[quote=Euripides]...While the folk of Eleusis made merriment in celebration of the hero's might, the mighty Hercules was heard to sternly rebuke those who made light of noble Charon - in the retelling of his tale, Hercules lingering greatly upon the great patience of the ferryman who had permitted Hercules to bring Cerberus across the aphotic river of Erebus.[/quote]

[center][b][color=black]Those of you who have completed this task - heavy are laurels wrought of unforeseen merits. No crown might be more proper in the procession of a triumph, to remind the victor of their foibles. You are hereby worthy of bearing the title...[/color][/b][/center]
[center][h3][color=coral][b]Stygian Legend[/b][/color][/h3][/center]

Congratulations to the authors of the following stories:
[b]OPRAH NO![/b] by [@Doc Doctor].
[b]For Ken[/b] by [@mdk], which won the [color=coral][b]Mortal Coil[/b][/color] Challenge Accolade.
[b]The Cook-Off[/b] by [@WiseDragonGirl].
[b]Gunpowder Fairy[/b] by [@PlatinumSkink].

Your stories have been added to The Twelve Labours [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4003829]Victory Archives[/url], to which there will be a permanent link in my signature. In addition, your victory has been announced in both the [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4003833]News[/url] and [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4003834]Roleplaying Discussion[/url] Subforums!

[hider=RomanAria's Reviews][hider=And she was quoted as saying…]
[b]You have failed in the twelfth labour.[/b]

Erhm. Wha… I… that can’t have been the whole entry. I um. There’s... not enough to… wha? I’m just… I’m confused. I’m… confused. So very confused. I… don’t think there’s enough substance here for me to pass the entry, nor really enough substance for me to review it… That said, part of my instinct is to pass it just cause I’ve not seen an entry done like this before. But… no, I can’t. We have no idea if the speaker was being sarcastic, what the cause of this award was… any of a hundred other things. There’s just not enough substance. 

Perhaps if you had been quoted as saying more… but until then, only obscurity will be had for you.[/hider]

[hider=OPRAH NO!]
[b]You have succeeded in the twelfth labour.[/b]

Erm. I’m sorry, but… what? I’m confused. I mean… I guess your story fulfills the  requirements? But… I, at least, did not enjoy it at all. It’s  a good thing stories don’t get disqualified due to judges’ opinion. Perhaps this is very closed minded of me but this story was just… too absurd and it did nothing for my suspension of disbelief.

Grammatically, I can find few flaws with your story. It is sound, structurally. That said – in the future, please refrain from using colors. There is no good reason to use colors within a narrative, especially not when the colors take the place of the proper, in-text indication of speech  (i.e. “s/he said” or some embellishment of that phrase)

Overall, a sound entry that fulfilled the requirements. However, I would suggest taking a mildly more serious tone for future labours, lest you want us all crying “NO!”[/hider]

[hider=For Ken]
[i]paging [@mdk][/i]
[b]You have succeeded in the twelfth labour.[/b]

Short, sweet, to the point. The kind of entry I have come to expect of you, MDK. While it wasn’t the most clear-cut fame for something hated, it definitely is a nice juxtaposition. Ken, who hates the racism, became a symbol for them to rally behind (even after they likely shot him, which is a vending-machine logic thing that only hit me like two days after the first read… >->) and also: Ken, who thought the aliens were peaceful and cool and all of that, dies and becomes a symbol for war against them. Clever.

As ever, your grammar and dialect are pretty much impeccable. A natural, elegant read, even barring the repeatedly-censored word (for the sake of pure style, I would have suggested leaving it in its uncensored form as it mildly broke immersion, though I understand it’s best to be on the safe side when writing things that younger audiences can read.) Your description is as on-point as ever- enough to give a feel for the scene without being clunky and overdone.

Great work as always, MDK. May your name be forever a rallying cry for authors great and terrible alike.[/hider]

[hider=Closure]
[i]Paging [@Burthstone][/i]
[b]You have failed in the twelfth labour.[/b]

I’ll be honest – I really wanted to pass your entry, this was one of the more heavily disputed ones.  It was short, sweet, and to the point, and encapsulated a sufficient narrative to contain a full world and story. That said, I’m going to have to go with Terminal’s verdict on this one – your failure is purely due to the sheer proportion of errors relative to wordcount and paragraph length. Terminal has done a mock-up of the entirety of your entry, and I suggest you read over that, study that. 

