cathfach

A Willing Victim: Prologue

Is on discord, in the a-willing-victim age-restricted channel, as will be all future chapters, because it opens with consentacles and only gets worse from there.

Chapters are short. (As is the full story, probably.) It's just something I wrote on a whim after spending an unhealthy amount of time on scribblehub. (An experience which I really hope hasn't negatively impacted my grammar...) It'll occupy the Monday slot, but there doesn't seem much point posting on patreon about eve...

Unruly Summon Chapter 13: More Magic

"Maius Magus Visus."

The words of the spell reverberated around my room, despite the way I'd spoken them face-down on my bed, face smooshed into my pillow and head buried under my blanket. Thankfully, I'd also hung up the fluffy hide over the door as an extra layer between myself and the guard outside. Using my new higher-tier mana sight, I peered through the wall, thankful to find him unmoving. It looked like I'd got away with it.

There had to be a way a...

Unruly Summon Chapter 12: Complexity

Princess Stephanie remained silent for a few seconds more than was comfortable, before sighing. "We'll need to admit it at some point," she said. "There were a series of... incidents along our border. Humans crossing into demon lands and taking from their farms. There was no violence, and they never took much, hoping that the shortfall would go unnoticed. For that reason, even though the provincial nobles involved knew what was happening, they tolerated it. Alas, the demons noticed, ...

Christmas Special: A Friendly Voidling Meets An Unborn Hero

Merry Christmas y'all. Have a completely non-canonical friendly voidling/unborn hero crossover as a Christmas present.

"Look, I know you're nervous, Dad, but there really are no more demons," patiently repeated Hugh, who was holding the reins of a horse, and was dressed in the garb of a young merchant. "And even if we get attacked by bandits, well..."

He tilted his head sharply, causing his bright blue pony tail to flick around. It proceeded to smack him in the f...

Unruly Summon Map

The map of the continent of which the Ricousian Kingdom is a part.

Unruly Summon Chapter 10: Lies

"Ug," I groaned, trying to remember how to open my eyes.

I successfully managed my difficult quest on the third attempt, and was rewarded for my victory with the sight of the wooden ceiling of my borrowed room, coupled with a pounding headache.

"Wasn't I in the courtyard?" I mumbled.

"You passed out from mana exhaustion," came an answering voice. "You shouldn't try to cast spells when you're already worn out."

"Mary?" I asked, just to confirm, because it was going to b...

Unruly Summon Chapter 9: Spells

I peered at Wendy suspiciously. What had started as a lesson in background theory had somehow escalated into her wanting me to cast what was apparently high-level fire magic. Magic that some actual qualified mages didn't even have the mana to cast.

... Wait, that phrasing was inaccurate, given how mana apparently worked. Didn't have the control over mana to cast? Whatever. That wasn't the point. The point was that I'd rather not suffer another body strengthening type mishap.

"Shou...

Unruly Summon Chapter 8: Magic

"Good morning, Tom," called a cheerful voice, waking me up from a dream that thankfully did not involve a single dragon.

"Already?" I answered blearily.

"Oh? Do you need more sleep?"

"Yes, but I probably shouldn't, if it's already morning."

Sleeping in would just extend my jet-lag, so despite not having had a great night's rest, I dragged myself out of bed. Breakfast was already waiting on my desk, with my clothes neatly folded over the back of the chair. They'd even m...

Unruly Summon Chapter 7: Night

"Grysuurm. Hydaxx schuurm."

I opened my eyes, trying to figure out what had woken me, only to find myself standing up. That was an unusual position to be in at the point of waking. Had I been sleepwalking?

... If I had, I'd not only made it out of my room but also out of the castle, and quite possibly the city. It was hard to be certain, given the dark mist that made it hard to even see my hand in front of my face, but I could be reasonably sure of that; the city hadn't been built...

Unruly Summon Chapter 6: Audience

I sat at a plain wooden table in uncomfortable silence, peering at my stew. I'd tried to eat it, but I wasn't really hungry. Being summoned at nearly midnight and ending up in an early afternoon caused one hell of a bout of jet-lag, and bits of my body were insisting it was around 5am and far too early for breakfast. It was surprising I hadn't fallen asleep in the middle of my training session, but between the excitement and exertion, it made some sort of sense. Now that I'd stopped, though, ...

