Writer’s Workshop Submissions. Cycle 2, Week 3

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hello folks, and welcome back to the writer’s workshop… as was discussed here, the competition has had a bit of a facelift, and we’ll see the full effects once we begin cycle 3 (in two weeks)… :+1:

starting with this week’s entries though, we’ll be incorporating a few of the new changes, which will be explained in the rules below… thanks, and have fun! :smile:

So here it is, week 3 of the second cycle of the Writer’s Workshop competition, and the theme for this week, thanks to @DrLank is - “The discovery of magic in Stonehearth”.

So, go for it. You can submit any story related to the theme.

Here are the revised set of rules and requirements:

  • You can only submit one story per week. And in the interest of making this manageable (for the community to read and review), we’re asking for submissions to be no more than 400 words.

  • [color=#8B0000]Week specific requirement:[/color] the names Tom and Tony must be incorporated into your story.

  • Vote for as many stories as you want - simply ‘like’ the associated post by clicking the heart at the bottom of the submission.

  • Keep all discussion of this week over here, as anything in this thread that isn’t a story will be moved or deleted.

Story submissions will close on the Wednesday August 28st, and the winners of this cycle will be announced the following Thursday.

We want to see all stories regardless of ability as we’re thinking about the possibility of having future awards such as ‘most improved writer’, so don’t feel like you can’t submit!

p.s. Don’t forget to stop by the theme bank to submit your own suggestion for a topic. Also, feel free to take a look at the theme schedule to see what themes are coming next!

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Once upon a time…

Nah, actually, just screw it. There was a kid named Jlejjfne’n. He went outside of his house one day, never to return. He had gotten lost. This was unfortunate in some ways, but far better in a slew of others! The reason he had gotten lost was the fact that a portal had entranced him. He wandered to close, and yadayada. Once he was sucked into the vortex, he found himself in a voxelly world. The locals hailed him as a god, and the chieftans of the two villages, Tom and Tony, from the villages Tomtony and Tonytom, praised him as a hero. The end.

Now onto the real story: After Whatshisface got sucked into the portal, the portal closed up, as normal, but not before a small meteorite fell through after the kid. Now, this wasn’t any ordinary rock. It was from a land called Americaa! This land was strange and arcane, and so was the rock. So, after it fell through, Whathisface discovered it, and he was imbued with mystical powers, such as flying, and casting fireballs.

One day, as he was flying around, he discovered a sort of altar. What he discovered was that the altar strengthened his powers, so he liked it, but Tom and Tony warned him to steer clear. They said," That is the source of strange things. You should not go near it anymore."

End of Part 1

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“Alright man, so I think we’ve got the crafting system pretty much nailed.”

“Sounds good, good job finishing it up Tony.”

“Only one problem…I noticed that when we try to craft certain items, it literally just skips the animation and the item appears on its own. The debugging doesn’t even seem to notice, so I can’t get it to fix. Want to give it a shot?”

“Sure, I’ll see if I can figure it out.”

Three hours later…

“Any luck yet Tom?”

“You know what, I give up, let’s just leave it.”

“How are we going to explain the item just appearing out of nowhere?”

“Haha! I’ve totally got this, check it out, magic.”

“…we did talk about implementing magic…sure, what the hell. There is now officially magic in Stonehearth.”

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Sweat beaded on her brow, as Isabelle worked her dagger into a peculiar opening in the cave floor.

"We're close to something Luke. Can't you feel it?"

Luke continued to scan the surroundings, as if at any moment, the growing shadows might pull free from the walls.

"Yeah, sis. It's amazing. Can we wrap this up? We're already an hour overdue to check in with the rest of the expedition."

Even as he uttered the request, Luke knew it would fall on deaf ears. There was no reasoning with Isabelle once she had a taste of success. Proving herself to Council of Geologists was well within her grasp now.

"Can you just imagine the look on Tom's face when I return with an entirely new discovery? We haven't had any advances in the field since Tony of Cannondale unearthed those massive veins of terbidiu..."

Suddenly, her dagger slipped through the gap in the floor, which had now widened enough to engulf her arm. Isabelle plunged forward and hardly had time to shriek before the momentum had driven her head into the surrounding rock.

"Isabelle!"

Luke sprinted towards his sister, now sprawled across the slowly widening hole. He prayed he would reach her in time. As he drew near, his pace slowed. He could feel a power emanating from below the gap. Luke gingerly reached for his sister, afraid to move too quickly for fear of causing the hole to swallow them both.

