[center][h1][color=666BAD]SALIGIA: The [i][b]7[/b][/i] Sins[/color][/h1][/center]

[quote= Paradise Lost, Lines 258-63.]Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven[/quote]

The first of the new writing competition series begins. 
For those of us new to the RPG writing competitions and have no idea what they are, take a peek at [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4318682] an Introduction [/url].

For those of you who participated in the Twelve Labours before or RPGC, you may be interested to know that this series will have a distinctively different thematic orientation. There are seven in total, and each one will hopefully amuse both reader and writer, inviting each to contemplate on each dreadful Sin.

Let the First Sin Begin. [u][b] Submission ends at 11:06 AM GMT, Saturday June 17th 2017. [/b][/u]
[h2]Entry Rules:[/h2]
	1. Follow the [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/531-fundamental-rules-of-the-guild/ooc]standard guild rules[/url] and these [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/77197-moderation-policy-in-the-rp-sections/ooc]rules[/url] and also these [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/85368-moderation-policy-for-forum-contests/ooc]rules[/url].
	2. Follow all [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4318682]T7S Official Rules[/url].
	3. Send your entry to [@The Grey Dust] by June 17th 2017 by 11:06 AM GMT, and state if you wish to submit anonymously.
	4. No explicit/mature material, no exceptions.
	5. Judges cannot submit entries, they must remain anonymous until after the final tally.
	6. Judges reserve the right to simply toss out any story if it does not possess a basic modicum of good sense and taste.
	7. You must use your own characters, and give credit to any franchises due if any are used.

[h2]Prizes:[/h2]
For now, all winning entries will be given recognition for success. In the future, winning participants may receive a forum trophy as well as a unique, custom forum title which they can activate and deactivate at their leisure.

All winning entries will also be saved to a public archive. As a reminder, unless you specifically give me permission to include authorship of an entry, every posted story will remain anonymous.

[center][color=#9932CC][h2] PRIDE [/h2][/color] 

[img]http://img14.deviantart.net/ce4d/i/2004/364/5/0/the_face_of_dorian_gray_by_kenmeyerjr.jpg[/img]

[quote= The Picture of Dorian Gray]"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."[/quote][/center]

[hider=The First Sin]
[color=#9932CC][h3] PRIDE [/h3][/color]

[b]S[/b][i]how[/i]
[b]U[/b][i]nchecked[/i]
[b]P[/b][i]ride[/i]
[b]E[/b][i]nduring[/i]
[b]R[/b][i]etribution[/i]
[b]B[/b][i]eyond[/i]
 [b]I[/b][i]nfernal[/i]
[b]A[/b][i]gony[/i]

[hider=Broken for Pride:]
[i]
Your Challenge is to break a paragon in any way you can. 
They must be the best in their field renowned and unmatched by others.
And then you must destroy them, until they lose self-worth.
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[hider=Clarification of the Challenge Parameters]This section attempts to illuminate any ambiguity or ambivalence, although hopefully the above is enough. They are intentionally left vague to a certain degree, with only 2 or 3 large parameters to fulfill. If you have any specific questions which are not addressed here, please send them to [@The Grey Dust] for resolution.

For [color=#9932CC] PRIDE [/color], You have been asked to punish the wicked, and make what was once great fall from such heights.

Q. The character must be perfect?
A. Perfect? I did not ask for perfection. Will there not be one fatal flaw for which they must be punished? They must simply be the best, that is the sole requirement to be fulfilled, nothing more, nothing less.

Q. Must the story have either a tragic or moral aspect?
A. Morality is the question you must argue with yourself. All you must do is knock down that which was placed on a pedestal. Be it moral or not.

Q. The story must end with death?
A. Only if it suits you. The parameters only require them to be purged of excess pride and humbled.

Q. How long can my story be?
A. As long as it needs to be. It is not the length of a story which matters but substance found within it.
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[hider=Credits]Thanks again to [@mdk], [@Terminal], [@RomanAria], and the entire RPGC crew for everything!

Great thanks to Lord [@mahz] and the other members of the [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/staff]guild staff[/url] for helping to renovate the guild and enabling the features that allow us to reward contestants and to advertise our presence.

