[quote=Euripides]...The mighty serpent's lone immortal head refused to be smote, and thereby forced Hercules to seal it in stone. Thus he passed from the Land of Lerna, victorious, though the dire Hydra was left bereft and live.[/quote]

[center][color=black][i][b]Those of you who have completed this task - Now you understand the nature of the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Some gifts are best left to the waysaid where their rot might not spoil the owner. You are hereby worthy of bearing the title...[/b][/i][/color]
[h3][color=coral][b]Lernaean Exile[/b][/color][/h3][/center]

Congratulations to the winning authors for the following stories:
[b]-Too Much Power
-Curiosity Killed the Cat
-Thirteen Flat by [@mdk][/b], which also won the [color=coral][b]Chthonic Virtue[/b][/color] Challenge Accolade!
[b]-Otherworld[/b], by [@Dark Wind]
[b]-I Think, Therefore I Am[/b]

Your stories have been added to The Twelve Labours [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/79562-the-twelve-labours-victory-archive/ooc]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/topics/80220-the-twelve-labours-contest-winners/ooc#post-2615881]News[/url] and [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/80221-the-twelve-labours-contest-winners/ooc]Roleplaying Discussion[/url] Subforums!

Unfortunately, certain absences amongst the RPG Staff means that certain technical aspects of The Twelve Labours, including forum trophies and custom titles, remain unavailable. I can only promise that once the Sun rises, all previously barren prize crops will retroactively bear fruit.

[hider=Entry Reviews][hider=Terminal's Note - READ ME FIRST!]I would like to preface the reviews by stating that if this contest was based merely upon the quality of the writing submitted, every contestant would be a winner. I can say with no deceit whatsoever that even though I did not enjoy reading every single entry, I still recognized that each of them was well written and spoke well for the skill of each author. My reviews were neither as long nor detailed as I thought they might be, because nearly every submission I received was of ultimately superior quality. 

Unfortunately, I have very specific criteria by which I judged these entries - and it was clear that there were several which did not pass despite their otherwise superior quality. My decisions were made all the more difficult by the fact that I was the only one making them. The challenge parameter - too much of a good thing - was sufficiently open ended that it was inevitable everybody would have a different opinion on what qualified and what did not. My opinion alone is not the ironclad truth of the matter, and had there been other judges perhaps some of the losing entries might have won and the winners lost. Even though I was forced to rule on each story individually this time around, I never had a concrete list of expectations for winning entries. I don't want to say I failed entries just because they felt wrong, and I have gone to some effort in order to clearly explain my reasoning for each ruling. That said, some measure, some element of my arbitrary and perhaps narrow viewpoint is present.

This is why I feel it was particularly important to allow for additional judges in each contest. I can only hope that nobody is dissatisfied with my reasoning and that perhaps more people volunteer to act as judges in the future.[/hider]
[hider=Ultimate Power, Ultimately Powerless]For this story, I had to think for a moment upon what the burden was. Power was the obvious answer, but going by that it was not the Imperator's power which acted as a detriment. It was political protocol and the enforcement of respectful deference which caused them to suffer. That said, the story was arranged in such a way that perhaps respect, or authority, or perhaps simply the blanket term [i]prestige[/i] could be interpreted as the burden. The question that remained was whether or not the burden itself was causing the Imperator their problems.

The conclusion I was forced to reach was that, no matter what form their burden was interpreted to exist in, the cause of the Imperator's woes were incidental. Political power and prestige do not nominally result in the problems the Imperator faced, which were highly specific to their culture and to their government in particular. It is not hard to envision settings where the Imperator's authority, power, and prestige do not act as detriments to the Imperator. As clearly stated in the clarifications of the challenge parameters,

[quote=Clarifications of Challenge Parameters]The burden must become a detriment in a direct fashion. Being incidentally inconvenient due to coincidence is not sufficient. The burden itself must, through its presence or manifestation, directly cause the woes and troubles of your character or characters of choice.[/quote]
The entry itself was enjoyable to read and there is very little for me to directly criticize. [@RomanAria], I would like to congratulate you for your outstanding effort, and to apologize for having to reject it as a winning entry.[/hider][hider=Too Much Power]This entry was rather straightforward. The burden was power in the literal energetic sense, leveraged as firepower. Having too much of it literally destroyed Zack's body. The entry clearly meets the challenge parameters.