Overall, though, I did seriously love this entry. Work on your grammar and sentence structure for a bit before the final hazard, and perhaps then you will receive more positive closure.
 [/hider]

[hider=The Cook-Off]
[i]Paging [@WiseDragonGirl].[/i]
[b]You have succeeded in the twelfth labour.[/b]

D’aww. This was… fairly adorable, and lighthearted. I was not expecting to see such a lovely nonviolent entry in this. It’s just… fun, and sweet, and simple. None of this cloak-and-dagger-y drivel, just friends and cooking and... yeah, great job, DragonGirl. I needed to read something like this.

You did a wonderful job with the grammar and exposition this time. I noticed nothing wrong while reading through. You did an excellent job of characterization through dialogue. One thing, though – in the opening, it does seem as though you engaged in a bit of an exposition infodump. Which is fine, but as an opening paragraph, especially as almost the entirety of the paragraph, it can be a bit tedious and bulky at times. Scatter it around through smaller paragraphs, or as the conclusion of a line of dialogue or like an elaboration off of the “he said” bit of the phrases.

Anyway. Nitpicks are nitpicks. Overall, a strong, solid entry, one that really boosted my mood. This is how lighthearted labour entries should be written. Great job, DragonGirl. May your sudden culinary fame serve you well in the final hazard.[/hider]

[hider=Gunpowder Fairy]
[i]Paging [@PlatinumSkink][/i]
[b]You have succeeded in the twelfth labour.[/b]

Ooooh. Ooooooh dear did she just—oh. Well then. That’s an inversion. I… This was fabulously done, and an enjoyable story, and I deeply enjoyed the twist at the end. Like… wow. I think this may be one of my favorites of your labour entries. And this was my favorite of all the stories put forward this time.

I would have given you the accolade for content but in terms of form I had to give it to MDK’s For Ken. While I deeply enjoyed the content of the entry I didn’t feel the story in quite the same authentic way—it felt more like your story was from a very… detached point of view?  Like the narration didn’t quite take on the style of the characters, I guess? I don’t exactly know how to better quantify this. I think Terminal’s review makes a good summary of the grammar so rather than re-iterate that I’ll just send you to go back over that section of his review.

Overall, a very solid entry. Perhaps in the final hazard, with an equal amount of gunpowder and an additional sprinkle of fairy dust, victory could be yours.[/hider][/hider][hider=Terminal's Reviews][hider=And she was quoted as saying]While I can appreciate the attempt to encapsulate the challenge parameters into a brief a segue as possible, the problem with this entry is that there is no [i]actual[/i] narrative. There is [i]a[/i] narrative - we have two characters and an implied chain of events, but that is about it. A narrative which does not really embody the qualities of an actual story, lacking any substance beyond the suggestion of implication.

The shortest entry ever to have won in any iteration of TTL, both Old and Newguild, was three paragraphs long. There have been shorter entries than that before now, and each time I come to the same conclusion: The story needs to be of sufficient length to establish an overarching narrative as well as a contextual reality. That does not mean a story [i]must[/i] be longer than three paragraphs; merely that a story, no matter how short, much have sufficient substance to stand on its own. The writer has the burden of meeting the standard of quality expected of good storytelling, and also of making it unambiguously clear that the challenge criteria have been met. This entry falls short and accomplishes nothing.

Even if I were to accept the entry as-is, the fact of the matter is that it does not firmly meet the challenge criteria. As I said before, the writer has the burden of making it apparent that the criteria have been met. Here, we do not necessarily know that is the case. It is merely implied, and only weakly so at that.[/hider][hider=OPRAH NO!]Short, but sweet and simple. The entry is not overly complex, but is executed near-perfectly. I spotted two minor grammar errors, but both were part of spoken lines and could be easily excused as due to imperfection in human speech - and that is nearly the worst I can say about this story. The topic is an interesting mixture of humor and dark implication, each line balanced and not overstated - which is hard to accomplish in scenarios like this one. Most writers have the urge to turn up the drama or the ham or both, but this particular entry is set up as a cool and clear record of events which nonetheless manages to evoke both amusement and intrigue in the reader. A victory duly earned.[/hider][hider=For Ken]I can strongly empathize with Ken in this story.

