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- It's a mess of bricks, sticks and holes, without any rhythm or reason, - Nliru finished her report, having returned to her companions. She seemed just a bit irritated.
Vig nodded.
- No people?
Nliru shook her head.
- Alright, - Vig turned to Will. - What did you find?
While Nliru was scaling the walls of the town, the halfling went to the gates and assessed the situation from there.
- No guards, no citizens. The way is clear, - he said cheerfully.
- Guardhouse? - asked Vig.
- Dark,  - Will shrugged, - and empty, I presume.
- No destruction?
- As far as I could tell, - said Nliru, and Will nodded.
Vig scratched his forehead.
- Maybe there wasn't anyone in the first place? - proposed Amlemth. - I mean, it's been two thousand years since Kefka Godsfate came here, and we don't know...
- Well, I'm not Kefka, - interrupted Will, - and last I've seen, Romistra was bursting with activity.
- Oh, - said Amlemth.
Vig smacked his hand on his shield and began getting up.
- Bjorn never hatched chicken, as my people say.
- What? Another colourful metaphor? - Will shivered.
- Let's go, - said Vig and put on his helmet.
The adventurers gathered their belongings and started briskly down the slope. The sun had already set when they reached a wide stone arch of the gates. They stopped in it, peering into the street ahead. The two dark lines of houses, interspersed with strange trees distorting the shadows on the ground, led to the stone circle in the centre of the town.
Vig walked towards the door of the guardhouse by the side of the street, and entered. A couple of moments later he reappeared and beckoned his companions.
Moonlight was oozing through a dirty window onto a table, the air smelt of dust. When their eyes got used to the darkness, the adventurers saw a lantern on the corner of the table, and a soup bowl. Vig looked into the bowl, then touched its contents.
- Some days old, - he commented.
- Careful, - said Nliru. - Don't sumble - there is a stool or a chair on the floor.
Vig bent down, feeling his way with his hands.
- Am, why don't you use your fancy lighter? - Will said.
- Really, - Amlemth rummaged in his bag, then walked to the table, - I hope there is something left, - he opened the top of the lantern, then clicked several times with a small object he brought out, and the lantern lit up with a feeble flame. He picked it up and held above the floor. Near the table a chair lay overturned. As Vig avoided its danger, Amlemth lifted the lantern higher.
The room contained little more: a water barrel, hooks on the walls with warm cloaks, and another table, which the guards apparently used to store essential stuff. There were cans of oil for the lantern, a stack of leather buckets tumbled to a side, and a knife. In the wall, opposite from the entrance, there was a door to other rooms.
- They hurried, - Vig spoke thoughtfully. He touched the buckets. - They could go put out fire.
- Lady Nliru didn't notice anything burnt, - said Amlemth.
- I didn't, - Nliru confirmed.
- Hm, - Will mused, - you say there were dwarven tunnels... I've seen some dwarven fortresses burnt to a crisp by a fire with but a streak of smoke to note above the ground...
- So, there could be demons deep, and get out, - Vig proposed. - They got everyone quickly. We must be careful, - he looked around the room, then turned towards the entrance.
- I wonder if there is anything left to salvage? - Nliru muttered, studying the other door. She noticed Will's scornful look. - What? Our food supplies are almost out, and chances are they won't need theirs anymore!
Will shrugged.
- I just don't think we should start dividing the loot, before we know what got the previous owner.
- Young man! - boomed Amlemth.
- That's another reason I went into scout missions alone! - Nliru glared at Will, and burst out of the room.
- What? - said Will, baffled.
Amlemth eyed him disapprovingly, then followed the kobold.
- Ah, whichever race, girls are the same, - Will clenched his fist in vexation. Then he turned out the knob on the lantern, putting out the light, and prepared to leave. Suddenly, at the edge of his attention, he caught a creaking of floorboards in the distance, or in the other room. He held his breath, but there was nothing, but the beating of his heart. He walked out into the night, with an uncomfortable feeling on his back.

