A Challenge to Galefore

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#21

Post by Galefore » Mon Feb 19, 2007 1:39 pm

Sorry for my laziness. I've been thinking of a counter, and I have some solid ideas. Now that the NLBFT is over, I'll put them into post form.

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#22

Post by Asnabel » Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:25 pm

I'ma gonna try to keep this from dying.

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#23

Post by Galefore » Fri Mar 09, 2007 6:01 pm

OoC; FINALLY! I'm forever sorry for making you suffer (if you even cared) through that wait. I hope it won't happen again...

Galefore’s face leaked crimson, his eyes no longer burning with a half-smirk encompassing them even through nonexistence. He glared with no soul, with only fury, fear, wonder and worry. He was now built to be deformed, infuriated by his opponent thinking he had won. Far from it. He had begun his own death.

Galefore stomped forward. The burned and deformed enemy he was facing still held the jawbone, ogling the torn and bloodied piece that once held the elemental of lightning’s face together. The remaining lip Galefore had curled into a grin, an open vein splashing blood into his already crimson moustache. He concentrated, walking even on his destroyed limb without limping. His body was bathed in light, a new light which was alien yet foreboding…

In fact, he had now begun to wash himself in a heated crackle that Asnabel felt from his spot a few feet away, as if the sun had come down and kissed him on the cheek. Sweat ran down his face, then down his body, soaking his clothes, and his skin began to fester.

Boils without any stop began to bubble, popping, forcing agony and anguish and all unpleasant emotions from Asnabel’s mouth, foul fluid dripping from his self-destructing skin. In some areas, meat was visible, thin gushers of lifeblood setting themselves free and exiting through the air into the stone on which they would dry. A painting of odd beauty began to unintentionally form, an abstract idea in an abstract cavern.

Galefore was merely a discoloration in the flow of eternal thunder. He moved from it, chanting with his lolling tongue as he tasted his own life come from his twisted envisage. His chant was in Ildyr, his power coming from his own native tongue, and now surging into the air to join the power he emitted through his birthright. A disgusting mesh of syllables continued through freshly renewed vigor.

Asnabel writhed and dropped his new toy. He dropped everything, his clothes aflame and discolored from sweat and blood and puss, already stuck to his dried skin after the electrocution. He began to feel sick.

At that point, Asnabel vomited. A fresh, pungent odor entered the air, the only new thing to enter since an unknown presence came about earlier, one who came and withdrew and whose eyes were scanning the horizon without delay. This presence wanted something. He would get it in due time.

For now, Asnabel was dehydrating slowly but surely. Galefore was laughing a sick guffaw reminiscent of a gurgling and muffled man screaming as he was having his head slowly opened via a drill. He reached through his showy light-show of a barrier, grabbing Asnabel by the neck, and squeezed him until he once again vomited into the air. His lungs were slowly drying out, giving out, crying for air.

Galefore continued to chant in his awful gurgle, his metal glad hands cutting into the jugular veins of the enemy and slowly inching towards his mouth.

Payback.

Using his left hand, Galefore reached into the open mouth, his white gauntlet stained by a new onslaught of his enemy’s final stomach contents, and unlike Asnabel, he did not rip the jaw off. Instead, he reached in, sunk the metal of his hands into the base of the tongue, and began to pull back, blood flooding the mouth and adding a new color to Galefore’s painted glove. Asnabel desperately reached for his enemy’s hand, but the sweat and blood soaked state of it made the frantic appendage slip as electricity pulsed again and flew down the gullet and into the internal entrails. This stopped, as Galefore noticed a lag in his ‘talents’…

The tongue fried, and came out as what looked like a dried and fat pepper with a screech and a snap. The stiff remains of the blood vessels and connective tissues remained, and Galefore threw it to the ground.