However, I do not have any problem saying that I was unimpressed with the story itself. It is not bad by any means, but I did not enjoy reading it and it is clear you have a lot of progress yet to be made. Specifically: Your use of verbs is extremely rough, (The medics 'instantly stayed away,' the heart monitor 'busted' open, and the particularly criminal 'absorbed an entire generator full of electricity'), you unnecessarily hammered on Challenge terminology (burden, too much of a good thing, etcetera - you shouldn't have to spell it out so bluntly), and overall the language used in the story is both boring and grammatically awkward (ZAP THE CLOUD!).

The story itself is coherent, and it is clear that thought and effort went into its construction, arrangement, and presentation. So congratulations, you scraped by. For advice, I would suggest trying to be more vivid and descriptive when writing, and then going back a second time and parring what you have down until you have something both sensible and interesting. Doing so should help you to avoid using certain words out of place. Just take a little more time to think about your presentation in regards to actions and descriptions and I think your writing ability will be greatly improved for it.[/hider][hider=Curiosity Killed the Cat]When I read this entry, I initially questioned whether or not Oscar's burden itself was to blame. Much like with RomanAria's entry, the pretext of the Witches' Forest seems like an incidental happenstance. However, the fact of the matter is that the Oscar's curiosity and adventurous nature lured him into the forest even though he knew it was potentially dangerous. The forest and the creatures therein were stationary threats, and it was his own impulsiveness that led him there. On that basis I felt the entry met the Challenge Criteria.

As far as criticism goes, a lot of sentences towards the beginning - especially in the first paragraph - are flat and awkward. There are more later on, but they're less apparent and I get the impression you were just uncertain how to start the piece off. In the future, experiment with making your narrative a bit more fluid; use fewer abrupt stops and try merging descriptions with character actions or setpieces to make the whole thing feel a bit more natural. Although we don't see too much of it, your use of dialogue suffers from a similar problem. You use a line break for every spoken segue; try incorporating dialogue into longer passages in the future. On a similar note, pay slightly more attention to your use of line breaks in general. Several of your paragraphs have inconsistent spacing relative to the rest of the entry.[/hider][hider=Thirteen Flat][@mdk], you nailed it. Outstanding work and congratulations. There is very little for me to criticize in terms of your writing itself, which is perhaps the cleanest and best put-together passage of text I have read in the past week. There are a few pieces of dialogue where it is not indicated who is speaking except through inference (which is something I do myself), but otherwise I am hard pressed to identify any persistent flaws in your submission.

My one reservation is the manner in which you attempted to relay Michael's burden. His nature does not at any point come across as beneficial to him. If I had a more concrete definition of what 'too much of a good thing' needed to be, I probably would have failed you on the grounds that Michael's impetuousness got him killed and did nothing for him in the meantime. I suppose what he had might have been useful given his profession, but the narrative context doesn't go out of its way to explain so except through inference. The material is pitch perfect. Work on actually hitting the target some more though.[/hider][hider=Forbidden Knowledge Grace][@Flagg], your entry was a treat to read and also a complete failure.
[quote=Clarifications of Challenge Parameters]Q. The punishment must be telling?
A. Appropriately tailored and poetic in nature. Not a slap on the wrist, but being dragged into a dark alley and violently mugged. Or killed, if you feel such a punishment is fitting.

Q. What if my character keeps their burden, but finds another way to mitigate or prevent the offset without having to give it up?
A. I said that if they are unable to let it go, that they must be punished for their indiscretion. I also said the punishment must be telling. Determine a suitable punishment for them involving their workaround.[/quote]
There were multiple possible burdens in your story. Knowledge. Answers. Ignorance, if we interpret the obtainment of the tome as discarding such. In the former cases, the Wizard and Arctos get away scott free with 'a wizard did it' literally being the excuse. In the latter, the burden is literally not a good thing. Either way your story does not pass the challenge criteria.

