# Heresy-Online's Expeditious Stories 4: Turning Point Voting Thread



## Boc (Mar 19, 2010)

This concludes the fourth Heresy-Online Expeditious Stories Competition!

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, which works quite conveniently as there are only three stories, 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. If you cast any votes, you have to cast all three, no picking a single story and nothing more.

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.

As a reminder, *the monthly winners will be placed in the next issue of The Heretic*! 

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 US Eastern Standard Time *Wednesday, 4 May 2011*. At that time this thread will be completed, the winner declared, and the new HOES topic for Competition 5 will be posted (the topic of which has yet to be decided, so send me your ideas!)

Here are the entries for HOES #4:

Andygorn: _Turning Point_
Gothik: _Forever Fallen_
Vulkansnodosaurus: _Art of Massacre_
Stephen_Newman: _The Failure of Brother Victis_
Bane_of_Kings: _Fort Indomitable_
Ckcrawford: _The Last Tower_
Akatsuki13: _The Price of Greed_
Kaiden: _Vengeance Found_

As a reminder, you do not need to have written a story to vote. Any and all Heretics are more than welcome to check out the stories and cast their votes for their favorites.


Now get voting!


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## Stephen_Newman (Jul 14, 2009)

Nobody mind if I go first then. Okay, here goes:

3rd Andygorn-turning point-1 point. I felt that this had some really great character but the fact that it made no sense why someone in a high position Like the lady Diamex would willingly become a scourge. Let alone that killing one is an offence.

2nd CKcrawford- The Last Tower-2 points. I REALLY liked this since it came with originality and also with convincing action and motives. However I felt you had to brush aside the fact that one SM chapter is unlikely to outwit 3 others.

1st Gothik-Forever Fallen-3 points. In the end I had to place this story higher. It had less action but it was original a story and contained a fantastic theme of the betrayal that Chaos does so well.

However feel free to ignore my ramblings if you wish.

I would like to also nominate my best of the rest to be Kaiden's Vengeance Found. The others I felt contained too many plot holes (like the fact the vampires never enter Nehekhara areas since Lhamia's demise for fear of vengeance from the Tomb Kings) or that it lacked originality. A trait I prise above a lot of other characteristics in stories.


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## VulkansNodosaurus (Dec 3, 2010)

1st place: Akatsuki13, The Price of Greed, 3 pts.
Quite honestly, the aforementioned fluff disagreement (vampires and Nehekhara) was rather minor compared to those present in many other stories, and this was by far my favorite story based on factions/plot/writing.

2nd place: Kaiden, Vengeance Found, 2 pts.
Very well done, though I don't know whether Space Marines would really be chosen for an assassination mission.

3rd place: Andygorn, Turning Point, 1 pt.
Dark Eldar society is fluid enough, I would guess, for something like this to happen. Then again, I am far from a DE fluff expert. Regardless, well-done, it's just that (a) I don't like DE and (b) it's a chapter from a longer story.


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## Akatsuki13 (May 9, 2010)

Wow... Someone actually had my story at the top of their list. I wasn't expecting that. Honestly, I was just hoping that someone would have me as their third place choice.

I found it really hard to decide on which ones I liked. Most of them were quite nicely written but I found myself getting sick of the repeated Space Marine stories.

First Place: Andygorn: Turning Point: 3pt After reading all the stories, this one I liked the most, mainly because it was so different from the rest. Not only was it none Imperial but it was a much more subtle than the others. Combined with a great depiction of the society, scheming and plotting of DE leaders and some great writing (to me, this is the best written story of the thread), this is my number one.

Second Place: Ckcrawford: The Last Tower: 2pt A good story and nicely written but lacking something that I just can't place. Of course it could just be that I'm still a little sick of SM stories at the moment.

Third Place: Bane_of_Kings: Fort Indomitable: 1pt A fairly solid and well-written story that could have had a serious chance at second place if it had just a bit more punch to it. I didn't really get the sense that the Necrons were tearing through the IG and the UM arrival was truly turning the tide.

Also Stephen_Newman I would like to point out two things in regards to your comment about a vampire in Nehekhara being unfluffy. First, yes the older vampires from Lahmia and those of the immediate successive generations would be quite leery of setting foot in the Lands of the Dead but they were expelled over three thousand years prior to the current time of the Warhammer World and the vampires have long since spread across the Old World. But that is still a great deal of time, even for vampires. And they tend to be selfish creatures by nature, hording knowledge and power from their fellows and those they sire. So it's not hard to believe that younger vampires are generally ignorant of their origins. Secondly, at least one vampire _has_ spent years in Nehekhara, Mannfred von Carstein. After Vlad died and Mannfred obtained the Von Carstein Ring and one of the Tomes of Nagash, he went south to Nehekhara to uncover the ancient secrets of Necromancy, Nagash and the original Vampire Lords.


