"Tale of the Necromancer" - dark fantasy/horror story - eviltoast

This is dark fantasy/horror story, stylized as an ancient oral legend, which tells the story of a simple man’s journey and gradual descent into darkness - and ascension to power. We tried to give our villain protagonist some psychological and philosophical deep, not just “HAHAHA I am evil and will rule the world!”.

Here is the audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCdlph835qc

If You prefer to read: https://adeptusrpg.wordpress.com/2022/12/14/tale-of-the-necromancer/

I am an author of the text, other guy read it and recorded. We are very interested in Your feedback and discussion.

  • GojuRyu@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 year ago

    I enjoyed reading this. I found some hiccups and odd choice of words or format but overall i found it to be well written and well paced. A proper decent into madness story, framed nicely as a legend of old.

    • Adeptus@lemmy.opensupply.spaceOPEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Thank You very much! Can You write something more about “odd choice of words”? I am not native English Speaker and I am willing to improve my language.

      • GojuRyu@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Sure! I’m not a native speaker either, so some suggestions may not be all that good.

        The first one I noticed is in the first paragraph. I’m unsure if it’s a mistake or an obscure word, but when googling the word “pacrossct” I got no related results.

        In the second paragraph both the word centuries and thousands of years are used. I’d suggest replacing thousands of years with millennia to keep it consistent. That may be a personal preference however.

        The phrase:

        But over time, the thought that everyone, sooner or later, would become just a pile of ashes enclosed in an urn in the ground, became a cause of anxiety and bitterness for him.

        This is a long sentence with a lot going on. It’s a bit difficult to parse the meaning of it and I think it would be beneficial to split it up a bit. Something like the following perhaps:

        But over time he came to ponder how everyone, sooner or later, would end up as just a pile of ashes enclosed in an urn in the ground. This became a cause of growing anxiety and bitterness for him.

        I tried to stay true to your phrasing except where it would cause repetition due to my changes or I felt it would otherwise lack an emphasis that the original had.

        I think these were mostly what I noticed, though some of the parentheses also seemed a bit out of place to me.

        Again I just want to reiterate that I really liked your story and this is just minor details. I hope I do not come off as overly nitpicky or negative.

        I think it was mainly those two word choices that I noticed, as I got

        • Adeptus@lemmy.opensupply.spaceOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          The first one I noticed is in the first paragraph. I’m unsure if it’s a mistake or an obscure word, but when googling the word “pacrossct” I got no related results.

          Oh, it is obvious mistake, there should be just “pact”. I remember correcting it, but it looks like it was not saved or something. I corrected it once again and looks like this time it sticked. Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention.