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Darkness Reign

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1/24/2011 12:12:10   
mastin2
Member

In the world filled with Darkness, a single man has seen it all, from every viewpoint he can. He's watched the suffering the Reign of terror has caused, having failed to stop it before. This man has no name to call his own, having had too many names to go by over the years. But what would happen if he were to try again? Maybe his timing before was off. Perhaps it is time for him to allow himself to become the hero he once was. His name had faded away into legend, a myth everyone knows but few believe.
"The man behind the myth is not as great as he is made out to be."
But...what if...what if he could be? No, what if...what if he was actually greater than anything which had been told of him?

He's sick of hiding. He will face his rebirth, and become what he was meant to be:
The messenger from the heavens, sent to stop the Devil known only as Ati.

So, do you remember Darkness Reign, that old story I used to make? Which wasn't important enough to get its own thread, and so I stuck it into my Library? Well, I decided to begin rewriting it to be a little bit better. Obviously, it's far from perfect, but hey, I've got to start somewhere. ;)

This is basically the start of me having a sort-of rebirth on the forum. Revising my older stories to be fully up to par with what I am capable with--okay, not quite, but close enough! :P
I found it fitting that Darkness Reign should be my choice.

Darkness Reign.

  • Introduction
  • Part One
  • Part Two
  • Part Three


    < Message edited by mastin2 -- 2/2/2011 19:53:57 >
    • Post #: 1
    1/24/2011 12:39:02   
    mastin2
    Member

    		The Introduction has been posted. Some notes about this chapter:

  • I'm glad the forum actually DOES have the font Papyrus; I was a little worried that I only had Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet (which all have differences but look pretty darn similar), and Courier New.
  • I'm well-aware that the story contains a *little* info-dumping. :P I removed most of it, but I consider the first five Parts to be full of Info-Dump to be a necessary part of the story. If I ever got around to writing the new chapters (Part Five is as far as I'll go), they won't contain info-dumping at all, with luck; that's what I'm using the first five for. That said, while it can be annoying (particularly in some places), I tried to make the story not be overwhelmed by the info-dump.
  • I tend not to use double-italics (that is, unitalicizing something which is italicized to represent how it'd normally be italicized), but for some reason, chose to have it for the pyromancer guild. It has an official name, but that's the name most people used for it.
  • "Fire" is always capitalized, because it's the name of an element. "Fire", "Ice", "Earth", "Metal", and "Air/Wind" (I forget which is the real name, but I think it's Wind) are the names of an element. When used as a normal word (like "the fire burned hot", "the metal was cold to the touch", "he hit the earth hard" "the wind blew across her face", etc.) it's supposed to be lower-cased, but whenever it's supposed to be the element, it should be capitalized.
  • Similarly, I decided "Rune" (singular) should always be capitalized when referring to a specific type of rune. "Fire Rune" and "acid Rune" are examples. I believe it applies to plurals as well. When talking about a Rune without a specific ("that Rune"), I think it can be either, but when talking about runes in general, it can be lower-case. Only when it's specific (like "Ice Runes") would it be capitalized. I believe, anyway. I'll need to double-check my notes to be sure, but I do know that--at the very least--when referring to a specific type of Rune, it's going to be capitalized.

    < Message edited by mastin2 -- 1/25/2011 15:19:54 >
    • Post #: 2
    1/25/2011 15:18:55   
    mastin2
    Member

    		And now, Part One is out. Notes about this chapter:
  • Lots of info-dumping. Many of the times, both of them know everything Darvic is saying; he's saying it for the audience's convenience. I might need to better justify it, but that's for a later day. Something like that she knows the basics, but doesn't know the more advanced level, which Darvic--having been the one who made the choice--obviously does.

  • ~-You'll note I'm pretty repetitive with the way I transition to the images being displayed, instead of his narrative. It was originally accidental, but I'm thinking of making it intentional. I'm actually thinking of including a lot more italics--not describing scenes in the flashback, but rather, Darvic's face as he tells the story. This also would allow me to alter some of the italics to contain less information about the scene and let Darvic handle that. For example:

    "An image comes up of the World Map. On it, Helios is shown, but it is not a huge star. Instead, it is the tiniest dot on the map. When zooming in, the small village is revealed as the poor town it really was. An image of Darvic is shown as a boy."

    I'm thinking that'd become something like "An image comes up of the World Map. Darvic smiles, sensing the curiosity about there being no visible representation of Helios. Looking for a huge star? You won't find it. It's on there, but it's the tiniest dot there. The image zooms in on the location of Helios, and it eventually becomes visible, as a small village. That, right there, is what Helios was: the poor town it used to be, which nobody knows about. The image continues to zoom in, to just outside the central hut. A young boy is sleeping against the wooden abode, shivering in the cold. Recognize him? He's Darvic as a boy--me, outside the village elder's dwelling, seeping off of what little heat escapes from the fireplace in there."

