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[Total Members Voted:]

Entry A

9 (15.8%)

Entry B

2 (3.5%)

Entry C

3 (5.3%)

Entry D

4 (7%)

Entry E

7 (12.3%)

Entry F

5 (8.8%)

Entry G

3 (5.3%)

Entry H

8 (14%)

Entry I

1 (1.8%)

Entry J

3 (5.3%)

Entry K

0 (0%)

Entry L

0 (0%)

Entry M

12 (21.1%)

Total Members Voted: 27

Voting closed: March 04, 2010, 11:54:54 PM

[Sea-Zan]

Glad you liked "I" (it was mine)

Thanks for the "vote" lol

[Hive Lord]

Congratulations to the authors of the following three entries, which have been deemed TO's favourite stories!

First Place: Entry M - DEF Knight
Second Place: Entry A - Colonel Marksman
Third Place: Entry H - Tau Killer

Points and seals will be winging their way to you shortly!

Well done to everyone who entered - these were all thoroughly enjoyable to read!

[Tau-killer]

Thanks to all those who voted for me.  I very much appreciate it.  I've never felt my writing skills to be at their strongest when it comes to 40k writing - and I hadn't even written anything 40k related in years - so to be given third is very gratifying!  Congratulations also to all my fellow competitors - especially Colonel Marksman and DEF Knight.  Your story in particular, DEF Knight was absolutely outstanding.


Also Colonel, I am well aware of the reverence and respect with which the vast vast majority of Eldar revere their Spirit Stones.  The whole point of the story was that in every society, there will always be some 'wierdo' (for lack of a better term) who sees things differently.  Even amongst humans for instance, you can always find people with outlandish beliefs - be it belief in a flat Earth, or in something more deadly, such as nuclear holocaust being a good thing for instance.  My story was about the Eldar equivalent of this - an Eldar (who by his own admission was effectively a heretic) who, when put under a situation of terrible emotional distress, saw fit to commit one of the most terrible crimes an Eldar could possibly commit.

[enderwiggin]

The whole point of the story was that in every society, there will always be some 'wierdo' (for lack of a better term) who sees things differently.  Even amongst humans for instance, you can always find people with outlandish beliefs - be it belief in a flat Earth, or in something more deadly such as nuclear holocaust being a good thing.  My story was about the Eldar equivalent of this - an Eldar (who by his own admission was effectively a heretic) who, when put under a situation of terrible emotional distress, saw fit to commit one of the most terrible crimes an Eldar could possibly commit.

I quite liked your story. Had it felt a little smoother, it would have been one of, if not the top pic. I enjoyed it very much because all to often people fanwank fluff up the Eldar into these supreme beings, when the can have any fault a human can + their emotions are on a greater scale. With this particular story, I think you hit a nerve ending with the human audience with such a human reasoning behind the feared act of stone destruction.

Very well done.

[Colonel Marksman]

Also Colonel, I am well aware of the reverence and respect with which the vast vast majority of Eldar revere their Spirit Stones.  The whole point of the story was that in every society, there will always be some 'wierdo' (for lack of a better term) who sees things differently.  Even amongst humans for instance, you can always find people with outlandish beliefs - be it belief in a flat Earth, or in something more deadly such as nuclear holocaust being a good thing.  My story was about the Eldar equivalent of this - an Eldar (who by his own admission was effectively a heretic) who, when put under a situation of terrible emotional distress, saw fit to commit one of the most terrible crimes an Eldar could possibly commit.

It was actually just last week I picked up the Chaos Daemon Codex, and in it I read about the Fall of Kher-Ys. So I am able to grasp this concept better. It is always a good idea to at least hint somewhere in the story that you knew all along. You have to consider your readers stupid after all. For example, you can't simply assume your readers will know that a character who rolls off of a truck at 20 mph through the ice, down a hill, into an icy river, swims out, and then shoot a rifle into the back of the head of the driver, is a lucky man. If you stick it in your description and include training exercises the character might've gone through, and make it obvious he's being pushed to his absolute limits, then it becomes more believable.

[Mr. HF G. Liath]

Thanks to whoever voted for mine (B) 

[Tau-killer]

It was actually just last week I picked up the Chaos Daemon Codex, and in it I read about the Fall of Kher-Ys. So I am able to grasp this concept better. It is always a good idea to at least hint somewhere in the story that you knew all along.

What do you mean?  What is it that I 'knew all along' which I'm supposed to have hinted at?  That he was a nutcase?  If so then I would disagree completely.  I would argue the way I did it - playing him as a conventional normal warrior for most of the plot and then suddenly revealing him at the end to be an unrepentent heretic (by Eldar standards) was a far better and shocking way of doing it.  Besides, I told you at the start that he knew he was going to die, and if that doesn't make it obvious with hindsight that I knew exactly where he was going all along, then frankly I don't know what does.

