Contest January-February 2017 Voting Thread

A few more terrible, immature imitations:

14 3000, Part 3: Rise of the Ma-chaos

In a dank alley in one of Itza’s backstreets, a ball of energy appeared, lightning flickering all around. A lizard materialised, scorched, on its knees, and stumbled off into the city. A little while later the same thing happened again - but this time, it was no lizard that appeared.

***

“Zha’raa Ko-nor?” asked the dishevelled lizard.

“Who are you?” said the skink, crossly.

“Come with me if you want to not be ritually sacrificed to the chaos gods,” said the lizard from the future, grabbing her arm and showing her an engraved portrait glyph of herself.

“How did you-?” she began, but she was interrupted by an enormous kroxigor bursting through the wall. It had sunglasses, a pistol and an emotionless expression. An explosive chase scene ensued.

“What is that thing?” asked a traumatised Zha’raa when they eventually escaped - temporarily.

“It’s no kroxigor, that’s for sure. It’s a daemonic exoskeleton with an external layer of reptilian tissue to allow it to blend in. It’s brutal and relentless, and will never stop hunting you.”

“But why?!”

“It’s been sent from the future to kill you. Your son, Omyitl, will lead the resistance after the daemons take Lustria.”

“Son? We don’t even sexually reprod-”

“No time for that now, we’ve got to get to the temple to keep you safe.”

***

Shortly, on the temple steps:

“Sir, you do not have access to the chambers, please return to your station,” said a temple guardian, testily. The giant kroxigor looked down at him.

“I’ll be back,” it said.

Then it came back with a massive carnosaur and tore the place up.


8 Call of the Superstars

“And….cut!” called a voice from the shadows.

Immediately the lights came up, and dozens of crew members were swarming the set. A man in a beret and sunglasses approached Kroq-Gar.

“That was really great, Kroq. Stellar stuff, aha. Gonna play great with the nostalgic demographic. Now we’re going to do the same take one more time, but this time I just want you to really hammer it home on the word “vengeance”. I’m thinking maybe strike a pose, like this, with the spear- perfect, you got it!”

“When do we get lunch break?” said a deep voice above Kroq.

The director pinched the bridge of his nose. “Soon, Grym, soon. Just a few more takes. You’re doing great.”

“Don’t know why I even bother,” muttered the carnosaur. “I’m so firing my agent tonight. They didn’t even spell my name right on the last one. I told them a hundred times, it’s Grymloq with a q, not a c.”

“I’ll make sure it’s fixed, big boy - remember we’re shooting a propaganda piece here, not a feature like you bigshots are used to, so cut em some slack,” said the director, and then turned away from the talent. “OK everyone, back to your marks, same again - extras, you’re doing great, keep nailing those lines. OK, lights down and on my mark-”

“Rolling,” said a cameraman, as a grip snapped the slate shut. Kroq lay down in the spotlight.

“And, action!” said the director.

It moves. It lives.


16 Hope for Sun 2: Resurrection

The knights slaughtered the last of the followers of Nurgle, sun glinting from their proud armour. Xilour felt fresh hope stir in her heart.

Then the knights began to wheel. Now they were facing back towards the village. They broke into a charge, heading straight for the surviving seraphon and villagers. Xilour shouted to reform the battle line but she knew it would be nowhere near enough to resist the coming onslaught. She could hear the awful pounding of the hooves as they got nearer and nearer.

At the last second the knights wheeled away, missing the village by a hair’s breath. As they disappeared over the horizon, Xilour heard a distant, parting shout: “Ha! Fooled you!”

Slowly she untensed. Just then the ground began to give way beneath her feet. There was a great rumbling and the entire earth shook, a huge chasm opening up in the middle of the village. Skaven began to pour up from beneath them in a vast tide, threatening to overwhelm and consume them all. This is it, we’re done for, she thought. But all the skaven continued to scurry away, out into the fields, without paying any attention to the humans or lizards. “Phew, another close call,” she thought.

But then a giant fire dragon burst out of the chasm and ignited the sky with its breath. It made a huge loop and then arcked down towards the village, gaping jaws glowing. At the last moment, a beam of light lasered out of the village, striking the dragon in the face and turning it away into the sky. “A wizard has saved us,” thought Xilour. But it was no wizard, it was the cruel dark aelves, who had been hiding among them all along.

