Other July 2013 Challenge Over.

[DreamingofRoses]

Congratulations to the winner of the June 2013 Challenge: Lux__Wolf with "Rather Burn than to Freeze"


Previous Winners:


Grey, Prose "A Season of Plague"


Kashael, Artwork, "Grief"


Ehmygirl, Prose, "The Decay of Infatuation"


No fanfare this time guys. Sorry for being late, but look! Competition stuff:


Themes of the Month: Eye of the Storm, Ancient Evil


OR


You can do an exercise in culture building.


Go here: http://chaoticshiny.com and choose 3 generators. Preferably, one of them ought to be the Civilization Generator but it's not required. Tell use which generators you chose, which results you got and show us the story/art you built around it. (Hint: stories from the made up civs count)


OR


http://i.imgur.com/yPjBnKv.jpg Choose one. Tell us what you chose and write/draw a scene from it or the whole thing.


Competition ends July 27, 2013


Also I'm working on ideas for rewards for competition winners. Ideas are welcome.

 

[Myllinnia]

This time, this time certainly! I will have a submission!

 

[Grey]

Badges! BADGES FOR THE BADGE GOD.


Not quite feeling the themes this month, but we'll see how it goes.

 

[Alexandra]

<snip>
Also I'm working on ideas for rewards for competition winners. Ideas are welcome.

Badges! BADGES FOR THE BADGE GOD.

I think that would be interesting.


Could even make, if people like?

 

[Lux___Wolf]

Themes: Eye of the Storm, Ancient Evil

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The Civilization Generator

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Time Period: Near Future | Shaping Force: Technology | Population: Mostly human

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Political Structure: Tribes - often warring | Strong Influence: Religion

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Popular Issue: Terrorism | Stability: Stable

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Personal Freedoms: Somewhat repressed | Scandals: Very rare

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Foreign Relations: Decent | Main Export: Tech-related

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Main Import: Military-related | Tech Focus: Large-scale weapons

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Trade: Slight surplus | Economic Strength: Weak | Wealth: Evenly distributed

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High Values: Charisma | Known for: Poetry | Popular Entertainment: Music

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Respected Profession: Physician/Healer | Discrimination: Attractive-based

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Major Taboo: Certain clothing | Major Social Ill: Addiction

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Military Strength: Strong | Focus: Land | Main Unit: Black Ops

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Soldiers: Draftees and Volunteers | Main Use: National defense

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Rank: Earned over time | Urban: 89% | Rural: 11% | Life: 69 years

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Religion type: Monotheism | Focus: Afterlife | Worship: Daily prayer in private

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Associated art form: Ballads | Holidays: Very often

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Main Climate: Temperate - Forested | Ocean: On all sides | Mountains: None

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Frequent trouble: Windstorms | Wilderness: 4% | Wild Animals: Extremely rare

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Magic occurrence: Very common | Source: Inherent ability | Major use: Law enforcement

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Viewed: With respect | Enchanted Items: Uncommon

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The Tarot Card Generator

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The Five of Hounds: The card depicts a cynical, scarred woman with sharp hazel eyes on a journey among trees while followed by five starving hounds. It is associated with fortitude. Inverted, it represents hatred, a period of severe weather, and a death. The card has a small burn hole.

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The Superstition Generator

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Drawing a weapon near a patch of black flowers often foretells a betrayal.

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"Original Evil"

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Lux___Wolf

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The fog clung onto her like a sickly chill. Across the slopes blanketed in silver leaves, around the naked pillaring barks, and through the moonlit night the sorceress chased the wind on foot. Five hounds ran with her, their thick ribs and gossamer veins exposed. She paused behind a dew-studded trunk. Her eyes, blue as steel, scanned the deafened forest.


The hounds' snouts dragged through the sodden earth and snorted with ravenous hunger but they would find no game. Not a bird dared nest here. It was just a flat rock half eaten by sea. A mere island where trees sway until a storm flings them afar, where the wind was lord.


She hadn't come up this far north since that cloudy day when the North and West tribes talked of peace.


