[Kveykvakonungr]

Passage's spartans: Chapter I: flash flood


Passage, a deserted rocky plantetoid, flung out of orbit, drifting through space, no strategic value, and no resources, or, at least, that's what they thought, but one day, they found a huge deposit of uranium near the planetoid's core. Five months in, the covenant attacked the core miners, a huge task force, and the UNSC needed that uranium, and so, three pelicans, each bearing five spartan IIs were dispatched, all three were shot down, one went unaccounted for, the second of them produced three survivors: Tokki, Shade, and their captain, Rush, of the third, two survived, two spartans nick-named Merry & Pippin, because they were best friends, and went everywhere together, these five spartans holed up in the core miner's base, with two pelicans worth of guns and ammunition, two weeks later, a flood ship crashed, and, as the UNSC had used the planet as a burial site, they had a fresh supply of bodies, while some flood matured, and turned into the odd varient that could either reproduce, or shift between three forms, nick-named "turret" "tank" and "spider"

Rush slung the sniper rifle over his back, he had base guard today, the others had taken the two warthogs to patrol, there were four spartans on patrol, so two to a hog, Rush entered the small lift, which carried him up to the base roof, just as he came up, a thin sheet of rain descended, running down his slate grey armour, bouncing off his "rogue" variant helmet, he was the only spartan in the squad with custom variant armour, rogue helmet, a CQB chest plate with the dagger on the chest, a CQB shoulder plate and an EVA shoulder plate, everyone else just had the usual mark VI, he peered through the sniper scope, training it across the rocky, mottled green landscape, nothing... but suddenly, he saw a flash of purple, Covenant? no... flood, they must have waylaid one of their patrols, but then, more came over the horizen, marine flood, spiders, turrets, tanks, a couple of flood brutes, hefted spikers at the front, he made a rough count, about a hundred and fifty, he zoomed as far in as he could with the sniper, aimed, and fired...

to be continued...

This is my first fan fiction, I tried to upload it on the other shurtugal fan fiction, but they only take inheritance stuff, tell me what you think, and show this to your mates.

[Kveykvakonungr]

I know some people have viewed this, but nobody has commented, so, I'm submitting chapter 2, which is longer, more actiony, and actually introduces two more squad members.

Chapter 2: in the nick of time

Rush fired, the bullet struck a covenant brute in the forehead, green flood gore splattered the ground, unfortunately, all this did was provoke the flood further, an ark of turret flood fire almost took Rush's head off, there were too many of them, he had to act fast, first, he activated his distress beacon, then, he slung the sniper rifle over his back, and grasped the trigger of the minigun turret they had set up on the base roof, he fired, stopping for nothing, cutting down flood after flood, the ammo feed lasted for about two minutes, there were about seventy flood left, and that wasn't counting the six that were wounded, but still crawling closer, and closer to the base.

This was evidently a planned assault, it explained why they hadn't seen the flood over the past week, they had been growing as many as they could into the matured shape shifter variety, he pulled his sniper back out and fired the last three shots in the clip, killing two flood, wounding a third, he loaded his second clip, and emptied it, all four shots finding their mark in the heads of tank flood, he had one sniper clip left, then, he was down to his handgun and the battle rifle he kept in his quarters, this wasn't going to end well... he fired his last clip, not bothering to see where the bullets landed, and was just about to go and fetch his battle rife when he heard an engine, then, a warthog practically flew over the hill, using the helmet controls on the wrist of his armour, he magnified his vision X10, Tokki was driving, with Shade on gunner position.

Rush allowed himself a small smile, putting his vision back to normal, he trotted down to his quarters, and, leaving the empty sniper against a wall, ran out of the base, battle rifle in hand, he fired into the thick swarm of flood, cutting a path to the warthog, Tokki nodded at him, 'captain.' Rush hauled himself into the passenger seat, pulling a small remote off his belt, he pressed a button, the large base doors moved shut, blocking the flood out, Rush twisted in his seat, 'right! where are the others?' Tokki looked at him 'Merry and Pippin signalled a distress call about two minutes after you did, along with a message: get captain Rush down here, ASAP.' Rush laid the battle rifle across his knees, 'all righty, then! let's go.'

