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| Gladius | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 4 2009, 02:15 PM (94 Views) | |
| The Bean | Sep 4 2009, 02:15 PM Post #1 |
Forum Kommisar
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Having been a bit stuck for inspiration for Grey Knight, I thought that I might take a bit of a break from Alicarius' action packed adventures and instead turn my attentions to another favourite Elder Scrolls topic of mine, assassins. Admittedly not the badasses from the Dark Brotherhood, for reasons that will become apparent in the story, but instead the, ahem, more family friendly Morag Tong. That said, that doesn't mean things won't get painful... Gladius Prologue The cell was bare. Four walls of stone, cold, grey and unforgiving; a chair; a wooden table; chains. And the child. His hands were chained together, as were his feet, both were attached to the walls. Instead of the iron bars that ran across a cell, the only point of exit was a heavy iron door, barred and bolted from the outside. The only source of ventilation were three holes, each an inch across, bored through solid stone. Nothing could get in or out. “Is this him?” Even from within the cell, the child could hear the question through the thick door. His head snapped up, his previously vacant blue eyes suddenly burning with a ferocious curiosity. “It's him, sir,” another voice answered, a voice the child recognised as one of the guard's. “Are you sure you wish to do this? He may be chained up, but he's not safe.” “I am sure. I'm here now, am I not?” The new voice carried the gentle power of one used to being obeyed. “Very well sir,” the other voice said. “But I'll have to lock the door behind you. We can't risk him escaping. I heard they're still cleaning up the mess he made at the Fort Buckmoth.” “Are they? Then he'll be perfect.” With a heavy clank the bar was removed, before the two locks were opened. The bolts slid back, and the door swung open. The child didn't move when the visitor entered, door slamming shut behind him, just sat where he was and watched. The visitor nodded a greeting, before sitting down, crossing his legs to be at head level with the child. “Good day young man,” the visitor said, an Imperial in rich red robes, whilst smiling warmly. No reply. Just a silence as stony as the walls of the cell. “I understand you weren't told I was com-” “Who are you?” The voice was hoarse and rough, the voice of one much older than the child should be. Hirall had no children of his own, and little experience with them, but he guessed this boy was only ten or eleven years of age, perhaps less. “Me?” the visitor said, still keeping the warm smile. “Right now, I'm somebody who could let you out of here for good.” “Who are you? What is your name?” “I you insist on knowing, my name is Hirall,” the visitor said. “I am from the Morag Tong. Perhaps you know of us?” The child nodded. “The noble assassins,” he said, before adding, in a voice that did not quite seem to be his own; “An oxymoron if I ever heard one.” Hirall gave a short laugh and nodded. “Aye, we are paradoxical in that sense,” he said. “What do you want of me, Morag Tong?” the child asked. There was a strange echo to his voice, as if he was trying to repeat his words, to mask something else that was speaking. “I'm coming on behalf of Eno Hlaalu,” Hirall said. “He wants you in our organisation.” “The Tong would not want something like me.” This was the child's voice, the echo now gone. “It wouldn't let me live within your rules. It wants to be free.” “There is only one other organisation like ours that would let you join them, and frankly, if you were with them then there's no knowing what would happen,” Hirall said. “We can't allow that.” “I tell you, Hirrall of the Morag Tong, I do not want want to join you,” the child spat. Once again, the echo was there, some unnatural brightness burning at the edge of his eyes. “Tell the guards to let us go. Let us be free.” Hirall shook his head. “I can't allow that,” he said. “We both know that. This is your only chance to walk free.” There was silence as the child contemplated the offer. “Very well,” the echo said. “We will go with you.” # The child was loaded into a heavy wagon, its wooden frame reinforced with thick iron. There were no windows, and the two men guarding it were both high ordinators, their weapons ready to be drawn at a moment's notice. The child was escorted out of the prison, still heavily chained, by ten guards and Hirall, loaded into the wagon and chained to the wall. Hirall clambered into the driving, cracked the whip and spurred the guars pulling it into life, their claws