"Belle. Listen to me. I'm going to toss you my belt. Try your best, but don't struggle to reach it. I'll... I'll get you out of this. I promise."

Isabelle slowly began to regain consciousness. As she opened her eyes, Luke thought he saw a sense of calmness envelope his sister. She remained motionless, but surveyed the situation as if everything was happening, just as it was destined.

"Luke. It's OK Luke. I... I can't quite explain it, but I think I'm meant for this."

Gripped with fear, Luke watched his sister slowly lower herself into the hole, that was now emanating a soft blue light.

"Please Isabelle. Don't do this. You're delirious! You can't possibly know what you're doing!"

Luke stared helplessly as his sister dangled precariously over the hole. Her body was now completely aglow from the blue light that had increased in intensity, as if it were growing anxious. Isabelle smiled weakly.

"Goodbye Luke. Never give up the search. And know that I am Raya's first."

The last thing Luke saw of his sister was a look of complete contentment, as Isabelle plunged into the pulsating blue void.

So was born, the first Child of Raya.

– An excerpt from Raya’s Emergence, transcribed by Atrarius, High Chronicler of the Light’s Ascension

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reminder: submissions conclude in three days… then we have the last week of cycle 2, and then we start with an entirely new writer’s workshop! :smile:

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-The Light’s Ascension was asked to look into a number of assaults by deformed demonic pillow monsters one being on the twin children, Tom and Tony during a pillow fight, of the High Animal Tamer.-

“But what do you mean a ‘Tear’?” Kenixe asked.

Ightust cut a piece of fabric from his shirt, about 3x3 voxles large, and promptly cut a hole through the center voxel.

“We’re at all times next to another universe, and this is where the area between the two are the easiest to penetrate, the exact area is up there, right in the center of that stone archway.”

“Your not seriously gonna open it are you? We’d need a much larger team to even know anything about the different plane, let along go inside it’s never been done before!”

“Well, let’s be the first to try, It’s probably just the fluffy pillows dimension, remember all those Demonic pillows all over the place?”

“Well, those demonic pillows made it through the portal then, what chance do we have to get through alive, let alone whole!”

“What is our point to come here and find a stone archway if we’re never gonna go through it, come on!”

Ightust Immediately raced for the stone archway, stopping next to it.

"Come on, why not? I believe the trip will be instantaneous as we are just walking through a doorway, It will be easy!

And before she had a chance to react, a large Titanic pillow arm came through the stone arch, and grabber her brother, Pulling him in, she raced forward, only to find the portal had closed, it appeared to be a door that opened outward, with no handle outside.

He was Later retrieved 3 years later, having lived off cotton fluff and chicken feathers, he was quickly found to have had his mind tampered with by the years of pillows, but with a small amount of magic, his mind was restored and he continued his work for the Light’s Ascension.

*-Excerpt from “The Discovery of Gateways” in 139, Portal mission issued by the The Light’s Ascension in 138.
(Yes, i DID steal The Light’s Ascension from Steve, It’s called a reference! It was just THAT good!)

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Timothy, or Tom as they called him, was out one day by the river with his twin brother Tony, gathering water from the stream that ran down the rocky mountainside. Every week, looking up at the cliffside, he would see something through the waterfall. There was always a dim red light, and a pair of gray eyes. After years of regarding it as an apparition, and a figment of his imagination, he told his poor brother Tony to see what was behind the dark waterfall.

Inside the cave, Tony found an old lantern, which had long since run out of oil, and a broken pickaxe, seemingly mounted to the wall. It was then that Tony saw that this was no cave. It was a man-made room in which he presumed dark practices took place. He could see through a corridor a light-blue glow, and he couldn’t venture further alone.

After reuniting, the two ventured forth into the corridor, and found skulls and skeletons piled to their necks. Yet they trudged through the dead masses, eager to find what was on the other side of the tunnel.

As they reached the end, they found an old man, dead on the cold floor next to his desk. There was not more than a single book beside him, written in a language so cryptic, it looked like the man had only drawn skewed lines in a notebook. There was nothing else to be found in the room. Discouraged, they walked back down the corridor, but then Tom pointed out that they never found the source of the blue glow. It wasn’t in the old man’s study, so it must have been buried in the pile of those once living.