This post has been edited by Kveykvakonungr: 19 July 2009 - 10:35 AM

[wolffy]

Its good.

Needs some tweaking though.

Add paragraphs so its easier to read. At the moment it is like a block of words which are hard to read.

Also change the fonts to non bold so its easier to read.

but the story is good but needs some back story.

[Kveykvakonungr]

Good morning, folks! I'm hoping this chapter will be loved:

Chapter three: ambush

The warthog pulled up, sending a spray of pebbles cascading down the hill, Rush was the first out, dashing towards Merry and Pippin, who where standing over an elite, sprawled on the floor, purple blood oozing out of a wound on his leg, Pipping hailed him, while Merry stood with his assault rifle pointed at the prisoner, Rush eyed the elite, before saying, 'why didn't you two bandage his leg? it'd be a hell of a thing for him to bleed before we could interrogate him!' Pippin stepped back, stumbling over the broken plasma rifle embedded in the hard earth, 'we tried, sir, but every time we tried, it just lashed out!' Rush shrugged, 'right, you,' he said, nodding at the elite, who was wearing a crimson combat harness, which meant he was higher ranking that the usual grunt squad leaders, 'what are you planning here?' The elite glanced up at him, 'kill me,' he said, Rush cocked his battle rifle and said, 'answer the f***ing question!' there was a pause, 'never!' the elite spat.

Rush was about to try something else to get the information, but, in the distance, he heard the whoosh of ghosts, 'take cover!' he shouted, running up the hill, and leaping behind a boulder, just as a ghost flew over the hill, past him, he ran, jumped forward, and kicked the unsuspecting elite driver in the neck, who fell out, to be gunned down by Merry, Rush took control of the ghost, bringing it about just as two more flew towards him, he lined up his target, and unleashed the dual plasma cannons on the nearest ghost, he glanced away from the resulting explosion, suddenly, he saw something, two plasma grenades landed on the rim of the ghost.

Rush threw himself to the side, flying out of the ghost, scrabbling across the ground, but too late, the ghost exploded with the additional force of two plasma grenades, throwing hin forward, his vision blurred, everything darkened, then, nothing...

Boot camp, seven years previously, Rush and the rest of the marines were, one by one, told to go behind a flawless white screen, and strip to their underwear, each of them was Xrayed, they gave blood samples, then, were given plain sweat suits, put through tiring exercises and tests all designed to see how muc stamina you had, what your limits were, just about every form of physical endurance, then, were given I.Q. tests, then, a holo-unit was brought in, and the revolutionary computer construct, Cortana, blossomed into life, then, a black marine, in his late thirties walked in, followed by lord hood himself, the marines stood to attention for an hour, then, the three spectators talked among themselves, then, he heard them speak, 'Tokki, kevin!' a 28 year old man with sandy hair and a scar on his left cheek stepped forwards, 'Torin, Peter!' Rush stepped forward, the two of them were led away from the other marines, given a series of injections, they wear measured, then, were put to sleep for "something special..."

then, it was all a blur, he was a spartan II, spartan X52, in military green mark V armour, with various other spartan squads, human and Covenant gunfire rung in his ears, an assault rifle vibrated as he emptied the clip into a hunter, narrowly avoiding the deadly fuel rod gun on it's arm, then, he was somewhere else, wrestling a fairly muscular elite for control of an SMG, the elite had him pinned, tugging the weapon from his grasp, suddenly, he barrelled forward, catching the elite by suprise, knocking it back, the SMG was his, he twisted it round, and fired... then, he, and four Marines were pinned down, he was in mark VI armour now, he shotgunned a bruted, took it's spiker, and emptied it on the grunts, then, he saw the shimmer, and elite's energy sword coming into visibility, horrible pain in his shoulder, worse than anything he'd felt before, then, he was in an office, his helmet under his arm, listening to the man behind the desk, '... and so we have your next assignment...' he brought his fist down on the desk, splintering the wood,'No! I've had it with this "spartan" program, i did my duty, I'm finished here, I'm going home!' The man smiled, 'ah... Rush? that's what the men call you now isn't it? well, in anycase, I have the documents, if you leave, it will be desertion!'

