The TROGG WARS!!!! BY, CORII
Once upon a time my great-grandpa and his friends had cool boats and they rode the cool boats here and they made houses and then they built a really big house but it turned out it was ontop of a trogg mine and it fell into the mine and this started….THE TROGG WARS!!!!
The trogg wars were really hard because troggs live underground and we don’t, so, we had to find them which was hard and they could find us, which was easy. Lots of people died and my great-grandpa said lots of his friends died too and it sucked. But then we found out you can plug up the holes and my great-grandpa’s friend made friends with the birds and my great-grandpa’s other friend made friends with the tree giants and the troggs all lost and we started to win and they tried to trick us by saying timeout but it didn’t work and we won and that is why we’re here and the troggs aren’t. That was the end of the trogg wars.
My great-grandpa said it’s important to never forget what happened to his leg so I don’t because it’s really, really, gross.
***
Improper formatting.
Inadequate wordcount.
Insufficient detail.
Terrible grasp of punctuation.
Extensive reliance on source outside of the textbook.
At least it isn’t plagiarized this time. 20/100.
***
Summary of A History of the First Trogg War
Harvest 17, 1238
Nennifer Grisbit
Since the dawn of time, the Fine Folk have yearned for sights beyond the horizon, and whether by foot, by cart, or by ship they have chased its ever-distant glow. Such wanderlust was eminently rewarded in the year QD (Queen’s Domain) 732, when an unseasonably late summer storm drove a sea-serpent-hunting expedition far off course and onto the shores of a hitherto undiscovered coast. Captain Melepron found refuge in a sheltered bay with plentiful fish and fresh water streams, and upon returning to the Homeland and spreading word of its existence, it was soon populated by a wave of explorers, adventurers, and settlers, who named it Safeharbour. This first foothold grew rapidly, and soon the sheer number of would-be-manses, burgeoning shipyards, and half-tamed parkgrounds necessitated (as it so often does!) the investigation and shaping of further territory. Luckily, the rest of the large isle – now named ‘Melepronnia’ – was equally sumptuously suited to the life of which the Fine Folk have long accustomed themselves to, with the local meadows being suited to unicorn pasturage; the native pines proving eminently susceptible to subordination and obedience under the transplanted boughs of gild-trees; and the beasts of the field being of the common sort and thus easily dissuaded or directed by both Word and deed. Indeed, things were going both marvellously and typically of any new (if exceptionally productive) colony, until the fateful moment when Lord Holbrom ordered the construction of a new hunting manse for himself and his immediate family and companions. Lord Holbrom was a roamer by the standards of nobility, and he desired wilderness in his surroundings – thus, the manse was laid out many leagues from Safeharbour and its constellation of expanding villages, about, atop, and within an appealingly striking rocky crag. It was to his great and unsuspecting misfortune that this peak was already occupied.
Troggs were unknown to the Fine Folk before this encounter, but it likely that the inverse is not the case: the work laid beneath the foundations of Holbrom’s Folly (a name meant in irony, soon proven in tragedy) was patient, slow, and devastatingly premeditated. Only when the final keystone of the manse’s grand hall was placed did the troggish undermining trigger its collapse, murdering in a single fell swoop Lord Holbrom, his entire family, and much of the assembled entourage and partygoers. The only survivor was a young and quick adventurer named Elmar, who had attended only by chance in his explorations of the hinterlands. This alone was the salvation of the colony: Elmar ran day and night without rest, sleeping in trees and eating nothing, and by his warning and counsel the outlying villages were recalled to Safeharbour before Holbrom’s Folly could be replicated in a hundred halls and more. Once scouts confirmed his words, Elmar would prove central to the war-councils of what would be later called the First Trogg War.
The war itself can be divided into three broad phases: a prolonged period of initial skirmishing, in which the troggs would seek to encroach into the colonized wester coastlands and be driven back; an intense period of open warfare conducted in the rugged interior; and the final siege at the Depths of Troggak.
The first phase of the war lasted several years and was broadly inconclusive; the troggs were functionally both undetectable and impervious to assault as long as they remained in their hidden tunnels, but this rendered their offensive capabilities practically nil except for very gradual and careful use of undermining to topple homes, redirect rivers, dry wells, and other such cruelty and general mischief. It was Elmar who tipped the scales of this delicate and terrifying balance; drawing on what little he’d seen as he fought free of Holbrom’s Folly, he discovered the means and ways by which the troggs hid the doors through which they crept about the surface realm at night. Once this was known, the trogg’s tunnels afield were useless: every bird in the sky was already allies of the Fine Folk, and once they were given warning of what a trogg-door looked like they patrolled day and night, dove and owl, until at last the troggs were driven far from the fields of Safeharbour and retreated unto their rocky homes in the far hills.
