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**bassman** · October 20, 2002, 00:45

Good start and an interesting angle.

Watch your punctuation - that will make the story easier to read.

Looking forward to the next episode.

**steamthunk** · October 20, 2002, 02:08

Too short to say much at this point. Will definitely check back for second part though.

Agree with Bassman though; check the grammar/spelling a bit tighter and it'll be better.

**jongon** · October 20, 2002, 02:08

Great Story and I like the whole concept keep writing it looks great

**ChrisiusMaximus** · October 20, 2002, 08:41

Thanks for the feedback, Ill try to improve my punctuation but I wouldnt hold out much hope, it takes me ages to type with one finger as it is. Im a builder by profession so things like puntuation etc are not my forte.

But I can knock walls down with big hammers anyday

PART 2 Bad News On Arrival,
Mike stood on the middeck above the main cargo hold and looked out across the water in utter amazement as the English flagship,
HMS Elizabeth sailed towards them to escort them into Londons harbour. She was an impressive sight in full sail bristling with over one hundred guns.

"There will be many more like her in port son" Mikes dad said as he put his strong arm around Mikes shoulder,"best get below now and help your mother to pack,we should be in London in a few hours."

"Okay Pa " he said as he left the deck and went below to his cabin.

The evening sun was setting as the ship sailed slowly into harbour, the scene was very dramatic with well over a hundred vessels of all description going about their business, some being loaded and unloaded, others sailing out to sea and others at anchor in the bay. Even at this time of day Londons docks were a hive of activity.

As the Queen Of The Sea slid effortlessly into port Mikes dad noticed several divisions of Calvary and Musketmen embarking onto three ships at the Royal Barracks quayside, with four frigates close by. Whats going on he thought to himself. Then he spotted bustle of activity at the Royal Drydock with what looked like three Caravel class transport vessels being refitted and upgraded and at least three Man O War's under construction.

The ship moored up at the quayside and the passengers began to disembark, just then a unit of Musketmen came aboard up the gangplank, one of them pushed young Mike out of the way and he heard the officer tell the captain to take the ship to the barracks as soon as they had unloaded their cargo.

"Whats happening Jack?" asked Betty.

"Im not sure love, but it doesnt look good!" he replied, "we best go find our digs, Mike get those bags will you."

"Sure Pa" Mike said as he gawked at the Musketmen in their orange uniforms and their muskets by their sides.

Mike was immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the docklands. Fish of all descriptions freshly landed for market, Spices from India, Gems from the Republic of Rome and Chinese Incense then he spotted the news stand with headline "WAR."

"Hey Pa! Look at this!" he shouted.

"Oh my god!" said Betty "theyve attacked Leeds"

"Whos attacked? what the? give me that paper will you woman!" Jack snatched the paper from Betty" my god your right! the Russians have surrounded Leeds, they declared war two weeks ago, theyve destroyed three cities and are now outside Leeds itself. Oh my god theyve burned Newcatle, Bristol and Newquay to the ground, oh no what about Jimmy and his family Sally and the kids?"

Mike had never seen his father cry before, his mum put her arms around Jack and comforted him. Jim was Jacks brother and they had stayed with them in Bristol the night before they had set sail for England, just three weeks ago, but Mike could only think about Jess and he too began to cry with his parents.

The Russian nation had long since envied the English, and despised the fact that they had settled on part of their continent. Known to the world as new England one of the colonies of the British Empire. Of course Russia had been a very small and backward nation back then nearly four hundred years ago and there had been plenty of room to build new cities.
The English could have expanded across the entire continent unchallenged at the time, but the Queens policy was to simply set up small communities to increase and control world trade. At the time the Queen dictated that four new towns would be established, to act as safe harbour to British shipping and to mine the rich Iron and Gold deposits where leeds was founded.
This strategy had made England a very rich nation indeed.

The English government had always been very generous to the Russians and had granted them maps and technology, to promote growth in the hope she would become a strong ally and trading partner. On occasions some of the smaller Russian border towns had petitioned the Queen to allow them to become British citizens but HRH Elizabeths goverment always refused to ensure peace. But now the Russians had decided to bite the hand that had always fed them, they had razed three English cities (one could only begin to imagine what had become of the inhabitants)and were surrounding Leeds in what was to become the bloodiest battle the world had ever seen.

Later at the Richards new digs Jack read the rest of the news to his family,"it says here that those troops we saw getting aboard the ships in port are heading for Leeds, I only hope they can make it in time."

PART 3 The Seige Of Leeds.

Still writing this part so I'll post it maybe tomorrow hope your still liking this,thanks

Chris

**TheGuitarist** · October 20, 2002, 14:14

Cool. Good to see you start writing something yourself Chris.
Looking forward to the upcoming epic battle scenes.