Then, the slate gray helmet descending over his eyes, new armour again, for his new promotion...

There he was, rappeling into the crater, left by a covenant ship jumping to hyper space, aiming his battle rifle at the Covenant in the crater, he was going to do this, for her!

Rush awoke with a start, he was back in the base...

Hope you liked it, and Wolffy, theres some back story for ya!

This post has been edited by Kveykvakonungr: 21 July 2009 - 07:54 AM

[wolffy]

Cheers for the back story.

I assume that the black guy is sergeant Johnson.

Also well done with the paragraphs it looks much better now.

I also found this chapter much more descriptive and immersive than the last,

Also I have a new chapter up

EDIT: Also the Text is much better now it;s less blocky.

This post has been edited by wolffy: 22 July 2009 - 07:20 PM

[Kveykvakonungr]

Thanks wolffy, I'm trying to get as many readers as possible, people have read, but as you can tell, you're the only one to review, I'm trying to gather a strong audience...

anywayz, yeah, t'is johnson, I did that to seperate out true halo fans from the "halo's awesome, I don't have it but I play it at my friends house" guys... but yeah, I'll say this about chapter three, they have a problem...

[Lady Snapdragon]

Passage's spartans: Chapter I: flash flood


Passage, a deserted rocky plantetoid, flung out of orbit, drifting through space, no strategic value, and no resources, or, at least, that's what they thought, but one day, they found a huge deposit of uranium near the planetoid's core. Five months in, the covenant attacked the core miners, a huge task force, and the UNSC needed that uranium, and so, three pelicans, each bearing five spartan IIs were dispatched, all three were shot down, one went unaccounted for, the second of them produced three survivors: Tokki, Shade, and their captain, Rush, of the third, two survived, two spartans nick-named Merry & Pippin, because they were best friends, and went everywhere together, these five spartans holed up in the core miner's base, with two pelicans worth of guns and ammunition, two weeks later, a flood ship crashed, and, as the UNSC had used the planet as a burial site, they had a fresh supply of bodies, while some flood matured, and turned into the odd varient that could either reproduce, or shift between three forms, nick-named "turret" "tank" and "spider"

Rush slung the sniper rifle over his back, he had base guard today, the others had taken the two warthogs to patrol, there were four spartans on patrol, so two to a hog, Rush entered the small lift, which carried him up to the base roof, just as he came up, a thin sheet of rain descended, running down his slate grey armour, bouncing off his "rogue" variant helmet, he was the only spartan in the squad with custom variant armour, rogue helmet, a CQB chest plate with the dagger on the chest, a CQB shoulder plate and an EVA shoulder plate, everyone else just had the usual mark VI, he peered through the sniper scope, training it across the rocky, mottled green landscape, nothing... but suddenly, he saw a flash of purple, Covenant? no... flood, they must have waylaid one of their patrols, but then, more came over the horizen, marine flood, spiders, turrets, tanks, a couple of flood brutes, hefted spikers at the front, he made a rough count, about a hundred and fifty, he zoomed as far in as he could with the sniper, aimed, and fired...

to be continued...

This is my first fan fiction, I tried to upload it on the other shurtugal fan fiction, but they only take inheritance stuff, tell me what you think, and show this to your mates.

Great. But I suggest using periods more often instead of a bunch of commas. At least use semi-colons.

[Kveykvakonungr]

Thanks, I'll try to work on my punctuation, I might get round to chapter 4 tomorrow... for those who are curious, it will feature the Covenant in more depth than before.

[Kveykvakonungr]

Chapter 4: The Covenant

After waking up, Rush put his magnum on his belt, and walked out of his quarters, soon to be waylaid by Pippin, 'Sir, sir! thank god you're awake! Merry, he--' Rush pushed past him, Tokki, status report?'

