Father Leofwine is Dead

Murder at the Royal Court

Father Leofwine, the King’s councillor and Queen’s confessor, has been brutally murdered! Somewhat unexpectedly, the King chooses Cynehelm, his Tax Collector, to surreptitiously investigate the matter.

Cynehelm in his turn recruits an accomplice, Wulf, to do the stealthy legwork while he talks to the eoldarmen himself.

I love historical detectives. The (static fiction) books about Gordianus the Finder (Steven Saylor) and Brother Cadfael (Ellis Peeters) have brought me many hours of joy. From the first paragraph, I knew this game was right up my alley.

Father Leofwine is Dead begins with an intruiging “locked room” murder mystery and spreads out through the Castle, even the City. The story has two protagonists, and you alternate making choices for them. The different characters and social stations of the protagonists lets you see the the investigation through two different viewpoints, as Cynehelm is a member of the King’s closest entourage, and Wulf is more at home in the backstreets and dark alleys.

I found it very well written and truly engaging. I’m not a completist in story-games, I will not go back and see all the different branches of what-could-have-happened. (I’ll go back a page if I die unexpectedly, but I won’t replay to see all the text.) This approach immersed me deeply in the story, laying a weight on each choice so it had to be seriously considered. To aid the player in choosing, there are many clues laid out in this story’s pages. The mystery of course demands that the player differentiates between important clues and dead-end paths, a tricky but doable task in this game.

The writing is very good. There’s a nice rhythm to the sentences and the historical atmosphere comes through without laying it on too thick. The suspense is sustained (even turned up) throughout the story, maybe even a bit too much. Perhaps one or two resting spots would have allowed me to catch my breath before diving in again.

The layout is great, the pages are the right length to draw the reader in while still presenting important choices to signal a new beat.

Some small nitpicks:
-I found it disorienting that the story is told from the 3rd person perspective of one of the protagonists, but that some of the choices inconsistently refer to a 2nd person “you”. Either this is a remnant of the 2nd person IF-convention that slipped through, or it is a deliberate breaking of the fourth wall, acknowledging the player as the real decision maker. If the latter, it did not succeed as a style choice for me. If anyhting, it felt jarring to be adressed as player in a story I had been reading “from above”.
-The writing is very good. Therefore, the typos are all the more grating. I reckon one per page. Pity.

Very, very intruiging historical mystery.

After reading “The Bard’s Tale” and “The Daemonologists,” “Father Leofwine is Dead” has really convinced me that Pugpup is an author who should be kept on my radar permanently.
Now, I’ll try not to spoil anything in my review for you who read reviews before you read stories.

“Father Leofwine is Dead” is very probably the best mystery story I have read on CYS. The format, the writing style, and the setting all help to create an engaging mystery that made me genuinely curious about the answer.

The story got my interest from the start with the historical setting; Anglo-Saxon England is pretty hard to make uninteresting, to be fair. It was fun to see the real people and places mixed in with everything in a way that didn’t seem awkward too.
The mystery part of the story was very interesting. I definitely did not suspect the actual murderer until the page before it was revealed. So that was fun.
Since I played as two characters alternatively, I do think it would have been interesting to see what else happened afterward when one died. After all, the story isn’t over for the other main character at that point. Even just a page saying they failed could have been good.
The writing itself was very good, and I didn’t see any mechanical errors that were worth remembering either. I didn’t really care too much about the one character’s hots for the one chick, and it seemed a bit out of place, but someone else see it as adding more to his character.

The structure of the story is gauntlet, which suits the nature of it well. After all, if there is a very specific goal, it is hard to have extensive and well done branching that doesn’t just loop back to it. There was a choice near the beginning that I am pretty sure was totally pointless though, and that is something that annoys me. Other than that, I thought the story structure fine and a good fit.
I also appreciated how on the death choices, it would continue righting the path out in the same detail until the end, which both led me to believe my choice was right when it wasn’t sometimes and eliminated the impression of laziness that it is easy to get from gauntlet stories when they do not put care into the death endings.

Overall, this is a very good story that deserves its featured spot for sure. I recommend it highly to anyone who likes mysteries, this sort of historical setting, or are just looking for a good story of any sort.

This is an outstanding story, and I happily rated it an 8/8. The writing is confident, the characters are well defined, and the setting is intriguing. There was quite a bit of information to digest in the first few pages, but once Wulf began his investigation, I found myself engrossed for several hours in this remarkable story.

I won't comment on the plot, as this is essentially a traditional whodunnit that just happens to be set a long time ago in post-Roman England. As the title explains, Father Leofwine is dead -- murdered, actually -- and a trusted member of the king's court is tasked with figuring out who. And since this was submitted as part of a "lone hero" contest, a mysterious man dressed in black shows up out of nowhere and offers to help. These aren't spoilers, just a summary of the first two pages of the story!

