Competition of the Month - April Edition!

[Musicman247]

An old orsimer
Believed past his usefulness
I give him honor

[SM-Dreamer]

Never written a haiku; here's my entry.

Hidden:

Roar splits the sky
Light glints on sword, scale, and snow
A dragon battle

[TopHatKat]

Entry:

Exploring Windhelm
Child wants revenge on Grelod
Kill her yourself, kid

[AKB]

We've had an awesome turnout, and some really nice entries besides! Once this is over, we might just have to create an ES haiku thread.

There are roughly three days left before I'll decide to start the vote two days early, forget about it, and start roughly on time. So if anyone else wants to get in their entries, now is almost the time when I could say you have to do it right away!

[BetaB17]

Forget about winning the Comp I just want there to be a TES Haiku thread. Viva La Haiku!!

[Ursula R. M.]

Butterflies and Bees
crushed, ground, mixed with care I think?
poison, potion, heal, kill

[AKB]

Vote has started!

My money is on that Benjamin Franklin guy!

Get it? Because he's actually on money!

[Musicman247]

Are we voting on the names or the haikus?

[AKB]

No, that's next month!

[Musicman247]

Well not anymore since you spoiled it!

[AKB]

I ruin everything

[Unionhack]

Someone voted for me. <3

[Aarah]

Wow, that's a lot of entries!

I'm puzzled - is the joke option an actual entry, as it's a double entry and not ES related?

[The SheoDovah]

Oh, everyone but me gets a nickname. You killer robots are racist! *flies off*

[Argonanza]

I'm getting beaten by a long dead Founding Father who's not even following the rules.

[AKB]

I'm puzzled - is the joke option an actual entry, as it's a double entry and not ES related?

No, Benjamin Franklin is competing.

[SM-Dreamer]

Oh my, I have a vote!

Thank you!

[AKB]

The vote has been reset as Benjamin Franklin has informed me of his intent to drop out of the voting. I apologize for this inconvenience.

[sinister]

Really like Argonanza's.
If you didn't know Dawn's beauty=Tamriel in elvish.

[Argonanza]

Well well well, it seems we've got a dead heat.

How do we settle this? Brawl to the death?

[MARS]

The Swede versus the Norwegian. Oh BOY!

[TopHatKat]

I thought Taters would take this competition easily, but it would quite the opposite. Guess I'm alone on thinking Miaq jokes are the best.

[AKB]

THE RESULTS ARE IN!!!!!

In an unprecedented turn of events, I learned that I cannot actually accept any of your bribes. No one will be refunded. Instead, the honest to goodness winners of the AKB Flavored Competition of the Month are Argonanza and Per.

Argonanza wowed the crowd with his awesome haiku on every player's beginning experience!

Opened the gate
Captivity and darkness left behind
Dawn's beauty ahead

Meanwhile, Per went for a more humorous option by referring to one of our most common annoyances, the weight capacity of your character:

After the Battle,
Collected my Just Rewards.
Overencumbered.

Good show, good show. Thanks to their wordsmithery and your votes, they get to share the COTM Winner title for the next month! Tune in for the next competition!

I would also like to acknowledge our users who made it to second place in this competition, AKB, SM-Dreamer, and Winter Symphony!

AKB opened this show with his haiku relating to one of the most infamous creatures in ES history:

Cliffracer flies high,
joined by six and seven more.
Return to last save?

SM-Dreamer came into this show without having ever written a Haiku before, but clearly demonstrated a natural talent for it with this one describing dragon combat:

Roar splits the sky
Light glints on sword, scale, and snow
A dragon battle

Winter Symphony chose to take inspiration from AKB's haiku, using a more modern enemy in its place:

Walking through the fjords
Quest shattered by unseen death
I hate sabre cats.

While we do not get to go home with a fancy title unless I suddenly decide we do (I won't!), our efforts are admirable regardless.

With our congratulations granted to the winners and the runner-ups, I'd also like to give a less awkward shout out to our third place winners as I did not come in third place! Please applaud for Dohva., ElGreg, sinister, Taters, TopHatKat, and Ursula R. M.! Unless you are in a public place where it would be weird for you to just start applauding, don't do that then!

Dohva's haiku tells of the experience of a Dark Brotherhood Assassin, one of our user's favorite guilds by far.

Sweet victim of mine
Sithis hungers for your soul
Taste my poisoned blade

ElGreg gave us this chilling account of the climb to meet the Greybeards:

Seven thousand stairs
a small price for the power
that will become theirs

sinister told us a tale we have all experienced, a mistimed taunt leading to hilarity.

A blade moves swiftly
The brigand's head departs
Just a scratch!

From Taters came a reference to so many player's favorite character:

M'aiq knows a lot
He can tell you many things
But he's tired now

TopHatKat provided a unique response to a certain Skyrim quest:

Exploring Windhelm
Child wants revenge on Grelod
Kill her yourself, kid

Ursula may have joined the competition late, but that didn't discount this entry from making it onto the podium:

Butterflies and Bees
crushed, ground, mixed with care I think?
poison, potion, heal, kill

Thank you all for participating once again!

While not everyone came home with a title, or even a vote, I do wish to provide one last thanks to all of our other contestants. Thank you to Aarah, Alarra, baratron, BetaB17, Dark Heart, Dark Spark, Deandra, joshthenesnerd, MARS, Musicman247, Thelastdovah, and ZeRoc for taking part in the contest.

I hate this guy too, Aarah:

Go to Cloud District?
Oh my, what am I saying!
Of course you do not.

ESO may have just came out, but that did not stop Alarra from pointing out a certain bug in it:

Elder Scrolls with friends
Let's quest together... oh no.
I fell through the ground.

baratron provided us an entry on one of the most shocking, and unresolved crimes from fifth installment of the main series:

High in the Jeralls
Cloud Ruler Temple lies dead
Murdered by Thalmor

Beta was one of the few who named their haiku, something that I thought added to it quite a bit.

:

Lint in pockets, carrots too;
With my knife I ran him through
For dancing to this Haiku!

Dark Heart gave us all some rather good game advice:

Frost troll in my way,
FUS RO DAH down the mountain.
On to High Hrothgar.

Ladies and gentleman, Dark Spark:

I live in this world.
You wish to destroy it all.
Now— it's Stabby Time!
—!!!

Deandra produced one of my favorite haiku entries, please appreciate it for a moment:

A quiet rustling
I know they're out there, waiting
Fog fills the valley

Inspired by a screenshot I took.

Spoiler:

joshthenesnerd reveals the trouble of screenshots without clipping disabled:

the difficulty of screenshots:
jumping on buildings
this shot is quite hard to get
i fell off the roof.

MARS made this touching piece on a cart-related incident:

Stand in the cart
Blood fills my vision
Amused death

The Old Orc may still be physically young, but that did not stop Music from letting him die with the grace he wanted.

An old orsimer
Believed past his usefulness
I give him honor

Thelastdovah:

Trolls stamp, dragons roar
Mudcrabs stare, wolves sneak
all die. All taste the Thu'um.
Then the game crashes.
Son of a [&@%!].

ZeRoc was never going to win for forgetting to list House Redoran and the Morag Tong, but his entry is still admirable:

Fighter's guild or Mage?
House Hlaalu, or Telvanni?
Too many choices.

And finally, one last shout out to my main man, Benny F!

This note is legal
Tender for all debts comma
Public and Private

That may end this Competition of the Month, but stay tuned for the next one, which is just around the corner!

[Aarah]

Well done Nanza and Per!
(And hats off to AKB for his lovely display of equality)