"You've not much changed, Navignon," said the West chief, smoldering in his torchlight as he stepped out behind another tree. His tan face wrinkled. "Taller perhaps, if memory serves."


She clasped his taut hands, "Elkius of West. You came alone."


The chief waved a hand and told her not to fuss but how could she not? The island was small. Its four directions were mighty and merciless. There were men and women who could bury themselves into the trees and the hills.


Then there were those like Navignon. Super humans blessed with magic. They were the law enforcers and vigilantes, large in number, divided in these four tribes. They each believed in the Drake that had brought them wind. At least the South and the West believed that, she thought darkly.


"The North and the East have entwined as one," Elkius said.


"So sudden," Navignon braided her hair out of her face briskly. "One wonders… how long ago the Northeast colluded." She thought of the legend how the islanders were divided into four at their God's request. All were promised a glorious life beyond death as sure as there was peace between them. Wasn't the Drake watching?


"What drove them to this madness, Elkius? Surely they haven't forgotten."


"Hunger twisted them. The season brought little to eat."


A distant snap. Alarmed, they unsheathed their crescent-curved scimitars. Nothing but the moss and the roots but she knew better than to assume. Just one of the dogs, Navignon realized as she watched the hound sniff wildly at the branch it pawed through.


She found it more eerie the fact a patch of glistening black flowers lied at their feet. Drawing a weapon near black flowers, it was said, often foretold a betrayal. She swallowed with difficulty. From the look of their state, it may be as blasphemous as cannibalism.


"There's more troubling news," Elkius stared at the ashen thundercloud that loomed, glimmering behind the trees.


"You think they mean to attack during the tempest."


"Yes," the West chief said and brought out a bundle. "Wearing this."


He flapped it out like a stark flag, a long yellow cloak. Her weathered eyes narrowed. Now this was blasphemous. Yellow was the color of ancient evil. The Drake's long-time nemesis. The Fallen Bones.


She felt the coarse yellow cloth. Poor camouflage. They don't mean to hide, she concluded. They mean to conquer.


"Why turn to the Fallen?" Navignon thought of its charred skeleton. "It's caged. Bottom of the sea. There's no way it …"


"No way at all?" Elkius posed the question.


A sudden draft hit them like a roar, sending the torch in furor. Navignon heard intense whispering at the back of her neck and swung her scimitar. In the distance, a lone yellow shroud stood. Which of the two that the enemy watched, she couldn't tell. Whoever it was, it was alone.


The five hounds went loping over and snarled madly. The barking was all over in an instant, the way the dogs somehow vanished to nothing but air. Then forces of wind swept, barreling the silver leaves towards her.


If God existed, so did the Devil, and there stood the Devil, right there of all places they could've been caught.


"Flee now, Elkius of West," Navignon sent him a scared look and sheathed her scimitar. He reluctantly doused the torchlight and shrank into darkness. When she cracked her hands, popping followed. "This requires other skills, it seems."


By the time she looked back, the yellow cloak already stood several feet away. It stood very still and watched her wordlessly. Navignon's mouth was dry all of a sudden, and she realized it was getting harder to breathe.


She rasped at the shrouded, "Are you the one that fell from the Moon?"


"I am the Moon," an amused voice came.


"Once caged in the sea?"


Its left hand raised, sinewy raw, as it whispered, "In the flesh."


"You c-corrupted us," Navignon tried to talk with an itchy throat.


"What was mine," it stalked her in circles but she refused to have her back to it.


A hum of energy throbbed in her cold palms she balled into fists. Lightning jumped in her steel irises.


She was sure it saw her ferocity. It continued, "You may be the daughter of the Drake but you are also mine. This goes back longer than you can understand, Navignon Hullos, sorceress of the South. You understand nothing."


It was true. She knew nothing but that still mattered little.


Clutching her slowly tightening throat, she asked outright, "Why threaten the Drake?"


