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Post by SuperCommando on Oct 3, 2016 20:48:07 GMT -6
This thread is where you post your stories for the 7th ANNUAL YAPPA’S HALO RPG HALLOWEEN SHORT STORY CONTEST. If you are not participating in the contest, please DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD. Thank you. Announcement thread for details and/or questions: yappashalorpg.proboards.com/post/112013/threadThis year our esteemed judges shall be:SuperCommandoLlau |
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Faclan
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Everyone's Favorite Space Chicken
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Post by Faclan on Oct 25, 2016 6:29:25 GMT -6
First time entering, thanks Sheep for getting on my case about actually finishing it. I had the thought of the ending first and then wrote backwards for a bit before skipping to the start and then writing forward to match both stories up.
I'll call it; "Dead Ship Pitch."
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Ships don't just die, that's impossible, especially not Covenant ships. It just DIDN'T happen. This had to be a trick. Some kind of prank played on him during these long flights to give the other soldiers something to do. Probably the Unggoy or Kig-Yar thinking they could get a laugh at his expense...But even his info pad wasn't working when he woke up. All the lights were gone. No more quiet rumble of the engines. Nothing. He stayed in his bed for a minute as he waited to see if anything would come back, all those old lessons he was told when he was a kid coming back. Being scared of the dark was something no proud Sangheili was supposed to fear...But even the Warrior Poets of old would preach about the unknown. How caution in the face of the unknown would keep the smart alive, and only the foolish would charge ahead.
But nothing changed in the minute he lay there. Still no light.
At least it let his eyes adjust to see that his small quarters was still the same. The info pad he had left on his chest from reading was still gone however and he hadn't awoken yet. So this wasn't a dream. Something terrible had befallen Sacred Pilgrimage. Setting the info pad on the little table beside the bed he reached under it and pulled his plasma rifle from the charge station.
Click.
But the weapon didn't light up, and the charging station wasn't showing any power anyway...What in the Gods had happened? Clutching the shell tightly he tried to operate the cooling fins in the slight sight he had but it felt cold. As if it had been turned off for hours. Taking a breath he moved toward the door and set the dead rifle on the ground as he had no mounting points for it now and tried to open the door. It took some doing with no power but thankfully the locks weren't engaged and he was able to force it open. Into the equally pitch black hallway. It was at this point the boy seemed to notice that he was still breathing and not floating...So some things were still turned on here. But the lights had been cut and the reactor was running on low. This was some kind of targeted strike. He needed a weapon. Heading back to his bed he pulled out his personal box, thankfully able to see well now, and entered the small manual lock code to open it. Pulling out his Curvedagger, presented to him upon graduation that had been owned by a great warrior - a dream to aspire too, he looked back at the door. But there was something glowing and white looking at him, before it was gone.
It didn't look like an Unggoy. The dagger was clenched tighter as the useless plasma rifle was set on the table with the dead info pad before the hallway was braved. It was like his room had been. Deathly quiet. Crouching down into a slightly ready stance he moved down to the right. Toward the ready rooms and out of the resting section of the ship. It was...unnerving that the other doors were all already open. But no-one was in there even if it had been time for the day shift to sleep when he turned in. Just before he arrived at the break room a shape would be spotted in the doorway before the break room proper. The first other thing he had seen...it was a Kig-Yar. Dead. His neck looked like it had been wrung and it wasn't even in armor. Only Sangheili or Jiralhanae could have done that...what had happened?! He managed to hold back a gag as he leaned closer to see if he could tell what had happened as there was the smell of blood as well but all that he could find was some scratches made in the breastplate of the unfortunate soul. Some kind of Human scratches...two vertical half circles on top of each other and then a straight vertical dash to its right, with two small vertical dashes under it with a horizontal downward semi circle below it, barely visible in the reflective metal plate.
