Good [select one – morning/afternoon/evening], folks. It seems as if my Halloween special was enjoyed, which is good. Don’t forget to read my Thanksgiving special, when I talk about turkeys, and my Christmas special, when I talk about why SANTA CLAUS DOES EXIST, GOSHDARNIT!

[AT: Okay, Grondring. It’s time to take your medicine now.]

Aww, but my medicine tastes like old people!

Ahem. I’m sure you’re all eager to find out whether I’m going to be posting samples or not (actually, you’re probably not eager at all, since you’ve seen the thread title), but I’d like to start off with one bit of news. That bit is that I’ll be writing two special edition articles. These will be posted in addition to my regular ones (bad news for my poster, Axem Titanium), but will be self–edited (good news for my editor, Mad Mod). The first will be on the deeper meaning behind Venture Brothers, and the second will present my interpretation of the ending of Wolf’s Rain. I know these topics aren’t wildly popular ones, but when I want to write something trying to stop me is like trying to stop a linebacker with a toothbrush – ill-advisable, difficult, and often very painful. I will make you cry and laugh loudly about it afterwards. Hopefully the
Venture Bros. one will be out on 11/14/04 (next Sunday), and the Wolf’s Rain one
on 11/21/04 (the Sunday after next Sunday). These won’t be my normal casual bits
of writing but serious analyses.

[AT: I seem to recall you saying something about never writing about something
you’ve planned out.]

I know. Amazing stroke of luck, isn’t it? God’s smiling on me today. Well, actually, he smiles on me every day, but he smiles more today.

… oh, you mean the special edition articles? No, I’ve already started forming them in my mind and have actually written some stuff for the Wolf’s Rain article. If I’m going to be that unlazy you just know I’m going to stick to my plan.

Anyway, let’s get on to the story samples, shall we? The format will be a brief summary of the story (often with a few design tidbits) and then the actual excerpt. Keep in mind that I wrote the excerpts for the sole purpose of using them as samples, so it might be a while until you actually see them in the story.

First up is The Broken. This is set in my mind, as usual, but I think you’ll find it’s a lot different from the typical fun romps. It features Arthur Eidael as the main character. Arthur is a light mage brought into the service of a general named Grondring. Before you get pissed at me for what seems like the despicable act of putting myself into my story, let me say that after all this is set in my mind, and besides, you’ll find after reading the first chapter that this Grondring is obviously not me. Then who is he? Why is this story named The Broken? What is the truth behind Arthur’s world? How do I come up with all these ridiculously clichéd and pathetic questions? Vote for this story to find out.

Excerpt Start: Arthur grumbled at the lack of light, conjured an orb of pure brightness in his right hand, and wished he hadn’t.

The negator that had been skulking in the darkness of the dripping wet cave realized the lieutenant could now see him. Its eyes were the absolute opposite of Arthur’s lamp, unfiltered darkness as opposed to unfiltered light. Its body was contorted and grotesque. The monster was an unnatural eight feet tall, though it crouched so low it was actually shorter than the purifier. Its body was a writhing mass of black jelly, rippling like the waves of some deranged sea. It snarled, a harsh, grating noise that revealed rows of broken yellow teeth.

Arthur instinctively shot up his free hand and fired off a bolt of purifying energy at the creature. The thing didn’t even bother to move. The ball of light tore off its entire upper torso, and then it was gone.

But it wasn’t. Arthur could still sense it, an unnatural evil darkness against the natural darkness of the cave. He fed more energy into his makeshift lamp and peered about. Where was the blasted thing, and how had it survived his attack? Secundus must be getting better at making negators these days. It was no good–the creature could be hiding in any of the flaring shadows created by his orb.

No–there! That entire black patch; there was nothing that could cast that shadow! As if the negator had somehow sensed its disguise had been penetrated, the black patch swirled and reformed into a slightly smaller but no less fearsome version of its original form. Its jaws twisted up into a deranged smile and an uncountable multitude of obsidian swords burst of its body, formed by malicious will from its own flesh. The deadly arsenal came at Arthur with inconceivable speed as the monster gave a harsh laugh…

Excerpt End

All right, that’s the sample.