He was thinking thoughts he would have never allowed himself otherwise to think, holding a weakened man in his weakened fingers. His loss of blood caught up to him, and his luminescent glow faded, his grip loosened, his glare went back to sadness…

He dropped the gunman, allowing a final punch to the face that crushed the eye socket, forcing some of the white dribble and gore of a now crushed eye into the air and the rest back into the cavity of his brain. Without his tongue, the formerly overconfident gunfighter let out an angered “wooooor”, a noise reminiscent of someone with cotton in his mouth screaming about a surprise sword to the stomach. The two ruined men lay apart from each other, and Galefore had no legitimate thoughts left…

But it wasn’t over. He desperately tried to stand to his feet before his infuriated opponent stood to his feet. Without much effort, he was on his knees…

But, as if suddenly shot in the head, he froze, unable to move. His body was shutting down from blood loss, which he needed to stop. He lifted his hands to has face, but his electricity wouldn’t come. He couldn’t cauterize the wound. He was doomed, as it seemed…

So he bled. He sat, and bled, and awaited punishment, like a school-boy who has cut his hand while playing with a principle’s letter opener and writing slander on his papers. He would receive punishment for his actions, of course, ten, or twenty, or thirty-fold. He couldn’t underestimate a human, nor could he underestimate himself. He yearned for the end, but he yearned it to be in his favor…

The gunslinger stirred.

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#24

Post by Asnabel » Sun Mar 11, 2007 5:43 am

OoC: Dang man, that's cold.

The gunslinger was in agony. He could feel his skin still bubbling, popping, and sliding off in places. He had only been saved from choking to death on his own blood by the furious lightning, which had cauterized the entire inner coating of his mouth and tongue. Every nerve in his body screamed for him to give up at this point, to let himself die and this un-godly powerful elemental be the victor. It was only with all of his willpower that he was able to keep conscious, which in turn kept him away from death itself.

With great effort, his skin itself screaming in agony, he raised himself up on one elbow. He was shocked to find his attacker on the ground, near complete exhaustion. He was shocked, but did not hesitate when he began to take action. He began to stand up, but the pain magnified exponentially with the effort. He fought past the urge to vomit again, and with great effort got to his feet. He stood wearily, and Galefore could see his face was a mask of near-despair.

But then Asnabel’s fingers felt the long barrel of his great, ancient revolvers, and he stood straighter. The old oath of the gunslingers ran through his mind: I aim with my eye, shoot with my hand, and kill with my heart. A deeply unsettling feeling swelled in Galefore’s chest as a change seemed to come over the gunslinger. His face, nearly unrecognizable from blood and boils, was a chilling sight by itself. The man before him had become as death itself.

The gnarled hand moved with all of its original speed, unhindered by the wounds of his body. Far faster than Galefore could even comprehend, the revolver was drawn, and six shots sounded through the air as one. He was caught unawares as the joints in his left arm exploded. The armor around them was torn to shreds, and the flesh beneath was ripped asunder by bits of armor and bullets. He could barely register what had happened when the gunslinger had reloaded and already unleashed another volley. This volley did the same to his right arm, followed by a third to further ravage his wrists and hands. Before the three attacks were through, the joints and hands of his body were little more than a paste seeping through the cracks of his decimated armor.

Again, Asnabel reloaded with his terrible speed, and turned his revolver on the elemental’s legs. Working like a surgeon, he ripped asunder both ankles even worse than they already were, attacking the shins along with them. Another volley ripped his knees apart, and the wet screams of his jawless mouth echoed throughout the cave. A last pair of volleys ravaged his torso, breaking the armor and mutilating the flesh and organs beneath.

The entire attack had taken less than ten seconds.

Breathlessly, the gunslinger let loose a wordless moan of pain and fatigue. His initial surge of strength had wavered, and his gun now hung in his hand, only a single shot remaining. He looked at the crippled form of his opponent, and concentrated. He concentrated on their mutually disfigured forms, and the terrible injuries he had both dealt and been given. His hands still did not shake. He leveled the gun at Galefore’s jawless head, and his vision steadied.

I kill with my heart

And the last shot of the battle fired, a gout of flame that roared like a chorus of the barking hounds of Hell itself.

OoC: Not to say that Asnabel killed him, of course. That’s entirely up to you.

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#25

Post by Galefore » Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:17 pm

Damn. I'll have to contemplate whether or not Galefore can handle that much, considering the way he dies in the story he's actually in... I dunno, mutilation versus elementos-orhumani explosions... Well, I'll have to decide whether or not to let you have the win or not. If I pick no, you'll know by my long-winded reply, and if I pick yes, you'll know by my resignation.

