# Heresy-Online's Expeditious Stories 14-04: Infamy - Voting



## Dave T Hobbit (Dec 3, 2009)

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Congratulations to all of you who participated in this month's competition and making it a success! Thank you all as well, for helping to add colour to the already exceptional fanfic forum here on Heresy. Hopefully in the following months, we can continue to build up interest and maybe bring some more fresh blood to HO's fanfic forums.

Voting works as such:
Each reader (not just writers) can cast three votes, ranking them 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Feel free to share your thoughts, comments, or brief reviews on the stories as well, since each of the writers worked hard to get their entries up.

Scoring works like this:
1st place: 3 pts
2nd place: 2 pts
3rd place: 1 pt

*When you vote, ensure that you vote in the following format:*
1st Place: Author, Name of Story, 3 pts
and so on.

Unfortunately, to prevent any possible dramas, you cannot vote for your own story. As there are fewer than 4 entries the requirement to cast all three votes does not apply this month.

Additionally, if you wrote a story, you must vote! As the competition grows, I think it is necessary to point this out. If you enter but do not vote, any votes for your story(ies) will not be counted.

By the end of the voting period, all votes will be tallied and a winner declared.

Once this winner is declared, the winning story will be placed into the Winning HOES thread which has been stickied in this forum. The winning writer will be awarded the Lexicanum's Crest (seen above!) forum award for fiction excellence during the quarterly Awards.

Just to emphasize again, _you do not need to have written a story to cast your votes!_ The more people that cast their votes, the better!

The deadline for voting will be *midnight* *GMT 11 May 2014*. At that time this thread will be completed, and the winner declared.

Due to the change in the reputation system, the rewards for entering/winning have also changed:
Participation - 1 reputation point
3rd Place - 2 reputation points
2nd Place - 3 reputation points
1st Place - 4 reputation points

Here are the entries from HOES 14-04:

*Table of Contents*

Xabre - Blooding

Dark Angel - Brotherhood

unxpekted22 - Ceased Ambition

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## unxpekted22 (Apr 7, 2009)

1st place - Dark Angel, _Brotherhood_

2nd place - Xabre, _Blooding_


I like how we have a fantasy, 30k, and 40k story haha. Nice.

I put most of my voting factor into how well I thought the stories incorporated the theme. Some other factors for me are control of language and whether or not the story evoked emotion, and if so how well.

I didn't get much of a sense of infamy from either of the stories, but Dark Angel's did make me feel more for the characters involved. Perhaps this is my personal preference and better knowledge of the 40k universe compared to the warhammer fantasy universe. I'm not sure. It was a fun battle scene to read though, for sure.

Perhaps its because I haven't been following along with previous HOES competitions but the ending of _Blooding_ doesn't mean anything to me. The scene seems to be a training session, but I don't know what they are getting ready for or where the infamy comes into play. Again, for all I know these elven characters are well known for something in the fantasy universe that I am simply unaware of.

Dark Angel's story conveys more of a feeling of imminent betrayal, but again not so much 'infamy', in my opinion. I feel like even if I knew nothing about what happens on Isstvan III, that I would still pick up on the fact that something is going to go wrong, and someone is going to do something they are not supposed to, likely harming a supposed ally significantly be it directly or indirectly. Something caused me to care about Sarnbael and krateron, which drew me in more. 

I feel that both stories contain good imagery and language control, so, equal there.

Anyway, I thought this was fun and wish I had started participating in these sooner. So, I plan to continue and try to get these entries in. Can't promise I'll be able to every time though.


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## Xabre (Dec 20, 2006)

I'm gonna go with:

1st place: Ceased Ambition

2nd place: Brotherhood


@*unxpekted22*: Back in January, I challenged myself to make every month's story based around a 3000pt High Elf Grand Army I was creating. To be honest, I'm not sure if I want to continue with it, because I'm -- Squirrel! -- easily distracted, but I gave it at least one more month to try and work towards it. The Infamy was more directed towards the possibility that this army might be something great... or turn into something terrible. My own lack of Fantasy fluff has kept me from moving too quickly towards real conflicts and the like. I'm using it to build the backstory of my army so far. I've almost been tempted to post TWO stories... one to keep the challenge to myself going, and another to go back to 40k, which I've enjoyed writing... We'll see what happens next month. Do I force myself to continue the challenge? Or give up and try something new. I've 'won' the HoE 5 months in a row, but some of those were draws and others were because I was the only one trying.


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## unxpekted22 (Apr 7, 2009)

Xabre said:


> I'm gonna go with:
> 
> 1st place: Ceased Ambition
> 
> ...


Oh ok, cool man. Thats actually pretty commendable to basically double the challenge by continuing it with each new contest as well as trying to stick to the theme. I would suggest not forcing yourself to be constrained, though. If one month's theme holds ample opportunity for you to write using your own army then go for it, as it will be smooth and comfortable. If you feel something outside of that would be better, you could change up the pace and use something else. I wouldn't hold yourself against it. Holding too too tightly to a goal isn't always the best thing, puts pressure on, but thats something you'll have to decide!


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## Myen'Tal (Sep 4, 2009)

Didn't realize Infamy was so close to voting, would have slipped in an entry otherwise . 

1) Blooding, Xabre
2) Brotherhood, Dark Angel
3) Ceased Ambitioin, Unexpected


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

1st place: dark angel, Brotherhood, 3 pts.
2nd place: unxpekted22, Ceased Ambition, 2 pts.
3rd place: Xabre, Blooding, 1 pts.

Every time this contest happens people mention how close together the stories were, but I think this is the smallest difference between #1 and #3 in a long while. The stories were all well-written; Ceased Ambition felt like it had the most rough edges in the prose, but not by much, and the roughness fit the Admiral's insanity. In the end, Brotherhood had the most impact - even though that was because it referred to a well-known background event's impact. Blooding, by contrast, not that much happened in.

The greatest weakness for Brotherhood and Blooded were simply that they didn't stand out. Both felt more like good chapters in a novel. Ceased Ambition, meanwhile, seemed to have all the ingredients, but didn't come together as well (I know, not constructive, but I really don't know why it left that impression).


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## dark angel (Jun 11, 2008)

1st place, Unxpekted22, _Ceased Ambition_. 
2nd place, Xabre, _Blooding_.

Firstly, thank you all for the votes and the criticism. 

I enjoyed both stories immensely. But, I'm afraid, Fantasy just doesn't interest me _at all_. _Blooding _was a top notch story, but like Vulkan said, it definitely feels like a chapter from a larger work - And I can see why mine does - And you've acknowledged that it is. _Ceased Ambition_ felt more of a standalone, and with it being 40K, caught my interest more.

Until next month. k:


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## Dave T Hobbit (Dec 3, 2009)

Well, looks like this got eaten by my diary. 

Tallied the results.

1st:* Dark Angel*
2nd:* unxpected22*
3rd: *Xabre*


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