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The Monthly Adaptive Storytelling Contest is a contest run by @Jorick. It runs once per month on a slightly irregular schedule: the prompt threads go up on the third or fourth Friday of each month, submissions are accepted for three weeks, and the voting periods are one week long. The prompts will change wildly from month to month: some prompts will present restrictive challenges, others will be invite participants to write damn near anything they want, and a few might be plain absurd. While fulfilling the prompt will always be required, there will also be some additional challenges listed with each one that participants can take on or ignore as they like, but those who do the best job of fulfilling them (as decided by me) will get some praise as well. The overall goal of the contest is to challenge the writers of Roleplayer Guild to adapt to whatever the requirements may be and to grow by overcoming them and learning from the critiques of the voters. After all, what's the purpose of a writing contest if not to better one's writing skills?

You'll find the rules listed below. They might change a bit over time, but any alterations will be noted clearly in the prompt or voting thread that comes up following the change. Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions for the contest here in this thread or by sending me a PM.

Also, credit to @Pahn for the lovely contest banner up at the top of this thread.

Submission Rules:

1. Send your entry in a PM to @Jorick before the deadline: before midnight on <~3 weeks after thread posted> in the Pacific Time Zone.
2. Submissions may have no more than 5000 words.
3. One entry per person. Entries are gathered for posting after the deadline, so feel free to edit, tweak, or entirely replace your entry with something new in the PM before the deadline arrives.
4. Submissions will be posted anonymously in the voting thread.
5. No poetry entries allowed.
6. Characters and settings used for this contest must be original works. No fanfiction or non-fiction entries allowed.
7. All site and contest moderation rules are of course in effect.
8. I can and will disqualify entries that violate the above rules or fail to fulfill the prompt. The extra challenges are not required, they're just there for fun.

Voting Rules:

1. Submit your vote by posting in the voting thread before the deadline: before midnight on <~1 week after thread posted> in the Pacific Time Zone.
2. Submissions are posted anonymously for a reason. Revealing which entry was yours before the voting period is over will result in disqualification.
3. Contest entrants cannot vote for their own entry but are invited to vote for a competitor's entry.
4. Comments on and critiques of the entries are highly encouraged, but do keep in mind that criticism should be constructive rather than destructive.
5. The entry with the most votes in the end will be declared the winner. @Jorick will also highlight those who did the best job tackling each extra challenge.
6. All site and contest moderation rules are of course in effect.

Prizes:

The winner of each contest will have their name and work immortalized in the MASC Hall of Fame thread in the Writing Contests subforum. They may also receive a trophy that will be displayed on their profile, details currently being hashed out with the admins!

The additional accolades awarded by @Jorick are just for fun and confer nothing but bragging rights and a sense of accomplishment.
<redacted>
I might as well co-opt this thread to put out a little introduction of sorts for those who don't know me. 8D

Some of you might be wondering "who the hell is this guy and why is he suddenly a contest mod?" It's a fair question, seeing as I'd been basically inactive on the Guild up until about a month ago. I'll throw out a resume of sorts to explain why I was chosen for this job.

After being an avid participant and multiple winner of the old Writer of the Month contest, I helped to run it for around two years back before Roleplayer Guild lost all its information and had to be rebuilt from scratch. Afterward, I helped in trying to revive the contest. That effort was unfortunately unsuccessful, due in part to the lack of a lovely writing contest subforum as we have now. That project was laid to rest after a couple months of low activity contests run in the Off-Topic Discussion subforum.

I was then a part of the planning team for the first iteration of RPGC, which was conceived of mainly as a contest to replace WOTM after it was put to rest. RPGC was quite a bit different back then, but the modern version looks great too. I ended up not taking part in the active running of RPGC because I was at that point already moving away to another roleplaying forum.

On that other forum, I became a staff member (and an admin later on) and spearheaded the creation of a writing contest. I did basically all the groundwork for it, then recruited a couple people to help me, and I remained the lead contest manager for the entirety of its run. It was a fairly popular contest that ran smoothly for over two years, until I quit that forum's staff, and since then the contest has languished in my absence. Not to throw shade or anything, but I was definitely the glue holding that project together.

So, in summary, I've got a ridiculously high amount of experience with creating, organizing, and running writing contests. I look forward to getting a new contest up and running in the near future (keep an eye out for new threads going up in the next couple days with information on how it'll work) and seeing what kind of great stories the people of this forum can come up with nowadays.