Until then, good fight, be this the end or merely the beginning.

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#26

Post by Asnabel » Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:23 pm

Agreed. A great fight.

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#27

Post by The Willful Wanderer » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:35 am

Let the Judging Commence!

Judgement 1: Galefore

Spelling: 4/5: Very good. There were a few points where it looked like a spellchecker ran over you ('suck' for 'such', et cetera), one word that I think doesn't exist (envisage), and 'pus' has only one 's'. Given how much writing is there, though, that's a quite tolerable level of error.

Length: 8/10: Very good. None of your posts were short, but then, they all *wanted* to be long anyways. Some paragraphs were longer than they should have been, and certain ideas were underexplored, but overall you did pretty well. There are a few points, such as in the first paragraph, where you go a bit overboard on description length, but that's more of a writing style issue. Nothing particularly wrong, but nothing made me go 'oh, that's perfect'.

Writing Suitability: 9/10 Excellent. Your narrative tone went well with the nature of the battle, the nature of the combatants, and the nature of the battlefield. Additionally, that made the occasional single-sentence declaration stand out all the more, and in the right ways, too. Still nothing to wow me, but solid all through.

Reality: 13/15 Excellent again. Consistency of scene, character nature, displayed power, matched character/setting power gradient, and a clear understanding of the basic workings of whatever reality this fight took place in.

Suspension of Disbelief: 8/15: Decent. The lack of descriptions of how or why anything happened demonstrates a lack of attention to this aspect of a shared reality. However, your character's effective power level was believable, his reactions were believable, the results of things done were believable- aside from his still being alive and well after having his neck pump blood out into the air for what seemed to be well over a minute after the removal of his jaw.

Grammar: 12/20: Fairly good. You had a number of awkwards vague points (peace is embodied in multiple things.) at odd places in your sentences, some wierd juxtapositions of concept (of course somehow), and the occasional moment where the reader would just say 'huh?' (beginning to single-handedly rise from the ground) (bringing a bit more of a salient sense- look up 'salient', will you? I'm pretty sure that that's not a viable way to use it.) However, for the most part you kept grammatic pace and sense, and the occasional runon sentence didn't break things up too badly.

Description: 10/20: Acceptable. Your level of descriptiveness was very irregular, though it became much more even in later posts. The initial description of Galefore was nice, but a bit heavy-handed, and the scene was a bit underdone- you gave it plenty of history and meaning, but not enough depiction. There are a number of spots where you tack on a few too many modifiers (-shriveled into crumbled bones quickly and noisily), and some things are just kinda 'wha?' in description ('a sick after-trail of blood-drops') or far too understated to the point of oddity ('watching fluids from his hand pour to the stone cavern floor'). On the other hand, you had some very, very good spots (An unutterable noise, gasp, and breaking calamity followed...). Biggest issue- it's pretty uneven. (There's also an odd inconsistency in grammar/description when Galefore's removing the gunman's tongue- I can't tell whose hand is sweaty and bloody on the skin, and Galefore's wearing *gauntlets*.)

Inventiveness: 12/20: Fairly good. Your character in and of himself is rather interesting, his set of weapons and abilities is kinda nifty and not too common. But you're not too horrifically interesting here in terms of how you use it, nor of using the terrain to your advantage in any way. Though, the choice to retaliate against a de-jawing by way of tongue-removal is fairly neat.

Writing Style: 18/20: Excellent. The tone of your narrative fits the fight. You have a few significant errors (overuse of character names, Galefore's speech style doesn't fit his apparent nature at all and no reason is given for that or the inconsistency of his manner of speaking), but those have been so thoroughly drowned with appropriate and good writing that they can be overlooked by the reader (but not by the writer- fix those!).

Combat Style: 10/20: Meh. No horrible tactical blunders that would be unreasonable to expect, but there's not much *style* to his method of combat. It doesn't help that he makes so few actual attacks- it almost seems like he's a 'few, heavy hits' type, but he doesn't move through combat or inflict damage in that manner, aside from the one bit with the aura and the tongue-removing and whatall.