**dnassman** · October 20, 2002, 22:30

Also looking forward to more. Good start.

**ChrisiusMaximus** · October 21, 2002, 07:25

Thanks for the positive feedback chaps but do let me know if there is anything you think I should do improve it or as Metaliturtle would say FEEDBACK!!please

PART 3 A The Siege Of Leeds

In the weeks that followed there were news reports coming in from Leeds sporadically, making it difficult for the public back in England to know what was really happening at the front. Many people were anxious about the welfare of loved ones who lived in the former colony. Many reports about the bravery of the British forces defending Leeds managed to trickle through but no information about civillians or casualties was released for fear it would ignite riots.

Leeds itself was a natural fortress founded on the ore rich hills, and the Russian offensive had temporarily ground to a halt, laying siege to the city and attempting to assault when ever fresh reinforcements arrived at the front. Leeds had a small harbour on its north side making it possible for some supplies to get through but even so things were now dire, and the commander of the garrison was about to discuss terms for surrender when on the horizon, a fleet of British warships and transports were spotted approaching fromthe north east.

This fact was also taken in by the Russian forces who mounted another immediate desperate assault to breach the city walls before the reinforcments could land. Though they did not succeed in taking the old walled city they smashad the remaining English outer perimeter defenses, enabling them to entrench in the now unoccupied English trenches and bring up their cannon for a final assault.

Meanwhile the fighting had been so intense for most of the day that the Galleons had arrived in the harbour, and started to unload their cargo of men and supplies, but they came under fire from Russian gun emplacments along the cliffs to both sides of the harbour. The Queen Of The Sea was badly damaged and fiercly ablaze and many of the soldiers onboard did not make ashore.

The escorting frigates began to bombard the Russian posistions and managed to force them back from the clifftops. HMS Elizabeth took severe damage from this action then suddenly three Russian Caravels rounded the cove and attacked the Elizabeth in unison. She sank like a stone in a ball of fire and violent explosions, the entire crew of 865 men were lost. The remaining four escort ships who were of a far sleeker design than the flagship intercepted the Russians and all three ships were sent to the bottom of the sea. England was now beginning to count the human and material cost of this war.

In the city the offensive had again ceased as the Russian troops had there hands full dealing with booby traps left by the retreating English, and small isolated pockets of resistence in the streets and buildings. British snipers being among the best marksmen in the world.

This part is quite long and I am going to post it over 2 or 3 posts .Ive decided to just make this a narrative as I want focus on the character Mike and this is just to give background to his eventual future.Im sorry if you find this too long but in my head this is necessary for the development of the story.

PART 3 B The continued Struggle For Leeds
(humanities bloodiest miliatary action in British history)

I will post this tonight.

**dashstar1972** · October 21, 2002, 11:54

Thought I'd do you a return favour and provide some feedback.
I guess the hard thing with this style of writing is whether to narrate a game or tell a story loosely inspired by a game. I'm finding this distinction hard to keep in mind, myself as the actual facts we are going on are 'broad sweep of history' stuff but not very interesting. I think the trick is to only use the Civ game as a launching pad and focus on a human-scale story from then on.
Of course, the cheat is to pick a 'leader' as your protagonist and then you can do both.
So, my feedback would be that you started with a main character at the 'average man' level and were telling a story but have now started relating the story of a civ game.

However, your punctuation HAS improved and your narration of the civ game is pretty good.

Keep it up.

Dash

**ChrisiusMaximus** · October 21, 2002, 12:51

Thanks Dashstar for the feedback,I started out with the intention of really just skipping through the timeline of this until I could reach a point where Mike is old enough to fulfill my original idea for his character.However as I progressed it seemed to need more and more background to be built into it to stand any chance of any thing making sense later in the plot.

Then I had a response from my good friend The Guitarist
(I would recommend you search out his work if youre fairly new here, its excellent)who said he was looking forward to the epic battle scenes,theyre a bloodthirsty lot round here you know!.Unfortunatly I was not really planning to have any major battle scenes in my original idea, so this coupled with my concern of the lack of background in the build up of the story led me to rewrite the 3rd part.I was worried that it may now be too long and maybe boring but I thank you for your words of encouragement.

Im going to continue with this even if it kills me,I just hope I can bring it all together successfully.

**ChrisiusMaximus** · October 21, 2002, 14:02

PART 3 B The continued Struggle For Leeds

As evening drew closer the guns finally fell silent, giving the people of the city a brief respite, the miliatary busied themselves with the task of loading the bodies of the dead and the wounded onto the three seaworthy Galleons in the harbour. The civillians helped by sewing the corpses into anything they could find, linen, old fishing nets and any spare sail to be found. The captains were to dispose of the dead when safely out to sea out of range of Russian guns.

