The Skirmishes
Every skirmish returns each month. From the 1st to the last day, authors submit entries and the guild votes; when the month ends the winner is crowned and sent their prize by letter. No cash changes hands — winners earn free guild membership time.
The Character Skirmish
November 2026 round · Entries and voting open until 30 November
A story begins to live the moment a reader believes in one person. This skirmish asks you to build that person on the page. Bring a single character to life in a few hundred words. Show us how they look, how they sound, what they want, and above all the contradiction that makes them real — the soldier who is afraid of dogs, the miser who tips too much. You may describe someone from your own book or invent a stranger for the occasion. Your entry can run as long as you need, up to 4,000 characters (about 650 words). One entry per scribe each month, open to every rank. Here is the kind of entry we hope to see: Marguerite Oyelaran-Voss kept the lighthouse at Skerry Point for thirty-one winters and was never once seen to hurry. She was a broad woman with a sailor's squint and hands like knotted rope, and she spoke to the lamp the way other people speak to a difficult husband: firmly, fondly, and with a great deal of sighing. She distrusted the sea, loved the sea, and would have tolerated no one saying either thing aloud. Every evening she wound the clockwork, polished the brass and lit the flame, muttering “Well. Off we go, then,” as though the light were a child being sent to school. The village whispered that she was waiting for someone to come home. Nobody said it to her face. She would have handed them a mop.
A free month of the Lorekeeper tier, sent to the winner by email when the round closes.
The Dialogue Skirmish
November 2026 round · Entries and voting open until 30 November
Anyone can describe a conversation. The craft is in letting the words themselves do the work. Write a short exchange between two voices — no narration needed, or as little as you can manage. Let each speaker want something different, let the humour or the tension rise in what they leave unsaid, and make us able to tell who is talking without being told. Your entry can run as long as you need, up to 4,000 characters (about 650 words). One entry per scribe each month, open to every rank. Here is the kind of entry we hope to see: “You're late,” said the dragon. “You're a dragon,” said Pell. “You're supposed to be asleep on a hill.” “And you're supposed to be a knight. Where's the armour?” “In the wash.” “The armour is in the wash.” “It's been a difficult month.” The dragon sighed, and a small, tired ribbon of smoke curled up from one nostril. “Do you know how many of you I have eaten? None. Not one. You all start the same way: big speech, big sword, big tragic backstory. Then I say ‘Shall we sit down?’ and we are still talking at dawn.” “That's actually why I came.” “To be eaten?” “To be listened to.” “Ah,” said the dragon, more gently. “Well. Mind the hoard. Sit anywhere that isn't pointy.”
A free week of the Archmage tier, sent to the winner by email when the round closes.
The Setting Skirmish
November 2026 round · Entries and voting open until 30 November
Some places we remember better than people. This skirmish is about making a reader feel they have already stood there. Describe a place that feels lived-in — a room, a city, a ruin, a shoreline. Reach past the sight of it: give us the temperature, the sound, the smell, the small detail nobody would think to invent. Make the Guild want to walk through the door, or be quietly glad they never will. Your entry can run as long as you need, up to 4,000 characters (about 650 words). One entry per scribe each month, open to every rank. Here is the kind of entry we hope to see: Lake Dolma sits at the top of the world like a coin someone forgot to spend. At dawn it is the colour of hammered pewter, and the mountains lean over it to admire themselves: white teeth against a blue-black sky, each peak doubled in the still water so exactly that you cannot tell where the world ends and the reflection begins. The air is thin and so cold it tastes of iron and snowmelt. Prayer flags snap along the shore, faded to the colour of old bruises, sending their ten thousand small wishes across the water; the wind carries them off without any sign of having read them. Somewhere above, a yak bell clanks, slow as a heartbeat. Nothing here is in a hurry. The lake has been listening for ten thousand years, and it has not yet decided to answer.
A free month of the Lorekeeper tier, sent to the winner by email when the round closes.