Combat Effectiveness: 14/20: Fairly good. You've got him on a more or less even keel, but.... he seems to be playing catch-up the whole fight. I understand not wanting to risk warping the combat up into a power level that your opponent doesn't want to be fighting on, but simply responding in kind is going to get your ass beat- trust me, I made similar mistakes even to the NLBFT where I lost out to Erdawn. Don't be afraid to be the one upping the ante.

Character: 12/25: Okay, but.... You've got your character. You've got the beginning of a description, and you describe him some more in combat. Good. He's long-winded- an interesting trait. Good. However, his nature as a person doesn't seem to impact his fighting at all, and other than a generic ability to manipulate electricity (unspecified) and the assumption that your reader will know what you mean when you call him an Elemental, there's not a lot of comprehension or background appearing. By the end of the fight, we still really don't know who this guy is.

Overall Score: 129/200

Final Comments: This is better than you implied it would be, by quite a bit. You've got some issues with vagueness, description, and some wierd points in your grammar, but the writing is pretty darn good overall. You need to find a way to display more of your character in his fighting and activities, but you've got a good start on it. A more distinctive fighting lean would also be appropriate- so far, he's just a warrior/lightning-mage so far as anyone can really tell. You've got the foundation and all of the walls up, as well as most of the interior walls- you've just got some furniture and flooring issues (as well as the plumbing and gas lines left to handle) before this is a nice place to live.
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...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
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#28

Post by Galefore » Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:34 pm

Quick note: Galefore is a duality. Check his bio, he has a split personality, which is the reason his combat style near the end no longer matches his style of conversation.


Anyway, this was truly helpful, as always. I will make sure to take it into mind in the future. Thanks!

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#29

Post by The Willful Wanderer » Wed Jul 18, 2007 2:51 pm

And the other 'half'!

Judgement 2: Asnabel (Orchis)

Spelling: 5/5:
Impeccable. You only have one spelling error that I could find in the entire thing, and that was the typo of ‘lading’ for ‘landing’. Comparative to the amount of writing that appears here, that’s just fine- even if it would have been caught by a run through a spell-checker.

Length: 9/10: Excellent. While all your posts are long, the length of writing feels right for their content. Where you need a mini-paragraph, you give one- and where you should speak at length, you do. There are some very good paragraph sizes, and the whole thing flows long without getting boring. There’s probably room for a little improvement here in terms of flexibility of length (most of your paragraphs are pretty much the same size as one another), but that’s all that’s left to you here.

Writing Suitability: 6/10: Pretty good. While the tone of your writing is very neutral, that also prevents it from creating a disjunct with what you’re writing about, or who you’re writing for. On the other hand, a neutral tone doesn’t have any particular cant or tilt to it, and doesn’t lend anything to the writing in and of itself. I suggest taking some time to do a bit of tonal writing- try to write in a 1400’s (Shakespearian era) tone or a highly technical tone for one piece or another sometime.

Reality: 12/15: Very good. Despite the one odd moment (the slowing of Galefore’s electrical wave, which isn’t particularly in synch with anything else in the fight), you keep a highly consistent sense of what is going on, and how it all flows together. On the other hand, you’re a bit lacking in the overarching sense of what’s going on- during your posts, the characters could be anywhere with a wet floor. Try to include the scene in your reality.

Suspension of Disbelief: 10/15: Not half shabby. Your character’s capabilities and nature are highly believable. However…. There’s not much there not to believe. In fact, you almost seem to have chosen very carefully not to do anything that needs this, other than the rapid reloading of Asnabel’s pistols. While it’s an interesting point that he loads them far too quickly, no explanation or sense of how he does this is given, and it doesn’t seem to apply notably to anything else done with his hands. Finally, you gave only a vague sense of why the lightning wave slowed down at that one point. So while you’re not sloppy on this, it seems to be more a result of a lack of attention and need than a result of a good grip of the matter.

Grammar: 18/20: Excellent. My only real complaint here is that you reuse a lot of the same word in a short period of writing. From the variety of words you use, I know you shouldn’t need a thesaurus to come up with alternatives (particularly for ‘this ritual’ and ‘breeze’, and a small array of words in your last post of the fight)- but it’s something you should be paying a little more attention to.