If you've got any questions, please feel free to ask them here or throw a PM my way.
Alright, I've updated to address some of those concerns, but I strongly disagree with the rationale for others as I'll explain below in the summary of changes made. I'm keeping him as a Darth while making other adjustments.

Age bumped up ten years to 56 and altered places where age was specifically noted to match. I'm still having him picked up at ~12 years old since the exact time of Ruuria being taken over by a Sith puppet government was uncertain anyway and the info in the wiki implies it could have started as early as ~3700 BBY anyway.

Info in the bio and interests portions expanded and clarified to note that the training under Darth Korrus was a holistic approach to combat training, not a matter of training things one by one. Frankly the idea that time required for mastery of a set of skills ought to be counted sequentially rather than concurrently makes no sense to me, because that's not how learning works in reality. A quick look at the curriculum of any school from the elementary to post-graduate level would show students learning multiple things in the same time frame. Even so, I've knocked down the power level of a lot of things make his prowess with the Force less intense.

Force Speed and Force Lightning down to well-trained talent from talented master.
Droid Disable down to trained talent from talented master.
Force Sense down to intermediate training from well-trained talent.
Telekinesis, Force Throw, and Force Choke down to intermediate training from advanced training.
Telepathy down to basic training from intermediate training.

This leaves 2 mastered talents (Precognition and Force Rage). It also leaves 6 as well-trained talents: Force Speed, Force Sight, Force Bellow, Force Scream, Force Lightning, and Chain Lightning, though I'd argue that the bellow at least is actually just a side effect of training up the scream rather than something that was specifically focused on. There are only two at advanced training now, Telekinetic Defense and Force Stun. All of these things are directly relevant to combat, long with the lightsaber skills, so they were all being trained in tandem by the holistic practical approach rather than in a one by one fashion.

The political influence and associates section was greatly expanded, and the bio has additions to note this as well. Of major note, he now has a whole fleet of subordinates rather than me hand-waving them away as all unimportant stooges shunted off to military postings.

Expanded the flaws section a lot as well.

Added some more failures and changed up the punishments explained in the bio.

General tweaks to the bio, lots of additions, but the basic thrust of the narrative is the same.





<Snipped quote by Ezekiel>

Okay. Not sure how'd I'd work recovering Brightroar into the Dance of Dragons. Considering most of the action would be happening on Westeros and Brightroar was lost in Valyria.

Hence my desire to use it in likely battle. Granted perhaps there might be some debate over which family Branch should have it?

That and perhaps Joanna is learning to still use it. Otherwise, with war coming - I doubt Joanna would have a desire to suddenly slip off to Valyria.


I'm not a GM or anything, but you're getting well ahead of yourself there. This roleplay is set in 111 AC to begin with. The Dance of the Dragons doesn't kick off until 129 AC. The puzzle pieces that lead to a civil war over the succession are only just starting to fall into place at this point in the timeline, so there's not really any likely battle to be had unless you have something to do with the war for the Stepstones.

There's plenty of time for expeditions to Valyria before it's civil war time.
Lord Confessor Rhaegel Waters


Pained moans and sobbing voices begging for mercy filled the lower chambers of the Red Keep's dungeons. These sounds were almost always present, but these days there were oh so many more criminals and malcontents for the royal confessors to soften up with their tender attentions. Lord Rhaegel Waters stood before one such man, a filthy old fellow who'd been left in the cramped chamber for the better part of a day with his wrists chained to a ring in the ceiling. There was just enough slack for him to stand on the front half of his feet, though the damp stone smoothed over by countless prisoners before him certainly didn't provide a steady enough footing to make it comfortable. The prisoner's outbursts had already been reduced from indignant denials to panicked pleas and finally to hopeless sobbing, and yet Rhaegel hadn't even begun to hurt him. Those of weaker constitutions could often be broken by the mere promise of pain to come, and he reveled in bringing them to that point of absolute surrender.

"I have a question for you." Rhaegel's soft and almost sympathetic words were enough to make the prisoner choke back his sobs and look up. Fear filled his eyes, and they couldn't stay still on the Lord Confessor now that the man had looked up from the floor; they flitted back and forth from the torturer to the small table covered in tools as if the man could not decide which was more worthy of his fear. "Yes, they do exactly what you'd think. Worse than that, unless you're particularly imaginative. I'll only ask the question once before we begin, and if I suspect even a hint of a lie..." Rhaegel trailed off, picking up an outlandishly complex implement from the table. A multitude of metal arms branched off from a the end of a wooden handle, curving out and then in to almost meet at a point about a forearm's length from the handle, each one ending in a barbed hook or a jagged spike or similar nasty-looking embellishments. It was almost useless in the work of causing pain, but the prisoner stared at it with wide eyes as his breathing quickened to hasty pants. A knife would do more damage than the unwieldy implement, but the order to the blacksmith had asked for something that looked like it came straight from a nightmare and that was exactly what had been delivered. A fearful mind could conjure tortures that even the most skilled confessor could not put into practice without outright killing the subject, and the prisoner's whimpers made it clear that he was quite capable of such vivid thoughts.