[i]I have so many questions.[/i]

[@mdk], you are an utter [b]TROLL[/b]. This tantalizing yearning for more of your patented bullshit is so precisely rendered that it is clearly artificially manufactured, turned out by your dire machinations with the nonchalance of aliens drinking coors. Combined with the aspect of this entry's [i]cunningly[/i] duplicitous simplicity and linear narrative, your entry is engaging without being at all involved you [i]snake[/i].

This is made all the more worse as the [i]singular[/i] mistake I found in your entry is the run-on sentence in the first paragraph. Not quite eldritch, but not quite human either. Plus the bit where I became so engrossed in the minute I spent reading your entry that I [i]forgot what I had been doing[/i].

I am at a loss as to what I can even actually criticize here. Possibly the [i]only[/i] thing I might have done differently in your shoes was include a line about the townspeople being buck and short-toothed. I certainly would not have (or even have [i]thought[/i] of) written anything in this particular style, and while the accusation that you are writing beneath your abilities rests on my tongue I dare not speak it. The entire story seems established specifically in order to leave the reader hanging out to dry in the middle of a literary desert wondering what the hell just happened and wanting more. The length is therefore precisely as long as it needs to be, and the content perfectly rendered for its purpose. I suppose in the end the only thing I can say is that this particular style does not seem well-suited to lengthier narratives. I can kind of see it if I squint a little, but the longer the story goes on the more actual setting detail you would be forced to surrender to the reader beyond scenery and implicit intrigue, which I take runs contrary to your malign intentions.

Just take it, you piece of slime. Take your fucking Victory and your fucking Challenge Accolade and ride off into the sunset on the eldritch horror you rode in on.[/hider][hider=Closure]You unfortunately have failed, although not for the reasons most might expect. Believe it or not, but I initially intended to pass your entry. I felt that it sufficiently encapsulated the challenge criteria in an efficient package. The entry [i]is[/i] fairly short - it does not meet the three-paragraph record currently in place, but it comes rather close. I bring that up specifically because you have two superfluous paragraphs that could have been removed altogether with minimal tweaking to the remainder in order to produce the same story - if you were aiming for brevity you could have done better, or at least been more efficient. 

What I like about this entry is just that - its brevity, or rather your expertly compressed narrative, which does exactly everything it needed to. The first paragraph establishes everything the reader needs to know, the fourth paragraph is the climax, and the fifth paragraph is the [i]closure[/i]. You do [i]just[/i] enough to establish a setting that I cannot properly accuse you of cheating us out of a proper story with, but not really enough for me to be impressed except by the entry's near mechanical adherence to the challenge criteria. This is what I get for making simple requests. Which is where we come to the reason I eventually decided to fail your entry.

Because your entry was so short, I decided to take the few errors you made into greater consideration relative to the whole. I went ahead and proofread the entire thing for you. Refinements in italics, commentary in parenthesis.

[hider=Markup Version]Spending years with Locus had attuned Audrey to feel when magic was afoot, and as she [s]stepped[/s] [i]set[/i] [s]her[/s] (unnecessary possessive pronoun) foot within the [i]city's[/i] stone gates [s]of the city[/s] (inefficient) it was all she could do not to collapse under the almost unbearable pressure of the magic [s]that saturated[/s] [i]saturating[/i] (formally grammatically incorrect even if informally accepted in literature. Untidy in general, try to avoid the use of the word 'that' when able. Also inefficient.) the air. Someone[s],[/s] (unnecessary) or something incredibly powerful was here. [s]That could mean that[/s] [i]Which could mean[/i] Locus, who she hadn’t seen in almost two months, had finally managed to track her down. Or it [s]could[/s] [i]might[/i] (repetitive) mean Jonah had finished him off and was after her now. Worst case, it was neither, (this comma is not strictly necessary, but I left it since it does have an effect on the tone of the subsequent text) and Audrey would have to spend months more wondering what had befallen her friend.

