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I love your take on the Battle Brothers, but feel that you would have hit the theme better if you hadn't set it up so that the Robot Legions actually outnumbered them. As it was, the Battle Brothers didn't really have a strength advantage.

I loved the details here - how Shinsplint noted that chivalric law was designed for larger creatures, how the bandit's swing missed because he didn't adjust his form to account for size differences, how scent plays a big role in Shinsplint's perception of the world. 

I adore this story. I love the concept of pre-manufactural cultures being exposed to space age technology, and the idea of a spaceship AI guiding evolution to favor curiosity and ingenuity is a really cool means for a scavenger species to develop. There were a couple points where it was a little difficult to track the flow of the script, but that is very minor. Well done!

I adore this story. I love the concept of pre-manufactural cultures being exposed to space age technology, and the idea of a spaceship AI guiding evolution to favor curiosity and ingenuity is a really cool means for a scavenger species to develop. There were a couple points where it was a little difficult to track the flow of the script, but that is very minor. Well done!

thank you so much!!! The intent towards the theme is that the Angelic Kingdoms are in a position of indomitable strength on their home terf - namely, a big big wall. The Barrister and his gaolers don't regard Yak-Dul as a threat - she's bound in iron chains too strong for her to break. Her victory lies in stalling them until her warherd can dig under the wall and collapse it, something they're able to do because of their understanding of stealth - there's the intelligence. Regardless, I'm so glad you enjoyed my work!

"The general stroked
his ashen gray beard over his ruff. The
beauty mark on his sun scorched cheek was
displaced by a scornful smirk my lord wore.
His thick, black eyebrows raised
sardonically."

A little more punctuation can help this flow better; periods work best as dividers between distinct concepts, so them being in the middle of a description of a single character can be jarring. Additionally, the introduction of another title in the middle of a description can be confusing. Something like this might read smoother:

"The general stroked
his ashen gray beard over his ruff, the
beauty mark on his sun-scorched cheek
displaced by a scornful smirk.
His thick, black eyebrows raised
sardonically."

Later, when describing the wizard, you have the perfect opportunity to use colons, which denote that the following items are in a list (even if the list only has one entry, as used here):
"His garb was layered and
frayed. The brown, stitched together cloak
that draped over his shoulders reached his
knees. The rough spun fabric that made up
his ragged cap was pelted with black
feathers from a bird that I could not place,
they reflected a luscious green when hit by
the candlelight. Yet, even with his uncouth
getup there were hints at refinement. A
pale ceramic mask covered the lower half of
his face. From the gold trim, and eloquent
design, it must’ve been from the Duchies of
Vinci. "

This could be edited to read thus:

"His garb was layered and frayed:
stitches held together the brown cloak
which draped from his shoulders to his knees,
and the rough spun fabric that made up
his ragged cap was pelted with black
feathers from a bird that I could not place.
Yet, even with his uncouth getup there were
hints at refinement: the feathers
in his cap reflected a luscious green where
the candlelight struck them, and a pale
ceramic mask covered the lower half of his face.
From its gold trim - and eloquent design - it must’ve
been from the Duchies of Vinci."

This version groups the refined elements of his outfit (the sheen of the feathers and the mask) together, and injects a little more direction to the description, IMO making it easier to read as action has a way of guiding the reader's thoughts. 

It's mostly stuff like this - you also don't need to indent individual lines of dialogue within a larger paragraph, but that's not as big a deal. I think that if you took some time to study the uses of different kinds of punctuation, you could elevate your writing a long way with very little effort! I recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss; it's short and - unlike most grammar books - extremely funny and easy to read.

oh, she wasn't jumping off - remember, she picked up the barrister before stepping towards the ledge :)

I love the concept and the vibes, but your writing is very difficult to follow here - there are times when a comma sits where it seems a period should, and the capitalization scheme made it difficult to parse where thoughts started and ended. I think a little editing would really elevate this piece!

I think you could use some work on your form, but you make up for it in panache. Great concept and twist, but I think your final line would have more impact if you just left it at what the General said and let the audience infer the tone.

"There's always a bigger fish."

spectacular. Love the twist, love the quirks you gave the machine cult, love the brutal sarcasm on the Hive Lord's part.

excellent work; my big piece of advice is that you use things like "seemed" or "appeared" a lot. I think that your descriptions would be punchier and more clear if you cut them out: "the beam voraciously flung itself", etc. It also saves a few words, which in this format of writing is vital. Looking forward to seeing your next entries!

I would have liked to give it a little more depth, but I ran up exactly to the word limit (had to prune from over 1300 words to get down to exactly 1000). Was there any specific part you feel should have been expanded? Would love to hear your thoughts!

the lore friendly answer as to why she's not more restrained is that she still needs to be able to march up the stairs to her execution; the real one is I hit exactly 1000 words and had zero more room for descriptions. I'm glad you liked my take on Beastmen - something ive learned studying world history is that if you look at a culture and it seems unsophisticated, there's probably something you're missing (the American great plains are entirely terraformed to optimize bison harvesting, and fully 1/3 of the Amazon Rainforest grows on artificial, self replicating soil)

Excellent concept and very unique; however, I found the prose somewhat difficult to follow. You use a lot of long descriptions which I think would benefit from more punctuation. Love the description of the other species as "children"!

I think you have the bones of a good story here, but you need to focus more on dramatic moments and descriptive action over exposition. You tell us constantly how strong and intelligent Lyra is, but you never demonstrate it through her actions or specific exploits, and you leave it vague as to what faction she's a part of. This story would do great with more specificity behind it - expanding on the moment of betrayal (as mentioned by another commenter) would be a great opportunity!

thank you, I'm planning on it! My intent with the theme was to position the angelic empire as strength (the power of indomitable stone walls, the absolute control held by jailers) and the beastmen as intelligence (knowing how to sneak up on the wall and dig under the damn thing!), but I figured it might be a stretch haha. I'm excited for the next one and might wind up doing a bit more writing about my beastmen army in the meanwhile :)

Technology working per design, i see nothing wrong here.

Technology working per design, i see nothing wrong here.

thank you! I'm glad you liked it, the word count was my enemy on this one

I LOVE the concept and the final reversal - the selection of the Duchies as the raw brute power faction and the peasant revolution as the brains was delightful (we love a reversal here). One thing I think you could work on is exposition; the early conversation where Vlad makes reference to his own sorcery was a little awkward and broke the immersion; I think the boyar's accusation of necromancy would have worked enough on its own to introduce the concept, and cutting Vlad's reference to it would have opened more room for drama in the later part of the dialogue. Still, excellent work!

Excellent story - I've never seen the idea of knight-foremen before. The way you used quotation marks made it a little tricky to follow who was talking, though - towards the beginning, I thought the foreman and the inquisitor were exchanging dialogue.

Good work! I think that a little more emphasis on the difficulty of tackling the robots would have adhered to the theme better, though; those rifles seemed pretty darn strong!