Next is A Cruel Angel’s Thesis. Anyone who knows anything vaguely about Evangelion should be aware that this is actually the title of the opening theme. Well, I actually got the inspiration for this from Eva. I considered making it an Eva fic, but decided it would be pathetic and stupid if I did. There’s the little design anecdote.

[AT: W00T! Go Eva! Okay, I’ll stop making stupid comments now.]

Yes, you will. You’ve used up your comment quota for the week now. Anyway, ACAT chronicles the transformation of the angel Ferreus from a relatively minor luminary into a corrupted demon and then his ascendancy to the throne of Satan. Sounds really religious, I know, and I have borrowed a bunch of stuff from Christian theology, but trust me, it’s not preachy or anything at all. This excerpt is really violent. You have been warned.

Excerpt Start: Azariel turned, a cruel smile adorning his face and Ferreus’s blood dripping along his sword. The fallen angel flapped his rusted red wings twice and slid his sword back into an invisible sheath, the weapon disappearing. He glanced at his foe in triumph…

… only to take Ferreus’s black metal blade into his heart. The demon stared down at the weapon which had driven through two layers of magically reinforced armor, up at the angel who had thrown it there, and then back at the length of strong steel.

Black electricity crackled from the scimitar into Azariel’s body, and he screamed as the enchantment on the artifact tore through his material form, relentlessly searching and discarding the atoms of his body. He knew what it was questing for, but all his ability to stop it was lost in the agonizing pain of the moment.

His wings faltered, and a black comet fell from the morning sky. It plummeted through the clouds, through the air, through the trees, until finally with an earth–rending crash it impacted the ground with enough force to send a shock wave through the surrounding forest.

But still Azariel lived, both because every iota of his will he could spare was focused on holding his physical manifestation together and because the black sword still lodged in his body was not done with him yet and refused to let him die. The demon shrieked and writhed on the ground, completely unaware of the angel descending to end his misery.

With another flap of his own white wings, Ferreus’s feet touched the ground. A triumphant grin danced across his face as he walked casually over to where Azariel lay twisting and contorting on the ground. He frowned.

“Hold him still,” he commanded. His sword dug through the fallen angel’s body, coming out through his back and lodging in the ground. Azariel screamed again, sparks jolting across his skin, but stayed relatively motionless thanks to the power of Ferreus’s weapon.

Ferreus stood by the great demon at his feet, looked at him intently for a moment, and then took his sword by the hilt. Then he spoke, his voice eager and energetic and filled with power.

“Through trial and trouble, through blood and battle, I claim the power of the demon Azariel, Cortex of Gamchicoth, Rival Sefira to Tzadqiel the Cortex of Chesed and Mercy.”

The blade found what it wanted–the well of Azariel’s stored strength. The ebon electricity turned into a black fire, and the demon’s body burned as the enchantment discarded his material body and tapped into his pure power. The power channeled itself through the enhanced steel and into Ferreus.

And as Ferreus absorbed Azariel, the blackness of his eyes became a physical thing, and spilled out in a billowing dark cloud to obscure his entire face…

Excerpt End

Okay, that’s done. I told you it was violent.

Now it’s Curtains Down. You know what? I hate this story’s name. I think it was originally Reset, which was worse, but then I decided to make it Curtains Down because the main character’s name is Quentin Curtanel and I felt in the mood for puns, but it ended up barely less horrible than the original. Oh well. I’ll settle for it.

Curtains Down is the story of Quentin Curtanel, a mercenary in the world of Solus. This is sort of like The Broken in that it’s a “truth behind the world” type story, but you’ll find that they branch off into very different directions. Anyway, Quent goes off and tries to discover why his world’s so freaky and messed up. Along the way he meets Pritor, one of the Scourges who have been messing with his world for a long time, who also wants to discover why the world’s freaky, and together they go around looking for the origin of freakiness.

Excerpt Start: “What’s this?” Quentin asked, passing the thing he had found to Pritor. The small crystal orb glowed with an inner light, and the massive silver-skinned Scourge held it carefully in his claws and bent over,inspecting it with a keen eye.

“It looks like a server”, he said finally, passing it back to Quent.

“What’s a–”

“A server is one of the tools at the disposal of the Scourges. We’ve used them since the world began, since we began. Simply put, they store things and, when activated, release those things onto out material plane.”