This is kind of ridiculous. I mean, my output. I've got problems, but the more I look up on the internet what people have to say, the more stumped I become. What I mean is I think that I need to officially put this project on pause until I figure it out. I know it's barely moved lately, but maybe I should say that there probably won't be an update neither on this week, or the next, or for a month, even. I have to figure it out. Maybe a sudden inspiration will come...
About criticism. I don't care anymore! Not because I've suddenly decided I've become flawless, but because I've found out I'm putting on the internet for all to see a first draft! And it's supposed to have flaws. So, I'll write it all out, then we'll have a good laugh fixing it. Meanwhile, I won't be spoiling for you what issues I have with my writing.

I told you about off-topic discussions... I immediately think about some forums, where you can be put on probation for this sort of thing...

Back on topic. This thread is simply chewing on my pride, and while I know that I win nothing if I enter and I feel like I am quite set on writing, and I have another writing thread here, where my output has stalled to a couple of pages per week, and I am desperately falling out of the university... aaalet's say, I'm gonna be a lurking entrant for a time.

But Dasleah said to come here with problems, and I've got a problem. Lately, I've been trying to become a good writer, and to introduce realistic characters into my stories (and a kind of screenplay). And basically, when there is an introduction, everything's fine, but when the craziness of the plot starts kicking in, the character stops, and I don't know what he would do. The sources of the problem I see as my identification with the character, so, I am an antisocial person, who is used to relying on others' decisions in difficult situations, and the character is the same. Or I have a suspicion that it's just my anti-sociality, and so I know very few people to base may characters on. Am I right and what should I do?

Half a year ago I was very heavily into learning screenwriting and I found a couple of very useful books about it and moviemaking in general at my library: Kevin Conroy Scott, Screenwriters Masterclass; Clifford Thurlow, Making Short Films. I think they can be as useful for quality writing, as for low-quality, first-draft writing.

I'm confused: what's with this thread and that site? Is this thread just announcing the challenge for Bay12Forumites?... Or is there a more deep association?...
And about Fellow Posters: is this going to turn into an off-topic discussion to put a shame on any off-topic discussions we've seen before?

Also: feature length film script in 30 days?... Ah, really bad screenplays are in. I see.

Ok. Scratch, basically, a good half of the previous page...

I must admit, in the past few days I've managed to develop a kind of fantasy city building philosophy. Some points (or aspects, or whatever they have in philosophies) are that you should enjoy and love your city (or town) and not just make it for the plot purposes. If you don't feel like it is your child, don't make it, it just won't fare well. Also, Victor Hugo's description of Paris was boring as hell, and I've never read it completely, and even if Romistra's description in a similar fashion would be real snazzy, a writing should never bore it's reader... Maybe I'm just going mad.

