A great war is about to erupt, the greatest  the world has ever seen since the Trojan war. As the Greek city states are about to be engulfed in civil war, one man has to undertake a great journey. A dangerous road lies ahead, but you must take it, for the odyssey of one will decide the fate of many. This story is loosely based on the famous Greek epic: the Odyssey, by Homer.

Note that this is more of a story than a game. Depending on your choices, it can be either pretty long, or very short.

The people of Azrya live in fear. An evil group of wizards, that call themselves The Black Veil, hold the country in an iron grip. Their leader: Sarces, singlehandedly killed the previous king and his royal guards. When all hope is lost, a small light appears in the darkness. A hero is born ...

I know that this isn't a masterpiece, but this just my first story and I'm not a native speaker of English so advice or comments are welcomed.

The sequel to my first quiz. Welcome back to the Big Little History Quiz! After ending at the Middle Ages last time, we now focus on the time between approximately the 14th and 16th century in a few, short questions. 

In this instalment, I've added a wildcard system, that let's you continue after a wrong answer, and a scoring system. Though I guess you'll notice when you get a question wrong, 850 means you have answered everything correctly. You can view your score after you comment ;)

A little girl falls asleep on Christmas Eve, and wakes up in a town filled with wonder. But as she explores her dream world, she slowly discovers she is not alone. An unspeakable evil is on her trail, and the weather is turning cold.

This is my ballad entry for Bucky's 2017 December Contest.

Welcome to the Big Little History Quiz, the best quiz about history from all over the world! This first part mainly focuses on ancient history of European and Middle-Eastern civilization, but later parts will discuss later historical era's and other parts of the world.

Edited 17-07, added some more historical info and corrected some spelling errors.

Inspired by the famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Raven' tells the sad and dreadful tale of a man torn apart by his love for his lost love. However, the past does not rest easily and the arrival of a shadowy messenger unlocks memories the heart desperately tries to forget.

The fate of a nation lies on your shoulders. You have infiltrated the royal palace of Arkhendale to recover the most priceless object in the realm. After fighting your way to the treasury, you are but five locks away from your prize. However, time is short as guards are coming your way. Will you be able to solve the puzzle in time?

I made this short game as a test of a puzzle type that I might implement in a future game. It also functions as a teaser of a story that I'm thinking of writing.

It's the middle of the 19th century: Napoleon is rotting in his tomb, industrialisation is speeding up, and the Great Powers of Europe are scrambling to colonise the furthest reaches of the Earth. In the far East, on the tropical islands of Southeast Asia, tales are emerging of immense riches: temples to deities long forgotten, filled to the brim with treasure. It only takes the conquest of the untamed jungle for any dedicated adventurer to earn wealth and fame for all eternity. 

When titans clash, humanity suffers. As criminals and vigilantes fight out their war to end all wars, the city they fight over is turned to complete devastation. Thousands lose their lives, while those that survive try desperately to find a safe haven elsewhere, or find shelter amidst the ruins. 

When the line between heroes and villains starts to blur, it's time for the refugees themselves to try and take action. 

"Dear Watson, you do not really believe in ghosts, do you? No, I believe that we are dealing with a mere mortal man."

When the jewels of the dowager Duchess Marbrough go missing and mysterious deaths shake up the town of Brightmore, Holmes and Watson are called in to crack their hardest case yet.

"...A huge, grey monolith, towering above the run-down tenements arrayed in a circle around it. Its smooth surface broken only by a thousand mirrored windows, giving it the impression of being a restless giant. Never was one certain if he was being watched. Even within the 'privacy' of one's home, one could feel the eyes of the Party prying into them, looking for the slightest hint of deviancy."

Welcome to Whynaere, the marvel of the modern world. A society under the watchful eyes of the Party, where crime is non-existent, and the people prosper. Follow John Blair, as he delves beneath the surface of this so-called utopia. Would you sacrifice the safe status-quo, for the promise of freedom? Risk breaking down the pillars of society, to pursue a dream for a better future? For when the day is done, what is freedom compared to security?

They tell a sad and dreadful tale,   
The stones of Arandore.   
A city, in a grassy vale,   
Now gone forever more.   

A city built on crop and trade,    
A city filled with life!     
A city where a pious maid  
Would fall upon her knife.   