The second phase of the war was a painful necessity: Elmar knew that the troggs would never stay at bay for long, and pressed most passionately to defeat them today rather than let them attack tomorrow. Despite jealousy and cowardice from his detractors, his wisdom was too great to be ignored, and so the great punitive army was forged and sent into the highlands, where the trogg homes were and they made greater use of the surface to grow their vile crops and vent their reeking forges. Initial battles were in Elmar’s favour, but as days turned to weeks the tide began to turn: the troggs were thick as leaves in the forest and had riddled the ground with such holes as to let them flank from any place they wished any time they chose. The great punitive army, though undaunted, was in danger. It was in this darkest moment before the dawn that the wilderness itself arose to volunteer aid: so tragic was the plight of Elmar that the greatest and tallest of the trees rose from their needled beds and strode down the hillsides to bow before him and volunteer aid and service. The pinelords had also suffered as the Fine Folk did under troggish cruelty, and they proposed a joining of forces: if the great punitive army could protect them, they could provide both knowledge of where to direct its wrath and the means with which to ensure victory.
The series of audacious triumphs that followed led immediately into the third and final phase of the war: an entire grove of pinelords rooted themselves atop the valley that held the troggish capitol of Troggok, and for three days and three nights their roots sang to those of all that grew for leagues, and for three days and three nights the great punitive army saved them from poisonous vapours, from flaming arrows; from fierce axes. And at the dawn of the third day, with the rise of the sun and the sap alike, the pinelords threw up their hands and the roots of all that grew within leagues pulled with them and into the pits of the earths itself sank the Depths of Troggok, where it will never return from. No living thing will grow there now.
Our land is now Elmaroreen, in the name of the one who fought so dearly for its survival. Had he not perished in that final battle, I believe he would have been pleased. So, too, would he have been pleased with our continued vigilance: the Second Trogg War would have been much worse without memory of his warnings, and without the continued assistance of the allies he made so far from home. As long as that vigilance does not falter, and that friendship does not wane, his name and the people that live under it will never end.
***
More-than-adequattely studious, advanced formatting, correct (if smug) conclusions.
Composition is adequate if overwrought.
Heavily penalize for using ‘since the dawn of time.’ If we catch it early enough, she might not insist on using it in university. 70/100
***
Review of A History of the First Trogg War
By Fonrud Furlament, QD 1238
This book is very easy to read, but it doesn’t seem very accurate. I’m going to try and explain.
For one thing, it explains why we moved to Melepronnia, but it doesn’t mention that one of the reasons Safeharbour grew so fast is the Queen was exiling debtors. Lots of people came here because it was new and exciting, but the reason they wanted to go somewhere at all was because they were being sent away.
It also messes up when the troggs found us: they sent messages pretty soon after we started building houses outside of Safeharbour. I think Elmar met them too, but I’m not really sure. This matters a lot because this is one of the BIGGEST mistakes in the book: Lord Holbrom knew that hill was dangerous to build on because the troggs told him there was a ritual cyst-cavern beneath it. He built on it anyways, even when they told him he was putting too much weight on it and hollowing the stone out for cellars. The keystone was the heaviest part and that’s why it sank, and Elmar lived because the troggs pulled him out of the rocks and healed him. It was pretty lousy of him to go home and tell everyone to fight them after that, and it was even lousier when he told them to stuff up their ventilation shafts so they couldn’t breathe in their tunnels (why does the book say he blocked their doors? It says they were undermining us, they wouldn’t need doors for that!), and it was lousiest of all that we kept the birds so busy looking for new trogg airshafts day and night that they all died. My grandma says her favourite bird was the jay. I wish I could see a jay. I wish I had a favourite bird. I wish anyone in my class could have a favourite bird.
Finally, it gets the reasons behind the end of the war all wrong. The pinelords didn’t go to Elmar; he went to them. And nobody knows what he said to them, just that he made them a promise and only told a few friends what it was before he died. The pinelords don’t like the troggs, and they don’t like us, and they don’t like anything that isn’t made of plants, and I don’t know what Elmar promised them but I bet it wasn’t great because none of Elmar’s friends ever told anyone else what he promised either (I wonder if it was about the gild-trees? They all died before the Second Trogg War). I hope nobody else ever promises them anything because if they did that to Troggok I don’t know why they couldn’t do it to Safeharbour.
In the end I don’t think A History of the First Trogg War is a very good book. It doesn’t tell the truth in some very important places and it doesn’t say why it’s doing that. I don’t like it very much.
***
Adequate formatting.
Serviceable composition.
Absolutely intolerable levels of critical thought.
Find out what he’s been reading, where he got it, and who gave it to him, then purge immediately. Inform the local broadsheets that a trogg infiltrator did it. 0/100.