clacking on the roughly paved road as they dragged it back down the mountain road. It was several hours before the guar wagon reached the city of Vivec, and by the time they did night had fallen, the city silent except for ordinators walking their lonely beat on the great cantons. The grox wagon rumbled over the single bridge that gave access to the city, a rare sight-usually carts and wagons were forced to wait outside the city, and a small village had grown up around the bridge. It was carefully steered into the arena district, and the child was unloaded. Flanked by the two high ordinators, Hirall blindfolded the child and led him into the darkness, down to the underworks, into one of the many corridors that laced the Canton. One could spend hours exploring the depths of the sewers, and barely cover enough ground to get from one canton to the next. Hirall pulled open a trapdoor in the deep darkness of the Arena Canton's deepest corridors, lit only by a torch held by one of the ordinators, and led the child down the steps. The ordinators closed the trapdoor and left, still listening out for any signs of danger, the trapdoor exploding, Hirall's screams. They had heard things about him. Almost everybody had. Nobody knew exactly what the child was. But he was to be feared, that much was clear. Still blindfolded and chained, the child was lead down a set of stairs, feeling his way with surprising sureness for one who had never been to this place before, let alone one unable to see. “Greetings, young one.” This was a new voice, warm and welcoming like Hirall’s, and almost instinctively the child recoiled. Voices like those were always a disguise for a lie. Or a trap. “Who are you?” the child snapped, his voice echoing. Even chained, his movements restricted by the coiled and looped iron, he forced his body into a fighting stance. “What do you want with me?” “My name is Eno Hlaalu,” the voice said. “And I am sure Hirall explained what we want with you. But let me ask you a question. What is your name?” “I am called Gladius,” the child said, the echo still in his voice. “I know that,” Eno said calmly. “But let me ask, who are you.” “I said I am called Gladius,” the child repeated. “I am not asking your poor host,” Eno said. “I am asking you.” The child snarled for a moment, before conceding. “They call me Refero,” the echo answered. “And I suppose, Refero, that you will not work with me willingly,” Eno said. “We want to be free,” Refero said. “Everybody makes us a prisoner. Let us go.” “That’s not possible,” Eno replied. “I had a hard enough time convincing Imperial authorities that this was the best place for you. I can’t let you free any time soon.” “Yet you expect me to kill?” This was Gladius. “I cannot kill efficiently if I am chained,” Gladius continued. “And you cannot keep me chained forever.” “I do not intend to,” Eno replied. There was the sound of something being picked up, and a moment later the child felt something being fastened around his neck. A collar. Gladius gave a shriek of wordless rage and reached up, only to find his movements stuck into place by the chains he was wearing, his fingers clawing viciously at the empty air. Realising this course of action was futile, Gladius threw himself forward, intent on bludgeoning and clawing this man to death with his fingers. As he took his first step forwards, he felt something in him give, and he fell limp and weak to the floor. “That,” Eno said, his voice suddenly harder and colder than before. “Was a paralysis spell. When you are here, you will obey me and follow my orders. If you attempt to remove the collar then the spell with kick in and you will fall limp and helpless. If you attempt to attack me or my fellows then I will order the spell into action. And if you kill me, as you are no doubt already planning, the collar shall kill you. Do you understand?” Still unable to move, Gladius muttered; “I understand.” “Good. Hirall, take our young Brother to his room,” Eno said. “And remove his chains and blindfold once you’re there.” Still limp and helpless, Gladius did not even try to struggle as he was picked up. He was carried a few more paces, before feeling himself being folded slightly as he was squeezed through a doorway. He was placed on the floor again, and then the blindfold was off, and he blinked in the sudden, dim light of a candle. It was another cell, the heavy walls no less oppressive for being the more cheerful yellow of sandstone. With a clank, the chains were removed, and Hirall picked them up, and left the cell, swinging the door closed behind him and leaving Gladius to lie alone on the cell floor. Edited by The Bean, Sep 9 2009, 01:53 PM.