Unruly Summon Chapter 5: Temptations

I managed to get through the rest of the training session without crippling myself again, even if I did devote far too much of my thought process to very carefully not picturing mana doing anything whatsoever. It helped that Christine refrained from any further superhuman exploits I might have been tempted to copy.

Despite her warning, the mana potion hadn't tasted that bad. It had the texture and taste of one of the worse sorts of smoothies; the type you get by blending togeth...

Unruly Summon Chapter 4: Training

It's not quite December yet, but I don't really have anything interesting to say about the Erryn's World RPG today, so we'll start the double unruly summon chapters a week early instead.

Stephanie Ricousian, second princess of the Ricousian Kingdom, stalked down the corridors of the royal palace, her hurried footsteps echoing off the bare stone walls. After numerous twists and turns, she reached the guarded doors that separated the western wing from the main building. ...

Unruly Summon Chapter 3: Decision

"Good question," nodded Wendy. "I've been wondering what caused this war myself. I spent a few months concentrating on research, then suddenly there are knights banging on my door, and I stick my head out to discover that a quarter of our territory has been overrun!"

"Allow me," chimed in Christine. "The specific events that led up to the outbreak of war are complex, but the underlying issue is simple enough: the populations of the kingdoms are growing, but arable land is shrinking, and...

Erryn's World RPG: Magic

Magic is something that doesn't feature heavily in character creation, on account of needing to switch class before you can learn any spells. Unless you cheat, of course:

Speed dressing with [Minor Speed]. The short snippet goes to show that balance is going to be a big problem; that example was with the spell at level 10, and yet it almost instantly wore off. At the moment, almost every actio...

Unruly Summon Chapter 2: History

"We need your help," Princess Stephanie finally admitted. It really was an admission, too, spoken as reluctantly as if she was admitting a murder. "Our kingdom has been attacked by demons. We've been fighting them for months, but, frankly, as things are, we're going to lose. We need the help of a hero if we're to stand a chance of survival."

"Uh... Are you sure you've got the right person? I'm not any sort of hero."

"Maybe not right now, but you could be," she responded. ...

Erryn's World RPG: Combat

A game involving dungeons and monsters is obviously going to need some form of combat. The first demo lets you get into fights, (how many people murdered poor Roller?) but there's not much behind it. Try to attack a villager, and you'll probably get stuck forever.

The village training dummy is how you can unlock various weapon proficiencies. (Attacking villagers is against the Law, after all. And probably Roller, too, because your poor mum would be upset if you splattered your shack wit...

Unruly Summon Chapter 1: Summoning

The winner of the poll, with more than double the votes, was An Unruly Summon, so I'll give that the Friday slot for November. From December onwards, it'll be two chapters of Unruly Summon per week, at least until the end of the first volume (40-ish chapters) but probably further.

"Well, there's something you don't see every day," I commented, peering at the swirling purple vortex that was squatting over the middle of the road. The previous few hours had involved some ...

Erryn's World RPG - crafting

One of the things I'd like to make fairly extensive in Erryn's World is the crafting system. In the books, Peter pulls some ridiculous stunts (weaponised toilet...) that I won't be replicating, but the basic principles are still the same. For each type of crafting, you have a quality rating between 0 and 100 (0 being no skill, and 100 the rank 5 skill at level 20) and as that rating goes up, you can produce a wider variety of items from a wider variety of materials. e.g., to forge something, ...

Unruly Summon Prologue

The second of today's chapters. See the note at the start of Unprepared Castaway for why there are two.

A group of people sat around an ornate table, each occupying a richly decorated wooden chair. The same level of opulence was on display around the full room, from the colourful tapestries that adorned the walls to the plush carpet that covered the floor. Even the enchanted orbs that filled the room with light were held in a jewelled chandelier. Nevertheless, despite ...