The beautiful image of the Dorian Grey up above was made by kenmeyerjr on DeviantArt, whose profile can be viewed [url=http://kenmeyerjr.deviantart.com/]here[/url].[/hider]

[hider= The Submissions]
[hider=King Dethroned by Kalleth][u]
King Dethroned[/u]
[i]Written by Kalleth[/i]
 
“The blood of the lambs must be spilt, in order to make our foemen wilt. We cannot allow this terrible force to reclaim what is ours. And if you all deny the facts that are at hand, I demand that you bring yourselves into the light and show us all what we must fight. There is nothing that can keep us from the dark, there is only what is lurking in our starkest nightmares, hoping to falter and to fail our every whim. So take your sins and shove them right into hell! And I’ll take your hands and raise them into our new world of opportunities and all we ever wished to keep in our undying glory brave!”
 
His words were goldenspun and taken from the one who taught him how to move a crowd. And though they cheered for his life, they wondered at night if he was the one who’d bring them all he promised. But in their doubts was hidden the spouse of hope. Hope which will kindle a fire in their breasts. They can’t rest until his name is carved in golden ways along the silvery battlements of their newest wondrous fortress. Every single person, born under the sign of Capricorn, can be categorized as a cocky, no-good, selfish bastard of a human being. But gods damn them of the highest sins, the ones that take us in and deliver all our harmonies singing to the angels and whispering to the devils.
 
The podium was lit by their gazes, grazing the crowd of its weeds. He set upon the heroes and told them all his fears, and they assuaged his pride. Yes they denied he had a problem. The cancer of the heart, the tumour plaguing his decisions, was derided by the snide id that took into his harmony. Discordant and dying, it set about a clangorous route to bring him low. But he was the King of all, he was the one who laid his foes low, yet who bowed before the gods almighty. He was a prideful man, but a pious one, and he knew that even under god he might rise higher. His feats might be crying, and though his spouse lied to him, he gave her one last chance. 
 
“He supposed that his choices were all only ones worth the making of, and that might have been all true, except for what you did. You harlot and you snake, you evil treacherous fake! You ruined my master, you tore him from all the astral plains he was destined to ride through in life. So grab the knife, and take it into your guts, and tear out your own lies, fed to us all with equal enthusiasm. You cannot breach the chasm you rent all through the land!”
 
The crowd roared approval. The masses were brutal. They had a target for blood, and in a flood of chaotic massacre, they took their own ways after her. And all that remained once morning had come, was a painful smear on his reputation. Everyone knew that she had loved him too, and that in the end, that horned friend, he’d chosen power over people, and she’d brought him to a lethal counterpoint. The King anoints those he sees fit, to pierce with blades of irony. Tyranny uncloaked, words that bespoke the undeniable evil in his heart. And so the election, and the erection, of all his glory came to pass unchecked. And even in the wreck of his image, he still twisted the laws that lined the laneways. They were bracken in the swamp of discord, causing his unwinding undeserving death. He disparaged them and fed a new narrative into the causal canal that is our wholly uninfluenced medium. His grip tightened round the throats of those who laid before the founding of the world. His pouting lips unfurled in a curled sort of cringing smile of victory.
 
“Now let us drink friends, to our own expense. We have become the highest ones in the world! Living and dying, petty terms to keep us from having our cake and eating it too. Cataclysmic turbulence to push through, reality need not be our cage! We have no need for any rules unbinding, we can see that all the others minding our people are deluded sacks of unworthy eyes! The world shrinks to a single point of shining light and that will be our greatest triumph in bringing about the centrifugation, and cementation, of a single solid state. We’ll never inundate our electorate with dangerous principles or even unapproved fables of coming salvation. They’ll all be taken into one perfect unblemished wholly uninfluenced body of being that conquers the sun!” 
 
Now he has won.
 
“Something has come, to our attention. Your King has lied to you. Stolen your rights from you. And even as he praises your obedience, he defies you, and he might do with some appraisal, nothing need keep it from your eyes. A drunken, angry, sinful, black-hearted wretch of a man. He has no plan, to save us from our evil! He is our evil! We are a people, put upon by the battering and evil whims of his madness. Martial laws, and his claws tighten round our freedoms and our eyesight grows dimmer in each passing minute we stand idle. We stand idle and like cattle at the slaughter. He violates our daughters, sons, brothers and sisters, mothers and our Father, he takes each one of us and breaks us down into our essential pieces. He doesn’t know what peace is, he can taste it, the blood of our country running red!
 
