Supposedly, the Perfect Weapon could kill anything. Supposedly, it was a mighty spear that could slay giants, or a great axe that could fell treants, or a great sword for the killing of dragons.
The commas here do not serve to disambiguate or separate ideas and are thus unnecessary and give the reading of the passage a stuttering pace.
The listing of what the Perfect Weapon could be gets awkward after the spear because the first sentence set up
supposedly to take only one line. It has the sensation of taking a step on supposed solid ground and going down a step; something gave way that was not meant to.
In similar fashion
supposedly goes from meaning
probably true to
spurious rumors by the next sentence.
What else would be expected, after all, of a joint creation of the gods of trickery and weaponry?
There is no natural comma in
what else would be expected of a joint creation of the gods of trickery and weaponry so
“after all” is an insertion into a sudden pause. It does not mean anything, either. After what all? Without setup it is a padding phrase in speech and worse so in writing where words are at a premium.
It is unclear what gods of what spheres are meant. Are there two, one of each, or are there multiple gods of weaponry and of trickery? Perhaps the gods have the narrow field of weaponry-trickery?
The Perfect Weapon was a great game for the gods. Who would find it first, they often wondered?
The first sentence is disconnected from the previous and it is incomplete on its own: it reads to mean that the Perfect Weapon itself is a game.
The question mark should not be there. If it is indirectly stating the gods’ thoughts, then there should be no question mark. If it is directly stating the gods’ thoughts, then the question mark should be in the thoughts and those should be in italics.
What purpose is
“often” meant to serve in the second sentence when it is previously said the gods are still playing and thus would naturally wonder what the outcome would be? If it serves no purpose then it is padding.
These two sentences would work better if combined, for example:
Who would find the Perfect Weapon first and win the game of theirs, the gods often wondered.
Would would wield the perfect weapon?
This is repetitive of the previous sentence, and as I wrote that I noticed
“Would would”. Ah, the feeling of writing the same word twice instead of a similar word, the adding-two-sugars-instead-of-sugar-and-cream of writing, like with
of and
to.
I am left wondering if there was any point to the opening paragraph that could not have been done better by the second paragraph.
One day, after the great knight Valiant had fallen in the Caves of Doom in his search for the Perfect Weapon, after the great wizard Wazlocke had fallen in the Trees of Despair in her search for the Perfect Weapon, after the great ranger Flagast had fallen in the Ruins of Death in his search for the Perfect Weapon, the farmer John was taking a walk in the local forest when his eye caught upon a glint of metal.
I assume the heroes failing repeatedly and the overuse of
great and
in search for the Perfect Weapon is comedic.
The location of the failures is cumbersome; initially it seems that the story will be about Valiant.
“What’s this?” He spoke, and moved to uncover the strange metal object.
“He spoke” is the dialog tag for
“What’s this?” and a continuation of the sentence, so
“He” should be lowercase.
It was a shovel, and a well made one at that.
“well made” is used here as an adjectival unit and thus should be
well-made.
Well whatever.
This should have comma, otherwise it uses
“well” as an adjective instead of an interjection.
The shovel never seemed to rust or wear or crack no matter how much John used it.
This is strange to me: the shovel would only rust if poorly maintained, and only crack if overloaded. So John declared that his well-made shovel was magical because he did not recall any wear, though I suppose a farmer might not be the brightest artisan in the land.
From this John
This requires a comma.
One day, in the frustration for the search that was going nowhere and costing the lives of her champions, the goddess of lore bequeathed a piece of information upon her high priestess.
The clause about the goddess’ frustration would be better as its own sentence. This aside is actually longer than the rest of the sentence.
Haha, what a great goddess of lore, sending her dudes to die without ever telling them what they were looking for or where it could be found. Ten out of ten, would sacrifice a white bull to her again. If that was the joke, or even if it was not, I applaud you. Just the implication that the goddess of lore put such a high price on information that she let her own followers die in masses for a shovel and risk others getting it first has me laughing still.
The local king Boknak knew that the goddess of lore never lied, and while the champions and heroes searched for the Perfect Weapon, Boknak simply issued a decree. Every shovel in his realm would be handed over to him for inspection.
The first part about the goddess is unrelated directly to the next and should be an independent sentence.
The last sentence should be following a colon because it directly is a description of the decree.
John didn't like this one bit. Teams of roving warriors were being sent out to seize every shovel… and a fair bit of gold in the process.
This should be restructured to be one sentence.
I wonder how wealthy the farmers are if they just have loose gold lying around. I wonder too why the King sent brigands to pillage his own lands instead of his administrators or soldiers or literally any people whom he could hold accountable if they stole his shovel of lore. I wonder in addition why the King would send a bunch of illiterates to investigate farmlands, warehouses, hunting lodges, and estates. What if the holder of the shovel also has a retainer of warriors? Surely putting a bounty on a “very nice shovel” would be more effective, but the King has the great wisdom known only to the most pious followers of the goddess of lore and thus choose the differ, the absolute wiseman.
I am enjoying this, if that was not apparent.
One day, as decreed by Boknak, a squadron of armored warriors came riding up to John’s farm.