As you read the story, you are presented with quite a few choices. However, from what I could tell, the branching structure seems to be best described as a "gauntlet", meaning most of the choices are of an advance-or-die nature. I didn't explore every single branch, but only once did I encounter a false branch that gave me one additional choice before getting killed in both instances. But I didn't mind this, as the main plot was so intriguing (and long) that I didn't want to get led too far astray from it anyway.

If I had any criticisms, it was that some of the choices were too obviously poor ("Why would anyone choose to do THAT?") or the consequences weren't what I expected. In the latter category, there were at least two places where a decision seemed sound, but the actual execution of that decision turned out to be more drastic than I thought the situation called for -- and of course these led to death endings.

And there were a few places where perhaps a detail was missed. Most notably, an encounter between two characters in a dark tunnel, one of them is known to possess a certain object, but the other person produces it and gives it back. It's a key scene resulting in a case of mistaken identity, but I had to re-read several paragraphs to confirm I was not going crazy, and that exactly how this item went from one person to the other had not been mentioned. I therefore developed the theory that Person A dropped it in the dark, and Person B found it and presumed Person A was an ally. But for a story with 33,000 words created within a short amount of time for a contest, this really is a minor quibble.

On the other hand, there were plenty of other details that I really liked, and that I though were very original (at least, they were to me). Most importantly was the description of the castle, which was no stone Elsinore. It was a structure that had been built and expanded over time, beginning with a Roman fort from several centuries prior. Like the people who inhabited it, this setting had a distinct character.

Bottom line: this is a well-executed story, and you should drop what you're doing and read it at once.

Good story but very very linear

Good:

1. The main mystery plot is very well-written and constructed. It reminded me of an Agatha Christie novel set in the Middle Ages. I was able to guess the killer of Father Leofwine (the most fanatically zealous are always the most likely to violate their own preachings) and why (once I learned of what the Proslogion was) about a third of the way through, although I wasn't sure how the rest of the pieces would fall into place. Like any great whodunit story, there were little hints sprinkled throughout the story that pointed to the answers, though only the sharpest readers would be able to piece all of the clues together before the big reveal.

2. The historical fiction setting was immensely enjoyable. As someone who loves historical fiction, everything from the character and place names to court intrigue and religious conflicts made this world feel alive and real.

3. The death pages were well-written, with a lot of details and not lazily done at all like they too often are.

4. I really liked the style of the prose. The Wulf and Cynehelm characters working together reminded me of the Hound and Tyrion from GoT

Bad:
1. I was said to have the Proslogion on me and got killed for it when the text said that the dark-haired woman had it just moments ago

Ugly:
1. This story reads like a linear story that was converted into a CYOA story, so there's not much to the non-main branches

2. There weren't much clues to point the reader at the correct (non-death) option at most branches, so the outcomes felt random and deductive reasoning wasn't as rewarded by the story as much as I would have liked a mystery story to.

Overall, an enjoyable mystery on par with any Agatha Christie story and more than worthy of a sequel(s).

FATHER LEOFWINE IS DEAD: 96%

SHOULD I READ THIS?
Yes. It’s a very engaging story, and the mystery is realistic and clever.
Preview: You are tasked with finding out who murdered Father Leofwine, a priest and friend of King Alfred. You play as two characters, one the official court investigator of the murder, and an unofficial investigator with less resources and more difficult methods.

=SPOILERS BELOW=

RATINGS:

Basic Plot & Coherence: 5/5
The plot shines here. A lot of mystery stories (interactive or otherwise) seem to throw in suspects and twists just to confuse the reader into missing the true guilty party, but in this story, each development of the plot was logical, and made perfect sense in retrospect. Even the surprises made sense in the context of the characters and world the author had developed. The idea of having two seperate and unrelated guilty parties is a clever plot device, it complicates the story without sacrificing continuity.

Characters & Development: 5/5
Cynehelm and Wulf work well as a duo, and bring a sense of scope the story that might be hard to replicate with just one narrator. Cynehelm is experienced in the king’s court and bureaucratic matters, while Wulf is both more experienced in the real world and far more jaded. Each brings their own unique take on the story.
The side characters, even the ones who had only a few scenes, all showed their character and personality. I liked the dynamic between the members of the king’s court. It’s clear during any of the scenes where they interact that nobody trusts anybody, and several of them have their own private plans.
I also particularly liked the queen’s role in the story. Her being the murderer was both satisfying and surprising.

Grammar: 5/5
I saw no mistakes.
Mastery of Language: 3/3
I was impressed with how the language was adjusted to fit the tone of the work. It’s really believeable that these characters are living in medieval europe based on how they talk and act.

Mechanics & Coding: 0/0 (usually /5)
This story is fairly linear.

Branching: 2/3
This story is fairly linear, but that’s not really a problem in the context of an investigation. I take off a point because the choies about trusting wulf seems to have little impact on the story, and that could have been an interesting branch.

Player Options/fair choice: 3/3
No problems here, I thought many of the insta-death paths were unusually well foreshadowed for save-or-die choices.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I enjoyed my playthrough a lot. Though I died a lot, I did figure out the queen was guilty of the muder about halfway through. I wasn’t sure of Alrdic though until the end.