Deciding [s]however[/s] that it was better safe than sorry, Audrey [s]made sure she had access to[/s] [i]clutched at the hilt for[/i] (awkwardly stated, one of several possible structural corrections) the dagger Locus had given her when they parted. Made of some black metal, the blade looked like the most wicked thing one could find on God’s green Earth. It had more points than the King’s kitchen, and was serrated wherever possible (as a minor aside, heavily serrated blades are inefficient for striking through clothing/leather or at making anything more than superficial cuts with glancing strikes. Most daggers intended for combat will have clean edges with serration further down the blade for enhancing damage after contact is made. No idea if the dagger was made intentionally for torture or not, just thought I would point that out since many authors unfamiliar with blades seem to like tossing in serrated edges needlessly.) While she walked around the cobble streets and busy people, Audrey began to [s]fell[/s] [i]fall[/i] into a sense of sad security (this entire sentence could stand being rewritten honestly. It is a bit out of place and awkward.). The [s]source of the energy[/s] [i]energy's source[/i] didn’t seem concerned with her, which meant it wasn’t anyone that knew her. (This paragraph is faintly superfluous, you establish her possession of the dagger and that the unknown source of magic did not seem focused on her - both details could have been established as part of the first paragraph.)

“One apple please,” she said to a street vender, pulling out a few coins to pay for it (what the hell kind of economy is this where you need coins plural to pay for an apple? This is an archaic setting, minted coins are going to be large and weighty things with considerable value as opposed the throwaway contemporary pieces currently in-use.). [s]The man selling his produce was more than happy to take money in exchange for his food product[/s] (not only is this line unnecessary, but the reader does not care even slightly about it. It establishes wholly irrelevant information that comes to no fruition and adds nothing to the narrative. You could have added a line about Audrey nervously haggling with him in order to enhance the story's atmosphere, or any number of faintly interesting and relevant lines instead.), and soon Audrey was on her way. (This entire paragraph is entirely superfluous. You could have omitted it entirely and the story's conclusion would not have ended or felt any different).
(Added a line break here).
She was mid-bite when she felt someone coming up from behind her. She clenched her hand.

“Been a while, Audrey,” said something as it put its gloved hand on her shoulder. (I understand the use of 'thing' is intentional here, but it clashes with the use of the 'someone' used immediately prior in the last sentence.)

She was on edge, she reacted before she realized what she was doing.

Black ichor drooled down her arm.

“Ah.” Was the sound Locus made. Not ‘ow,’ not ‘damn,’ not a shout. Just ‘ah,’ like someone had just told him that he was actually supposed to be sitting two seats down on the dinner table. Audrey looked at her hand, horrified, unable to speak. Locus sighed softly. “I think you told me you hate surprises one time,” he collapsed as he said this, taking the dagger with him. His unnatural blood welled up around the wound, and [i]the[/i] (specificity in order to avoid ambiguous and awkward syntax) people around her quickly took notice. (While this is nothing technically wrong with the shift from present to past tense here, the abruptness is more awkward than its enhancement of how swiftly the following events proceeded justifies.)