"You know not the Drake. It threatens us all. It cares not. And it threatens you, very much so, you who wield the power that was taken from me," the Fallen said. It reared back its hood and revealed a searing-hot skull. Glowing crimson ashes constantly formed and cascaded from it like white dust. Its cheek muscles flayed when it bared a grin, "I suppose it naive to ask for everything back."


All of a sudden, from its hollow eyes, a snake lunged with steamy fangs.


Navignon shouted and swung her head back, her neck evading the strike by an inch. She stumbled on her back and crawled. More snakes hissed in response from the sockets. She put her hands up and incanted in the old and dead dialect.


A lightning bolt plummeted down on them and snapped across the soaked ground. It was fulgent for a moment that even highlighted the crawling maggots inside the cloak. She hadn't missed her target and yet it lived. The Fallen Bones gurgled a laugh as its skull sizzled. Yellow smoke fumed profusely from its empty eyes.


Keep going. Navignon wasted no time with brushing hair out of her eyes; instead, she turned and dug her elbows to propel herself across more ground. Enraged vipers and bones repeatedly stabbed where she lied a moment ago. Just keep going.


She quickly incanted more. Bolt by bolt, the electric whipped around the wrists of the skeleton that still lunged after her. It was almost bound but she couldn't hold it forever. Navignon cried to the thundering skies for the Drake to come.


Clouds blustered with fury. Plasmic flares streaked through the night. She could tell by the jarring tremors in the ground beneath her that the storm was here. But where was the Drake?


Navignon was on her back and felt her throat constrict even tighter. She gasped for air and then gasped for some miracle when she watched a gigantic tree fall slowly on top of her.


Her leg got caught and snapped. She screamed before surrendering to sobs. None of the spells that came to mind could move the monumental trunk that was crushing her and pinning her down.


Soon, the earth went soft and she realized that with it, she was sinking, being buried alive. Over the mossy trunk, the Fallen dragged its upper half of its torn torso and snarled at the sight of her.


"Where is your mighty Snake of the Sky now, sorceress?" the Fallen raged. "You think you know the face of evil. You'd hate to meet the maker." It crawled on top of her and wrestled with her jabbing hands. "Where do you think I came from, dim mortal?"


She started incanting again but its spidery fingers wrapped around her throat and squeezed, cutting off her air. She choked long, straining to taste the rain that plopped into her eyes. O God, save me.


The smack was the strangest sound she heard, the smack that knocked the Fallen off her. She coughed, blinked stars, and watched the maggots pour from the shattered cranium. She looked the other way and saw someone stand above her with a broken branch. Thunder spattered.


"Elkius," she croaked as the chief kneeled beside her.


"Look," he pointed through the roaring tempest.


She saw it, just as immediately as she knew what it was he saw.


When the ashen sky lit up white, a cloudy hydra rumbled in its churning spiral, tendrils and claws warped like silk. Her knees buckled. Its nine godly heads with fiery jaws spewing smoke and ash were terrible to witness. The Fallen Bones told her nothing but the truth. Their God, the Drake, was a soaring volcano of dragons. Original evil.


"I damn you first!" the undead screamed out of misery at the storm.


The sky screamed back before a wind threw it up. The cloud serpents snatched and tore apart its bones in their mouths. The Drake launched away slithering with a sonic boom before Navignon blinked. The storm quickly died down and silence returned.


Navignon wept in his feeble arms. He had clutched her close, but he was unable to think of anything to say. She knew there were no words. What they saw ruined life. What they saw they hated. The true face of the Devil, their God. There was no more good in this world then except for weak and animal love. She felt him shudder and join her in weeping.


When Navignon was numb and when she no longer cared that the earth was eating her, she watched the maggots eat into the earth and waited for them to eat her.

 

[Aphet]

I'm definitely going to do this! Probably the Road Eternal... that sounds neat.

 

[DreamingofRoses]

Y'all better start hauling your behinds, my friends. You have til Sunday.

 

[DreamingofRoses]

Alright, guys, Lux_Wolf is the winner by default for this month. I'm actually going to put the Challenges on hiatus for August since there doesn't actually seem to be that much interest for them at the moment. Alex, I'll get the details to you soon.