    You can see the difference between the two, but eh, I'll fix it later. The goal of this project wasn't to bring this up to the maximum level of my ability, but rather, to bring it up to my normal level of ability (that's what I mean by "okay, not quite, but eh, close enough!"), my casual writing. What's there is what I'd write naturally. (And did!) The above is probably an example of my best. (Your Mileage May Vary, of course, but *I* think it's better than what's actually there.) Alright, not my best-best (that generally requires more than just the improvisation I did above :P), but pretty darn good, compared to what's there, but what you see in the story was--again--just my average writing. I didn't go above and beyond to make it as powerful as I could have. I let it be a little info-dumpish, telling instead of showing. (When you're pretty much advised to do "show, don't tell" universally, nowadays.) Trust me; it was worse before, so this IS better than it was.

  • You might've noticed the small font when the Pyromancer is speaking. That's Sylfaen, which looks pretty similar to TNR in Word. (I wanted to differentiate between speech in the recording [which is normal italics] and HER speech, so I got a font for it which was similar enough to not be a problem.) It seems a bit small (ironic; it's a little larger in Word), so I might want to increase its size.

    PLOT:

  • His rise to power. I'm a bit sketchy on the details, but his trial introduced him to the political world, and he was soon able to manipulate it to his advantage. Once he got started, he continued to grow his village, into a town, then a city. To gain further political power and make the transition from a city into a nation, he chose a Great Nation to worship. His particular choice encouraged population growth, making his nation boom into an empire. He gained a few enemies, of course, but most people respected him enough to be allies.
  • The injury. I'm not sure when it happens, exactly, but it happens, nonetheless. This was the result of two different versions of the story. In one, he just retired because he was getting tired of being the King. In the other, the arrow forced his retirement; what kind of leader of a nation has only one eye? That'd be a serious impediment to his job! I liked both versions, so I decided that he was getting tired of the job, and the arrow injury was the perfect excuse he needed to retire.

    < Message edited by mastin2 -- 1/25/2011 15:31:48 >
    • Post #: 3
    1/25/2011 21:38:22   
    demolitiondragon
    Constructively Friendly!


    		 Excellent to see you back, Mastin! =D

    When there's a bit more time, I'll jump back on here for a read. ;)
    Post #: 4
    1/26/2011 13:09:29   
    mastin2
    Member

    		Heh, it feels good to be back. ;)
    Small confession: I don't have Part Five written, so I'm thinking about skipping my update today to work on writing it.
    (Introduction-Part Five are all of what I had for the original, just rewritten to be of a higher quality.)

    Again, do keep in mind when you read, however, that this isn't meant to be top-of-the-line for me. I'm not trying to create my best; I'm trying to bring it up from my worst. :P (Okay, so Darkness Reign wasn't my WORST, but it's far from what's currently mediocre.)
    Maybe someday--when I have more freetime (this takes me a few hours a day minimum as it is, just to get it to mediocre quality. To make it a full-blown top-of-my-work level...well, that'd take a lot longer. Probably 12 hours per part, if I had to guess, as a minimum) I'll bring it up to par with my maximum ability. (Which is on my novel version of Life of a Mortal. Well, the prologue, at least. And my begun rewrite.
    Closest thing I have here to my top is my Disease rewrite. But even that, I've since rewritten, to cut out a great deal and make the plot flow more easily.
    ...What? Don't stare at me like that! I'm good at rewriting things, not at finishing them. :P) Maybe even continue the story. (Got the beginning and end down well. Middle? ...Not so much.)
    Post #: 5
    1/28/2011 14:00:20   
    mastin2
    Member

    		And now, Part Two is out!

    Notes:
  • Interesting fact: Darkness Reign is now the fiftieth story I have in Creative Prose.
  • I'm extremely depressed. The forum where I have a lot of history, the forum where I have a lot of unique notes on my stories spanning ages back, the forum with a lot of content I never put anywhere else, was deleted. That's a lot of valuable information, poof, gone in an instant, never to be recovered again.
    Ah, well. What can you do?
  • I might--when I do bring this up to full detail--describe the scenes in far more detail than what I have. Show him doing his entire campaign in his rise to be a King as Part One, not just the highlights which I have, now. Show him doing all of his training as a Cobra, not just some key points. These span years of his life. I can flesh them out. Heck, they could be novels of their own if I wanted them to be. (Actually, that might be a better idea. Considering that he's not trying to tell his life's story, he's essentially giving highlights intentionally. Though even if I decide not to flesh them out, I can still make the highlights better--see my post about Part One.)