CONCLUSION: 23/24 = 95.83%

So incredible!! I am generally a fan of murder mysteries but it is extremely difficult to right it well. Usually leading up to the conclusion is fantastic but the ending is awful or the other way around, but this? It was so compelling and I loved it immensely for how hard it was to truly complete as well as the amazing story and plot. It could use a little less of the death links but outside of that it was incredibly fun and, as I have said about a million times now, amazingly well crafted. This is a must read for folks looking for a difficult challenge, a great game, and/or a great story with an grande plot.

Warning: Some Spoilers Ahead

The writing in this was excellent. The pacing was just right. The length was not so long as to leave me bored, but long enough to present a cohesive storyline. I ended up being right about the culprit(s) in the end, and their motivations, which I was happy about.

Some of the other commentators mentioned that your story felt largely linear. Now, I don’t mind stories that have a “true ending”, as yours has- in fact, i rather like them. I enjoy how multi- ending mysteries can lead to puzzles slowly being pieced together, with the final route revealing the bulk of the information. So even though I understood the need for this “ultimate ending” in your narrative, I was a bit frustrated by the fact that there really weren’t any other options. Every scene that didn’t lead to the “true” path lead to a death scene.

That being said, I did quite enjoy reading through even these “end game” links. Unlike with most stories, I deliberately chose to read through each bad pathway first, just so I could see what the story had to offer. Your writing is very suspenseful and well-done. Everything was neatly polished- for such a long tale, I couldn’t detect any grammatical or spelling errors (which is rare).

Good job on this, overall. I’ve given you a 7/8.

Very good story. The choices were clever and deceiving. I managed to make almost all of the wrong choices before finally reaching the true ending. 6/8 because of the lack of branching. As far as I can tell, there’s only one path other than instant deaths.

Firstly, this was an enjoyable read. The mystery is compelling, the setting is credible, and the protagonists - Cynehelm and Wulf - invite interest. At a technical level, the writing is well-controlled. Dialogue is incisive. As a submission to the Lone Hero Contest, which only ran for about a month, these are commendable merits. Congratulations on the win.

There are ways to improve, however. I think the most important avenue is to privilege character and introspection. All of the supporting characters - and, to an extent, even the protagonists - would benefit from stronger characterisation. Examples that come to mind are Ecgbald, Grimbold, Aldric, Queen Ealhswith, Osfrid. Two of them were killed off before we really grasped their personalities and motivations; I think this was premature, and we would have benefited from being encouraged to empathise with them. The severity of the situation (both characters seemed incidental to the mystery) was lost on me. Yes, it's bad news that they're getting picked off. But why should we care? We're told that they are valuable members of the king's council. In the plot, they merely discuss the murder of Leofwine. They pose no new information, and don't embody a role to play in the investigation. Their untimely deaths serve only to introduce a separate mystery to the plot. And that would be fine - although I'd like to, at least, get to know the two better - if that whole debacle didn't jeopardise the credibility of the other characters.

None of them are propelled to change in reaction. The entire castle should be in outrage - there's a bloody crisis in leadership! But the soldiers remain mostly ambivalent. The common fold do, however, express some trepidation and anxiety. But when it comes to the inner circle, they only react with some fear and disgust. There isn't a sense of intense desperation and urgency (if I was Cynehelm, I'd be haunted by paranoia - and would demonstrate that by being unable to sleep, prone to lashing out etc. etc.). No one has an (imo appropriate) outburst of grievance, or mourning, and they aren't really altered by the ordeal. Most of all, King Alfred doesn't seem to waver in his emotional steadiness. In fact, nothing seems to faze him - and if we're supposed to see his restraint as a virtue, then it should be evident that there is some conflicting force within him: righteous fury, or hysteria. I think this was a missed opportunity, which also detracted from the believability of the characters.

Other examples of missed opportunities...
The motivation for the perpetrator, of the two later murders, is chalked up to ambition. There isn't really any extension of that. Why choose political murder? If King Alfred is so strong as a ruler, would this really be the best way to enhance your own prospects and increase your influence? Was there a dispute between these advisers that could only be resolved in this way? It's not clear as to why this was his plan - which is confusing because this character is otherwise portrayed as intelligent.

The role of the queen could also do with greater 'explanation' of motive. Is religious fervour really the only way to rationalise her actions, when we begin to consider the ideological influence Leofwine possessed over her as mentor and confessor?

All these issues with character can be summed up: they are not well-defined. Wulf, who is supposed to be this deliciously badass lone hero, is met with death for every misstep. He seems to have a tenuous hold on life - and we can't really demonstrate his resourcefulness throughout the story. Cynehelm is perhaps the most interesting character. He isn't one to be courageous, but demonstrates bravery at times. If this internal tension was privileged to a greater extent, he would be more compelling.

In essence, there should be more elaboration on cause and effect, by clearly depicting the mental state of each character through the detailing of their actions.

6/8, despite the criticisms I am happy to have read Father Leofwine is Dead. Thank you pugpup1 for the story.