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| Septim741 | Sep 7 2009, 01:18 PM Post #2 |
Anglophile
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"Four walls of stone, cold, grey and unforgiving." Since you're describing stone here, a colon would be more appropriate. It gives the sentence more clarity and structure. Also, I'm of the type that uses another comma between the last two items of a list. (1, 2, and 3) "Four walls of stone: cold, grey, and unforgiving." "A chair, a wooden table, and the chains." This sentence is rather structured poorly. I think you're trying to make a parallellism with the two series (Cold, grey, and unforgiving... a chair, a wooden table, and the chains). However, this is wordy because you're using adjectives, then nouns. If you WEREN'T trying to do make these two parallel structures, then you only succeeded in confusing the reader. Perhaps, then, you meant to include a chair, a wooden table, and the chains in the same list as the four walls, in which case your sentence would be "Four walls of stone: cold, grey, and unforgiving; a chair; a wooden table; and the chains;" Note that here you would use the semicolons (or at least a semicolon after unforgiving) to distinguish the different list items because one of them has a list within it. Finally, all the items in the list should be definite or indefinite... "A chair, a wooden table, and chains" or "The chair, the wooden table, and the chains." (Four walls and the four walls respectively). I like how you put "And the child" on a line of its own. Very dramatic. Keep your same structure as you used above, though... "And a child." or "And the child." I noticed a few other minor grammatical (mainly sentence structure, comma usage) errors early on in the story, but nothing that detracted much from the story. When you arrived at the second part, with the child traveling to and entering Vivec, you seemed to find your rhythm. Your writing is descriptive, your vocabulary refreshing, and you kept even the dullest parts interesting through your writing. Excellent stuff, Bean. The story itself was captivating, particularly Eno Hlaalu picking apart the Gladius-Refero relationship. In all, very nice, and I"m looking forward to seeing this story play out. You have a great foundation set up, and if Gladius's missions are as good as they're set up to be, it will be a worthwhile read. Also, if you could add some emotional depth to it, by exploring Gladius's thoughts on Refero and the like, it has the potential to become very powerful. |
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Goodbye TESFU Grand Ayleid Home 1.3 :: Oblivion GC Theme | |
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| The Bean | Sep 8 2009, 02:03 PM Post #3 |
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Forum Kommisar
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Well thank'ee very much Septim! I'll get onto sorting out those errors right away, and my thanks for pointing them out. As for Gladius and Refero-their relationship is...unique. Gladius is both grateful and ungrateful for what Refero does for him, but as for emotion, my current plan for the story looks set to pull a few heart strings if I do it. Adding the fact that Gladius is just an 'ickle bit crazy, how he'll handle it will probably be very interesting... |
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| Septim741 | Sep 8 2009, 06:47 PM Post #4 |
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Anglophile
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I'm psyched. Keep it up. Edited by Septim741, Sep 8 2009, 06:47 PM.
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Goodbye TESFU Grand Ayleid Home 1.3 :: Oblivion GC Theme | |
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| redsrock | Sep 14 2009, 09:14 AM Post #5 |
Jefe el Heffalump
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Meh, way to boring. As the reader I don't want to be told all of this stuff. A simple sentence would have sufficed (without as much detail). And of course this is the opening paragraph of the story. You don't want to be boring by starting out describing the setting. There are very few authors who can pull that off. Just mention the cell and then dive straight into the child. That's what's more important anyway. This may seem like nitpicking (hell, it may be), but this is important to me:
The first sentence he says "I am," and the second sentence he says "I'm." Pick one and try to stick with it. It's always important that your characters stay consistent with their speech. It makes them more, well... characteristic. Unless there's a certain reason he does that of course.
You're having problems with sentence structure that I've never seen before. Read that aloud and see if it makes sense. It does not. Reword to something like "The child didn't move when the visitor entered, not even with the door slamming behind him. He just say where he was and watched." Watch out for clunky sentences, because there were a lot of them.
There needs to be a comma between "day" and "young." In real life, when he address someone by a title there is always a pause right before the name/title/etc. It's very slight, but it's there. In writing, we show that pause with commas. The sentence above should be written like this: "Good day, young man." See? The comma shows that natural, tiny pause.
Okay, this is right. So maybe that one above was just a mistake. I apologize for wasting your time if that's the case. Very nice story so far. It sure has loads of potential. The crazy child plot is cool. Reminds me of F.E.A.R in a way. If anything, though, I think it would have been better for the child to have struggled more with Hirall in the beginning. I guess it's because the child knows it's the only way to be free, but still. And, if the child is so dangerous, then why is Eno allowing his chains to be taken off (because I assume, from the chapter, that he won't be watched)? Seems like a unnecessary risk to me. *shrug* Excellent story so far.  |
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| Darkom95 | Sep 25 2009, 11:14 PM Post #6 |
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Mudcrab