Your story is beautifully detailed and descriptive, and my only criticism of note for it is that the text itself is arranged in a very sparse fashion. Lots of line breaks and solitary lines hanging around. Try condensing your stories in the future, pack some more of that gorgeous detail into bigger chunks (just be careful not to overdo it). Additionally, while the segmentation of your story into separate parts is fine, it only seems necessary due to the expository scene in part two, which is separate from the setting throughout the remainder of the story. There were neater ways you could have arranged the sections.[/hider][hider=Otherworld]A little too much fantasy has obvious consequences considering that existence is grounded in reality. This story perfectly encapsulated the nature of the Challenge itself. The execution was entertaining, but not entirely without flaws. A lot of the dialogue and descriptions are stiff. I got the impression you might have been trying to convey that Mark's reality seemed flat and one-dimensional relative to Merkel's fantasy, but seeing as how he spends most of his time with Celes and Jolin in any case the language used and the flat delivery of the dialogue and descriptions does not do the overall narrative any favors. Most of the text feels sparse with lots if isolated lines separated by line breaks. Try condensing your passages into somewhat larger chunks; there are ways to convey an impression of dead potential without having to resort to descriptive scarcity.[/hider][hider=I Think Therefore I Am]The hilarious misspelling of Therefore in the very first bolded, italicized, and increased font sentence aside, I must compliment this entry on the inventive and perfectly appropriate punishment for being too sensitive a telepath. Of the two main problems I had with the story, the first is the internal inconsistency of the plot. The first two sections imply that Émile only recently acquired his telepathy, but the last section where his apartment is described as barren would seem to contradict that (and he got the apartment when he first arrived in town, and the implied passage of time and Julie-Lou's interactions indicated he spent at least some time there). Secondly, the shift from Émile exhibiting his telepathy and becoming a living Egregore feels extremely abrupt. There is an implied passage of time, but it feels incredibly short. It feels as if the entire scenario is literally a throwaway exercise. I am not criticizing the length of the piece, but rather the pacing. Drawing the story out might help to draw readers in a bit more.[/hider][hider=Swordmaster]Stop abusing ellipsis. There are eighty-three of them over the course of your story. I suppose there is nothing strictly wrong with employing them, but the omission of information is supposed to be strategic, not used for commonplace ambiance. Otherwise the story is decent, even if it does seem like a literal analog to Karel's background. You do an excellent job of conveying Nethanel's drive. The combat isn't the most descriptive, but the way in which you arranged the narrative and the perspective from Nethanel's point of view makes it seem natural.

The problem with the story is that you did not adhere to the Challenge Parameters.
[quote=Clarifications of the Challenge Parameters]Q. The punishment must be telling?
A. Appropriately tailored and poetic in nature. Not a slap on the wrist, but being dragged into a dark alley and violently mugged. Or killed, if you feel such a punishment is fitting.

Q. What if my character keeps their burden, but finds another way to mitigate or prevent the offset without having to give it up?
A. I said that if they are unable to let it go, that they must be punished for their indiscretion. I also said the punishment must be telling. Determine a suitable punishment for them involving their workaround.[/quote]

Even if one interprets his body and muscles suffering from extreme stress and causing his body to basically shut down as his punishment, ultimately Nethanel receives a literal slap on the wrist. If anything, he benefited more from being worn out than he suffered. His thirst for battle and to encounter a worthy opponent remain. His speed will return to him and one suspects will continue to serve him will. Knowing Fire Emblem, his status as a lackey for the nominal piece antagonist probably means he eventually gets killed by a paladin armed with a Swordreaver. Even so, that's just an assumption and not included in the story in any case. Since Nethanel has lost nothing and been rewarded more than punished, I cannot in good conscious declare this entry a winner.[/hider][/hider]