Rhaegel smiled at the man, letting loose a glimmer of the sadistic pleasure he would take in pulling this mans entrails out slowly and wrapping them around his neck. "I see you understand. Now, answer me truly: what did you do with the stolen gold?" The prisoner opened his mouth and words spilled out quicker than blood ever could, dribbling spittle and secrets down his chin with all the panic of a man facing his certain demise. Rhaegel kept the smile on his face as he listened, enjoying the product of his work as others might admire a fine painting or tapestry. There was art in suffering, after all. It just took a particular kind of genius to see it.




The lords and ladies in the Red Keep gave Rhaegel a wide berth as he strolled back toward the dungeons. He'd taken the time out of his busy schedule to send word to the City Watch, the names of all three accomplices that the cowardly old man had provided, and it was a rather auspicious start to the day. There was another fellow in need of help loosening his tongue, a man who owed a lot of people a lot of money, and it was time for his debt to the Iron Throne to be paid whether by coin or by blood. It was always strange, seeing the nobility of the court so disturbed by the Lord Confessor walking by with a smile on his face, but Rhaegel supposed it had to do with the primal fear that they might just be the next person to cause him to hurry to the dungeons like another man might race to the brothel after a long week. Worrying about the opinions of inferior people, no matter the supposed superiority conferred by their lineages, was not something he'd wasted time on in many years.

A lady let out a strangled scream as the Lord Confessor rounded a corner and passed her by, but the man himself paid it no mind. Word would spread about the manic cast of his face, the grin and the burning eyes, but he would not let that slow him down either. There was so much work to do, after all, and he was so very eager to do it.


Name: Lord Rhaegel Waters
Age: 28
House/Affiliation: Lord Confessor and Master of Whisperers to King Viserys I Targaryen

Appearance: Art by LeafOfSteel on Deviantart.

Biography: While Rhaegel's father was never positively identified, his heritage is written clear for any with eyes to see. Even in the cradle, the silver hair and purple eyes made it clear that his dark-haired tavern wench mother, a young woman named Ella, had made the child with someone of Valyrian blood. He was born on Dragonstone, and there his status as one born of dragonseed made it simpler for his mother to raise him as a single mother. The men who had laid with her in the time Rhaegel might have been conceived were courteous enough to see that the boy's needs were met and that he got at least a rudimentary education from the maester of Dragonstone, though none stepped forward to claim him directly. Thus Rhaegel live in relative comfort, helping do some work on ships at the docks out of interest rather than need, until Ella died of a pox when he was ten years old. Two of the three men who had been helping his mother out with money came and found Rhaegel a few days later, and they presented him with a variety of options for what could be done, none of which included the silver-haired and purple-eyed men taking direct responsibility for him. Rhaegel made his choice with his deceased mother in mind, and so he was sent by ship to the Citadel with a sack of coin and two letters of recommendation in order to learn the healing arts and fight diseases like those that took his mother's life.

After getting situated in the Citadel, Rhaegel made fine progress in forging his maester's chain. His first link, silver for medicine and healing, took him a year and a half. The second silver link took just a year. The following year he forged two silver links and made good progress on one of black iron for learning to work with ravens. Over the course of eight years, Rhaegel managed to forge a particularly strange chain compared to his fellows: where others spread their focus between a few differing fields of study, Rhaegel was relentless in the pursuit of knowledge regarding the workings of the human body and how to heal all manner of ills. As a man of eighteen years, he left the Citadel with a chain made of eleven silver links and just four of other metals. He never swore the maester's vow, in large part because the archmaesters decided that he needed to learn more of other subjects before he would be worthy of the title, but Rhaegel did not truly care to become a maester. He'd long ago abandoned that burning desire to become a healer, turning instead toward a desire for knowledge for its own sake, and he had learned all the Citadel had to teach in the area he cared about.