She and the corpse were dragged off to the cathedral, lorded out before everyone. Demon and Demon Slayer, in their own city! (Bear in mind this only works as an idiom). An archpriest honored her, giving a speech, (this is awkward in structure and could merit a faint degree more elaboration in order to enhance flow) but when she was asked to recount how she knew the corpse they had tied to the rafters was a black-blooded demon[s],[/s] (entirely unnecessary this time) before she had put a knife through him, her voice shriveled up and died.[/hider]
The problem here is not the nature or severity of the errors themselves, because there are not that many in total and because none of them are [i]incredibly[/i] serious. If there were a few out-of-place sentences or even paragraphs in a more drawn-out entry, I would probably let it slide. That said, since your story is so much shorter you have a greater burden of effort in terms of per-line-capita. 2/5ths of your story is essentially a complete waste of space, issues which could have been easily and readily rectified in ways that would have enhanced the story overall. As an extension of that point, part of the reason I am ultimately failing this entry is because of the impression your entry gave me of nearly being cheated out of an actual story. It is just-barely-sufficiently there to qualify for the purposes of the challenge criteria, but it is clear you could have done much, much more - and is why I took greater consideration to the flaws in your form than I might have normally.
[/hider][hider=The Cook-Off]More than any other entry, this one captured the essence of the challenge in terms of what I was looking for in the entries. The meat of the narrative in the expository rant near the end is nearly precisely what I wanted to see. The preceding rant earlier on in the story about how much Ethan hated cooking is incredibly easily to understand and empathize with, and the harassment Ethan received after winning is both realistically portrayed and perfectly described.

I will say that there was a distractingly large number of typos, grammatical errors, and a few flat-out misspellings towards the beginning of the entry. It makes sense since everything important is further in, but the beginning passages are memorable and linger in the mind throughout the story specifically because of the errors therein. Then there is the entire issue of Benjamin's existence, or rather the conundrum thereof given he has very little reason to. He enables the story as a mechanism to enable Ethan's expository rants, full stop. The segue where he goes on a shopping race was wholly superfluous, and illustrates the story's greatest weakness: The contextual reality of the narrative is perfectly suited to Ethan, but is weak and sloppily made for the purpose of accommodating Benjamin.[/hider][hider=Gunpowder Fairy]In addition to the great news of passing and breaking your ever-other-labour win/lose streak, I can confidently say that your issues with grammar have narrowed down specifically to your use of conjunctions. Errors in other areas are still present, but I had to go out of my way to look for those. Here are a few egregious samples for your consideration:
[quote=First Paragraph]The molecules of the metal was slowly duplicating themselves[/quote][quote=Eighth Paragraph]This includes other magicians, some of which are powerful enough to feel unbound by rules and will attempt stealing you or your magical research for their own profit.' (A conjunction is [i]missing[/i] here, if it is not immediately obvious.)[/quote][quote=Paragraph 22]Most of her classmates were intending on becoming hunters, others intended on becoming freelancers.[/quote]
More good news in that I feel your handling of natural narrative flow has improved significantly, along with your use of dialogue. There are a few odd lines, but everything is much smoother and easier to process. My primary complaint now is that the diction is unrealistic, or more specifically that everyone is speaking as though they lived in an anime. Which is fine if you are into that sort of thing [i]I guess[/i] (as history will show, I have demonstrated something of a bias against that particular genre of writing). To me, it comes off as unrealistic and forced - I know it is not and that it makes sense for you to write your lines out in that particular fashion, but it feels wrong to me nonetheless. I suppose I will have to settle for asking whether or not you have considered attempting to find some form of happy medium.

My biggest issue with the story is its conclusion. It makes sense that Charity would want to pursue an avenue that would ease the burden of having to head out and murder heaps of people. The solution of 'I will make a potion that will turn me into a hackneyed B-Movie Serial Killer!' seems rather contrived, tasteless, and honestly kind of stupid given the details of the setting we have been exposed to. We already know that there exist any number of mental magics that she could have used in order to adjust her outlook accordingly, or to have installed mental blocks, etcetera. Potential reasoning that she would have had to spend time studying that sort of thing is invalid, she she had to spend time figuring out how to brew up Serial-Killer-Stew in any case. Moreover, why go full-ham on becoming a serial killer? She could have just made herself amoral, or chosen to repress SPECIFIC emotions, or  any number of other solutions! Also at the tip of my tongue is the accusation that it is typical anime contrivance, but even that aside the fact of the matter is that the notion of the story's end is completely at odds with the rest of the story. It seems drastically less reasoned and thought-through, in addition to simply being poorly handled. If I had to make a bet on it, I would even hazard that the entire segue after the line break was copy-pasted from an older iteration of your work for the purposes of maintaining continuity.

Congratulations are still in order however. By and large this entry is perhaps your most impressive to date.[/hider][/hider]