    STORY:
  • The part about the eye being fixed with a piece of the gem has lampshading on how it seems to create a plot hole. Passing on his sword, and his special eye being made from the ruby in his sword, were both elements of the story...just in two different versions. :P I realized this, and decided it needed a quick explanation.
  • I also lampshade the unusual-ness of the color in his weapons and armor. I decided not to include the quote from the original as an explanation, because they both KNOW it and take it so for granted, there's no way I could get away with it:
    quote:

    Don’t ask me how they got green and red steel and carbon. I just wanted it, and again, they managed to get it. We do live in a magical world, after all.
    While an awesome quote and a little humorous, they don't know what a world without magic would be like, so there's no way I can fit it into the story.
  • With even more lampshading, I point out how heavy he SHOULD be with all the weapons he carries (and carried) around. The simple solution is, of course: Magic. (A wizard did it! :P)
  • There's also the repeated lampshade on how large his arsenal was, how over-the-top it'd be, and how he could probably never actually use that many.

    OTHER:
  • Keep in mind that italicized text doesn't automatically mean "flashback"--for example, Darvic pointing to his arm is not in a flashback; it's right there. That's why I always have something like "an image is shown", to distinguish between them. (I could do more variety on the words I use, but as mentioned, for some reason, I want to keep it.)
  • You might complain that this isn't a formal enough way of doing the storytelling, with phrases like "Nah." in there. Keep in mind, Darvic is a real person, talking to a single person. He's trying to bring her up to speed on the basics, not tell everyone the full narration. If he was, he'd be more formal, obviously. The casual-ity is intentional.
  • Sorry about the small text in the end. In Word, it's size eight, versus the standard 12. Here, going size=1 reduced the size slightly, but not enough. I decided I needed a font to make it look smaller, and I chose Browallia New. (Or something like that.) It worked, perhaps a bit too well. It's meant to represent Darvic whispering.

    < Message edited by mastin2 -- 1/28/2011 14:01:38 >
    • Post #: 6
    1/28/2011 19:14:14   
    Anastira
    Member

    		a summary of mine. It's not done, but I'll post it if you can please answer my question...it would be a great help.

    Four paths intertwined...
    And the Lore of old comes true.
    In the North, the great master of Shadow, Sanivir, plots to take the world. It will be his – and everyone shall fear his name and presence. He sends a young girl, Taima, to fulfill his wishes, along with another of his apprentices, a teenage boy named Rianth.
    In the West, the young girl Solreyah, her friends Nessyr and Byantha, know nothing of the coming danger – that is, until all but Solreyah are taken into captivity by Sanivir and a stranger tells Solreyah of the danger. Drena, Solreyah’s woman-friend and Wrangar – a Moonfox-human who can assume either form – aids Solreyah in the battle. She does her best to teach Solreyah the art of war, first by having her compete in the Tournament, a vicious Warriors’-game held between the Warrior Holds every year.
    In the East lies the Shadowlands, an unexplored area of the world which not one would venture to, except Drena – for it is the Wrangar’s homeland and birthplace. There they travel each year to honor their ancestors and the nature that created them.
    And in the South lies the greatest mystery of all.
    The last Emphora – Lady of the Miste – and the Lone Isle, along with the Drasons and the somewhat vicious and war-centered native tribal peoples there. And still, the last Emphora’s plan is veiled, hidden to all but those of the Lone Isle, and Drena, who has foresight – but even she does not see the future clearly.
    Still lies undiscovered the Lady of Miste and her plans.

    _____________________________
    AQW  Post #: 7
    2/1/2011 14:55:38   
    mastin2
    Member

    		Uh, Anastria, I think you meant to post in another thread?
    Post #: 8
    2/2/2011 19:52:29   
    mastin2
    Member

    		Part Three is Out!

    Notes:

    PLOT:
  • Yes, the Rangers were extremely powerful, more so than you'd think. They traded quantity for quality. While not the best individual fighters in the world, they were the best group of fighters in the world, elite of the elite. Only later did a group (made up of the best individual fighters in the world) surpass them.
  • I fully admit that Darvic seems quite overpowered. Trust me; there's a reason. This is also why he's suffered basically every cliche he can. It's quite intentional.
  • Same goes for Ati, too.

    OTHER:
  • Like the poem? It was completely improvised.
  • Uhg, I hate conflicting stories. The scene with the Cobras had, like, four different versions for it. As does the Helios Siege. It was bad enough with only two. >_<
  • It Just Wasn't Enough is something intentionally repeated, multiple times, for good reason. He really was out-classed by Ati, but there's a darn-good reason for it.
    • Post #: 9
    2/6/2011 20:15:24   
    1412.
    Member

    		Pretty good, Keep up the good work ^^
    AQ DF MQ AQW Epic  Post #: 10
    2/7/2011 15:07:16   
    mastin2
    Member

    		Thanks. :)
    I'll have Part Four out...hmm, maybe tomorrow, but it might wait 'til Wednesday.
    Post #: 11
    Page:   [1]
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