In the long and deep shadow of the fortifications of Romistra, in intermittent dashes, wary of a chance observer, Nliru the kobold moved up a grassy slope. As soon as investigation was proposed at the council, she volunteered, even though it was customary that she would scout. But the mission smelt of danger, and she felt an itching inside to go and face it, after days of calmness and almost complete emptiness on the road but for wolves who sometimes took her for their prey, to their misfortune. Beside that, she was somewhat tired of friendly and - what's worse - entirely combat experienced company; and if at the top an ambush awaited her - as something at the back of her mind was telling her, despite her consciously dismissing it as ridiculous, - even better.
She paused for the last time, looking back; her companions were nigh invisible on the other side of the valley. Cicadas couldn't be seen anymore, their contest moved away; but now several foxes were giving a performance, probably in the forest nearby, and their clear voices had brought a welcome change. Still, there was no sign of any two-legged creatures.
Nliru started away, and in a couple of moments she was at the base of the wall. She inspected the stones. The town's builders had done a good job: the construction was tight, all the stones even and forming a regular pattern. The wall was about thirty feet high. A solid protection of the city. Nliru took out a dagger and gripped it with her teeth, then started climbing. Her tiny clawed fingers fit into the cracks between the stones like a key into a lock, and palms stuck to surfaces as if glued, and she was near the top in a matter of minutes. She checked again, if any unwanted observers appeared, and then peaked through an embrasure in the battlement.
The wall-walk was completely devoid of any life, to her disappointment. She clambered up onto it, and crouched, taking in the view.
Romistra certainly seemed larger on the inside, than on the outside. The somewhat bumpy slope, down which the town flowed, was strewn with many houses, mostly of yellow stone with blue tiled roofs, gathered in small clusters, stretched in dense rows, or sometimes all by themselves. However, the houses standing alone didn't seem to have the liberty of choosing to do so, as the free space, beside them, if it had some elevation, had in it always a gaping dark entrance to a tunnel, on the side of which some rock debris would be heaped. Most of those entrances were decorated with rock, too, and had rock doors, all but few of which were flung open. There, where the elevation was not sufficient but the ground rich enough for vegetation, strange trees grew. Their trunks were stout, and in place of crowns they had brown bulgings, as if the tuber of a potato or the bean of a turnip was turned upside down, some green leaves sticking out at the top in a ragged ponytail. The tubers had square openings cut out on the sides, that made them look like houses on trees, with windows and doors, and from the thresholds hanging rope walkways led from house to house, connecting them into an overground web. And where these constructions didn't find the place suitable, large plump burrows of earth and stone sprouted up.
The variety of architecture was governed from the crest of the slope by a castle, which looked simple and sturdy, shaped similar to a stone brick, and as monotonously grey at that, yet quite aesthetically appealing. The door of the castle was slightly open, and the banners were flying high above on their poles.
In the middle of the town houses were pushed back by what appeared to be a place of worship. In a wide earthen circle giant slabs of white rock were set upright in the shape of a horseshoe, if viewed from above, and in the middle smaller stones formed an archway, leading to nowhere. An air of mystery hung in the air there.
On the lower end, the town bordered with a river, glistening in the fading sunlight. And the stream seemed more alive than the settlement, as no sign of animate movement rippled the slope with its multitude of man-made features. The windows were dark and the streets were empty.

If I am ever going to write any fiction after Othor II, it's going to take place in an abstract space-time point.
Not like I'm completely dissatisfied. Just maybe in a couple of days someone comes up with some criticism finally. I think it's my first ever landscape writing, and I have no idea if it works or not.

Small edit: @Dwarf: Being realistic is boring.

Oh, shame on me, I keep extending various historical eras into where they don't belong. But look at the size and regularity of this thing... Wait... So, this is a fort, and it means it's probably been designed this way... unlike your average city that usually just happens. Or maybe I am getting this wrong... Oh. I don't know where people find out about this stuff. I probably should just go by fantasy rules (that is, I am the king and god of this place, and I deem irregular sloppy structures favourable).

we need someone to draw this.

OK.

 

I for one like Armok's idea. Here's a swing at fleshing it out a little.

All the sentient races share a precursor, and eventually, two variants developed that were not only mortal, but possibly didn't even resemble the original group. (We really don't know what any of these races look like, bear with me.)
An ensuing civil war over whether to annihilate or simply exile these mutants (read: humans and dorfs) resulted in another split which created the elves and goblins. They may have even been similar in belief (appearance too?) until the demons developed a habit of conquering the goblins.
The remainder of the precursor race is... I don't know, they turned into kobolds and managed to lose their immortality. Because the idea of all sentient life in DF being directly descended from kobolds is hilarious.

So, in the end, we come back to DF world being a huge Forerunner experiment.
I mean, it was seeded with all these weird and immortal creatures, and then they evolved... Uh, kind of lame.
But not so lame for my purpose at least. It's some theory, and it definitely lends a base to reasonable speculations on evolution, history, psychology etc. of different races.

Aaand, I might embarrass myself, but yesterday, when I was already lying in my bed, I started thinking sci-fi, and came up with an idea for adamantine being a material (or element), that moves in time slower, that's where its unusual properties come from. And some plants can (what's the proper word?) use it in their metabolism, and elves can eat such plants, and adamantine substitutes some co-enzymes (or something) in their bodies. But I have no idea why. Just a random fantasy.