Description: 13/20: Highly acceptable. You put description into a lot of the appropriate places, and leave it out where it’s not wanted. You’d have done much better, however, not to give a description of Asnabel as if he were some doll standing still in a playset. The initial appearance of the man reads somewhat like a laundry-list. Also, your writing tends to get a little awkwards to read in some of the descriptions- work on making these little bits flow better, and you’ll see a great improvement.

Inventiveness: 10/20: Passable. You didn’t have Asnabel doing the same thing described the same way with the same motion every time. However, just about everything he does amounts to firing his pistols. He doesn’t even seem to have any variation in kinds of ammunition. You did a decent job picking interesting places to shoot Galefore in, but it doesn’t make up for the relative blandness of your end of the fight.

Writing Style: 12/20: Hunky-dory. As I noted in writing suitability, your writing style is very neutral. This makes it applicable to a wide variety of situations- but it doesn’t do much to make it notably your writing. You could really stand to apply tone to your writing, rather than just flexibility. Again, try some tonal writing exercises, and finding some element of the writing that you really like and emphasizing it or using it a bit more frequently. Can’t fault you on the basics of it, though.

Combat Style: 8/20: Blah. There’s…. not much here. You shoot, you reload, you shoot some more. Some interesting choices of where to shoot now and again, but mostly it’s fairly rote despite your ability to make it interesting to read about.

Combat Effectiveness: 19/20: Impressive. For a guy wandering around with two pistols and some bullets, you’re amazingly destructive. You hurt Galefore bad, and you hurt him first (not literally in the battle, but you reached each ‘level of hurt’ before he did). Escalated on your own, and just didn’t slow down or even coast at all. Fairly brutal choice of points to shoot at/hit, too. Yeah, for something as simple as just two pistols, you pulled off some nasty business.

Character: 13/20: Decent. Had some nice details (doesn’t like talking during a fight, keeps trophies, knows some interesting weapon rituals, the like), but the character himself is overall bland. You describe him on entrance- and that’s it. No details of his appearance show up after that, really, and he doesn’t give a sense of being beyond a general human shape with two guns and an interesting personality. Try to work on giving more of an impression of the character in his actions.

Overall Score: 135/200

Final Comments: Not your best work, but quite good all the same. You made an interesting character and choice of character, but there was a lot missing in terms of expression. Your writing had no particular tone, your character had no particular physical appearance after initial description, and you didn't do but one notable thing other than shoot and reload. You've got an extremely good base, and almost no errors, but this one's rather lacking in flair and noteworthiness. Still- quite good.






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------







FINAL JUDGEMENT:

Scores:

Galefore: 129
Asnabel (Orchis): 135

Winner: Asnabel, A.K.A. Orchis.

Overarching comments: This wound up being a rather brutal fight- brutality instigated by Asnabel and the gristle-piercers. Very solid writing abilities were shown, and some nice base-tone to the characters. Unfortunately, you both had some downfallings in description, though your other strengths and weaknesses varied. I was rather disappointed that after Galefore lent such an interesting battleground, the scene itself had so little to do with the fight. Try and use the terrain more, even if there is no high ground and a severe lack of obstacles. Good work all around, though.

(Note: Galefore, nine times out of ten, nobody reads the BoW bio's. If you want your character's split persona to be comprehensible as such a thing, you need to mention it in the course of the fight itself.)

That's another one down! See you later.
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin

\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"

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#30

Post by Asnabel » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:31 pm

Hmm. That's an interesting decision, though I can see the reasoning in most of your comments.

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#31

Post by The Willful Wanderer » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:00 pm

AS A FURTHER NOTE.

After a bit more thinking, Gale, I realize you and I were speaking of different things. I was thinking in terms of Galefore's tendency to precede and antecede a sentence in casual semi-slang with a much clearer, more formal mode of speech. It was rather jarring.
\"What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?.....
...Or suppose <b><i>EVERYTHING</b></i> matters. Which would be worse?\"
-Calvin

\"Joke \'em if they can\'t take a f$%k.\"

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