Mors Vincit Omnia

Gotta say, I preferred your last couple stories to this one. Even accounting for you doing a lot on your own to influence my opinion by not seeming to think much of it as you were writing, and the uninspiring description itself, this felt a bit lazy.

Don't get me wrong, it's still better than average for the site but...come on, you know that's not really a compliment. The story is linear and Sadman McMuscles had less personality than most of the corpses. The creepy scavenger thing was probably the most memorable character here.

I had questions about the protagonist. We aren't really told much about him except that he's a mercenary who loves his wife. Okay, let's work with that. He's a mercenary who 'comes back for the harvest'. Did he come back from helping create a scene like the one he found? At any point in his journey through this grim underworld did he wonder how many people he'd personally sent here, for money? Was he ever confronted by any of them? The answer is no of course, but I feel like in a story you were more interested in you might have addressed some of that and done cool things with it.

It also seems odd to me that a man who is so accustomed to killing and seeing people killed would immediately go the spiritual route of retrieving his wife from the underworld instead of the more pragmatic one of seeking revenge. How common are these sorts of attempts, how much is known about the afterlife, why is it his first thought over even burial? More attempt at establishing the character might have explained this all away too, though.

(Also, nitpicking now...but I noticed the wife's body is still hanging dead from the tree in one ending while you're back in the world and carrying her in another? Is the original body still in the tree and what you've got is a copy?)


Couple of notes on typos and things I took as I went:


A patch stretches out before you, stone tiles laid out in a bygone age. // path


Such an expensive and hard-to-build wall must have been constructed by the gods themselves. // I don't know, this just made me laugh. All this hellish imagery and then 'wow, that wall looks expensive!' (You used 'wall' on that page seven times btw)

You can hardly stand to look at the creature; partially scaled and partially skeletal, it’s coiled around the tower; a viper ready to strike the sky itself. // Hmm, not sure about two semi-colons in the same sentence.

Okay I do like that the protag called out the Serpent on asking a subjective question because I would have complained about it if he hadn't.


“I’m looking for a woman.” you say as you cautiously sheath your sword.

“Ah, so you seek the Sleeping Lady.” the Corpse-Thing says knowingly, sympathy creeping into its voice.

“Aye.” you say. /// MALK. Ugggh. How many times do we have to discuss this?

Also, I would have liked a choice before just approaching the thing and getting my face near it's face.

Squinting through the bright luminance, you glimpse it’s true form // its not it's


***


Anyway, your actual prose and the imagery you use remain REALLY good even when you're phoning it in like a lazy sack of shit. Everything from the cave described as the belly of a whale to the crumbling giants in the desert to blood-slicked marble floor and the arrival of the angel and the image of the Sleeping Woman and the souls and more all imprinted themselves on me very vividly and clearly as I read. Lots of scenes and individual lines of description stood out as memorable, it's just, I would have liked the chance to explore more or interact with it in some way instead of feeling like a disembodied camera floating behind the shoulder of the most boring man in the universe.

Also, don't complain about everyone being too edgy and then give us the endings you did, lol. I settled on letting the angel take me out of there as the closest thing to a happy one even though it's heavily implied the guy will be offing himself and going right back.

It's a backhanded compliment, but you continue to amaze me with your writing. Perhaps it's because you're lazy in chat, but regardless, I thought this was a pretty solid piece, if rather depressing.

First of all, I want to address the lack of choices. Often, I find this detracts from a story, but not in this case. Because of the nature of the end results, I appreciate that you didn't throw in extra illusory choices. The focus was obviously meant to be on the story itself. So, it might not be the best CYOA style story, but it is still a good piece of writing.

Of course, there's a few places where the phrasing and word choice were a bit clunky, but that's par for the course, especially in contest entries (though I wonder why you submitted so much earlier when you could have done more.) At any rate, these clunky places didn't detract too much from the story, and were minor enough that by the time I got through the story, I couldn't remember specifically where they were to give you details.

You have a talent for visceral description: the kind meant to make a person's blood run cold. Honestly I would like to see that level of detail for something less gruesome, just to see what you do with it.

You also seem to have a knack for making not only the flow of the story smooth, but the flow of the choices make a logical progression between the pages.

Alas, this style of futile quest was the tale's undoing. Or, rather, if it's going to be futile, there needs to be a larger pool of futile endings. In my opinion. Still, if that was your vision, who am I to argue with that? It's just not to my taste.

Pretty good story. Prose and visualization were top notch, felt very immersed in the whole thing. Good job, Klam.

That was certainly quite the twist. It was a very well written game, I wish there could have been more to it though, it was kinda short, but very good for a shorter story. The descriptions were great and the impending sense of Hell made the story one to be remembered.

I enjoyed this one. A bit linear, I was disappointed to find that you get the same ending whether you take the woods or the Serpent's keep, but I really admire your writing style. I felt like I was living the story. Good job

This was quite enjoyable to read. Not a bad storygame at all whatsoever, at least in my opinion.

Well done, Malk.

You could've done better.
The story was too linear for my tastes, and the plot was uninteresting. I only choose to read this (and post this comment) because you are my competition and I hope you do the same.

*SPOILERS* I couldn't find a happy ending, though I did not try the unnatural weapon path. I'll assume it ends with a sad ending as well. *END SPOILERS*

You also had a riddle. Why did you have a riddle? I know you were going for a Greek myth feeling (which is one I rather like), but the answer was not difficult.

As a final word, I'll just lament on how you still had two weeks to polish this into something better, but you did not. You did not fulfill your maximum potential on this storygame.