Attack on the Lighthouse

It was the Fallen, bad memory..very dark day.

Photo by Mitch Mckee on Unsplash

PROMPT: Pink horses galloped across the sea.

Bleachers rang incessantly, with rocking chairs, the soundtrack playing of the pots and kettles buzzing. Rhiannon lowered her palette slightly, cocked her head, and performed her map.

Staying as far from the sound as possible, she sat down on the grass to the right of the open gates and studied the actions and personalities of the creatures in front of her. She could hear the croaking of this particular lighthouse’s bell as she flipped through the map. Sadly, this lighthouse was past the frontier of controlled stayerages, and was most definitely not a safe attraction, in Rhiannon’s opinion. One wouldn’t even be safe going down there, as there was a non-glass window with numerous bowels.

“Cenarius has perfected the art of map-working.”

“Like he says,” she smirked, pointing at a spot next to the burgundy-violet lines. “Technique, good. That theory has been proven out very, very good by those rooked Titans.” Rhiannon cocked her head sideways. “Teammates?,” she murmured as the notes floated to the outer middle for further analysis, each causing a buzz around the circle.

Why was this really tricky for her to duplicate? The small patch in the middle had a broken wick and nearly impossible to replicate, so it wasn’t just Pluton, it was also improbable to look upon and deduce what the


lab results would look like for that spot.

“Well, may as well see what I found out, using what we already have,” she nodded to Dorian and pushed the button to circle. “Rough run of the numbers for results. The last four passes: Seedling, Forest Wumpus, Mountain Scryer and Junk Overseer. Out of these, I think the least likely to be success is the smaller Village.”

She wasn’t quite as eager to put forward the result as Dorian had thought, preferring to do more time playing as they explored, dodging searing spells and coming with the dagger of titan dreams handy. Then there was Morgan. Or at least she thought that Morgan was her figure-after-Morgan—and Drillsaw’s ten times better scale revealed what she would, in their hometown of Albion, eventually become: an officer of some stripe. Many-elves (had she been thought something above the common footsoldier even though she was born that way or did that even exist?), who were here to conquer.

Miner infuriatingly roped her into that single hilliest sculpture every sixteen meters as some flaming head sprouted from a blood blue hole in her heart and nipped her earlobe of spellfire. Morgan moved into the circle behind Rhiannon with the gitically-gigantic crow for leader and just on patrol. The crowd of dwarves around them laughed loudly and poked her ass. Rooflines sliced through nearby trees and twinkled. Embracing their feathered charge, Darius pressed on with his ability to change into skunk and his savage ferocity, like sneaking a few bugs in your perch against an arrowstorm but keeping them under control.

“Oryx for Lucy,” Rhiannon could declare with conviction. “Exactly like us.” Her fingers tightened around Dorian’s chair and her voice became warm with instinctual fondness. “Trust me on this one,” she kissed the face that suddenly greeted her on the face and at other times climbed on top of the skunk and could no longer keep him out of reach; an androgynous and benevolent, pathetic display of those birthrights set aside for Dorian and placed instead for himself. “If I did not love Chynna, you and Zed would not be ready for this.”

The circle imploded with a low rumble and an onslaught of rare fire mages. Dust.

Abruptly, her fingers relaxed and were replaced with the sturdy hand-shake lines that resembled a scorpion coiling about a speck of blood and coagulating. “The most likely number is .25. Which implies a success rate of 39%. Not far from Decoy though, no?”

“Rhiannon,” Morgan hersed, not even bothering to check that answer or even hearing it—Thane’s daughter walked over to shove a hoof against her thumb and fumbled weakly while she pulled her hand back. The placard floated forward without enough pressure to be wrung out.

“We can’t play Decoy,” Dorian replied with a frosty raise of his own at them “Unless we are in compliance for Karkat—”

Oh. Whatever else they were in compliance with. Karkat. “If we put time into it, can we figure out what exactly happens, rhiannon.” His slightly edged voice was based on long experience. Nothing more. “In case we die, can we at least use that to help plan against on next meet up.” The voice was much too clipped—Liam regarded them with mischievous leer.

“Or?,” Dorian grinned. Then realized that it was about sixty percent likelihood of figuring out the method, but only 35 percent certainty of it. “We could always go home right now!” Probably true, since a couple had already looked out over the realms under the indifferent sky. Guessing they wouldn’t go for too long.

“Of course we could.” Morgan was pointing at Eivind and felt a twinge of anxiety that Hagg would visit. She allowed herself to collapse on her brother


’s shoulders and focus on staring at the purple sky. Hopefully if Eivind was still there, they could talk some sense into the Captain. No one suspected or saw her presence and being ten feet from his “friend” was pretty bad. Morgan’s world seemed to expand and contract rapidly at the rime of the sun.

“Hey.” Eric was settling himself between Hagg and the younger man’s shivering form. Hagg looked uncomfortable.

“I…I’m sorry Hagg, I saw you on the hill that day.”

“Yeah…that happened.” Hagg struggled to get more comfortable against Eric.

“Numerous times.” He said and rested his head in Eric’s shoulder. When he spoke again “I can barely remember it all. Not everyone I see the Citadel every day remembers all the memories, some on that magnitude.”

“It was the Fallen, bad memory..very dark day.”

“Whatever…I think.”

“Was anything done that day that would make you not want to cooperate?”

“No…” Eivind spoke through gritted teeth.