The mercenary nodded slowly, digesting the information. “So it’s sorta like a box where you can cram stuff in and it’ll never run out of space.”

“No, it will eventually run out of space, but it all depends on the particular server’s capacity. I’d say this one contains ten cubic yards of volume.”

“Okay then. I’ll stash it in case we figure out how to open it–” Quent paused in the middle of putting the orb into one of his cloak’s numerous inner pockets. “Wait a second, you mean the Scourges use these and can active them whenever they want?”

“Yes, my former people often used them as bait for traps. They would wait for an unsuspecting traveler to pick them up and then activate the servers, releasing troops onto the material plane to–oh.” Pritor paused. “That’s bad.”

The crystal orb pulsed with a sudden bright green light, and when it faded Quent and Pritor were keeping the company of five immensely tall Scourges (with lots of pointy claws, of course) who were looking at the pair like a starving man looks at a turkey dinner.

Excerpt End

There, that sample’s finished. Only one more to go.

Last is Fire and Ice. This story’s origin is kinda weird. One day I was reading my history book, learning stuff about the Russian Revolution, and I suddenly thought, “Hey, this would be really interesting if it wasn’t written all stuffy and boring!” Thus was born Fire and Ice.

Fire and Ice is essentially that – the Russian Revolution, except interesting. I’ve thrown in a few details, like the fact that everyone can, er, use magic, and ignored a great deal of other facts, so don’t expect to read this and pass your history tests. (Who was Leon Trotsky? Oh, he was a Russian revolutionary who used fire magic. Eh, I don’t quite think that’s what your teacher’s looking for.) Anyway, I still think it’s pretty interesting. The main character is Leon Trotsky, by the way.

Excerpt Start: Trotsky cursed as he rolled, barely dodging the massive shard of ice. The Russian revolutionary countered the attack with a small fireblast, barely worth his opponent’s time. As expected, Kerensky simply smiled and waved his hand. The pillar of flame dissolved, unraveling itself until it was nothing but a small spark, and then nothing at all.

Trotsky breathed hard and glared at his adversary. Alexander Kerensky stood a solid ten feet away from him, still impeccably dressed even after the long battle. Neither he nor the royal ballroom they fought in was in such good shape. The expansive hall of the former tsar’s Winter Palace was scorched in some areas and wet in others, and in one corner there was a solid block of ice where one of the rebel’s Bolshevik comrades had wandered in and gotten frozen.

“So tell me,” Leon said, trying to get some time to catch his breath, “what’s it like being the Prime Minister of this piece of dung you call a government?”

Kerensky grinned at him in an irritatingly condescending way. He fiddled with the golden buttons on his suit and tapped his shining black shoes against the floor. “Oh, it’s excellent,” he said. Then his grin disappeared and his voice grew harsh. “Until a bunch of stupid rebels like you Bolsheviks try to overthrow me.”

Trotsky shrugged. “Oh, no need to thank us for breaking the monotony.” Then he lunged forward, his heavy overcoat flapping and his fingertips glowing red. More columns of fire flung from his hands. The wooden floors burned, and the Bolshevik could see nothing through the heavy pillars of smoke.

Then the fog cleared, and Kerensky stood unharmed, still tapping and fiddling. He looked at his foe, his eyes suddenly icy blue, and said, “And you blame me for being monotonous? I’m not the one who’s done nothing but throw bits of fire since the duel began. But enough of this.” The Minister was suddenly eerily still, his fingers ceasing their fiddling and his feet their tapping. “It’s time to get rid of you and quell the uprising outside. It’s really quite irritating how incompetent the mages in the infantry are. Farewell, Leon Trotsky.” He clenched his right hand in a fist and lifted it. Three chunks of ice smashed through the battered floor and, even as the Bolshevik watched, chiseled themselves into roughly humanoid forms. Then Kerensky spoke a word that hurt his ears and the revolutionary felt the weight of three coldly burning gazes uponhim.

“Kill the rebel,” ordered Kerensky, and the ice golems lumbered forward to fulfill the bidding of their master.

Excerpt End

Finally! All done! Right then, everybody, vote! That’s all for today. I’m exhausted from writing all this. Six freaking pages, man! Six! With tons of editing and rewriting! I need a vacation.