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Well, here goes my first critique here Let’s hope I don’t disappoint anyone. I think I’ll try this one a bit more organized, putting it into a few broad categories. I started off just doing it chronologically, but it got too messy to post it that way. First one (as always) grammar: I’m not the best with mechanics, but I felt a few things were distractingly off in your story. Specifically these two quotes: “Good day young man,” the visitor said, an Imperial in rich red robes, whilst smiling warmly. This could easily be moved around to make it a little less awkward: “Good day young man,” the visitor, an Imperial in rich red robes, said with a smile. Or better still: “Good day young man,” the robed Imperial said, smiling warmly. Unless you really want that red part in there, I’d opt for the second one. “The ordinators closed the trapdoor and left, still listening out for any signs of danger, the trapdoor exploding, Hirall's screams.” This one didn’t really catch my attention for comma use so much as the vagueness of it. Why did Hirall scream again? It doesn’t say anything about it in the next part- he’s still alive- and I have no idea what happened. I only got that those things are what the ordinators are looking out for after five or six times reading it. Clarification would be helpful. Next up is description and flow: The overall feel and pace isn’t half bad (though the journey to Vivec could have used a bit more description to slow it down), but the description leaps in and out of focus. The beginning is pretty good at telling us the scene, but then the picture gets fuzzy when we try to look at the kid. Imagine the first scenes of a movie like this: it would start with just a far away view of the kid, but it would eventually give us a close up on his face. We never figured out what he looked like. The same problem persists throughout the story: the scenes are good, but the characters feel kind of far off in your descriptions. I have a bit more to say on these, but I’ll focus on those later if the problem persists. Dialogue and character: This is always a big thing for me, and boy does this story have potential. The character’s personalities don’t feel quite set yet, and because of that their dialogue doesn’t follow a set path. Is Hirall kind or cold, professional or a people person? Is the kid derisive or simply logically efficient? I can’t read their emotions, thus I can’t figure out their personalities. All I’m running on at this point are stereotypes. I do feel that this kid has a lot of potential to be used in a very cool way. Between his multiple personalities (nice job conveying that, by the way) and his mysterious past, he can really turn into the uber Hannibal Lecter we all love so much. However, his dialogue feels more like a normal, sane person. I want to be able to come into the story at any point and figure out this dude is messed up. I for one feel he is a little too talkative and submissive, though this could work if we heard a bit more of his thoughts and rationalizations. Of course, an awesome protagonist does not make up a story. We need strong, fleshed out side characters. In this case: Eno and Hirall. I’ll start with the robed Imperial. Hirall, to me, seems the least concrete character of them all. At first he feels nice and almost fatherly, but then at the end he becomes a part of the scenery. I think that you have two options with him: make him a professional man that follows orders with zeal, or a nice guy that looks at his superior’s actions with a slight frown. Either roughen up the dialogue at the beginning, or show us exactly what he is feeling at the end. Even if you decide he is to be a cold killer, we still need to know a bit more about him at the end. I know it is from a close third person, and the narrator doesn’t know anything the protagonist doesn’t, but you can still throw in some insinuations. I’ve got another suggestion, but I’ll get to that later. Eno is almost the same way. At first it feels like he is going to be a nice teacher, but then he throws the kid in a cell. This would work much more nicely if you were to throw in more hints about him lying; that is, if you want him to be the kind of instructor that punishes by taking away food for a week. And from what I see from the plot so far, Eno and Hirall need to get their personalities straight fast. (One last thing about Eno’s dialogue, make his explanation of the collar shorter) Any further musings are pointless unless I know where you intend to go with them, just know that they need to be conveyed more strongly and without changing. Before I go on to plot, I have one thing I really need to say: why, oh why, did you put that blindfold on Gladius? It feels out of my impression of his character to have him even let them do that (once again, he feels too submissive), and more importantly it severely limits your ability to describe some very crucial points in the story. I know that mystique is usually a good thing, but here it feels pointlessly restricting. I see nothing in there that can’t be done with him seeing everything, and it would really help you characterization, descriptions, flow, and so much more. Ok, with that said, I’ll quickly sum up the plot thus far: As an intro should, you haven’t told us too much about the story. An intro needs to introduce the characters, with a little mention of the plot at the end to keep the reader’s intrigue. It feels like you tried to get on with the story too quickly; I might even recommend splitting this up into two chapters: the scene in the prison as the introduction, then a time skip into Vivec starting the second. The pace is just a little rushed; not too bad, but still could use some slowing down. And the best way to do that is to describe the characters, their feelings, and good dialogue. I won’t take stabs in the dark at the future story, but I have one thing I really need to say: if you timeskip to Gladius being older, make him much more reserved and angry. At the same time, make him so self confident and egotistic that the reader starts out disliking him. But that’s only if you timeskip, if not then I suggest simply making him more crazy and violent. Perhaps have one personality be cold and calculating and the other overly violent and rebellious. I love looking at all the potential this story has If I were writing it, I wouldn’t be able to decide between a timeskip or an event that makes the future of the Tong depend on him (but he doesn’t care). Both sound so awesome!Thanks for writing, I am really looking forward to where you are taking this. Keep it up  PS As you continue to expose the characters, I'm usually able to read and critique them more efficiently. So I'll be able to give you much better advice on them later. |
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4:57 AM Nov 29