Unprepared Castaway Chapter 1: The First Day

Chapter: https://cathfach.co.uk/chapters/Chapter1:TheFirstDay/49.php

epub: https://cathfach.co.uk/epub/Chapter1_TheFirstDay_49.epub

Erryn's World RPG - Intro

With A Broken Pact finished, it's time to finally give that Erryn's world RPG I started so long ago a spot of attention. This thing actually has roots that go back way further than the start of Unbound Soul. I've mentioned the Discworld MUD* before, (go play it! It's great!) and way way back when C#3 had just discovered LINQ, I made a reimplementation of the FluffOS driver it runs on in C#. It never worked too well. (it could boot the discworld distlib and connect to intermud, which was cool,...

Broken Pact Epilogue

There's no side stories/afterwords or anything to this one. Tuesday will be the first of the Erryn's World RPG devblogs/demos, and next Friday the first chapter of Unprepared Castaway.

I haven't decided on a December schedule yet. Depending on response to the RPG and how much more I write of Unruly Summon and Unprepared Castaway, it could be any combination of castaway, summon and the RPG. I'm tempted to give Unruly Summon the Tues...

2023-10-27 04:38:38 +0000 UTC View Post

Broken Pact Chapter 7

The dragon gave a slow blink as the little humans rushed around. While he'd learnt some amount of human politics out of necessity, that didn't mean all their actions were suddenly comprehensible. He doubted whether their actions were even comprehensible to themselves at times.

"Did the fool not get the message that she was innocent?" he grumbled rhetorically as the fleeing knight was restrained by a dozen others. Clicking his enormous tongue, he fixed Steven with his angry gaze.

"...

Broken Pact Chapter 6

I've just spotted that formatting was broken in the pdf/epubs of chapter 4/5, too. It looks like an edge update has changed the way it copies text. Will be fixing them shortly.

Why is this so hard? Why are italic text and copy/paste not long-solved problems? :(

Edit: And now it seems a bunch of double-spaces have been inserted from nowhere. I give up. At least they aren't causing...

2023-10-20 05:21:53 +0000 UTC View Post

Broken Pact Chapter 5

Josse sat huddled on her ledge, arms wrapped tightly around her knees and her back up against the cliff. She was shaking, but after what she'd been through, who could blame her?

"I... I can't..." she mumbled to herself as she climbed unsteadily to her feet. "Sorry Lindy..."

The broken princess didn't even stop to look down, diving straight off the ledge. Or she tried to, anyway. She actually rebounded off an invisible barrier at the edge.

Runes inscribed into the rock flicke...

Broken Pact Chapter 4

Father Serrell, the high priest of Sulltheria, always welcomed the opportunity to expand his mind, taking any chance to learn something new. Today, he had found himself with a larger opportunity than most days, but most of what he was learning was that he had acrophobia.

Or perhaps not. It wasn't as if he ended up completely debilitated every time he ascended his cathedral's bell-tower, and that was pretty darn high. Phobias were supposed to be irrational, and there was nothing irration...

Broken Pact Chapter 3

I know formatting is fixed for some people, but it's still not for others, so I'll continue with pdf/epub attachments for now.

Josse pondered as she drank from the waterfall, splashing her face with the clear water. She had to admit the view from her new home was amazing. Normally, a home with that sort of view would fetch tens of platinum coins, yet here she was, not having paid a single iron.

She would prefer not to die for the privilege, though.

She look...

Broken Pact Chapter 2

Edit: As part of their latest 'redesign', patreon have apparently decided that formatting isn't a thing text posts need any more. Until they get their act together, I'll be attaching a pdf of each chapter, and I strongly advise reading that rather than the regular text. I'll leave the chapter text up for now, because surely this is a bug on their end and not deliberate, but if it's not fixed I'll need to move completely to attachments, because the way I tend to write things means a l...

2023-10-06 05:14:08 +0000 UTC View Post

Broken Pact Chapter 1

Crown Princess Josse was having a bad day. Or rather, the former Crown Princess, according to popular consensus, and in the end, wasn't that all that mattered? She could claim to be the rightful heir all she liked, but if no-one believed her or acted as if she was, what difference did the truth make?

No doubt someone somewhere would be filling out the paperwork to make it official. Of course, Josse couldn't check, on account of the way she was thoroughly tied to a stake. Ve...