wheelchair. The bestial waves of power, their flavour ancient. The sheer confidence of the winged myth, its hide so black as to jar the eye. But the strongest feeling she sensed from this giant reptilian demon, however unlikely, however impossible, shocked her senses more than anything else.

Reluctance

It was unmistakeable. With a wingspan to dwarf a freeway and fangs longer than her legs (before the A-Train) she sensed reluctance.

It had to enter the arena, once full but now empty of spectators. Out of the ten thousand or so spectators present before the arrival only the official responsible for starting the proceedings remained. Yet the dragon did not land. It remained, hovering in a casual manner that defied the occasion. Susannah had no choice but to wait. She would likely get one chance and she would go down guns blazing, the face of her father firmly in her mind, as her dinh would.

Had the caramel skinned woman known the man behind the dragons visage, a visage that embodied both his nature and his will, she would have known. She would have realized that both Susannah Dean and Detta Walker had been right and fundamentally wrong. They sensed the cold draconic bloodlust, confidence and patience that came with veering into his soletaken form but also the unflinching integrity of the man beneath this ostentatious display.

Anomander Rake had surveyed this small legless Seven Cities woman in some form of Che Malle contrivance and sensed no fear. Cautious determination and awe mingled together on a mechanised device. He had no desire to fight but his hands were tied in this regard. With duty his motivation he landed with Kurald Galain bristling from his maw.

As soon as one his talons had brushed the floor the Seven Cities woman had moved with an unflinching speed, drawing a small metal object from her hip with a crack that send a shard of pain through his left eye. The arc of magic that shot like a bolt towards the woman only engulfed her chair and the wound caused his head to snap left while the woman leapt right with a grace and familiarity of someone who has mastered their disadvantages. The magic ripped through the stands to his left, obliterating the first tier of the stadium. He shot upwards, his wings unfurling in vast majesty as he climbed into the sky. Some sort of Moranth device had eliminated his left eye and he cursed his complacency.

As Sussannah Dean looked upwards at the dragon, its wingspan shading the arena, she realised that she would need it grounded to get another shot at its remaining eye. She opened fire, the cracks reverberating around the empty, battered arena, blowing fist sized holes through the wing of the beast. It appeared to have no effect as if another other wordly force held the demon aloft. She quickly reloaded while the dragon breathed in a gigantic breath, seeming to corrupt the sunlight around it. She opened fire again, this time at the creatures head, hoping to hit the remaining eye. The dragon loomed, the bullets glancing off the scales of its skull. It released its pitch black sorcery towards the arena engulfing all in an other worldy cold, the cold of its home.

It was only when she saw the literal blackness of death rolling towards her she realised she had been screaming. She had done her best, for her Dinh and her Ka Tet. She had done her duty.

Rake had done his
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#202 User is offline   Aptorian 

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Posted 23 April 2014 - 07:07 PM

Who is this Sussanah woman? A wheelchair bound pistelero with magical bullets?

Also the opening line of the third paragraph switches from singular to plural.
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#203 User is offline   tiam 

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Posted 24 April 2014 - 07:28 AM

View PostApt Hoc, on 23 April 2014 - 07:07 PM, said:

Who is this Sussanah woman? A wheelchair bound pistelero with magical bullets?

Also the opening line of the third paragraph switches from singular to plural.


Wheres the change?

Susannah Dean from Stephen Kings Dark Tower series. She was up last year but didnt fight Rake in the end. Yeh shes a wheelchair bound gunslinger. Ive never read any other King but the Dark Tower is very good.
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#204 User is offline   Aptorian 

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Posted 24 April 2014 - 11:48 AM

View PostNoOneExpectsThetiamishInquisition, on 23 April 2014 - 06:42 PM, said:

'Go then, there are other worlds than these'

Such a bold statement, while not her own, had never resonated with Susannah Dean as much as they did now.


The question is what is resonating with Susannah.

As the sentence reads it is the bold statement that resonates with Susannah but there is only one statement, so the sentence should probably be "as much as it did now".

