In as Many Words [Octoberish Discussion]

[limetom]

This is the discussion thread for the October Contest.  Get to it...

[limetom]

Note, I have made a rule addendum:

RULE ADDENDUM: At least, the entry should be 150 words long.

It has already been added to the thread.

[Elven Doritos]

Submitted my entry

[Steerpike]

Submitted my entry as well (exactly 499 words!).  It's sort of somewhere between the Edge Chronicles and Scar Night, injected with some cosmic horror.

I really like your entry, Elven Doritos - it delivers a vast amount of information in a very short space.  Are you envisioning the PCs as agents of the Nazis and Soviets, or primarily of other factions?

[Elven Doritos]

Thanks, Steerpike. I figured that'd be up to the players or the GM, though that could ensue in an argument about players' rights and systems of game governance.

[Gamer Printshop]

I posted one (exactly 500 words) though I was only trying to get close, I kept track of word count early on, even editing some unnecessary verbage at around 261 words. I continued to type, pretty much saying everything I needed, then checked the word count - oh, 500 words. Stop.

This is actually based on a novel idea, I never wrote, from back in my college days, 28 years ago! While not as well worded or eldritch as Abysm, I thought I'd participate too.

GP

[LD]

What's with all the space-based ideas. Limetom- I think you had a not-so-subtle influence with the photograph you chose to introduce the contest (!)

--
Sarisa: Halactor's description seemed interesting, but the name and everything else just reminds me of Waterdeep and Halaster the Mad's endless tunnels underneath the city. The writing is evocative, though.
-
GP- I like the bolding of "we didn't ask to go there" it drew me right in. Regrettably, the "prison planet" idea didn't speak to me. I think I read something like this in some greg bear fiction or one of the military sci-fi authors. When you came up with the idea 28 years ago I don't think it had been done, but since then- even a movie... I think Pitch Black? Did the prison planet. (Firefly also did one). I don't particularly like brutal settings but some people here might. I like settings where light and dark areas can coexist. The last paragraph is very good- I really liked that image of the narrator's plotting.

[limetom]

What's with all the space-based ideas. Limetom- I think you had a not-so-subtle influence with the photograph you chose to introduce the contest (!)

I am going to reject that logically sound criticism and blame you for everything. :3

[Gamer Printshop]

I think I originally came up with the idea shortly after my first time reading Frank Herbert's Dune. So that was more where the influence came. In the original storyline, a young and up-in-coming bionuclear scientist was working on an abandoned project, against the wishes of his seniors, so when he asked where he could obtain the biological specimin to continue work on the bionuclear project, his enemies got the Imperial government to send him where the material existed - on Heap.

A single celled organism from the galactic core had a long stable lifetime floating in space, but when circumstances were right, it induced cellular mytosis and split into two cells, releasing tremendous amount of fusion energy, similar to the process of splitting an atom.

The scientist is sentenced to Heap, where he is forced to join a combat gang in order to survive. While continuing in his own research. He discovers another discovered bioform that is attracted to the fusion bug and is able to contain the energy caused in mytosis. The scientist figures out a way to develop starfaring engines and weapon systems from the biomaterial.

He eventually becomes a renegade "Paul Atreides" type anti-hero leading the prisoners to escape and retribution onto the empire using their bionuclear technology to do so...

I didn't mention it, due to lack of word space, but also this plotline is more a campaign set in Heap, rather than the setting itself.

But I guess I should have written it back then, and maybe I'd been first in creating a prison world... oh well!

GP

PS: I only submitted an entry to participate, not that I thought I had a chance to win, just to have some fun!

[LD]

>>PS: I only submitted an entry to participate, not that I thought I had a chance to win, just to have some fun!

Well you might win. I didn't say it was bad, just that it didn't appeal to me.

Hm. the original storyline you have seems interesting- very Alan Dean Foster-ish. reminds me of Sentenced To Prism's structure- in a good- original way.

>>But I guess I should have written it back then, and maybe I'd been first in creating a prison world... oh well!

Hm. Well, sadly I think penal-colony Australia was going to beat you to that punch outside of fiction but inside of fiction you may have been the first :)

[limetom]

Congratulations to ElDo, winner of the Octoberish Contest.

[Elven Doritos]

Space Nazis: fun for the whole family.