Tokki paused, then said, 'permission to speak freely sir?'
'Permission granted...' said Rush 'The situation's gone to s***... said Tokki. 'What happened?' asked Rush, growing more and more worried, he noticed Shade was on the computer system they had set up, things must be bad... 'Merry's gone missing,' said Tokki, 'The Covenant knocked him out, and they threw him into a phantom, and flew off!' Rush thought for a second, they had long since pin pointed the most likely coordinates for the Covenant base, but had never explored there, because there was always the chance of being wrong, and they had no idea how strong the defences could be, but now there was no choice... 'get the hornet...' said Rush. Shade immediately disappeared, running down to the basement, then, in the back room, a large platform rose up, throught a hole, from the basement, on it stood Shade, and the hornet, Rush walked up to it, lifted up the driver canopy, and hauled himself into the cockpit, pulling the canope down, he switched the mic on, 'hop in!'

Shade and Pippin clambered onto the sides, and grabbed the railings above their heads, holding their assault rifles one handed. The hornet ascended lazily up through another large hole directly above the platform, Rush unhooked the door controller off his belt, closed the roof window they had exited through, and locked down the entire base, soon a voice came through the speakers on the hornet dashboard, Tokki, he said, 'I guess I'm looking after the base...'
'Looks like it.' answered Rush, angling the Hornet around and beginning the journey, it was twenty minutes of steady flying, then they reached the coordinates, Rush swore violently, 'nothing!' the landscape was bare, no base... then, 'It's Merry's emergency beacon! it's broadcasting half a quarter of a mile back!' Rush frowned, 'but theres nothing...' then it his him, he moved the hornet forward a few feet, made a 180' turn, and there it was, a cave entrance, facing the same way they had been, with a ridge of rock jutting out directly above it, invisible unless you were staring directly at it, and so, they started towards the mouth...

Okay, The next chapter is going to be from a Merry point of view!

[dragon_god]

Okay. As a writer, I have quite a few things I want to point out as constructive criticism and also a few questions I want to ask.

First off, the punctuation marks really bothered me. There were hardly any periods, way too many commas, and not enough quotation marks. I noticed that you would start off a sentence in quotes but fail to put the end quotes on it. You're really going to want those if you're seeking a large audience like you're wanting.

Also, you need to start new paragraphs when dialog changes from one person to another. It gets very difficult to tell when someone else is speaking when it's all one paragraph. It also gets rid of the need to put things like, "... he said" or "... said Rush". Reading that stuff over and over again after every sentence gets very annoying and will dramatically decrease people's opinions of your story. When you separate dialog with new paragraphs, we all have an easier time telling who is talking and it seems much more fluent; things that all writers want for their stories. It also makes the story look a whole lot longer and interesting.

I've noticed that your first few chapters were agonizingly short in length. An easy way to fix this would be to add some heavy description. Describe the environment as much as you can, where exactly are they (besides on Passage), what color the Spartans' armor is, things of that nature. The more description you have, the more interested the reader becomes because it makes the story seem more realistic even if it is a fiction story. The more believable it is, the better.

One really big thing you have to be extremely careful about is the names you're giving everyone one and everything. Some of those titles/names are copyrighted. Names like Merry and Pippin are from LotR (I'm assuming that's where you're getting it from) and ranks such as the "tank" (again I'm assuming) is from Left 4 Dead. The resemblance between the flood and Left 4 Dead is very close so you have to be careful with the names and titles. Just giving you a fair warning.

Now a few questions I had were: What exactly is Passage? Is it a colony like Reach? How many inhabitants are there? Is it only the flood that inhabit Passage? Does this take place before the Fall of Reach? If not, when exactly does this take place, just for relativity? I don't mean to sound completely clueless or agitate you (if that's what the questions are doing), but answering these questions in your story could really help you out. Because if I have these questions, chances are: someone else has the same questions.

Hope my review helped you out. I'm going to hold off on spreading the word about your story until some of these things improve because if I spread it now, people are going to look at your story once and automatically lose interest in it and all you have is more views and no replies.