After digging through the bones, they found a single orb. The twin brothers tried everything, making a wish for themselves, for others, for the old man. Then they thought, they must have to command the orb in it’s own language. Yet the only one who could speak the language was the old man. So they came up with a different plan.

They put the orb in the old man’s right hand, and rested the book upon his left hand, and the old man sprung to life. After thanking Tom and Tony for bringing him back to full vigor, he taught them the ways of Majick (mājeek), but the brothers didn’t choose to use it for good.

Tom and Tony never passed on their knowledge, used their newfound power for fame and fortune, and granted themselves eternal life. Although the one thing they forgot was power. But who really needs political power, when you have the power of Majick?..

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reminder: submissions close tomorrow morning, with voting continuing through thursday…

some excellent cough hack entries so far!

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The Origin of Magic: Spoils of the Titan

It was an awkward time for the town of Liyl. Now, you might wonder why we’d use that particular word to describe it.

Well. There was always the threat of goblin attacks nowadays, more so since the lumber team accidentally squished their chief leader with a falling tree a few weeks back.

But perhaps more prevailing was the fact that the bustling town had just fought a Titan—some sort of humongous tree (massive thing, enough to squash about fifty goblin chiefs, easy). They didn’t have many carts or horses in Liyl, so they sort of had to…leave the body.

So yes, having to leave the revolting, decaying mass of a Titan right outside your village in a field is a little awkward.

A pair of brothers led the town, named Tom and Tony—popular names of the time, I assure you. Everybody seemed to be using them. Tony was a rather curious and inventive one, but his ideas always seemed to get shot down by his brother.

Tony: “Well, if we collected the pumpkins from the harvest and filled them with explosives…

Tom: “Nope.”

Tony: “Well how about we take another giant tree and head on over to the goblins—

Tom: “—DEFINITELY NOPE.”

Tony: “Okay, okay…You sure about the pumpkins?”

Tom: “Look, will you go back to the workshop? I have to take care of some things here. And I swear, if you set the weaver’s place on fire again…”

There were still some supplies to collect today though, so Tony head out to finish up. His trek brought him unexpectedly to the Titanic Ruin, the open grave of the colossal tree giant. A strange, fine bluish hue came from the mass—a sort of fungus, maybe? It looked like sand and scattered in the wind upon touch. He took a few flasks, and hurried back.

The next day, Tony spent his time off skipping rocks on the pond. Yet as he was about to cast a stone, it dropped.

Where the stone WOULD have gone was a ball of flames, crashing into the pond with a huge SPLOOSH.

Tony: “What was THAT…?!”

His hands still glowed softly, like the Ruin had. What was this strange energy?

Perhaps…it was the life force of the Titan…?

It looked like Liyl’s trouble with trees wasn’t over yet…

To be continued?

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Dark, so dark. At the beginning it was just all solidly black, not even a speck of light penetrated the rubble behind me.
Of course this was a silly idea to begin with, but when you are a teenager and nothing else is exciting enough, well even bad ideas seem exciting after a while, so the two Masters brothers Tom and Tony and me went to the old mineshaft.

It was one of the first the city miners build and then they were unexperienced so this accident was really bound to happen.
And here I am in darkness with a ton of debris cutting me off.
Normally if there is some residual light one could start to see nuances in the darkness, but it was pitch black.

After a while though I imagined a far away sound, was it a sound?
My earlier tries to remove some debris just resulted in more stones and dirt coming lose.
So I started moving and hoped I would not fall down some hole,
carefully step by step I moved, if up or down, backward or forward I could not say.

Honestly I lost track of time, the hunger slowly became unbearable and the thirst was kicking in strong and concerned me greatly.
This was it – I would die here – I was sure of it.

First I did not truly register it, but then I saw – wait I saw? – yes indeed there was a bluish glow crawling along what must have been the walls of the cave passage I was in.
The next sight I saw catched me completely off guard .
It was a sphere of light – I never saw a sphere before, but I was sure that this must be what it would look like.

There was something within it, the object that was emerging this light was shifty.
In fact it changed forms slowly, from a cube to a sphere and back.
I was so numb by now that I did not even hesitate to just go ahead and grab it, normally one would be too afraid, but I felt nothing.

The next moments were blurry, something inquiring bored into my mind.
Suddenly I was at the mine entrance standing before a crowd of people here to rescue me, over my right hand the object floated impressively.

And that was how I became the first mage.

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submissions for this week are now closed… thanks to everyone for the wonderful submissions!

voting will close on Thursday… good luck! :smiley: