Monday, August 15, 2011

Face-Lift 941


Guess the Plot

Transformation in Arvakeria

1. When Casey first heard of Arvakeria, she thought it was the new home for Aardvarks in the local zoo. Soon, she finds herself proven wrong and must hunt a lost princess in a hidden kingdom, accompanied by a stable boy who keeps transforming into household appliances just to get her attention.

2. The history of the Transformation and its impact on Arvakeria.

3. Ho hum. Another fantasy novel. Set in another world. Our hero/ine has the unique magical ability to transform their shape, and it has long been prophesied that a person with such an ability will be the one to [fill in blank]. Is anybody interested?

4. Old Zippo, forced to buy a suit for his son's wedding, goes to the local suit store, Arvakeria. In the changing room, he's transformed into a small Labrador, and wanders around town wearing the ill-fitting pin-striped suit. He's recognized as a brilliant dog, and gets a job as a financial adviser to the town council. When the town goes broke, Old Zippo runs off with a poodle named, "Zelda Muffin," and they live fairly comfortably in the back of a Volkswagon bus with a bunch of vegan hippies.

5. 6646 BC. Most of the human race died out two thousand years earlier under the reign of King Arvaker. Now, just as we're making a comeback, a new threat arrives: vampire orcs. Humans go underground and morph into dwarfs to await their savior, but when he finally shows up, he's kind of lazy.

6. Arvakeria was the rowdiest, most lawless city on the planet . . . until the Transformation, when all Arvakerians became angels. Now the Arvakerians travel from town to town punishing rowdy lawless people with death and torture. Hey, it's a living.


Original Version

Transformation In Arvakeria is a literary science fiction and fantasy future best seller at approximately 196,672 words.

Rumor has it that twelve thousand years ago, humans had magic. The orcs are not pleased about this because, while they are stronger than humans (their natural STR scores would default at 18) and bigger (orcs grow to about 6'5" at minimum all the way up to 8' whereas humans of course have a wide range but never that tall!) magic is obviously more powerful. So the orcs set about to kill all the humans. Around the reign of King Arvaker, circa 8573 b.c., these humans were all but destroyed and were on their final legs as a species.

Icarus is the only man who can stop all the senseless dying and kill off all the other species. But he won't be born for another few thousand years, so lots more people will die before then.

Left to their own devices, the orcs and dragons and dragon-orcs would kill and enslave all of the humans. Fortunately the world almost ended at about 6646 b.c. and all of the orcs died off. But a new threat was threatening... vampire orcs.

Left with few soldiers left (a typical army at about this time would contain around a thousand soldiers, broken up into "decades" of 200 troops. Each one would have a command structure roughly equal to one commander per 50 men) the humans have no choice but to hide until their savior is borne.

Rapidly the humans underground start to develop into dwarves, which helps boost their STR scores, but they become too belligerent and the remaining true humans are forced back above ground.

Icarus still hasn't been born yet, but he will. All of the humans await this day. That is when everything will be happily ever after... but will he command the humans?? Death follows those who worship the path of darkness...

Eventually Icarus is born and the savior grows up into a great warrior. Unfortunately Icarus is spoiled as a child since he is the chosen one and doesn't like to do very much. So his friends must tackle the fate of the world and save the humans from the dangers above ground and below...

T.In.A. is complete and awaits your reply. I know that vampires are very big right now so that is why I chose to kill the orcs and make the bad guys vampire orcs. Thanks for your time.


Notes

Every hundred or so queries we get a hoax query, and if we're running low on real queries and openings, or fake plots, and continuations, I'm happy to post it, as long as I don't have to put any effort into critiquing it.

7 comments:

ril said...

Gotta say, I think the bar is actually higher for hoax queries than it is for the real thing.

I suppose we could help the author by providing insight on how this could have been a better hoax..?

150 said...

The exact approximate word count and the double question marks were a nice touch. 7/10

Dave Fragments said...

That is one funny fake...

debhoag said...

it was all the T in A that caught my attention.

Anonymous said...

Author: It was funnier with the paragraphs included that allowed the THRILLRIDE structure of the first paragraph letter to remain intact. Ah well! Thanks for the fun :)

Evil Editor said...

No, it wasn't. Trust me.

Mother (Re)produces. said...

Oooooohh! Old School D&D. I feel like middle school all over again :)