World of Warcraft®

A female Orc sits surrounded by scrolls of parchment and vellum, stacks of books, empty bottles and small animals. Her black hair is a voluminous tangle entwined with quills, pet fur, and what look suspiciously like blood clots, and she is constantly drinking from a massive wooden mug of thick, dark ale, which is starting to dwindle. She is flipping through a thick, faded volume of stories with a frantic rapidity, her face screwing up into a tighter and tighter look of frustration as she progresses. She reads aloud, muttering, "Then Joilee ran her fingers down the supple spine of..."

Finally, she tosses the book aside and bursts aloud, “No. No, no, no, NO! None of these work! This is a gathering of the clans, a celebration of the fallen, and a primal cry to the Horde! Not some foofy, stupid Alliance tea party.” She takes a swig from her mug, emptying it, and stares at the bottom, furious. “No, this just won’ do. We needta have stories of valor, tales which bring honor to our fallen dead, to our ancestors, and to the elements! What we need...is a Spirit Walk.”

She grabs a nearby tome from near the bottom of a stack of books, sending those books on top tumbling to the ground. Flipping open to a page opposite an engraving of a Troll Shaman standing over a large fire, she smiles as her eyes travel down the text:

The Spirit Walk is drawn from the traditions of certain tribes of the Trolls, who believe that the dead do not rest easy and instead rely upon a kind of psychosocial food in the form of stories told aloud. These tales, it is believed, feed the souls of the hungering dead on the strength of valor, honor, and sacrifice. Unlike other traditions which hold that the souls of the dead travel to some form of afterlife, these Trolls believe that regular storytelling events must be held to comfort the souls of the dead. In this way, the living are able to walk alongside the fallen and learn from their past - hence the name “Spirit Walk”.

OOC: Hello and welcome once again to the Kosh’harg storytelling competition, the Spirit Walk! I’m your host, Atamancy - you can call me Ata. As roleplayers, we love telling our stories. Often we work in tandem with our fellow roleplayers to tell collaborative tales, but every once in a while it’s good to stretch our wings and fly off into the wild blue narrative yonder on our own.

About the Competition
The storytelling competition will be held during the Kosh'harg, which will occur on Thursday, March 20th from 9PM EST (6PM PST) to 12AM EST (9PM PST). In order to be eligible, you must be in attendance to perform your story. We will accept NUMBER entries with NUMBER wait listed contestants who will compete in the event that one of the scheduled contestants is unable to appear. The theme of the competition is "Remembrance of the Fallen", and while your story does not need to fit within this theme, there will be a scoring preference for those stories which do. Please keep in mind that the stories ought to be appropriate for the setting, a gathering of the clans and a tribal celebration - this means that a tale of battle will be better suited than a tale of romance. Awards will be given for Best Performance and Best Overall Story.

Each competitor will have seven minutes to perform their story. Because we are on such a tight schedule, we require that you submit your stories and any custom emotes you will be using in advance. If we find that your piece is too long for the event, we will ask you to edit it a little, however we will not ask you to edit your story for content nor will we provide other feedback - we just want to make sure that you have a story prepared in advance that will fit within the time available.

I will be judging this competition personally. Some of you may know me better as Sadaye, an Undead Warlock from way back in the days of vanilla, Low Red Moon, and all that madness. I'm also an English Literature major and the prose genre editor at my school's literary magazine. I will be using a quantitative scoring system that is fair and impartial (details below).

Note that we will be holding every storyteller to this schedule. You will incur a scoring penalty if your story runs over time, so watch the clock! Here are some tips to help you succeed:

• Plan. We only require that you submit the text of the story and custom emotes, but it may behoove you to plan out every emote and cue you’ll use. Want to use a spell effect to emphasize a point? Write it down! Want to /nod, /wink, or /dance? Make a note of it.
• Rehearse. Practice performing the story in a secluded corner of the world or with a friend and time yourself using the Stopwatch feature (click on the clock by the minimap if you’re using the default UI). This will help you ensure you can tell the story in time.
• Copy and Paste. One great thing about having to submit the story and custom emotes ahead of time is that you’ll already have them typed up! Don’t be afraid to use this document as a resource to speed up your delivery - just make sure you don’t paste in at such a pace that it makes reading your story difficult. If you try to shove a 2,000 word story into your seven minute slot, you will probably be sending it too fast to read, which will lose you points in the Technical Merit category.