Carefully stepping over the slain soldier he continued into the break room. It looked pretty empty besides the tables and chairs, but the smell of death was starting to flow from all directions. Leaning against a table with his head lowered the apparently sole survivor took a moment to hold in the contents of his stomach and try to compose himself. Something had happened to this ship and crew...Something worse than he could honestly believe right now. But thirty souls used to share this space and he had only see himself and that Kig-Yar...where were the rest?
With his breath back he looked up again, dagger barely held at this point, and stumbled toward the exit and into one of the main halls. But then he saw the white glow again. Staring at him. He looked fully at it before it ducked away and running could be heard. He ran as well to try and see it as he rounded the corner, but it was just a dark blob fleeing. From the sound it seemed like it ran down a different hallway off the main one...no way to follow it now.
Now holding the dagger tighter the wielder moved over to the much larger panel on the wall, used for announcements and also ship schematics for use just in situations like this. But no matter what button he hit it was dead, just like everything else had been so far. Dead and silent; left without physical senses besides hazy vision and hearing that was being tricked by noise bouncing off all the walls when it wasn't just nothing. All the technology of the Covenant gone and replaced by blackness, like some kind of Hell. All of his senses lessoned and played with like he was drowning. Flailing in the dark in the hope of some kind of salvation.
At least he was still alive...he needed to get to the reactor and find out what had happened. It was still active it had just been turned to not support some tasks for some reason.
Getting up close to the wall so he could read the navigation signs he headed toward reactor. Completely lost in the ship he had spent months on. Nothing was familiar in this black sea of distant noises and otherworldly silence. Not even the floor was something he knew and could find solace in. Especially not when he nearly tripped over another shape in the darkness. Catching himself on the wall he looked down and groaned. Another dead soldier...Unggoy with half of his head caved in and leaking methane, blood, and brain. Using the wall to steady himself as he staggered away his eyes snapped forward at another noise. Much louder than before.
Around the corner rounded a new glow, gold like the sunset and at the level of his own head. There was a loud kha-chunk before somthing very sturdy was jammed against his throat, making him stagger backwards and trip over his own feet. Ending up looking at the massive armored shape as it looked down with weapon pointed right at his eyes, and t
"Going to stop you there. Your English is very impressive but if I am getting the gist of the story you are painting the Humans as the aggressors and the young split face as the victim? Dare I say putting a Spartan as the 'evil' party?"
The stout Unggoy looked up from the rough script he had been reading, his pride and joy rough script, and nodded. Maybe the Seventh time would be the charm? Maybe the editor was into that angle?
"...Right, you can clearly write and read so you aren't an idiot but that's not going to fly around here. We didn't spend nearly thirty years trying to wipe out their entire civilization and history of them. Change around the positions and we can maybe talk."
Showing an admirable amount of restraint the Unggoy just replied at a normal volume. "But everyone can be and was monsters during that time, not just the Sangheil," but he was interrupted.
"I don't care about what you believe to be the case, but I don't want it. Get out." The Human seemed quite angry that Belop had even suggested such a notion. So the Unggoy just nodded, removed himself from the chair, and left. Another rejection from a publishing house.
Just like everything else these days; endless rejection, endless failure, and endless reminders that he was never going to make Writing work for him...
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Post by SuperCommando on Oct 31, 2016 21:44:21 GMT -6
It's getting late, so I think it's time to call it.
Suffice it to say there's little doubt who this year's winner is. Even so, Llau and I will still offer our scores and feedback. Those will be posted shortly.
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MrKill
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The Site dad
Guardian
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Post by MrKill on Oct 31, 2016 22:12:49 GMT -6
Hey, hey.
I still got two hours left!
Common.
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MrKill
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The Site dad
Guardian
Posts: 6,061
Likes: 604
Gender: Male
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Post by MrKill on Nov 1, 2016 0:08:24 GMT -6
So Dead Space and Dead Space 2 were probably some of my favorite 'action horror games'.
I thought I'd make my story present in that universe.
