Comments on "Caster's burden"

[youngstormlord]

Ok, that is my first fanfiction and I'm not native english speaker, so go easy on me using articles and tenses, 'mkay? For those corrections, please post the full page with just red and blue thingies, so I can copy and paste full corrected version instead of correcting sentence by sentence...

Now, what I'm interested in is comments on my style and story. Is it in the spirit of Erfworld? Are character's relatively life-like and likeable? and so on .

Some more notes, that might not be mentioned in original story:

I have presumed that scroll production is not a free action. In fact, I have gone from that relatively canonic position to full blown fanonic lunacy. So, here's what you need to know about it.

Scroll production: needs parchment and gem the same colour as the scroll, as well as the caster with ability to cast magic of the scroll type. Needs enormous amount of juice (in story example: 9000 castings compared to 150 scrolls produced, or 1 scroll = juice used for 60 spells cast) and has other limitations.

Parchment is produced in different parts of the city and is normally gathered by henchmen and taken to the central room of the casting tower, as well as gems, either made from Schmuckers by Moneymancer or mined/taken raw. They pop naturally in other parts of the city if Warlord orders that schmuckers for the next turn pop in gem form (orders at the end of this turn, that is). Colour of gems popped is random.

Casting tower has six rooms + big hall. Once scroll is created in the room, the same room cannot be used for scroll creation until the next turn, because of juice oversaturation of the room.So, caster takes certain amount of parchment and one gem from the hall, goes to one of the rooms, creates scroll, and repeats the process
from room to room until he is out of juice, parchment or gems. Certain scrolls cannot be created by a single caster because of their high juice cost (dittomancy, croakamancy and some others) and can be made by linked casters only. The aforementioned way of creating scrolls is regular way, when caster is not linked. It is a long and tedious process. But... when caster is linked with Findamancer, there's no need for tower rooms or gathering of gems and parchment. Findamancer finds piece of parchment anywhere in the city and closest pink gem to it (also anywhere in the city), then Healamancer creates the scroll in the point between the gem and parchment. At the end of turn( or the middle, or just after scroll creation), henchmen pick the scrolls from all over the city and take them either to dungeon or to the treasury. If there were Thinkamancer instead of Findamancer, it would allow faster tower rooms reusage (depending of the link, sometimes also faster healing of units within Healamancers range). Turnamancer cuts the turns somewhat, and Changeamancer allows usage of any gems or parchment equivalents. So, that's that.


As for other name annotations: Nyx is name of Greek goddess of the night, and Lux was Roman god/representation of light. Merry is allusion to Merry Poppins, as will become clear in the next update. Sizemore the Brown is shout out to both Gandalf the Grey of LOTR fame, and shout out to Terry Pratchet's shout out of character named Mustrum Ridcully a.k.a Ridcully the Brown of Discworld fame.

So... your turn, critique givers. Tear my fanfiction to pieces... but politely.

[Welf von Ehrwald]

Since praises helps writing and I'd like to read some more, here's some of it: I like it, and your last update created a good atmosphere of doom. That's always a goodstart.

For some criticism: Your first updates works very good as a character study. I actually thought it was a stand-alone. It was a little number heavy, they distract a bit from what the characters say. Character interaction like that works on emotional response, doing math speaks to the reader's rational. I think you should have delayed the exact figures to the second text, there we need to think about the conflict and the numbers support that. But that's a minor thing, and just a personal opinion. Actually I don't know much about literature.

Keep uon writing, and let us not wait too long till the next one

[youngstormlord]

Since praises helps writing and I'd like to read some more, here's some of it: I like it, and your last update created a good atmosphere of doom. That's always a goodstart.

For some criticism: Your first updates works very good as a character study. I actually thought it was a stand-alone. It was a little number heavy, they distract a bit from what the characters say. Character interaction like that works on emotional response, doing math speaks to the reader's rational. I think you should have delayed the exact figures to the second text, there we need to think about the conflict and the numbers support that. But that's a minor thing, and just a personal opinion. Actually I don't know much about literature.

Keep on writing, and let us not wait too long till the next one

Thanks a lot. I've felt that numbers are important, because it is Erfworld and numbers are important for characters. Stack bonuses, brute numbers, leadership, caster bonuses... it all adds up and I've felt that they would be given a lot of thought in doomed kingdom. Anyway, a new update is up.

[SteveMB]

Posted by Rolan7, moved to "comments" thread:

Not bad at all! I liked the romance between the casters, it's realistic (there's tension between them as they argue, but their love is greater than it). You missed the word "the" several times, so your grammar isn't perfect, but it's not hard to ignore. By the time you started describing the link-up I was hooked.

[youngstormlord]

Ok, here's the allusions, winks and nods in my last couple of updates. Archer names are allusions to famous tenis players. John was both a hint to John McInroe and Little John, of Robin Hood. And there's of course transformers reference: Autobots, transform and roll out! Have fun reading and hope you like my next update.