Grondring needs a vacation.

Mad Mod had to help him edit all that, so he needs a vacation too.

Axem Titanium gets off Scott-free. He says ha-ha to Grondy and Mad
Mod.

Damned tv's, I can't concentrate on reading the exerpts, so I'll vote later..

EDIT-Crap...Curtains Down reminds me of ToS...And that first one just sucks...Fire and Ice is interesting but the violence in ACAT is so enjoyable....

I vote for a cruel angel's thesis

I WANNA VOTE FOR MORE THAN ONE!!!

You can't, somehow, multi-choice pick polls aways give errors when we try to vote on them.

Fine then, I made my choice.

Okay, who voted for "they all suck"? =sharpens teeth=

By the way, just so you know, voting for that actually counts. If there are enough votes for that I'll stick with my normal articles.

*pouts* I liked fire and ice...

I thought you liked ACAT's excessive violence.

Though not as much as I like fire and ice!

OK, I'll be sure to notify you when I post new chapters of FI in my website.

... and what's ToS?

:ph43r: :blink: Tales of Symphonia?

Okay. I've heard of it, I'm just not exactly acquainted with all of its abbreviations.

I would be playing ToS right now... if I had a GCN. But I don't. So I'm finally playing .hack part 4: Quarantine. And you should continue playing FFVII, lazy bum.

Anyway, to make this more on topic, didn't I tell you he would bite you?

The thing is, I don't know who they are... so I'll just bite everyone! Gahahahaha!

=takes out a million automatic chattery teeth thingies and starts polishing them...

... one by one...

... for five minutes each...=

That would take 5000000 minutes, or approximately 9 and a half years, so don't worry about being bitten.

=enlists the help of a billion gnomes who can each polish one in two seconds=

I spoke too soon.

But wait! In the gnomes' zeal to polish teeth, they kill each other for the limited number of teeth to polish and ultimately wipe themselves from existence. And Grondy goes broke from buying the services of them all.

I'm not broke because they're dead. And if they insisted on early payment, I'll just loot their bodies. And now they're polished, sharpened, and ready to go.

SIC!

But they killed each other for the chance to polish before they got any polishing done.

However, they finished the sharpening before they finished the polishing, and that's what matters.

(Go verbal spar!)

But you didn't order them to sharpen, you ordered them to polish, therefore making your teeth neither sharpened nor polished.

... didn't I type sharpen? I was positive I typed sharpen...

Whatever, just bite people.

Me? Why would I bite people? It was you who said it.

I'm saying that to my automated teeth.

Automated teeth. *shudders* Hey, didn't Professor Farnsworth have a set of nuclear energy powered teeth?

Yes, but I have a million of them.

Uh oh. This could be trouble.

Exactly. Besides, the gnomes would have died anyway from polishing the nuclear reactor of the teeth, so no money lost.

How do you know gnomes are affected by radiation? (btw, on the floor of the Senate this debate would be called a filibuster. It's used to debate a topic to death until the supporters of the topic give up. In this case, I would be trying to debate Grondy's idea of biting everyone to death. And Grondy isn't allowed to stop me unless 60 people from FEW agree with him and want me to stop.)

I am perfectly aware of what a filibuster is. I do plan to go into politics a certain extent, y'know.

I wasn't talking to you. I was informing everyone else so that they know that I'm on their side, trying to selflessly protect everyone from your relentless teeth.

I'm only trying to bite the people who said my writing sucks.

... although I do admit that the excerpt from The Broken was pathetic. It was like 1 in the morning when I wrote that, and my brain was already exploding from the Wolf's Rain finale.

Why would your brain explode from the finale of Wolf's Rain? It was one of the less creative finales I've seen.

1 AM + sadness from last new episode of Inuyasha + sadness from last episode of Wolf's Rain + delirious joy from Steve Blum's awesome insane Darcia VA = exploding brain.

last new ep? LAst week was an old one...

You still can't argue that Wolf's Rain's finale was really cliched and unoriginal.

Yes you can, but that doesn't mean I will.

DAMNIT!!! QUIT IGNORING ME!

I don't think he was talking about last week...