I assume the overuse of
One day, is also meant to be comedic or stylistic.
He swung the shovel.
. . . why? Why did John swing his impervious shovel at an armored warrior? Did he ever use it on anything but dirt? I guess the prospect of losing his gold hit him hard.
the remaining warriors roared a scream of rage
“a scream of rage” is redundant: they are roaring and presumably not jubilantly because they hated that guy and thus started charging to John to pat him on the back and give him the dead warrior’s share of loot.
John spun the shovel on instinct, guided by the shovel’s magic.
This reads as if John is rolling the shovel in his grip, like he is trying to drill with it.
John spun the shovel on instinct because he was guided by magic? If so, it would not be instinct but it would be magic.
One warrior after another fell, and in the end, only John stood.
These commas are unnecessary.
John turned back to his farm. Then he turned away. Nobody would be able to farm in peace until the King was gone. Long, long gone. The warriors sent to kill him proved that. So John set off.
This paragraph is fragmentary. There should be two sentences.
How did John get the impression that the warriors were sent to kill him? They only attacked after he cleaved one of them in half. And the King only recently started searching for the shovel. People could farm in peace if John had just told the warriors he had the shovel the King was looking for, or if he had delivered it himself. I presume the King would reward him with something better than a shovel. Oh well, whatever justifies John’s newly found thirst for blood and shovels and land, and his preexisting, murderous hunger for gold.
John didn’t have horses
What happened to the horses of the warriors? Are they fertilizer in John’s fields? I cannot imagine the horses fled back to some camp rather than loiter around in the peaceful countryside.
There, he told her the tale of how he had been attacked.
That comma should not be there.
“It was terrible! They just attacked me for no reason!
No reason. Then I killed them all with this shovel. In self-defense. Because they attacked me first. . . . So, want to join me in my quest to beat the king into a pulp? Yes, Juniper, I am sure this is all the fault of his direct machinations and not some greedy lowlifes acting out of line. The king personally has it out for I, great farmer John; the goddess of lore told me so. So come on, join with me, the one the king is trying to kill, and we will prevail.”
a farmer’s revolt
I assume this must be written like the title, so the apostrophe is in the wrong place.
“A farmer’s revolt?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, just the one: a farmer named John. Our men must be very attractive because this John fellow is really . . . diggin’ ’em. But seriously, he is killing them by the dozens with only a shovel.”
This wouldn’t be much of a problem, after all he held the superior military force, but they made the food
So, after all, there is much of a problem and the sentence is redundant.
So he sent his elite cavalry regiment. They would deal with the farmers soon enough.
I am sure Sun Tzu once said something about combined arms, but the goddess of lore told the King that he should send out his cavalry unsupported into hordes of peasants armed with pitchforks and torches. I mean, she never lies, how could it go wrong? Why listen to a god of war when you have lore? Knowing is half the battle, after all, and the other half is cutting down your food producers.
the First Gold Cavalry Regiment, the most elite force of cavalry King Boknok could call upon
The King is not high enough level to call any of the Platinum Cavalry Regiments.
He did his job with pride, and found it insane that the peasantry were rising up against their king and protector!
If James has the free time to slay peasants, maybe he had enough time to rightfully check their shovels rather than letting criminal scum run wild on the farmers and other users of shovels.
They were a motley folk, armed with only leather armor pieces and farm implements.
“Quick, charge their lines! It’s not like they have long implements with which they could strike us, nor has any peasant ever attached spikes to a tool to make a crude but effective armor-piercing weapon! Look, they don’t even have metal armor! We don’t have any ranged weapons and if they stop us from getting close their weak armor doesn’t matter, but we look
fabulous and they don’t! See their morale melt at the sight of our plumes and capes! Just wait ’til they smell us, and they shall weep at our immaculate hygiene and scented body-oils.”
Their leader only had a shovel for his weapon.
“Milord, it’s just a fucking shovel! It’s not like we spent years looking for a shovel because the goddess of lore said it was the Perfect Weapon that all men and gods lust for! No, that was the other time. I’m sure we were looking for a spear, or a great ax, or a sword. Definitely not a fucking shovel, milord!”
King Boknok nothing! He’s done nothing for us! We don’t need him! At all! Everything he does for us, we can replace and do better!” Grandma Tobith tapped James on the head with her cane. “Are you going to kill your own great-grandmother, boy? Because if we fight, that’s what it’s going to come to.”
“What has King Boknok done for us?”
“He’s built roads so that we can get where we need and patrols them so that we don’t get eaten by wolves.”
“Yes, but what besides that?”
“He increased social mobility so that a great-grandson of peasants can become the leader of the most prestigious cavalry regiment which otherwise only consisted of knights draw exclusively from nobility.”
“OK, besides the safe roads and social mobility . . .”
“Look at us, we can do better! We, a bunch of illiterates with no ability to conduct international diplomacy, with the help of the great farmer John, who is even now self-defending in his mission of freedom that happens to give him much more power, shall build a government where everyone is involved even though it takes years to collect mere shovels and a corrupt courier could gain absurd wealth by manipulating the ballots.”