Jones woke up frightfully, a haunting noise echoing from the hull, as if the air itself was screaming in pain. Unbeknown to him, an asteroid had pierced through the hull and spread a very contagious viral infection through most of the crew. By the time they got uninfected personnel to the asteroid, it had disappeared, leaving only a centimetre breach in the hull. Oxygen was being replaced faster than they were loosing it, but structural integrity had been failing with the pressure leaving the hull, and the breach was getting larger.
The repair crews never made it.
"What the fuck." Jones muttered, slowly getting out of bed. He noticed a pad on his computer desk pulsating, a new message had arrived that he hadn't checked. The young service technician grabbed the pad and opened the message, it was an audio file from his service platoon leader. Jones was a member of the Passage Under Star's system technician platoon, twenty four guys who were experts for technical machinery and computer technology.
"Jones, where the fuck are you? Get to engineering on the double, shit is going haywire since the impact and we're loosing syst-"
The message cut out before the rest could be played, reading "<error, playback unavailable, please reset internal database for recovery.>'
Jones put the pad back on the table and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and pointer fighter, trying to figure out what was going on. The air was still softly howling, a sound that intimidated Jones enough that he decided to stay in his room for a few moments longer; perhaps he could make some sense of the message he had received. The tech booted up his PC and accessed the datalink connecting the entire ship to his service program.
"What the fuck?" Jones groaned again.
He tried another approach.
Jones sighed, "Mhmm."
Jones let out a quick breath in defeat. Locally didn't do him any good, he needed access to the main database. If it was offline, there was no fixing the problem remotely. He had to leave his crew quarter and get to the main database - or the server room some called it - in order to restore the system. If the primary database was offline, everyone but bridge officers were in the dark.
He knew the ship had a backup database that contained vital programs for the vessels critical systems, but those could only be accessed by bridge officers and senior engineers and technicians. Navigation, engines, bulkhead doors, sensors, communication, environment; systems that the ship absolutely needed to ensure it remained operational. These servers were engaged as soon as the primary servers crashed, but if there was a ship wide power outage - even for a moment - they might not have booted up.
Of course, each of those systems had local copies as well, a tertiary measure to ensure vital systems stay operational. However, servers allowed everything to link together and communicate. If both the primary and secondary systems were down, there would have to be constant communications between the individual stations that controlled their programmed system. It was pretty obvious to Jones - who was unable to communicate with the database - that internal communications, external communications and primary lighting would be offline.
Which meant his door, a non-critical door, would also be unresponsive. Thankfully they were light enough to open manually, but they were still built to contain an atmosphere in the event of a critical hull breach. It wouldn't be easy, but it was possible. Jones quickly packed the day bag in his locker with his Multi-Tool, his pad, a bottle of water and a holographic display of the ships internal structure.
By the time he built up the courage to unlock the door, creatures he hadn't seen had 'sniffed' their way around the crew quarters and killed the majority of the trapped inhabitants. Two crew members, just recently deceased, converted into terrifying creatures of flesh and bone. They heard the loud clank when the door unlocked from down the hull and rushed towards the noise. Jones wasn't expecting a large knife like limb to stab its way through the middle of the door, bending and ripping open the steel as it slashed for Jones' head. The mutilated face of what used to be Security Officer Tyreese Martins screeched with such a high tone Jones' ear was ringing for over twenty seconds after the... creature had tried to break in.
By the time Jones regained situational awareness, only the blackness of the hull outside remained. The door, bent and warped at such a degree that Jones could easily slide through, must have stopped the creature from entering long enough for it to get distracted by another noise. Certainly enough a woman screamed down the hull, the creature screeched again, and Jones was sickened with the slicing sounds that followed. He heard the guts hit the floor, two loud thumps, and that was it.
He heard the creature leave, however, as the foot steps softened until there was no sound but the flowing air. It had grown a touch louder, but not enough to be concerned about. Jones, collecting himself to get the fuck out of there, slipped through the newly created hole in his door. Red lights snapped on and illuminated the passage, including the woman that had died, who was cut into three pieces.