And one last thing, slow down on the updates. There's no rush and unless you have the entire story written from start to finish, you're really going to run out of updates really quick. Make yourself an update schedule saying what days you're going to update on and stick with it. Just leave room for any comments and suggestions.

[Kveykvakonungr]

Thanks dragon god, I'll try to alter some of my punctuation, as for the names, Merry & Pippin were really meant to be more of a tip of the hat so to speak, it sort of acknowledges lord of the rings, because it reffers to the fact they are nick named that because they always stick together. I'll admit with the tank thing I probably could have picked something better, but the only other thing in my head was "brute-flood" and I knew people would get that confused with a brute that had been taken over by a flood, if I think of something I'll go back and change it
I'm just thinking though? copyright? This is a fanfiction site, there's a huuuuge amount of plagierism, but yeah, I'll try and change "tank"

As for what passage IS, I suppose I need to explain that, well, Passage, is a planetoid, that was flung out of orbit when the portal to the Ark was activated, before being flung outta orbit, it was in between the gravitational pull of two planet, and acted as a fuel saving trading route between them, as well as a place for the UNSC to bury their dead, then the uranium deposit was discovered; about four years before halo was discovered, two years before halo was dicovered these spartans, who's existance after the larger part of the war was kept known only to a few, the three pelicans were sent there, as all three pelicans crashed in a thunderstorm. The UNSC assumed all aboard had been killed, so, a few years after masterchief blew up halo, during the events in halo 3, these spartans were still there, and when Ark was still active, Passage was flung out of orbit, the reason they didn't attack reach was because the Covenant still maintained a strong presence there, when, infact a huge Covenant army was stranded there, same as the spartans. The elites in that army had no contact with their people, and so the schism is currently unknown, but it will play a part in future chapters...

Chapter 5: inside the lion's den

Everything was a blur, slowly, Merry's vision returned, he was in a large, cavernous area, some sort of cave; the mixed light and shadows bathed the place in permanant twilight, his back was against a thick beam of wood, about six foot high, with another beam across the top, which his arms were bound to, shoulder to wrist, with cruelly tight ropes, his armour, above his waist had been removed, his leg plates and boots were still there, his black under suit had been pulled down revealing the upper half of his body.

He heard a soft humming, then, a hovering chair, with a prophet's crooked form nestled in it, his voice rang out loud and clear, 'I stain my tongue with your human speech, so that you may understand your crimes! You are charged with heracy in the upmost...' this got a call from the stands of 'heretic! heretic!' from some grunts, '... and with the abomination of taking up demon-form, in the image of the one that destroyed the great ring, I, as the fourth of the great prophets, Realisation; here by give the order for your execution!'

he motioned to a Jackal firing squad, 'do it.' They raised their carbines, Realisation shouted out, in an alien tongue, what Merry guessed was 'three, two... one' just as the last one came out, a continuous machine gun sounded, taking out all five Jackals, an elite stepped forward, yanking two plasma rifles from a stand, 'bah! I'll do this myself!' he unleashed a volley of fire just as the Hornet's machine gun hit him in the back, he spasmed, the plasma shot burned into Merry's arms, searing his flesh, but cutting through his bonds, he came forward, just as a grunt with some sort of purple dagger came running towards him, he dropped the creature with a punch right in the little gas-mask looking thing on it's face, an elite picked up the carbine of a dead Jackal, Merry ran at him just as he raised the weapon; bringing him down with a roundhouse kick to the jaw.

He caught the carbine and put a round into the prophets chair, sending him spinning off. A brute was running off with some sort of hover trolly, with his spartan armour on it, Merry emptied the carbine in it's back, pulled up the black undersuit, ran to his armour, took the trolly to a side cave, nobody followed because they were crapping themselves about the Hornet raining machine gun fire and missiles down at them, quickly, Merry went about reattatching the armour plates, he was just about to put the helmet on, when a huge brute loomed infront of him, bringing a gravity hammer down towards him, he just managed to catch the haft, the two wrestled over it for a few minutes, the brute was pressing down, then, Merry ducked under the hammer, and took the brute's spiker off of it's belt, threw himself back, and fired, the brute fell dead, then the Hornet came to him, Pippin reaching out, he grabbed his hand, climbed up next to him and the Hornet did a 180 and flew off up the cave, leaving Merry's helmet forgotten in the dust...

