Greetings fellow Elyrians!

This contest is now over and the winner has been announced below. Thank you for participating!

In the spirit of the Free Kingdom competition, I’ve decided to launch a Christmas lore contest! This contest will be open to all members of the community and will not require support of any campaign. Seele and NiHZ have graciously agreed to help judge the submissions. The theme of the contest will be short stories about future citizens of the Free Kingdom, in the period of wandering after the fall of the Mad King. Lore video.

The Mad King's reign ended in the year 671, Kingdoms of Elyria(when we play our ancestors) begins in 749, and the game launches in the year 817. This is all in the 4th age. Hopefully, that is enough of a timeline for you guys.

Stories should be a minimum of 1000 words and a maximum of 3500. They must be submitted in the Fan Fiction forum.

The deadline for submitting a story will be Saturday, December 16th at midnight(EST). The grand prize will be $50 for you to spend on CoE content as you see fit, with possible future prizes for runners-up.

To identify the posts that are entries into the contest, the following text should be displayed at the top in italics: This short story is an entry into the Free Kingdom Lore Contest. The contest is sponsored by Jon Warren. The judges will be three monarch candidates from the Free Kingdom competition: NiHZ, Seele, and Jon Warren. An official list of the lore contest entries will be frequently updated on the [Lore Contest thread](https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/22850/Free-Kingdom-Lore-Contest)

For those interested in creating graphics to go with their stories, you can submit them to the Trials of Karcion contest to have a chance at winning additional prizes! The thread is located here.

Entries

• Do Not Go Gentle

• Sylvia's Dance

• The Holly King

• Hawks Waiting

• A Rising Storm

• Leaving

• The Servants

• The Job Offer

• An Unnamed Tale

• Blessing in Disguise

• The Price of a Secret

This lore contest was created in the hope of inspiring community involvement in the Free Kingdom, while developing some unique and interesting lore for people to read. Who knows, some stories may even make it into the official lore? We are very excited to see what the community has in store. There are so many talented writers out there!

Many thanks to NiHZ for providing graphics and aiding in the design of the contest and to Rovert for the idea and other supporters for providing inspiration and advice! Good luck to everyone! If you have any suggestions, or would like to donate prizes yourself, please let contact me either here or on discord and I will get in touch.

Results

After careful deliberation and very close numbers, the winner of the Free Kingdom Lore Contest was "A Rising Storm" by Morbis. There were a lot of great stories and we thank you all for your participation. We enjoyed reading your stories!

We used the following criteria to judge the stories:

10% – Premise/Concept. (The idea behind the story)

20% – Presentation. (Formatting of the story)

20% – Structure / Plot & Pacing. (The actions, events, conflicts, and turning points that move the story forward)

15% – Characters & Dialogue. (Character depth and effective revelation of characters’ personalities and motivations)

15% – Theme. (The underlying message of the story, revealed through plot, dialogue, and visualization)

20% – Style/Tone. (The quality of the writing. Does it effectively convey the mood or “feel” of the story?)

Thank you,

Jon Warren