Jones went the other way, putting his back to the slaughter, only to find a pool of blood and guts even larger than the one he hoped to get away from. He wasn't about to turn around, however, as the creature had gone that way. He begun stepping over the gore when is eye caught something, a pad with a red pulsing light, which meant that a message had failed to send. Jones went to go pick up the pad but ended up adding what was left of his stomach to the gore.
When he was able to collect himself he grabbed the pad, wiped away the blood with disgust, and left the area as quick as he could. He rounded the passage and entered one of the main corridors to the crew quarters section. He found a nook in the hull plating and rotated the pad, searching for the volume button, but it blood had made it too sticky. Jones ejected the memory chip and added it to his pad, discarding the gore covered one nearly thoughtlessly, and listened to the audio file with nearly no noise.
"Security Chief to... anyone who gets this. Get. Off. The. Ship, we've failed to contain the creat... creature in the crew quarters. All personnel in the crew quarters are either infected or trapped behind doors. Riley and I are... are the only ones left. McMahhn, Tobie, Foster, Cutter, Harley and Erihm are dead. ... Well to be more accurate, they're converted. I'm hurt, Riley is... well he is hurt too. I'm not going to make it. Get off the ship, now!"
The audio log ended. Every time the security chief paused he coughed violently, and it sounded wet, like he was coughing up blood in the process. Judging by the pool of blood he had passed Jones made the assumption he had been fatally wounded and died there, along with the other security officer he had mentioned. He could only assume what had killed him, as he took notice of how the Chief said 'converted' during the log.
But how did the security team try to defend themselves? Certainly they had some form of weapon.
Jones pushed the thoughts into the back of his mind. The main door leading out of the crew corridors had a similar style of damage as his own did, but it was significantly smaller, and Jones made the connection: They're all in here.
The technician slowly backed further into the nook, his breaths beginning to hyper ventilate.
THUMP!
Thump. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.
Jones could see a creature, smaller than the one that had attacked him, walking around the main hallway. The dim red lights barely illuminating the creature, but the crack in the blast door provided some white light that radiated a small area of the crew bay. The rays of light faded as something on the other side of the door paused.
Bang, bang, bang!
The crack got bigger, and Jones tried to focus his vision.
His death, however, was swift.
A limb through his neck, another through his abdomen. The creature pulled Jonas out from the nook and cut him in half. By the time his head, disconnected from his body, hit the ground he had already lapsed into a never-waking coma. An abrupt end to his life, entirely unexpected, but it happened.
"Jesus fucking ch-!" Jones screamed, shooting upright from his bed. He took a breath in relief and sighed. It was just a nightmare, the game Dead Space 2 still paused on the TV.
Ding-dong
"Trick or treat!" Jones heard from the door.
Was it Halloween already?
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Post by SuperCommando on Nov 2, 2016 9:49:17 GMT -6
Well it looks like Kill managed to throw something up last minute. Must be in a different time zone than me, makes sense living in Canada and all that. So with two stories, it's back to being a contest than rather than a formality.  Now since there's two contestants and two judges, I think it might be fair to add one more judge in order to conclude a definitive winner. So, any volunteers? First come first serve. Sooner we get a judge, sooner we can get to the scores. |
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Remnant
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Shadow of the Past
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Post by Remnant on Nov 2, 2016 16:57:25 GMT -6
I call judging since I was too busy to finish my story.