“Don’t try me, boy! I am ninety years old and I am a peasant—I have no life expectancy! I’ll die on ya, I’ll do it!”
James looked down at his golden sword, inlaid with spells to sunder armor, set aflame his foes, deflect arrows, and many more besides… and dropped it. He then turned to the Regiment. “I’m sorry, men. I can’t kill my own great-grandmother.”
One by one, they dropped their weapons as well.
What legendary loyalty. James did not even try to restrain her or reason with her—he is more loyal to her than his king that he was planning committing mass murder for. King Boknak made a mistake by allowing peasants into the military, doubly so by sending a unit led by a man who has family in the area. Not even a single loyalist in the lot. Say what you will about the King, but he does not condone political suppression.
“Nobody wants to kill their own grandmother.”
“Oh yeah,” said James, and stabbed Tobith, who went up in a puff of smoke and shreds. “You're not my grandmother but my great-grandmother. I always confuse you two.”The gilded mansion will fall to us and we will raise a new one up! But not a gilded mansion, no, a simple building for our governmental needs!
“The gilded mansion will fall to me— uh, us, will fall to us.”
“And it will be just a normal building, suited only for governmental needs, like rooms filled with foreign delights and gold and beautiful women and gold and gold and gold! Go, Johnite Rebellion, go for the good of the kingdom!”
“Is that James? My personal champion? Has he turned against me!? Inconceivable!”
“Damn it! Who knew he would rather not slaughter his family? Oh, goddess of lore, I have failed you!”
Send out a delegation. See what they want.
“It’s time for a king’s last resort: diplomacy. Fetch me my talkin’ breeches.”
Even if my armies are dispersed throughout the land, we still have the Wyrmriders!
“HAHA! There is no way these guys will be unwilling to slaughter their families AND their comrades—yes! This will work. I know so because none of my men alerted me that an army was marching on the capital. Pure loyalty right, capital L Loyalty.”
“You thought my last resort was diplomacy? Suckers! I wasn’t ever wearing breeches to begin with! Drakes, fuck ’em up. Eat ’em. They’ll be real food producers now.”
“Sending a single elite unit with no support will work this time. Good thing I did not send my army to fight the peasants and instead my personal guard which would betray me for a ninety-year-old three days away from death.”
Then came the worms. The first giant worm erupted from the ground, bearing a highly trained Rider with it.
“Uh, Your Majesty, they WORM-riders. They ride big earthworms, not dragons.”
“They’re not invincible! Go for the head!”
“Look, a literal gods-weapon can kill them! We can do it with hoes and sickles! Yeah!”
King Boknok balked. This was absurd. One farmer with a shovel was killing his elite Wyrmriders! No… that could not be an ordinary shovel. It was the Perfect Weapon. It had to be.
“SHIT! It’s almost like this happened before to my men when they were searching for the Perfect Weapon! Ah, wait, fuck, it is the Perfect Weapon! If only I could somehow pummel him with big rocks or pour boiling oil on him or cast magic or fire a thousand arrows. A bow, a bow! My kingdom for a bow!”
“Tell the Wyrmriders to retreat. Ask the farmers to send a delegation. We’ll see about accepting their terms… in their dreams!”
“Uh, so that is a ‘no,’ Your Majesty? You want me to send a delegation to ask for a delegation in order to tell them to go to Tartarus?”
“And slap them all with a slinky worm. In one motion.”
“I sure hope they don’t send their leader, then a gods-powered fighter would be inside the castle where our elite Wyrmriders can’t help.”
James, Grandma Tobith, John, and several other farmers and cavalry approached the throne.
“Ah, excellent, the guy with the Perfect Weapon, the cavalry commander with the best sword in all the land, and several of his honor guard, all right in front of me. They can’t even begin to understand how dead they are.”
The finest crossbowmen took aim from the balcony of the Great Hall.
“Quick, crossbowman, attack without the element of surprise which I was trying to get! Ouch, oof, the Perfect Weapon went right through my invincible shield. Who could have foreseen . . . ?”
“Well. Who wants to serve a dead king! Show of hands? Anybody?” John walked to the throne and took back his shovel. Slowly the shout rang out. “The king is dead! Long live the king!”
“Yeah, who is loyal to their divine ruler or his offspring? Who wants to blast me away now that I am unarmed and then steal the shovel for himself and become the new king in the resulting power vacuum? . . . I thought so.”
“Huh? Huh, what? Do you want
me to be your king? Really? No, no, I can’t . . . but if you insist. Hail King John I the Glorious! Hail me! Give me gold!”
A great blast of light knocked everyone in the great hall off their feet, save John, who somehow remained unharmed.
And so John killed all his co-conspirators and became the eternal Shovel Emperor. Now, three hundred years later, your girlfriend is abducted, and villains amass and plot doom and death. Only you are a bad enough dude to deliver us from the jaws of defeat. Only you can save us. Arise . . . Shovel Knight . . .“Grandma Tobith has some ideas. She calls the new government… ‘democracy’.”
“I sure hope she doesn’t die before she can tell us what that is.”