It took him only a month to find someone, a minor lord of the Reach, who was willing to let Rhaegel delve into the studies that would have stripped him of the status of maester had he bothered to achieve it. The lord was very paranoid and saw enemies all around, so Rhaegel got to work stripping every last secret from anyone the lord suspected of treachery. He learned a lot from his living subjects, both in matters of anatomy and the nefarious doings of the rich and powerful. It turned out to be very simple to make someone tell the truth, but much harder to make them tell and believe an alternative truth more to Rhaegel's liking. He manipulated some of them into earning death for supposedly plotting against the lord who employed him, and the grateful lord in turn allowed him to carry out the sentence in his own way. He learned many fascinating things about the inner workings of a living body, but his subjects lacked the vision and brilliance to see him as anything more than a butcher.

Rhaegel's quick elevation in status began soon after he reached his twentieth nameday. A traveling merchant had caught the ire of the lord for not bringing any fine Dornish wine, which of course made him some kind of assassin in need of an aggressive push toward confession. In truth, it turned out that the merchant was party to a murderous plot, but against one Lord Tarly rather than the unimportant lord who employed Rhaegel, and his bags actually contained the bottle of poison that was meant for the hands of the would-be assassin. It was quite simple to arrange for transportation to Horn Hill with prisoner in tow, especially after Rhaegel's poor employer passed in his sleep the same night the merchant was caught. The merchant had been carrying a variety of medicinal herbs intended for sale to maesters, and a hefty does of wolf's bane in the lord's mulled wine was more than enough to stop his heart. The actual maester of the small holdfast, a man who despised Rhaegel for what he viewed as a dark perversion of the healing arts, ruled the death a matter of natural causes due to old age.

Lord Tarly proved to be quite grateful for Rhaegel's services, and he was invited to watch the beheading of the merchant and the three known co-conspirators. Rather than keeping him around, Lord Tarly sent him on to King's Landing with a glowing letter of recommendation in hand, telling King Viserys of his service and imploring the Lord Confessor of the time to take Rhaegel on as one of the crown's confessors. Upon arrival and being seen during one of the king's public audience sessions, Rhaegel received the gratitude of the crown for his efforts made to save the life of a loyal lord and a royal appointment as a confessor. The elderly Lord Confessor and Master of Whisperers turned out to be rather terrible at his job, leaving all the hard work to his underlings, but the newest confessor was content to work in the shadows for a while. Holding to the constraints imposed by a lord whose mind was not addled with paranoia was something of a challenge, but Rhaegel enjoyed the puzzles posed to him by those limitations. What is the best way to break a knight's will without spilling any blood? How can one make a hardened cutthroat confess his crimes but leave him living by the end of it? Is it possible to make a lord break down and tell his darkest secrets without harming a single hair on his head?

Rhaegel solved all of those problems and more, and he quickly became the confessor most trusted to handle difficult prisoners. He was castigated once for botching a questioning by planting false truths in the prisoner's mind, but that was all it took for him to accept a new constraint: seek only the actual truth, not whatever version of truth would be the most exciting. He worked diligently in the dungeons for four years, slowly acquiring more and more responsibilities as the elderly Lord Confessor crept toward the grave. By the time the old man retired in order to die in his own land rather than King's Landing, Rhaegel was the Lord Confessor and Master of Whisperers in all but name, and his predecessor acknowledged that by telling King Viserys that there was no man better suited to take on the titles and the seat on the Small Council. The king took that advice to heart, and in 109 AC Rhaegel was appointed to the Small Council and given land in the Crownlands and a separate title in order to make him a full lord rather than a mere lord in name by way of his seat on the council. He declined the offer to establish a lordly house of his own making, instead wishing to keep the bastard name of Waters until such time as he found a suitable wife and married into her family name, which the king graciously allowed.

In two years as Lord Confessor and Master of Whisperers, Lord Rhaegel Waters has made his presence felt across Westeros and beyond. With his hands fully on the reins he was able to revitalize the crumbling spy network his predecessor had left him, expanding it in the realms governed by the Iron Throne in the first year and then finding contacts in Dorne and Essos in the second. The confessors have been whipped into shape, quite literally in one case, to the point that now Rhaegel only gets his own hands dirty because he wants to rather than because he cannot trust his underlings to do a proper job. With the machinery of spying and torture now running smoothly, Rhaegel has turned his eye toward a somewhat less bloody matter: the search for a suitable wife who has enough fortitude to not faint at the sight his work. It is a rather different challenge than those he has faced thus far, but he looks forward to overcoming it all the same.
<Snipped quote by Jorick>

That's fine for me, just wanted to clarify it would be deemed as odd ICly.


Yeah, I have no issue with that. He's the head torturer and enjoys his work, so I feel like his name will be only a lesser reason for people to be suspicious or wary of him.
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