This post has been edited by Kveykvakonungr: 29 July 2009 - 06:35 AM

[dragon_god]

Dude, you seriously need to do some heavy editing or have an editor or something. Barely any periods were in this update. Commas do not take the place of periods. Don't be afraid to put them in. Remember, periods are our friends.

I also noticed that every paragraph starts with "He". Another reason you need to have some editing done. Just because you start another paragraph doesn't mean that you always have to start off with "He" or "She". Replace some of them with a name or something because you have to keep in mind that this is a chapter with a huge battle going on. That "He" could be referring to any of the combatants. Even though we can guess who you're talking about, it wouldn't hurt to put a proper noun in there from time to time.

A fourth prophet? I don't know how many turns and plot twists you're planning on making in this story but try not to put too many so as to try to make the story based on something that never really happened (if that makes sense). You're saying that this takes place after/during Halo 3. In the time between the first Halo and 3, there have only been known to be 3 prophets and they've always stood by each other, more or less. Now on some random planetoid, there's a 4th? The idea is good but it's really pushing it as far as keeping in step with Halo reality.

Descriptions were still lacking with the exception of the "gas mask" bit on the grunt. But as for everything else and the other combatants, you were really lacking description. Was there a difference between the Brutes with the spikers and the Brute with the gravity hammer? (I know there is, based off of Halo 3) but still. Another really big thing was that if this is taking place after or during Halo 3, then there shouldn't be any Elites with fighting side by side with the Brutes because the Elites have left the covenant and joined up with the humans. Unless you say otherwise, this is the basic idea people are going to get. And even if they never received word to disband from the covenant, a roundhouse kick to the face kills an elite? I know the Spartans are made of some heavy armor, but damn. I don't know if you've ever read the other actual books on Halo, but it takes a whole lot more to kill an elite, even for a Spartan. They're not as fragile as you're making them look. They're not the top ranks of the covenant for no reason. Maybe it would be more believable if it was a Jackal that got kicked and died. But definitely not an elite. That's like punching a brute in the stomach and expecting him to just fall over dead. It doesn't work that way and nobody believes that.

Also, the battle was way too short. You made it look like Merry was just standing still and just raping everyone and nobody could hit him. He never really moved. This story really needs description not only in the environment and characters but in fight scenes as well.


As for plagiarism, yes, there's a lot of it in fan-fictions but it's all based on the universe they're based on. You're basing your story on Halo, but you're pulling names from LotR and L4D. All of them are different universes and that's why you have to be careful. That kind of stuff can get you into trouble. That's what I meant in my earlier post.

[Kveykvakonungr]

To be perfectly honest, I live in england (despite the ireland refference on my profile) it was usually really f***ing late over here when I wrote/uploaded these chapters, I actually do know a fair bit about halo, and I think, normally, I could do better, I haven't really been thinking, I'm probably going to stop this one, because, honestly, it's terrible compared to my normal level of writing, so, yes, I'm going to put this wounded dog of a story to sleep, I've decided to submit something I want to be published, I've been theorizing over for a while, a horror story called asylum, an original fiction, once again, I'm really sorry, this abomination of a story shames me...

[dragon_god]

It's not that I have a problem with the story. It just needs some tweaks here and there. If you read my original first few chapters and compared it to what I have written now, you'd think that I'd have given up on the story. But you learn that as you go farther, your skills get better and, using those new skills, go back and redo the earlier chapters. It's what I did and I'm glad I did. You can leave the story and just let it die, it's up to you, though I would prefer you didn't. The story's good. You just need some editing done to it.

[Kveykvakonungr]

yeah, but to be perfectly honest, this idea, linked below, is one I'd much rather get out there, it's not that I'm stopping this, I may come back to it later, just not now