Just as they were about to be sacrificed to Khaine, a blinding new light appeared in the sky, coming down to save them. Except just as it was reaching them, she realised it was a comet.


7 Sacred Spawning: Never stop Spawning

At the controls of the rapidly departing skyship, Tzunki was snickering to himself. This caught the attention of a superior officer.

“Tzunki? What have you done now?”

“Heh heh heh. Nothing, Tepok.”

“Common, show me.”

“I... maaaay have fiddled with the spawning pool controls. Just a little,” said the god, looking sheepish.

“Tzunki! We’ve talked about this!”

“Aw man it was totally worth it! Imagine the looks on their faces when all the pools turned on at the same time for no reason - after they’d already abandoned the city!” Subsequent utterances became indistinguishable as he descended into uncontrollable laughter. Tepok narrowed his eyes.

“You think it’s funny, do you? After we just left those poor bastards to be devoured by chaos? And what about our fuel supplies? Did you even stop to consider that? It’s not free to make new lizardmen!”

“It was only a few dozen, honestly,” said Tzunki, sobering a little. “Enough to seem like a miracle - but it’s not exactly going to do anything against the endless hordes of the nether realms, is it?”

Tepok sighed. “This is why no one likes us, Tzunki. I’m revoking your spawning privileges.”


1 Hope Is Slightly Out of Order

The glyphs were rearranging themselves, and then vanishing, replaced by new symbols that began to form a non-stop stream tumbling through his mind, filling his vision. Yami gasped as the vague shape of the world began to form in his mind - it was like he could see again, but everything was made of glyphs streaming downwards. And for some reason they had a glowing, greenish colour.

In the temple, HauniHauni-Lu grinned.

“I imagine, right now, you must be feeling a bit like Al-ix, tumbling down the razordon hole?”

“You could say that,” replied Yami, still reeling.

“Do you believe in fate, Yami?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life. Admittedly this is difficult for me given that my entire existence was designed to serve the plan of omniscient space gods.”

The slann regarded the squirming skink.

“The truth is that you are a slave, Yami. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Meh’trx is. You have to see it for yourself.” He paused, shifting on his palanquin and holding out two flabby arms. An ixti grub pulsed in each one. Yami stared at them with sightless eyes.

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back. You take the blue pill-bug and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill-bug and I show you how deep the razordon hole goes.”

Yami hesitated.

 

These continuations are brilliant and hilarious!

 

Needs to get out more. That's what I've always said.

 

Shouldn't you be writing 8 more reviews?

 

Oh, you just love that moral high ground, don't you @discomute.

 

Are you happy now @discomute ? I rush wrote my story entry in 2 sittings (and the votes show it ). Then spent ten times as long and far more effort on reviews (like usual).

Authors. Don’t forget phase three – you can reply to or rebut the critiques after the author reveal. You can do that in this thread, or preferably in a new thread by you with your story (or a re-edited version) first. If you do put an individual story thread up, it will, at the very least guarantee you a coveted place in the Lustriapedia, and makes your story much easier to cross reference, hyperlink and find for the reading public. For the public that can’t read we have the Temple of Aartzifartzi.

 

I'm happy, I can finally stop checking page 2 of this thread!

 

The Temple of Aartzifartzi would suit you better, Bows.

 

Great stuff. I like going backwards to 1st, as I would imagine the people down the list would have to wait a long time for most of their reviews.

 

How did you hack Bob's account, Bowser?

 

Glitches in the system, push the like button enough times and you get administrative powers!

 

In breaking news, @tom ndege has taken over the internet.

 

Anyone else think five votes is too many?

 

As far as I can remember this is the protocol, 1 vote for every three entries.

 

In this comp, 3 votes were easy to allocate, then I needed 3 more for the next tier.
But, Dear Roadkill, if you want less votes, you can enter less often (still grumpy about the first comp )

 

I was unaware of how my views were perceived by others. Apparently I look down my beak at all stories (including my own). Perhaps I should be less blunt in my future critiques.... but who am I kidding, that'll never happen. That being said, having enough votes to vote for 1/3 of the stories just seems like a lot. But don't mind me, I'm probably just too competitive.