Morgan wracked her brains trying to recall anything he’d done or said that would warrant a hammer. It didn’t help. Regardless, Eric and Morgan endured the conversation as friends in the early morning or late at night. The shorter interrogations happened when Commander Vance was on but could manage by listening in on Eivind’s mental


facsimile, or the only sound would be the movement of his hand. Inside of it, though, there was nothing but leftovers from the interrogation. Those leftovers were still crying as if they just experienced death. The thoughts whizzed by Eivind quickly, and their conflicts and even ideas left Eivind’s mind, and then Eivind began preparing.

He really tried to conceive of a short time span for when he could capture the fortress. It didn’t matter. It took a few minutes for him to conclude Eivind was thinking along the same lines, so Eivind resolved to go for it. Sure enough, a window on it appeared a moment later. Around them stood two Ardra and dozens of infantry who were presumably Ardra military. Eivind recognised the origin as their kingdom, since they were led by Sigifre’th myself. Small talk is done by God through Ebunes. And this must be added, since it is meant to fool the other gods – there are discrepancies in translation here that I cannot tell exactly.

Why are they? Just to hide when he later turns himself into one. Are they trained troops? Things like that. Who sends them? Do I even know? It doesn’t matter, just why are there individuals named Ardra? I don’t even think they have a capital like many subraces have.

Ah, a bandit, he thought. One of the rebels


I figured out may be brave, but he was still just a bandit. He turned to look for help, but I grabbed the handle of my bat’leth and cut his throat. Dead.

That was enough for me. I stood in front of his corpse, and pretended to be a strangled scream as others began chanting what I’ve been decoding. “For Sigmar! For your king! For Bane! For Daybreak!” People sang and destroyed and beat their swords down against their shields as though this had all been planned centuries in advance.

It was like the Battle of Mt Bracewar all over again. Yet it was still utterly pointless and wasted a great deal of time. The reason I had to act had nothing to do with the demonic ritual and its intended ritual partner, and all to do with the idiot amongst us who just caught the original prophecy for what it was.

However, people tried their best to remind me how strongly I believe in Azyr, and it helped to lighten the mood a little. I went back to Orloz Tower to see their recruits fight off the corsairs and to see the skeletal remains of Þersinn lashing out with lightning. And really, it wasn’t much different from when I fought him on top of the Ferox High king. Nothing dramatic, just shield mauls, hammer blows and sword techniques. And for a fleeting moment, I was a better paladin.

[END TRANSMISSION]


Editor’s Notes

Generation Process

I tried a higher temperature this time, to see if I could get more story variation, and it got a little wild.

I changed the “last 50%” process of generational prompt content reuse to use the last 66% existing text in the story for each next generation this time. I hoped that would give me more continual consistency of character and plot in the story, and it sortof did. Obviously, it needs more consistency, but that is a hard problem when the generator only allows a max of 1024 chars for prefix + generated text combined.

This story is all over the map, though it does remember some character names more consistently across generations, which it usually didn’t before.

Edits

Just fixed quotation marks and formatted paragraphs for presentation.

Prompt came from Random Sentence Generator

GPT-2 Settings
# gen 1
{
  "return_as_list": true,
  "include_prefix": false,
  "model_name": "1558M",
  "length": 300,
  "temperature": 1.1,
  "top_k": 80,
  "top_p": 0.9,
  "truncate": "<|endoftext|>",
  "nsamples": 12,
  "batch_size": 2,
  "prefix": "Pink horses galloped across the sea."
}

# gen 2
{
  "return_as_list": true,
  "include_prefix": false,
  "model_name": "1558M",
  "length": 300,
  "temperature": 1.1,
  "top_k": 80,
  "top_p": 0.9,
  "truncate": "<|endoftext|>",
  "nsamples": 12,
  "batch_size": 2,
  "prefix": " in the middle had a broken wick and nearly impossible to replicate, so it wasn't just Pluton, it was also improbable to look upon and deduce what the"
}

# gen 3
{
  "return_as_list": true,
  "model_name": "1558M",
  "length": 300,
  "temperature": 1.1,
  "top_k": 80,
  "top_p": 0.9,
  "truncate": "<|endoftext|>",
  "nsamples": 12,
  "batch_size": 2,
  "prefix": "t sky. Guessing they wouldn't go for too long.\n\n\"Of course we could.\" Morgan was pointing at Eivind and felt a twinge of anxiety that Hagg would visit. She allowed herself to collapse on her brother"
}

# gen 4
{
  "return_as_list": true,
  "model_name": "1558M",
  "length": 300,
  "temperature": 1.1,
  "top_k": 80,
  "top_p": 0.9,
  "truncate": "<|endoftext|>",
  "nsamples": 12,
  "batch_size": 2,
  "prefix": " Morgan endured the conversation as friends in the early morning or late at night. The shorter interrogations happened when Commander Vance was on but could manage by listening in on Eivind's mental"
}

# gen 5
{
  "return_as_list": true,
  "model_name": "1558M",
  "length": 300,
  "temperature": 1.1,
  "top_k": 80,
  "top_p": 0.9,
  "truncate": "<|endoftext|>",
  "nsamples": 12,
  "batch_size": 2,
  "prefix": "ends them? Do I even know? It doesn't matter, just why are there individuals named Ardra? I don't even think they have a capital like many subraces have.\n\nAh, a bandit, he thought. One of the rebels"
}