A Tale of Two Brothers: text overhaul

[Darker_Dreams]

Spoiler:

Level 3 Pregame Text

19 IV, 353 YW
Excerpt from the journal of Rotharik the Clanless

The last of Mordak's servants arrived this morning bearing the news of his death as well as a bundle so well-bound it was barely recognizable as a man. Mordak was always reckless. This whole desperate scheme was his. I suppose I could blame him for all our suffering of late, if it still mattered. <<1>> All the same, he managed to accomplish what he set out to do.

I still cannot believe the finality of what has happened; until now we had always managed to make it through somehow.

We had hoped to deliver the mage to Tairach in return for our lives. I do not know why the warlord seeks a human mage, but this man matches the description. I suppose that Mordak's plan would have worked perfectly if not for the appearance of the horse warriors.

Now they are coming here. I hear rumors that the horse-warrior is brother to the mage I still hold. If this is true he will never stop; I would not if they held Mordak.

I have done what I can to fortify this dilapidated castle. The orcs who joined us stands guard at the gates as I gather all of my servants to me in the inner sanctum. But I have no confidence anymore. Whether or not I defeat this horse warrior the orcs will still come for me; they have been scouring the borderlands and raiding the northern farm country in search of us. <<2>>

Yet for some reason it is these brothers I fear more. If my brother were alive it would be different, but we are broken...and these two men are whole. In each other, in the ties that bind them, they have strength.

notes (not commenting on punctuation, just things that either I didn't change or that I figured the reason for change should be discussed);
cut out "handful", it makes it sound as though they've been trickling in, rather than having been destroyed

"a bundle so well-bound it was barely" I'm not sure what this is trying to say, it doesn't make a clear image that's self-consistent for me.

"the reckless one" -> "reckless" or "more reckless," people often compare brothers... generally people don't explicitly compare themselves. the other might be more reckless, but the "than me" (which is what "one" stands in for) is unspoken. more often the comparison is entirely unspoken- thus "he's reckless." means "more reckless than me."

1 "It was he who brought the wrath of the orcs down on us too." This is entirely disjointed from the rest of the narrative, and something likely already covered in his journal. I see why it's needed, but it needs to be demonstratory rather than expository. "Ice and flame take you; why did you have to {{sleep with the orc chieftain's daughter/steal the tribe's colors/noodle incident}}, Mordak? None of this would have happened had you any restraint."

2 "--those who betrayed Tairach and joined us--" again with the non-expository exposition. This time it seems like a bus-sized plot hole why orcs would abandon their powerful leader to join a lost cause. Maybe this is explained elsewhere, but I'm not seeing it right off. Meanwhile, it's easier to hand-wave without them being traitors and just having joined the cause. It also reads more smoothly.

random thought- you might add a "for vengeance" note or see about getting him to surrender when defeated. This guy really is spectacularly sympathetic right now: drug in over his head by a reckless brother who has now been slain, he sounds hopeless and a little broken.

Spoiler:

Arne: Bind him and take him with us. If he has played us false he will die.
Soldier: Sir...what kind of mess are we getting ourselves into? I thought you wanted nothing to do with your brother. Not since Toen Caeric...
Arne: I...don't know. Things have changed. Mount up, and let's get moving.

I'll admit, I haven't read the whole thing. But I was skimming through and this caught my eye. he's had one conversation with his brother and little demonstrated growth. This either needs expanded to better show the development or needs to be a "I may hate the [censored], but no one else gets to **** with him" moment. I suggest the latter, it's easier to flow and can be the "gruff cover" for "I give a damn but I'm not ready to admit it (to myself) yet."

Spoiler:

27 V, 353 YW
Excerpt from the journal of Bjarn of Maghre

Almost home now. The last week has been full of mixed feelings for me--blissful and difficult by turns. It is wonderful to be out of that dungeon cell and in the sunlight again. To be without the threat of death or worse hanging over my head. But with that behind me I turn to the almost equally daunting task of making amends with my brother.

Arne has largely forgiven me. It seems recent events had thawed much of his wrath and disappointment by the time he freed me from my cell. All the same, it has taken much for us to regain the bond we once had. It is fortunate that we have been able to take our time getting back.

Needless to say we gave the Grey Woods a wide berth. On our way around we traveled through some truly beautiful countryside. It has given us plenty of time to talk. Things are not as they once were, and may never be, but the wounds are finally healing.

Though I am at ease my thoughts often turn back to Toen Caeric. We should have been able to repel the orcs without great loss. The pincer attack Arne devised would surely have carried the day if it had not been for me. If I had stayed with the men under my command instead of acting recklessly they might not have been slain so needlessly.

I can hardly blame Arne for having taken it so hard and I can never undo the wrong that I have done. I suppose that time heals some things. We return to the village as brothers once more.

I still feel a sense of foreboding. I wonder is it merely a remnant of my time locked away in that dungeon, or is it a sign of something real?

[A-Red]

I've been back over the whole thing using many of the suggestions made (all edits made to the original posts). There are a couple of bits of dialogue I'm still thinking about, but overall I think I've worked out the kinks.