She was a servant of the gods,    
Poor Sister Elenore,  
But, cursed with beauty, soon at odds,   
With Princeling Rastadore.  

He saw the city as his own,   
Its people as his pets.  
And Elenore, at night, alone,    
He stole without regrets.  

Her screams were heard throughout the night,    
And, so the legends say,  
With no one there to end her plight  
She wished not see the day...  

Her body, in a shallow grave,  
Would set the world alight,  
The townsfolk, neither strong, nor brave,  
Still chose to end her fight.

It isn't known who lit the fires  
That burned the grassy vale.  
Nor is it known who built the pyres...  
But no side would prevail.  

The winds have cleared the ash they bore,  
The rains the blackened stones.  
The grass still grows in Arandore  
Amidst the scattered bones.  

As often is the case with hubris  
The eye sees what it wants to see:  
A shining, great and grand uniqueness,  
Unheard, unseen... except by me. 

How dares the dreamer dream of praises?   
How dares the layman lay his lines?  
For all their wild and well-meant phrases  
Will surely pale near my designs!  

The muses mourn their lost importance.  
The Bard, the scribes and poets too. 
Cause who could doubt the destined sureness  
The one and only god...  
                                      is you?  

100 words

It took just a single soul. Unlawfully taken, sure, but who was going to comb through the books afterwards? The system would be overwhelmed by clients soon. And they were desperately needed.

Cleaner air. Advances in medicine. This dreadful ideal of ‘world peace’. Their clientele kept postponing their visits. Management was looking to cut costs, and he wasn’t going to get terminated.

So he cheated a bit. Who doesn’t? That prince had it coming anyway, nobody liked the bastard. Another state’s gunman... Missile-happy generals... He wasn’t to blame for the rest, was he?

Death looked forward to his performance review.

It was a weird day, that summer's day, not so long ago. I was gazing across the barren tulip fields, where the spring's floral splendour had long since gone. I was contemplating something, though I can't quite remember what. (Funny how that happens more and more frequently these days. I might be getting old...)

I think it was something about the inevitable passing of time. How monuments crumble under the weight of ages. How once mighty orders might pass into the annals of history. How one might slowly forget about the bustling places of the past.

...Or I was thinking about lunch. Which I also happen to think about quite frequently these days. 

Anyhow, I remember that day because there was a certain something in the air. A warm breeze, a sultry gust of air that carressed the listless windmills, spinning faintly after years of disuse.

It was a most peculiar phenomenon because, as I stood there, listening; I could swear there was a voice that was calling me. Some average silly motherfucking voice that spoke of bets and commendations, and stuff. Or something like that. I can't quite remember. These random voice things happen a lot, it's quite a small country. 

---

Anyhow, I just happened to check out CYS again a couple of days ago. Glad (?) things didn't change too much. I'm a bit caught up in my newly-found adult life, so I won't probably become active again anytime soon. 

Tad late update #3: Am getting in the swing of writing again, but still have only a couple of thousand words. Since the site tend to be unreachable at times, I've also started writing my story off-site for the first time. I usually don't like the things I write when I'm still working on a story, but I've got some nice, totally not pretentious, 'dream sequences' that I quite like.

I don't know if fucking the homeless will solve anything, but it's good that you're thinking out of the box.

Well this sounds like the best idea since making Kiel a mod, and will surely not have the same end result of someone going mad with the slightest hint of power... Is something I would say for any other admin except for Mizal, and not because I'm totally not afraid of her...

Anyhow, congrats!

Oh, for some reasons I thought the update was due the seventh... Well the good news is that I know how the three main branches of my story will play out, and which general choices propel the plot. With regard to the writing process, the main issue is that I didn't have much time to write the past few weeks. I've been moving and the like, and had some other, big non-writing projects. However, I was kinda expecting this, and will have more time in the following weeks. I presume I'll still be able to finish before the deadline.

Both show up in the 'top storygame' list for me. As to why Necromancer is listed higher: its adjusted rating is higher than Dungeon Stompage's. This rating system takes the amount of votes and such into account, though I'm not completely sure how it calculates ratings. You can view the adjusted rating when you hover your cursor over a storygame's rating.

Has it only dropped for the 'based on ... ratings' number, or the ratings in total? The rating system can be a bit wonky at times because it excludes everything outside one standard deviation from the average rating or something, if I remember correctly.