How ever, rereading the opening I think you were referring to the opening line "Go then, there are other worlds than these". If that is the case you should rework the sentence so that it says something like: Such a bold statement. Those words, while not her own, had never ressonated with Susannah Dean as much as they did now.
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#205 User is offline   tiam 

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Posted 24 April 2014 - 03:06 PM

View PostApt Hoc, on 24 April 2014 - 11:48 AM, said:

View PostNoOneExpectsThetiamishInquisition, on 23 April 2014 - 06:42 PM, said:

'Go then, there are other worlds than these'

Such a bold statement, while not her own, had never resonated with Susannah Dean as much as they did now.


The question is what is resonating with Susannah.

As the sentence reads it is the bold statement that resonates with Susannah but there is only one statement, so the sentence should probably be "as much as it did now".

How ever, rereading the opening I think you were referring to the opening line "Go then, there are other worlds than these". If that is the case you should rework the sentence so that it says something like: Such a bold statement. Those words, while not her own, had never ressonated with Susannah Dean as much as they did now.


It is a bit clumsy as it doesnt make it clear.

In any case if theyd have fought I probably wouldnt have submitted it as im not a very experienced writer.
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#206 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 11 February 2015 - 11:49 AM

I know that I've mentioned my own ongoing project a few times across a few threads now. So to give you a little bit of blurb about it:

Working title is A-IB1, which is an abbreviation of the planned title (which I'm not prepared to reveal except to proofreaders as of yet) as well as the series as a whole. The intent is to write it as either a trilogy or quadrilogy.

The story focuses around three main characters. The protagonist a nonhuman thief, who by chance comes into contact with an item of great worth and power that was sought by others. Before they can get it from her, she experiences the minor inconvenience of death, but then finds herself back in the city with newfound abilities and a severe case of Kerrigan Syndrome.

The second protagonist is a former soldier turned professional mage-hunter, living in a bottle to try and drown out the sounds and sights that his time in the army showed him. When Protagonist #1 begins to kill those who hold power in the city, he is drafted in to firstly hunt down the killer, and secondly to investigate the increasingly erratic behaviour of the mages in the region, leading on to a conspiracy involving the ruling Empire.

The third protagonist is the son of the most powerful Imperial within the city (best described as a suzerainty of the empire). Born into a family of powerful mages with no abilities of his own, he too comes into contact with an artefact that binds to him whilst on an archaeological dig, and comes into his power. His story is largely seperate to the other two characters but will marry up at some stage as the Southern Empire (shall we call them, for now) successfully invade and take the city.

It's somewhat tropey at present, though I have a character whose purpose is to reference these (he's semi-aware that he's a character in a book). The magic system is based on the classical elements, with a wheel to denote the various elements and how they connect to one another. Instead of gods, we have physical manifestations of the twelve elements, who may take an avatar in the world. When protagonist #1 is brought back, the balance of power between these august chappies is disturbed and all hell breaks loose. There's also an overaching plot involving sunken continents, bad things are down there, yadda yadda, if you've played Chrono Trigger or Skies of Arcadia you'll see where it's going relatively quickly.

Oh, and of COURSE I was playing Daisuke Ishwatari fighters when I wrote the primary antagonist, so you can also expect unrealistically huge swords. And what.
Debut novel 'Incarnate' now available on Kindle
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#207 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 16 February 2015 - 07:50 PM

Also just checked and I have 21 chapters at varying stages of completion (probably about 12 fully finished ones). So I think I'm about halfway there now!
Debut novel 'Incarnate' now available on Kindle
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#208 User is online   Gorefest 

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Posted 17 February 2015 - 01:38 PM

View Posttiam, on 24 April 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

Susannah Dean from Stephen Kings Dark Tower series. She was up last year but didnt fight Rake in the end. Yeh shes a wheelchair bound gunslinger. Ive never read any other King but the first four books of the Dark Tower is very good after which it becomes a painfully underwhelming exercise in self-referencing.


Fixed.

Wow, a year late. Sorry, hadn't seen the time stamp.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 17 February 2015 - 01:39 PM

Yesterday, upon the stair, I saw a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
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#209 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 17 February 2015 - 07:37 PM

View PostCajun King, on 17 February 2015 - 05:53 AM, said:

Skies of Arcadia is still fav rpg to this day. I occasionally hook up my Dreamcast to play it.


