User:Daric Gaersmith/TES Fan Fiction Collection/Reading_Fan_Fiction/The Armour of Contempt

01:09, 27 May 2014 (GMT): I'm back playing Skyrim once again. I am not in ESO, so please don't ask. Userspace Links Cartography Gallery Genealogy In Game Characters Modding on the XBox Status Update Templatery TES Fan Fiction Collection To Do List Sandboxes — working on Alfwyn's map of Solstheim. — Apocryphal - the language on the Diiv Word Wall. — adding a referencing stylesheet to the Cite web references. — Empty or undefined. — Rewriting the proposed "guidelines" for DLC namespaces. See The Silencer's sandbox for more details. — new content for the Geode Vein page.

introduction   This page contains my review of The Armour of Contempt by HMSVictory. The Armour of Contempt Tonight I read through The Armour of Contempt by HMSVictory. It is a short story, and was not marked as a work in progress, so I assume this is the finished article. I thought it was an interesting story, if somewhat light on Elder Scrolls lore. There was also a lot of non-canonical information introduced for no apparent reason. For example, in Chapter II there is mention of an artillery bombardment using catapults. The only catapults that I have come across in the Elder Scrolls games are to be found in Dwemer ruins, yet there was no mention of Dwemer technology in this tale. To me, this story seemed to be more about Julius Caesar's Rome than about Tamriel. EDIT: I have just found my mistake here. During my playthroughs of Skyrim to date, I have avoided the Civil War quests and gone straight into Season Unending without having chosen a side. It seems from what I have found out today, that the Civil War questline introduces a lot more catapults than I have seen so far. I have never even seen the Whiterun Military Camp, for instance, which apparently has "three catapults here loaded with flaming bombs, each having a Stormcloak soldier firing and reloading them." I clearly need to go back and play through the Civil War quests at some time. One interesting feature in this tale was the drill instructor's use of a whip. This is not something that I would normally associate with the Elder Scrolls, but there is precedent for it in lore, particularly among the Bosmer. As a short story, I found it lacked the elements of plot- and character-building that I intend to bring to my own fan fiction writing. For instance the character "Lip, a Breton man on RIP for arguing with a superior", suddenly appeared in the story in one sentence, and in the very next was killed off. Was Lip from the same RIP intake as the protagonist, Criid, or had he been with RIP for longer? I can't see myself creating and dashing my fan-fic characters so quickly. But then, I don't expect to write short stories myself, either. Despite my comments above, I did get a good sense of the chaos of warfare from this story. I particularly liked the line about being able to smell majicka in the air. I gather that it would be similar to the smell of tarseal / bitumen on a road after the rain. Or perhaps the smell of ozone after a crack of lightning. Or perhaps the acrid smell of a burned out printed circuit board. What does majicka smell like when it is unleashed, I wonder? References