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Post by SuperCommando on Nov 4, 2016 22:09:40 GMT -6
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MrKill
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The Site dad
Guardian
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Post by MrKill on Nov 4, 2016 22:18:09 GMT -6
UntitledBy MrKill STORY: 4
THEME: 4
STYLE: 3
BONUS: - Plot twist, +1 (It was all a dream)
- Halloween the Holiday, +1 (“Was it Halloween already?”)I played the first Dead Space once. It freaked me out so much I had to stop playing, and I returned the game soon after. Of course, that was years ago. I’m sure I could handle it now. Point is, I know how disturbing Dead Space can be. I also know that trying to make something scary in writing is very hard. Even with Dead Space as your subject matter, the story didn’t give me the same kind of dread I got from the game. Perhaps a big reason is that too much emphasis is placed on starship technical jargon, not actually frightening descriptive language. And that’s the key. The very first paragraph is a good example of why the story lacked suspense or mood-building. It’s the age-old “show don’t tell” rule. That paragraph (and much of the following story) was a lot of “telling”, just a list of stuff happening. A suggestion on how to make that better is perhaps instead of one paragraph expand it into a whole scene on the bridge or something, where officers are panicking as they receive reports from the distressed repair crew and struggle to handle the infection. That way the audience still learns that something really wrong is happening, but it’s much more impactful. Of course, you did great in certain regards. I really liked the starship technical jargon actually, it goes a long way toward making the idea of being on a vessel like that more believable. Unfortunately, the rest of the story didn’t hold up as well. But I do give you major props for clearly stepping outside your comfort zone and giving it a try! That’s the kind of attitude this contest is supposed to encourage. TOTAL SCORE: 13 Thank you for the grade! Ultimately, I felt pretty 'shitty' of the story I submitted, as it really was only 1/4th done. I had a lot more planned, but when you posted with the intent to wrap it up, I jumped the gun on a few aspects and rushed towards a quicker ending; in fact, I jumped the story so much, that I missed out on a lot of character development and adventure. Originally, the mecromorphs weren't even supposed to be in the crew area. I would consider flushing the story out further if it meant anyone would actually read it, as I wanted to build the atmosphere up slower. I was definitely out of my comfort zone, though. |
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Post by Llau on Nov 5, 2016 22:10:59 GMT -6
I'll hopefully be able to edit this post with my scores either sometime Sunday, or Monday at the latest. Things have been slightly hectic for me (just a smidgen), but looking forward to having a relaxing time, read, and post my scores and thoughts of the two stories. :3
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Faclan
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Everyone's Favorite Space Chicken
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Post by Faclan on Nov 7, 2016 0:54:53 GMT -6
Thanks for the grade SuperCommando ^.^ I actually tried to slip a reference to the number 31 (and Halloween). Thats all the circle stuff that was cut into the Kiggles chest plate - a 31 with a under it. Dunno if it was caught cause it was hard to describe it with the character seeing it not knowing Human numbers or emoticons but ah well. Thanks for saying it was good, I didn't think much of it personally but a lot of people seem to think that about their stuff. And about the Covenant ship layout thanks ^.^ - I imagined that the corridors couldn't all be those massive Truth and Reconciliation ones we see in Halo 1 so I tried to think what would be a good use of space for crew quarters. Glad it made sense. And the species interacting for banal reasons like trying to find a publisher I think would be very common post war and would be loads of fun, glad you liked that idea  . That was the first idea I had that made me write the rest of the story. I shall look forward to Sheep n Remnant grading :> |
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Remnant
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Shadow of the Past
Guardian
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Post by Remnant on Nov 15, 2016 17:33:11 GMT -6
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Faclan
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Everyone's Favorite Space Chicken
Moderator
Posts: 3,194
Likes: 582
Gender: Male
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Post by Faclan on Nov 15, 2016 19:53:48 GMT -6
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Post by Llau on Nov 17, 2016 7:55:47 GMT -6
Sorry for the lateness, guys.
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Post by SuperCommando on Nov 17, 2016 8:08:08 GMT -6
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Post by Llau on Nov 18, 2016 15:13:38 GMT -6
Winner, winner. Chicken dinner.  Congrats, Faclan I also appreciate MrKill for taking a moment and the effort to post his story at the end of the contest. Hopefully next year, we'll have more participants. :3 |
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. That was the first idea I had that made me write the rest of the story.