In general, complex, subtle foreshadowing has its place, like for instance in long complicated epics.  But it is by no means necessary for a short, tightly packed, 1000 word story where every single word is precious.

[Colonel Marksman]

What do you mean?  What is it that I 'knew all along' which I'm supposed to have hinted at?  That he was a nutcase?  If so then I would disagree completely.  I would argue the way I did it - playing him as a conventional normal warrior for most of the plot and then suddenly revealing him at the end to be an unrepentent heretic (by Eldar standards) was a far better and shocking way of doing it.  Besides, I told you at the start that he knew he was going to die, and if that doesn't make it obvious with hindsight that I knew exactly where he was going all along, then frankly I don't know what does.

In general, complex, subtle foreshadowing has its place, like for instance in long complicated epics.  But it is by no means necessary for a short, tightly packed, 1000 word story where every single word is precious.

You made it appear that you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about. You didn't reveal enough in your writing (not that you had much room to) to show that you even owned an Eldar Codex, much less read it. There was no way to know for sure. Thus so, I (and my cousin to whom I read the story) assumed you had a seriously flawed characteristic in your story. You gave room for us to assume so.

It isn't Rule #1, but it's up there: never ever leave anything room for interpretation, 0.00% in the actions of characters, make everything known exactly as is and pretend your readers cannot understand you well.


There isn't a shred of fluff anywhere that portrays that there are nut cases in Eldar society. Whether or not they exist is up to opinion. And it is extremely rare that anyone would think that they exist. Because of this rarity, you have to clarify it, otherwise you could look like a fool. You never mentioned that you knew he was a nut case. He seemed perfectly capable of thinking clearly as it is written in first person. Like Ender said, most people tend to look up to the Eldar as supreme beings and write their fluff that way. In a sense, Eldar are extremely superior to Humans in dozens of aspects.


There probably are weirdos in Eldar society, but you're the first to bring it up to my knowledge.

[Tau-killer]

You made it appear that you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about. You didn't reveal enough in your writing (not that you had much room to) to show that you even owned an Eldar Codex, much less read it.

Oh don't be silly.  So it gave you the impression that I hadn't even read the Eldar codex?  Despite the fact that I displayed clear knowledge of:

Striking Scorpions
Exarches and the role of Exarches
Khaine
The weapons used by Striking Scorpions
The Tyranid invasion of Iyanden
The existence of Spirit Stones
Farseers and their psychic abilities
The ultimate fate of the Eldar and their relationship to Slaanesh

Do tell me, where did you and your cousin think that I obtained knowledge of all these concepts?  Wikipedia?

Furthermore, if you're seriously expecting me to explain the idea that in a population of millions of free-thinking individuals, there will be an odd few who do not conform to the concensus shared by the vast majority of the rest of the population, then it seems to me that you are suffering from a simple lack of imagination!

[enderwiggin]

You made it appear that you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about. You didn't reveal enough in your writing (not that you had much room to) to show that you even owned an Eldar Codex, much less read it.

Oh don't be silly.  So it gave you the impression that I hadn't even read the Eldar codex?  Despite the fact that I displayed clear knowledge of:

Striking Scorpions
Exarches and the role of Exarches
Khaine
The weapons used by Striking Scorpions
The Tyranid invasion of Iyanden
The existence of Spirit Stones
Farseers and their psychic abilities
The ultimate fate of the Eldar and their relationship to Slaanesh

Do tell me, where did you and your cousin think that I obtained knowledge of all these concepts?  Wikipedia?

Furthermore, if you're seriously expecting me to explain the idea that in a population of millions of free-thinking individuals, there will be an odd few who do not conform to the consensus shared by the vast majority of the rest of the population, then it seems to me that you are suffering from a simple lack of imagination!

Agreed. Marksman, he had a fairly nice story that was very clearly not done by an amateur fluff person. It had a great flow and was probably a shock to most of the readers when he decided to destroy the spirit stone, but I suspect that was done for shock value and the human reasons I outlined above.

Also, you seem to have been mistaken if you think he's the first to put forth Eldar that are less than godlike. Like it or not, there's been plenty of canon twisted fluff examples of (non-Dark) Eldar doing this sort of thing or worse.

How about the suicidal Eldar that hanged himself and rotted at the end of the rope in the slums of a city? The Eldar twisted enough to insert a horrified/hate-filled/corrupted spirit stone into the spirit network/crystal matrix of a craftworld? Or even a bloated and disgusting example of gluttony that hasn't quite turned to chaos but is working on it.

TK did not do anything wrong by depicting some screwed up Eldar, only the Eldar fanboys would suggest otherwise about the Eldar not having some screwup psychos like every other race.