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## Bane_of_Kings (Oct 28, 2009)

1st Place - CkCrawford - The Last Tower, 3pts
2nd Place - Akatsuki13 - The Price of Greed, 2pts
3rd Place - Andygorn - Turning Point, 1 pt


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## gothik (May 29, 2010)

1st place Stephen Newman - the failure of brother Victus - 3pts
2nd place Bane of Kings - fort indomitable - 2pts
3rd place CK Crawford - the last tower - 1pt

well done everyone a great read this month wonder what BOC is coming up with next


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## andygorn (Apr 1, 2011)

Really nicely done, everyone. I keep going back and reading all this month's entries and finding new stuff to like about all of the stories: for me, this is always a sign of an enthralling read, so many thanks for posting.

Just to give my votes for this month:

*1st = Gothik ("Forever Fallen") = 3 points.*
_I really liked the "this is how far I've fallen" bleakness 40K grim-darkness (in a good way) of this._

*2nd = CKCrawford ("The Last Tower") = 2 points.*
_I quite liked this one as I got a sense of the autonomy of Marine Chapters (even when compared to other ones in close proximity). Also that they may be on crusades, etc, but "no one in 40K has all the answers", so people do things for a reason which they think is perfectly valid, but they may not find out...until it's too late...that the reasons for things are based on lies, or unknown/forgotten history, or pride, etc._

*3rd = Stephen_Newman ("The Failure of Brother Victis") = 1 point.*
_I like the emphasis that one battle or a whole campaign can hinge on just a few people's actions and also the humans' arrogance of "we finally get to fight the Eldar" then they get the tables turned on them. _

Just to reply to people's queries (not trying to hijack things):
@ Stephen_Newman:
That's a good possibility about the wings. After transcribing the story, it never struck me that this could be the case until you mentioned it.
My initial thoughts afterwards about how she got the wings was that Lady Diadex has enough power/influence/etc to get someone (i.e. the same people who make the Scourges' body modifications) to graft wings onto her. To me, a Scourge is a high-profile messenger, but they just use wings to do what they do. That she's _not_ a Scourge and is pretty much 'an-Archon-with-wings' (but may use the wings to masquerade as one when she's wearing a helmet/mask) was the idea that came into my head after writing. But it's another facet for me to try to find out about at a later date. Thanks for the concept/inspiration.

@ Vulkansnodosaurus:
I'm glad you caught up on the changeability concept; DE's strike me as a "do anything as long as you win" kind of species. I'm new to writing and came into this contest quite quickly, so maybe it was an unconscious thing that characters who were currently revealing themselves to me would pop up again. My writing is a process where I just write about the inspiration that comes to me, rather than having a plan: I understand about the 'originality' thing and maybe the next one will be something completely different...or it may be that my next 20+ stories are all about the same characters again...but even I don't know how it'll turn out until I finish writing.

I'm looking forwards to 'Expeditious Stories #5' already.


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## Kaiden (Apr 1, 2010)

1st - Akatsuki13 - The Price of Greed - 3pts
2nd - CkCrawford - The Last Tower - 2pts
3rd - Bane_of_Kings - Fort Indomitable - 1pts

Great stories all round


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## ckcrawford (Feb 4, 2009)

1st-Bane_of_Kings: Fort Indomitable=3pts
2nd-Stephen_Newman: The Failure of Brother Victis=2pts
3rd-andygorn: Turning Point=1 pt

Good job everybody. Difficult topic, but you all wrote some awesome stuff.


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## Boc (Mar 19, 2010)

Okay, thank you all for your patience! I apologize for being so absent this time around, but Army stuff often has ridiculously long hours haha.

Without further ado, the results!

*WINNER OF HOES #4:* Ckcrawford's _The Last Tower_!

*Second Place:* Akatsuki13's _The Price of Greed_

*Tied for Third Place:* Andygorn's _Turning Point_ and Bane_of_Kings' _Fort Indomitable_

Thank you all again for participating!


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## ckcrawford (Feb 4, 2009)

Thanks Guys... tear tear....

You love me! You really love me!


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## Akatsuki13 (May 9, 2010)

Wow... Second place.

:yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo::yahoo:

Thank you to all those who voted for my story.:drinks:


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## andygorn (Apr 1, 2011)

Great stories everyone & many thanks for putting me joint-3rd. AndyG.


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## Bane_of_Kings (Oct 28, 2009)

Oh, tied for third .

Thanks to all of you who voted, congratulations to AndyGorn, Akatsuki13 and Ckcrawford!


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