My name is Odysseus
November 2026 round · Entries and voting open until 30 November
Every legend was told by someone, and the old stories rarely let the hero speak for himself. This skirmish hands him the pen. Write in the first person as a figure out of myth or legend — Odysseus, Circe, Medusa, or any voice the old stories left unheard — in a few hundred words. Begin with who they claim to be, then let the cracks show: what they are proud of, what they would rather not admit, and what the legend got wrong. Wit, regret and swagger are all welcome. Make the voice unmistakable from the very first line. Your entry can run as long as you need, up to 4,000 characters (about 650 words). One entry per scribe each month, open to every rank. Here is the kind of entry we hope to see: My name is Odysseus, and I am the man who broke the world with good intentions. In my youth, I was the quintessential hero: clever, brave, and possessing a silver tongue that could charm the Sirens into silence. I didn't just survive the Trojan War; I ended it with a wooden horse, a trick so audacious it became legend. My journey home wasn't a simple sail; it was a decade-long cosmic joke where I angered a sea god, watched my crew turn into pigs, and sailed into the underworld just to ask for directions. I was the man who could talk his way out of any situation, the one who always had a plan... The city of Aethelgard didn't need a hero; it needed a scapegoat, and I, Odysseus, the man who had outwitted gods and outrun fate, was the only one left who was both immortal and expendable enough to fit the bill.
A free week of the Lorekeeper tier, sent to the winner by email when the round closes.
The Villain's Hour
November 2026 round · Entries and voting open until 30 November
Every great story is held up by someone who believes they are right. This time, give your villain the floor. Write a monologue of 300 words or fewer, spoken by an antagonist at the moment they finally explain themselves — to a captive, a rival, a mirror, or to no one at all. Do not let them cackle. The best villains are persuasive, and the chill comes when the reader catches themselves nodding along. The Guild will reward menace that has logic behind it, a voice unlike any hero's, and one detail so specific that it could belong to no other character. You may borrow a villain from your own book, or invent one for the occasion. One entry per scribe each month, open to every rank. Here is the kind of entry we hope to see: “Sit, please. No — the chair is quite safe; I had it tested. You look at me as though I enjoyed this. I did not. I buried my first village in a ledger long before I ever burned one. Do you know what the crown spent on ceremonies last winter while your people starved? Seven thousand marks. I did the sums. Everyone does the sums, child, but only I was willing to say the answer aloud: a hundred lives now, or a hundred thousand in ten years. You call that cruelty. I call it arithmetic with a conscience. I shall be hated for it, and I have made my peace with that, truly. But I will not be wrong. Now drink your tea. It really is rather good, and there is not much of it left.”
A free week of the Archmage tier, sent to the winner by email when the round closes.
The First Line Skirmish
November 2026 round · Entries and voting open until 30 November
A reader decides in a single breath whether to keep going. This skirmish is about that breath. Write the opening of a story in 150 words or fewer — a first line, a first paragraph, or both. It can be the start of a book you are already writing, or something invented tonight. Fantasy, romance, mystery, history, memoir: anything the Houses hold is welcome. What the Guild will be looking for: a voice we trust within a sentence, a question we cannot help wanting answered, and a world that is already moving before we have been introduced to it. One entry per scribe each month, open to every rank. The whole Guild votes on the words alone, and the winner's name goes into the Hall of Fame. Here is the kind of entry we hope to see: The last honest man in Vessenmoor died on a Tuesday, which was inconvenient, because the whole town had been counting on him to testify on Wednesday. Inspector Halloran stood over the body, hat in hand, and did what he always did when the universe was rude to him: he reached for a biscuit. “Well,” he said to the corpse, “I do hope you had a better week than I'm about to.”
A free month of the Lorekeeper tier, sent to the winner by email when the round closes.
The Longest Night
On the longest night of the year the candles burn lowest and the stories run long. This is the Guild's midwinter contest — the grandest of the season. Write a complete short story of 500 words or fewer that takes place on the longest night. It needs a beginning, a turn, and an ending, all of it inside the limit. Set it in any world, any age, any genre: a lighthouse in the dark, a castle under siege, a kitchen where someone cannot sleep. Warmth or dread — the choice is yours. Every member of the Guild may read and vote, so write for readers rather than judges. Leave us with a feeling we carry past the final line. One entry per scribe, open to every rank. Here is a very short taste of the tone — your own story should be longer and complete, up to 500 words: Mara lit the last candle at four, because the dark came early on the longest night and she had decided, years ago, not to argue with it. Her father's chair still sat by the window where he had left it, and she did not move it, whatever the village said. At midnight the knock came: three slow raps, the way he used to do it. She opened the door to wind and nothing else, and laughed, and wept a little, and set a second cup on the table. “Come in, then,” she told the cold. “It's your night as much as mine.” By dawn the cup was empty. She told no one. The sun rose thin and gold, as if it too had been waiting up.
A free month of the Archmage tier.