Under cover of darkness the ships slipped out of port, two of the escorts HMS Valiant and HMS Seagull stayed offshore to patrol the waters, and prevent the Russians from blockading Leeds. The sinking of the Elizabeth although a tragedy bolstered the resolve of the English sailors, and they were more than a match for the feeble Russian Fleet.

Unbeknown to the garrison in Leeds another fleet with reinforcements was on its way from London, but this was still 7or 8 days out. Back home in England the people waited, longing for any news of situation, hoping beyond hope that the second fleet would get there in time. It was far larger than the first with a large number of cannon and vast supplies of amnunition.

But for now as night envelloped the beleagured city all was at last peace, a chance to get some much needed sleep.

It was a completley different story among the Russian lines, as masses of reinforcments arrived at the front. There seemed to be an endless supply of fresh men and equipment available to the Russian commanders. It was certainly true that Russia had grown to become a large powerful nation and was thought to have the largest standing army in the world. Woe to the English now for having taught them all their secrets of weaponary and warfare. In particular the russians excelled in their training of calvary known as the Cossacks the most revered miliatary units in the world to date.

The following morning at 5.00 am the British commanders from every regiment in Leeds were meeting in the town hall, now being used as the field command centre, to discuss options for a possible counter attack, when it started. The Russian guns opened up, it was all too obvious that the big push had begun. The bombardment was concentrated on the south walls of the city, so every available Musketman was stationed as close as possible, ready to take up defensive posistions if a breach should occur.

The 3 divisions of calvary around three thousand men, and the remnants of four other divisions making up another seven hundred quickly manouvered to the east side of the city. At around 7.00 am local time a massive section of the southern wall finally collapsed and almost simultaneously around ten thousand Russian Cossack Calvary began their charge into the jaws of death.

Sorry out of time right now, be back with more later.

**unscratchedfoot** · October 22, 2002, 10:56

Yah!!! Want more fighting!!

Don't worry about Mike. He can go down in a blaze of glory too. I don't like stories which are too warm and fuzzy. Mayhem and slaughter are more cool. Hopefully all those english being shipped in mutually destruct fighting the mobs of russian cavalry pouring through.

**vovan** · October 22, 2002, 12:26

Well, I like the story.

Interesting plot. Although not something "wow, this is totally new"-style original, it is has nice classic twists.

I also do like the style of writing (especially with good punctiation

). But I would say that epic battles are not entirely your thing, although they are not bad at all.

But I don't really agree that it needs more fighting. I think it would be nice if you would alternate between the "historical" description, and the "personal" story of the Richards family. Although I did read through the whole part three, I think it would be nice to hear from Mike now, to kind of change the action a little bit. Then, after that, back to fighting... Just my suggestion.

Overall, good job, indeed, keep going

EDIT: You know, Chrisius, I just realized something. There are three kinds of stories I found here. I separate them based on what I am thinking after I have read them:

1. Nah, this is too boring to read.
2. Wow, this is really good!
3. Hey, this is cool, why don't I write something also.

Now, your story fits into the third category. I leave it to you to decide for yourself, which is better: something that results in admiration, or something that results in inspiration...

**TheGuitarist** · October 22, 2002, 14:12

Nice job Chris

I agree with vovan and dashstar that it is a hard decision whether to focus on the human aspects of the story's characters or to provide a view of the massive battles taking place.

I would suggest that you focus on the intense Russian assault from Mike's perspective. Perhaps he has holed up in the city and experiences the attack firsthand. In this fashion you can keep the battle style of the story while also including an emotional, personalized element.

One other thing - I would suggest running the text through SpellCheck before posting. I've noticed a few grammar/spelling errors that interrupt the flow of the story.

Otherwise, the story is progressing well and I await further developments.

**ChrisiusMaximus** · October 22, 2002, 16:08

Many thanks everybody for all the response, I am finding it all very helpful. You know its funny that on many occasions I have posted to writers to watch their spelling, and I go and start a story and what do you know. I make loads of spelling mistakes

Anyway I think Ive got them all now, been busy editing the story so far and made quite a few spelling, punctuation and grammar repairs.

I also just want to add that I think the amount of feedback Im getting proves this stories forum is alive and well. It did go quiet for a bit but its alive and kicking now. I can now see both sides of the fence ie as a commentor and as a writer and both are vital to this forum.

If there is anyone browsing here as a guest and you like what you see, I implore you to register, its free!! and support the writers here.

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