In the realm of knights and kings, kingdoms rise and perish. The ever-warmongering Lorimur and the over-ambitious Karadas, are both struggling for control over the entire continent. Caught in the middle of their conflict, lies the small city-state of Valinor. Because of its strategic position between its neighbors, it's caught between a rock and a hard plate. If it were to choose to maintain its Independence, its inevitable destruction would only be a matter of time. Under the constantly increasing pressure of both sides, it decides to become a vassal to Lorimur, the one most likely to win this race.

On a certain day, a group of knights send by Lorimur arrive before the city gates, they call themselves the knights of the Golden Sun. They have come here in pursuit of glory and fame. But make no mistake, they're not some common knight band, they are amongst the high and mighty. They behave like the lords of the land and countless servants and soldiers follow in their wake. Some may claim a title bought with money has no value, but they'll tell you otherwise, the current market price of a knight title is a whopping 1000 gold crowns. How could anybody call that worthless?

Some may wonder, 'Nobody has ever heard of them before. Are they here to help or to cause trouble?'

Then they'll politely answer, "Don't bother us with your silly questions and move out of the way, you filthy peasant!"

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Note: This is my first story and immediately a contest entry to boot! (Every random peasant could join without any consequences and I was making little progress in my real first story.) This is my entry to Corgi's contest 'The lords of the land', yes, yes, I shamelessly copied it in my description. Me and the spelling corrector have joined forces in a futile attempt to rid this story of the most obnoxious spellings-mistakes. And as you'll probably discover soon, since English isn't my native language, we failed every time there was no red line beneath the word. Although being a newbie and a non-English speaker, could be some really good excuses to get away with anything (since they're true for a chance), please tell me what you liked or hated.

Like every CYS game demands there are multiple endings, aside from a few mid-story endings, there are 7 epilogues. B, C, and D, are a win, while E, F, and G are a loss and A is the 'perfect' victory. Note that when I say 'loss' it doesn't equal a bad ending, it simply means you failed to achieve the victory condition of the story-game. Even a few short endings, can be considered a 'win', while they're not 'happy' endings.

Above all, this story is meant to entertain and shouldn't be taken too seriously, that's where the 'humor' tag is for. In case you fail to appreciate my twisted sense of humor and start wondering whether that was added by accident or not, your question has been answered.

Update: Bugfixes and spelling mistakes.

Hi, to me it comes a bit as a surprise that you're having difficulties. It's meant as an easy and entertaining read, so obviously there's no walkthrough or something of the sort. Ending A requires both high fame and popularity and you need to proclaim the truth about the plague. I guess that last part is probably what you're missing. But you shouldn't try too hard to get it. Because it's only 'perfect' if you look at it from a game perspective, not from a story perspective.

Congrats for second place. Since your prize is a bit lacking, you can add my praise and admiration to it!... For what it's worth... you would probably prefer the old piece of gum, right?

Congratulations Cricket! Or allow me to rephrase that in a better way: "You win!!"

Some valid points are being raised and I completely agree with them. A short "Oh, Nooo!" is a good laugh afterwards and shame will motivate people. People learn best from their own mistakes, so that's why they should be allowed to make them. But I think shame alone is enough.

Perhaps I should be more clear why I'm so annoying about this. It's because I'm afraid this will happen to me. (Or somebody similar to me.) Because I'm wildly ambitious, everything I start for fun suffers from severe scope expansion and three guesses... It never sees the light of day. That's partly the reason I joined the competition so I could focus on a short funny story and get something finished. I think pretty any idea I get, will quickly expand beyond my ability to handle. So I can already see me failing with 3 stories were a lot of effort went into. (I realize a long story doesn't equal a good story and rather a high quality paragraph is better than a huge wall of text.)

But hey, there's this cool idea, why not add it? Ouch I didn't make it, well I'll make an even more awesome story next time!

I agree that a short 1/8 story that scrapes past the minimum requirements, isn't that hard to churn out in one day. But isn't that counter productive? People will just put in the bare minimum effort, with a subpar story as a result. The judges will need to read it and it will come between the "new story games", while the author didn't even care. Doesn't that encourage adding gutter to the site? Because as I see it, the minimum standards were implemented just to prevent this in the first place, while keeping the entry bar for noobs (like me) as low as possible. Besides, according to the list there's already 9 people that were banned. (Or all they all the same person in reality?)

Oh and congratulations, if you did cram out a featured story in a measly six hours. But this won't apply to everybody.

Then that means you're screwed, if you have a large project that's not yet published? Isn't that too harsh? We do this for fun, there's nothing harmful about trying and failing. (Even if it's over and over again).

By the way, sorry for misspelling your user name (in my description).

Then I'm certainly glad to have made it in time. And thanks to whoever awarded me 50 points for it. (It's half the first prize, it gives me the illusion that I'm half a winner already.) But I have a question. I understand that the shame pit is for those that couldn't deliver on their promise, a stain on their honor (so to say). Yet it seems that you can also get banned if you fail, I guess 3 times? How long is that ban?

Hi, thanks for taking the time to write a detailed comment on my story game (It can help me improve). So I'll try to answer yours.

Yes, fame and popularity determine the outcome of some choices (Okay far not as many choices as I would have wanted), but they mainly serve to decide what ending you'll get. Popularity < 0 gives you the rebellion arc and > 0 the other end arc. Then fame must be above a certain threshold to achieve the victory condition (get the throne). But for A you need both high and an extra flag, otherwise B or E. The whole idea behind it, is that the result you get, is a sum of your overall decisions (Sounds a lot better than how it turned out). 

I added the gender option as a casual role play option and originally in a delusion of grandeur, I had bigger differences planned. But it remained with a few minor descriptions (and one odd choice). But judging from your comment, you assume it serves to increase the length. That's the only part were you're completely wrong. I placed the different sentences in page scripting. There are absolutely no duplicate pages, with here and there a word of difference. Believe me, I would hate it far more than you.

Yes I'm aware of the dumb mistake, in misspelling sir Corgi's name (I thought it was Cori and I didn't bother to look it up). And now it's published with a description that wasn't properly reviewed (I wrote a quick draft description and then the deadline was there) and now it can't be changed anymore.

My native language is Dutch.

Lol, why do you think I only have a profile pic? It's ugly as hell to see an empty box near your user name, when you post something and people tend to remember a picture better than some random user name. But why would I need to write something on my profile when there's probably nobody bored enough to go click on the profile of a random noob. Okay the real reason is, I don't now what to write there yet.

And I don't exactly understand that last question, does it even matter? If the spelling and grammar mistakes were so catastrophic, that you're asking that. Please say so. I'm educated in a more technical field, than in a language field. Perhaps we should continue our discussion through PM, so that we don't hijack this post to discus my story-game.

If I remember correctly, you did enter. But for some strange reason, your joining post has 'mysteriously' gone missing all of a sudden. Some peasants may think an admin is creatively using her privileges. However I don't blame you, it's completely natural behavior for the lady of the land site.

Mine is finally done, pfew. Just in time. I know it's a wacky title, that's intentional.

https://chooseyourstory.com/story/the-knight-order-of-the-golden-sun