I'll not lie: my project is rather shameless in the SoA influences (and I'm glad it's not just me - incidentally, did you ever post over at Skies of Arcadia World?) - there's a Shrine Island / Soltis thing going on, and the first book's antagonist is heavily based on Galcian.
Debut novel 'Incarnate' now available on Kindle
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#210 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 18 February 2015 - 04:54 AM

There's no piracy or giant battleships, I'm afraid.
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#211 User is offline   Gabriele 

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Posted 19 July 2015 - 12:46 PM

Pirates should sneak in eventually. They always do. ;)
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#212 User is offline   Maark Abbott 

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Posted 20 July 2015 - 07:32 AM

There's a very strong criminal underworld thing going on, so you could think of them as Land Pirates, maybe.
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#213 User is offline   Esa1996 

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Posted 26 September 2015 - 06:19 PM

View PostApt, on 21 June 2008 - 07:58 PM, said:

I'm working on my own fantasy series.

I've not made a blurb and I'm not sure I could summon up the story in so many words just now.But to make a rough outline, the story goes something like this...

It's a sort of steam punk world, more weird/strange fiction than fantasy but it's not sci-fi. Instead of the usual planet with a moon and a sun it cirkles around, this is a universe in ruins. It used to be a dysonsphere like world with planes likes onion rings. The world is destroyed by an invading terraforming expedition, the gods home in the dysonsphere being annihalated.

In present day, the world lies in ruins. The world that is seen in the story lies on one of the bigger fragments of this Dysonsphere. The heaven is littered with a curtain of orbiting asteroids and massive remaining pieces of the world, some as big as the "known world". Night and day doesn't exist only the shadows of the fragments of the world blotting out the inferno that was the cradle of the gods.

Technology, allthough nothing natural and once a foreign entity in the balance of the universe, pervades the world and most of the spheres and planes of reality. Having spread enough before the sundering, the terraforming programme changed to hold the ruins of the world together and it actually started to reform and rebuild the world itself. The further details on this subject aren't really important in this matter, suffice to say the theres machinery beating and grinding behind the fabric of the reality the mortals experience.

All kinds of god like machines, extraterrestriel beings, elder gods, young gods, etc. exist but that's enough backstory.

The story starts on the eve of the Second World War less than thirty years before the First World War. The First World War was a catastrophy, an unprecendented event, the likes of which hadn't been seen in 10,000 years. The Pact of the Gods had seen to keeping the peace since the last Great War, that one between the Gods themselves. But the act of the Eshtrian Konglomerate shattered that peace. Three of the Six System Gods, the Mortal Ascendant Representatives of Mankind have been destroyed "in an accident".

Now the balance is shattered and the Konglomerate, aided by rebel "Wild Gods", the gods that walk among the mortal, have begun a proliferation of technology. Mankind, virtually stagnant in their "Golden Ages", are suddenly developing electricity, gunpowder, steam and crystal power in the span of three decades. The lands of the Machine System Lords are now expanding and encroaching upon the "Magical Lands", if this continues the Empires of the Gods will wage a Holy War upon the "Machine Lands".

This is what the story centers around. The story develops further as war threatens to spread through all the planes of the living, dead and condemned.
The elder beings that were incenerated in the destruction of the Old World attempt to escape from the underworld, the litteral underside of the world. Powers from the other fragments of the worlds are drawn to the gods weakening grip on the "Known World" and old powers, 10.000 years sleeping are waking to fullfill the prophecy... the series main "big nasty".

The awakening of the sleeping machine god. The fractions of the war seek to gain control of it, but the heart of the Machine God was removed millenia past. If it wakes, it will not only alert it's builders outside of the known world of it's wherabouts, it will restart the terraforming of the world. Compared to the power of the Machines even the Elder Gods are like children.

Oh and of course there's human armies blowing the crap out of barbarians with canons and riffles, giant machines and prehistoric demons trampling cities, dragons fighting UFOs, Giants wrestling T-rex's, Gods getting drunk and naughty, etc... and evil chickens, lots and lots of evil chickens Posted Image


I know this post is old (Yeah, OLD) but I got interested. Did you ever get it done? Really cool ideas there. Especially the lack of a night and day cycle was damn cool and original. I immediately got my head full of epic scenes of armies gathering to fight each other and then they get a sudden few hours of darkness etc. Or days that last for a week etc. Lots of possibilities.
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