Scoring

• Total Score/18
• 1-5pts. - Technical Merit; How well was the message of the tale communicated? Was the wording clear or confusing? Was the pacing appropriate?
• 1-5pts. - Creativity; How well was the story told in terms of phrasing (not delivery, just the words)? Was the story original or a rehash? How well does this story capture the imagination?
• 1-5pts. - Performance; How well did the emotes/emoted vocal delivery enhance the telling of the story?
• +1-3pts. for adherence or applicability to the theme
• -1pt for every minute over time

This scoring will not be given in-game as it is purely an OOC construct to ensure fairness by using a quantitative form of judgement. If you would like to receive your score and any judge’s feedback after the event, please let me know in your submission.

How To Enter
Email your story that can be told in under 7 minutes to koshhargspiritwalk AT gmail DOT com including the full text of the story and any custom emotes you plan to use while telling it, your performing character’s name and realm. Be sure that you are signed up to attend the Kosh’harg if you have not done so already, as signing up ensures that if you are not on Feathermoon you will get an invite to an anchoring raid group. Sign up using this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1AJ0MjIhcjM5WIPGQyjXK26PjY0GhdQPRJ6tpxP9WGd8/viewform In order to win, you must attend the Kosh’harg event and perform your story during the Spirit Walk event.

I would like to retell the tale I told last year, if that would be allowed!

Just curious if it has to be a tale (in story mode), or a possible poem that would be read to a drum. Sort of like a chant telling a story.

((@Brightclouds: We'd appreciate new works if at all possible, but if that's not something you can do then at least make sure it fits the theme for this year.

@Azimu: Mode of delivery is at your discretion as a storyteller, so long as it fits the theme it'll do!

@Everyone: We really need more entries into the contest, take a chance and enter! Send your story and emotes to koshhargspiritwalk @ gmail . com (without the spaces) - your chances of winning a prize are pretty high given how few entries we have! If you have a friend who loves telling stories, send them this way!))

[[ I'm counting 2 entries.

The feasting is planned to be in courses around the story telling so I count a 3 course Horde Feast. We want to give the Blade Tourney a good amount of time, so the "feasting" will be around 3-5 minutes for custom emote exchanges between stories.

We'll start with fish and soup, listen to a 7 minute spiel, move onto roast pig and goblin BBQ, have another story and then finish with Brews before moving onto the Blade Tourney. Please remember that time matters. During the story telling, if we could reserve the say/emote public channel to just the story teller, that would be great. We don't want information spamming off the screen before it can be read. Thanks for the interest and participation. I look forward to seeing a great Kosh'arg tonight! ]]

The sun was shining brightly on the denizens of Halfhill. Teevi gently patted Ose as she watched the iced barrels of fresh fish wobble in a rickety cart pulled by a harried looking pandaren farmer.

"Teevi help; Noxilite contribute. Feel good. Be good Kosh'arg."

Ose barely slitted his eyes at his companion, still miffed at being deprived of some fat glacial salmon and other choice morsels that were now wending around the bend and out of sight. The orc huntress reached into her fishing basket and pulled out a particularly fine specimen of Krasarang Paddlefish and wiggled it under the white lion's grizzled whiskers. Ice blue eyes widened with interest before gingerly taking the snack. Teevi sensed true contentment with a hint of companionable amusement. Time had honed their relationship to one of comforting rituals--like fish snacks to amuse a wild predator-- and unspoken contentment. Some rituals were worth honoring. Teevi hoped to hear good things from the Kosh'arg. She needed it. The Horde, now more than ever, needed it.

((Last call for entries! Please email your submissions before the Kosh'harg begins tonight at 9PM EDT/6PM PDT to koshhargspiritwalk AT gmail DOT com - if you believe you have sent in an entry but have not received a confirmation email, please make sure you have the email address correct! We have a very small number of entries, so you've got a good chance of winning if you enter!))