[Darker_Dreams]

"animated corpses"
If you're not going to refer to them as "walking corpses" you should probably move further from the term- as it is it looks like you're trying to avoid the unit name... and it should never look like that (especially when its true).

Our outer defenses slowed them enough for the townspeople to quell the attack with only a few casualties, but we cannot survive many more nights like this one.
The undead first appeared a week ago and have struck sporadically since that time, but the people of Maghre have not once managed to respond quickly or effectively.

Vary your sentence structure. I advise against putting two ", but" sentences back to back.

When I was a student at Alduin I crafted a pair of amulets for us so that we could call to each other in times of need. For the second time in my life I have sent out that call. I do not know if he will come. I do not know if he has even kept the amulet. We have not spoken once in the four years since Toen Caeric.

This is the same kind of exposition we've been hunting and killing elsewhere. I'm going to swing at a version;

my try

I used the amulets I made at Alduin to try and call to my brother. I do not know if he even kept his part of the pair. If he comes it will be the first time we have spoken since Toen Caeric. With that memory as the only other time I called him thus I have little hope.

[boru]

A-Red, I'm really glad someone is finally doing this.

To look at the big picture for a moment: I've always felt the final scenario was a bit of a let down. We fight undead armies in the first, elves on their home turf in the second, an evil sorcerer in the third ... and then a bunch of orcs.

Tairach really needs some development before we can be convinced he's a campaign finale -worthy threat. In the current version, he has no lines. In your version, he has:

Tairach: You! The mage who scarred me with fire! KILL THEM!

You've answered a lot of questions with your rewrite, but new questions arise. Since Tairach arranged for Bjarn's capture, why is he not there to gloat over the capture? What are his plans for Bjarn, just kill him or something else? Why do the sorcerers obey Tairach? Why doesn't Tairach just send some of his elite orcs to kill Bjarn? As you've written it, Bjarn did something far worse to Tairach than burn his face ... he scared him and made him run away, while his clan was in battle. Maybe there were some repercussions to Tairach's cowardice, or maybe it's something unspoken.

Hope this helps.

[A-Red]

Tairach: You! The mage who scarred me with fire! KILL THEM!

You've answered a lot of questions with your rewrite, but new questions arise. Since Tairach arranged for Bjarn's capture, why is he not there to gloat over the capture? What are his plans for Bjarn, just kill him or something else? Why do the sorcerers obey Tairach? Why doesn't Tairach just send some of his elite orcs to kill Bjarn? As you've written it, Bjarn did something far worse to Tairach than burn his face ... he scared him and made him run away, while his clan was in battle. Maybe there were some repercussions to Tairach's cowardice, or maybe it's something unspoken.

It's tough to make everything clear with limited exposition, but what I meant to get across is that the two dark sorcerors are not working for Tairach--rather, they're on the run from him, and are trying to lift the bounty off of their own heads by delivering someone he wants even more. Consider Rotharik's line: "the orcs will still come for me; they have been scouring the borderlands and raiding the northern farm country in search of us." Tairach doesn't know where Bjarn is. He happens to be attacking the village of Maghre just because he's attacking villages (while looking for the sorcerors)--a coincidence that brings the characters together in a karmic fashion.

[esr]

Lord of Prose here. This rewrite is good stuff. I'll probably merge it into TB, adding archaisms and rephrasing where needed.

[A-Red]

Glad to hear it!

[esr]

OK, I've done the text merge.

Your new backstory - the tension between the brothers and the debacle at Toen Caric - has gone in whole. That was good thinking and good storytelling. With some very nice touches - Arne's echo of Bjarn's early line "You be the right hand, I'll be the left" just before the fight with Tairach was dead on.

All the the journal entries went in with only very light editing, except for Bjarn's first one. I thought the saga-style opening we already had was too good to throw away, so I used it as a lead-in to a much shorter journal entry that focuses on Bjarn's feelings about his brother.

I was more conservative with the dialog changes. The ones relating to new plot went in, but I didn't merge the merely wordsmithing ones unless I thought they were a very clear improvement. There are two reasons for this. One is that you aren't yet as good at hitting a consistent level of mild archaism (Victorian/Edwardian Tolkien-like feel, with occasional reversions to almost Shakespearean early modern English) as I want; thus, in some cases, your improvements weren't. The other reason is that I like to avoid small changes that create lots of translation work.

You missed a couple of opportunities. One, early on, was Arne's second line of dialog. Note how I've added "be content with that", ratcheting up the sense that Arne is angry or disdainful of his brother. Another: I understand why you wanted to delete Rotharik's death speech, but that was the perfect moment to re-introduce Tairach as a bit of a mystery. The grim fatalism of "Your hand or Tairach's, death is still death..." finishes Rotharik's character arc symmetrically with the bleak tone of his journal entry.

Overall you did very good work, and you'll get better at the house style with practice. This is actually something of a milestone - the first serious mainline campaign prose rewrite that is both up to my standards and done by someone who's not me. Congratulate yourself.