So take up the sword, and show him what we are capable of and who we’re fighting for! For each other, not for his other ambitions in the world! We are people, who can be people wherever people wish to be. There is a reason we were born with eyes to see, there is a reason we were meant to hear our voices. There is a reason we have tongues to speak, there is a real tangibility that teaches why we have an obligation to listen to all who would tell us their story. Stories, forgotten and oppressed by this bastard, who claims to rule us lest, his unhinged cackling lets loose a crackling explosion that devastates us all. Let’s lead him to the fall. Let us show him what we all think, of his perverted dreams. His unclean themes of ignorance and tithing. We’ll have him writhing, broken in our hands. We will shatter each of his plans, devour his sickness with a purifying flame! We will reclaim! We will reclaim! We will reclaim!”
 
And reclaim they did.
 
The glory fell into hell, and did dwell there for a time.
 
His echoes silent, and his violent turns of rime and reason swayed. But under the shroud laid, lay a secret shame. Their requiem of reclaim had brought down an evil infame, and cast his train off the rails of ruling regally. His reign arrested illegally and his person put under the power of the mob. Rob, steal, rape and pillage, this man’s wronged the village! He’s been no better than a tyrant! No crueller than a itinerant typhoon of injustice! Lest we wrest this evil rooted deep, and havoc we shall wreak! Our rights are ours to use and to abuse, and to refuse the begging pleading of his mother, and his brother, and his daughter! No good may come from this father, husband to evil! He wronged our people! The flames of resistance and the embers of persistent lashing whips of vengeance in the sky! He will not die, we will kill his soul, and kill his whole existence! His bitter wishes have been denied! 
 
The King has been dethroned.

[hider= Judge 1]
The summary of the review is that while your vocabulary and language is quite strong in portraying imagery, the story has little flow or clarity of character in it. Given the challenge was to define a paragon being broken, there did not appear to be a paragon in the story nor was it abundantly clear who the narrator was. My guess would be it's the leader of the mob who was the paragon broken, as the dethroning turned violent but much of it is left to guesswork.

Furthermore the number of short sentences you have for non-action sequences make it rather staccato to read; in my experience lots of short sentences are used to crank up the energy of a piece and make the reader feel hurried. Having it on this piece, which is essentially a monologue, further confuses the point because there is no climax or real action in the piece. I felt as if I was hurried through the story with little reason for reading at a frenetic pace.

The last point I'd make is the lack of introduction in this story. You never set the grounds nor established characters, which while it can be an interesting tool with some stories, for this one it made me feel disconnected from the story. I had nothing to tie my allegiance to, so I ended up reading the story as opposed to experiencing it. You need to invest the reader in your story early so while they read the piece they experience all the emotions that your story has to offer.

If I had to put it in a sentence; whilst it's a nice piece of writing it doesn't feel like a standalone story.
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[hider= Judge 2]
Excellent imagery and internal rhyming. Overall a very powerful story in terms of evoking fantasy, a painting of words. However, the question that remains is does the story in itself, satisfy the objectives of the challenge? There is an overall vagueness as to who or what is being told, which point of view is being taken, it is not clear where the story transitions between two different speakers, or if indeed there is an identity crisis going on. Are there two characters speaking or one long monologue? Who is the central figure, the Paragon as required by the challenge to be broken? This is hazy and leaves the reader at a loss to pick up on who is who. It is hard to follow especially without a discrete introduction or rising action that isn't passively stated.

Furthermore, the challenge states "[b]then you must destroy them, until they lose self-worth.[/b]" Has the story done so? In a sense, yes, in another sense no. The first part of the requirement is fulfilled, the King (assuming he is the paragon) is presumably disposed of but the lack of a true resolution makes it difficult to ascertain this. The second part of the requirement however, is left untouched. Does the King lose his own self-worth? Has he been humbled and comes to the realization that he is nothing? The crowd does certainly, being whipped into a frenzy of mob mentality, but does the Paragon come to this epiphany himself? Or does he still believe he was/is a just and noble ruler being done an injustice? One line does suggest the King comes this: [i]But under the shroud laid, lay a secret shame.[/i] Yet this theme is not expanded on as the mob morality takes over from this point forward and the nameless king is overshadowed by his deeds, rather than his character which had been built up very nicely at the beginning. 

With that said, there is a partial investment and connection to be made in the story, but it falls just short at the end of giving a lasting impression. For all the build up and wonderful imagery, it is a painting of a stranger: beautiful to look at, but harbors no connection between audience and subject. 
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