7/10/2024

3/2/2026 3:19 PM

585

3

0 wins / 0 losses

Warden

Don't get distracted!

The target has been decided. The deadline has been set. All that is left is for you, Adam Finch, assassin extraordinaire, to execute your mission. Success is inevitable. Because you are weapon made flesh, and nothing will stop you from completing your mis- Oh! Look! A story-game!!

There are 5 endings: 'Double kill', 'War in the shadows', 'Retiree rescue', 'Kiss of death' and 'Who let him cook?!'.

Submitted for End Master's Prompt Contest 4 for the prompt of: 'A story involving being an assassin'

Ignis and Aero

Aero, a 14-year-old inhabitant of the village of Albritton, wants nothing more than to read his enthralling storybooks in peace. When he hears of a Golem wandering in the forests near his village, he is more than happy to let the professionals deal with it, while staying within the comfort of his home.

Unfortunately for him, his adventurous brother, Ignis, has other plans.

Author's note: If you want to collect all endings, then there are six of them: The Wise, The Mourner, The Cleaner, The Knight, The Skeptic and The Magician. Certain choices don't have immediate effects but may influence the endings. Also, certain endings can be reached through multiple different paths.

Submitted for Sherbet's Summer's End Synergy Contest.

Special thanks to mrcrimsonclean for proof reading :]

Of dreams and daemons

Most would be willing to trade a great deal to catch a glimpse of what the future holds. Hannah de Reade, however, has spent her time in Lumintrone ignoring the omens that she sees in her prophetic dreams. All she wanted was some semblance of normalcy.

But when her dreams warn her of a daemonic plot, she is compelled to act against it, leading her to be invited as an honored guest to the Imperial Castle.

However, in a court filled with dark secrets, are her eyes that can pierce through fallacies truly a gift or a curse? You will have to take Hannah's side and guide her through this ordeal that will forever change her fate.

And perhaps you will change the fate of Lumina itself in the process.

---

Author's note: There are nine endings. I highly recommend reaching multiple endings since you may not be able to experience the entirety of the plot with one read. While they are not central to the story, I should also warn that themes of domestic abuse and graphic violence are present in it.

In the news

unpublished

A newspaper delivery boy stumbles onto a criminal conspiracy!

Live me not

unpublished

An eternal flower for a dying princeling. The future of a kingdom weighed against the greed of a visiting merchant.

Tonio normally wanted nothing to do with nobles and their fickle ways. While they had more gold to pay, they were almost invariably terrible customers who were hard to please. But when the King of Spireshade made him an offer he couldn't refuse, Tonio saw the opportunity to make his most earnest desires come true.

But how far will a man go for the castles that reside in his dreams? How much will he sacrifice along the way? This is what the choices you make will determine.

Sure lol. Definitely the most impactful game of 2026, it would seem.

Uhh, thanks for crediting it to me, I guess? Congrats MrAce! I remember reading Bird in a Cage. It was a fun story!

Thank you RK. :]

Thank you so much! I read your review but honestly it might take me a few rereads to digest the treasure trove of advice you've included therein. I'll be sure to try and incorporate as many of those techniques as I can in my upcoming story. :D

This probably goes without saying but please don't feel pressured to commend ODAD. If you believe it has too many flaws to be commended then you can just let me know about it. All I wanted was for the story to be considered seriously for commendation. The fact that you are taking the effort to review it already means I got what I wanted. :D

Get back on your main account and say the same thing if you want a response from me.

I'm not going to claim ODAD is worth commending, nor am I going to claim LOTFF was unworthy of commendation (I did like the story as you have observed). At this point, I don't even know what that word means so it would be meaningless to get into that debate.

As for the other mods, a few mentioned in this thread that they feared setting a bad precedent commending any storygames. If it's not a science, then make it one. Establish guidelines so newer mods can confidently commend storygames without repercussions. You don't even have to make these guidelines public, just share it amongst yourselves so more mods are around to give deserving stories consideration.

As it stands right now, the idea of hoping for a commendation for a story just seems dumb. It's all based on whim and circumstance, it seems.

Apologies in advance for reviving this thread. I really wanted to power through without paying too much attention to all this, but these past weeks have proven that I am incapable of doing so. I'm somewhat stuck on this whole business. You can view this post as my attempt to excise the thoughts in my mind by granting them closure through conversation.

Since this post and my original response to it, I have had time to read The Legend of the Folklore Fish (will be referred to as LOTFF from here on out). It's a lovely storygame and I rated it a 7/8. I'm something of a sucker for excellently done characterization so if your characters even have some semblance of a character arc or development along the story's runtime, you are very likely to get a high rating from me. Kaito and Nagisa were both charming enough to capture my attention. stories_unwritten did an amazing job for their debut.

However...

I believe that the manner in which it was commended was highly irregular. From what I gather, the justification given was that it was a half decent story in a category that didn't have many stories. This, honestly, just feels like an exploitation of a loophole, especially because it was commended less than a week into its release, before people even had the chance to leave any reviews positive or negative.

On the other hand, my story (Of Dreams and Daemons or ODAD) had apparently been ignored for consideration BECAUSE of the existence of some negative reviews. I assumed that the mods had read it and deemed it unworthy of a commendation, but to hear that a 46k word story was never even seriously considered because of some sub 2000 word reviews? That really stung. So which is it? Do reviews matter or not?

If they do matter, then LOTFF should not have been commended so quickly. There should've been a month's time or maybe more to allow for more reviews to appear.

If they don't matter, then the justification given in the above post for ODAD being ignored is invalid.

Perhaps the reason for this irregularity was revealed later on in the post, namely, the Warden War. I can't shake the idea that SU's story was commended solely for the purpose of trolling the other wardens. Whether or not, the commendation was deserved is a different topic that I can't really comment on since I have no authority on it. I do, however, object to the intent with which the action was taken. I think it's a disgusting tactic to try and use SU's contribution to the site to shame other wardens.

Well, that's that done. I'm sorry about the whining. I know the mods have a lot of experience in running the site and probably have their own way of doing things, but I can't really bring myself to like this approach. Hence, this post almost felt like something I had to do.

Uhh, how about Mystic?

Woah, thanks for this! I did want to add another detailed branch where the thief takes a more violent approach when he sees the protagonist but sleep caught up to me so I just wanted to wrap the whole thing up.