“Wait!” Kenva cried as Kaius took a step towards the entrance to their new Arachnacine Landyacht.
“What?” he said, looking back. Her face was aghast; what could possibly have her so frazzled?
“We can’t just enter! Every caravan needs a name, and this is a damned landyacht!”
Kaius cocked his brow. He didn’t get it.
“A name?” he questioned.
“By the matriarchs, why would we give it a name? It's an artefact,” Porkchop added, ...
2025-12-11 22:04:49 +0000 UTC
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Blinking away the System notification and shock, Kaius snatched up the orb. It was weighty, denser than he expected, with a fine texture and densely patterned runes engraved on its surface. The name of it hung in his mind — an Arachnacine Landyacht.
The description was clear, as was Castellan’s explanation: it was an autonomous vessel, some kind of carriage, he was sure.
Kaius couldn’t help but grin. Of all the artefacts that could sometimes be found in old Em...
2025-12-10 20:37:23 +0000 UTC
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A single solid rap against the door announced the Castellan’s return.
It jolted Kaius from his contemplation. After he and his team had reviewed their gains, they’d taken the moment of quiet to cycle. He could still feel the fizz in his Aspects. The Castellan’s one-sided beatdown had inspired a mania in them, one that was fading the longer they waited.
Channelling that fervent energy by cycling proved profitable: he was brushing up against something. A pressure, or barrier o...
2025-12-09 23:44:50 +0000 UTC
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“Come on, you big lug. Let's get you to that chair.”
Kaius simply grunted, his arm thrown around Kenva's shoulder as he awkwardly hopped forwards. Kenva bore his weight without complaint. At their levels she was more than strong enough to do it, although he knew that with their height difference it must have been an awkward endeavour.
Supposedly the Head Researcher’s quarters were just ahead, down a winding hall that jutted off the side of a residential unit that the Castell...
2025-12-08 21:23:42 +0000 UTC
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Kaius stared at the plain steel table that just moments before had held the image of the long-dead Duke Unterstern. The Castellan sat still and silent, like its life had fled in the same breath that his ancestor had vanished.
He had no eyes for the creature, consumed by what he had learnt.
A lost compound. An unknown mountain. A forgotten oath. And two questionable, potentially long-dead allies. The revelation at once sparked his heart to a pounding fervour as a deep-seated hunger...
2025-12-07 22:25:34 +0000 UTC
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Kaius stared at the image out of time, unsure how to process what he was looking at. The man named him successor; it had to be one of his ancestors. Some hidden condition met due to that very Sovereign Star the Castellan had mentioned earlier, perhaps?
Regardless of their relation, he was held transfixed. The projection wasn't an illusion; Truesight was clear in that. No, he could see the light mana, woven with a dexterity he would expect even Ianmus would struggle with, creati...
2025-12-06 01:28:56 +0000 UTC
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That roiling pool of arcane in the centre of the room held him in a tight grip, claws of regret and horror sinking deep into his chest.
A library.
He didn't want to believe it. Not with any depth of his soul. Oh, he'd never been the most scholarly or studious of men. There wasn't much to be had in the way of reading material out in the Arboreal Sea, at least not counting the things that his father had written out for him directly. Still, knowledge — he had a respe...
2025-12-04 20:41:17 +0000 UTC
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Kaius listened to the Castellan’s words numbly.
A duke. Him.
It was patently ridiculous, even before he considered the fact it was the duke of a long-dead Empire that had once ruled the continent. Every time he tried to wrap his head around it, he failed. Was he supposed to introduce himself as a lord now? Demand that simple commoners should not meet his eyes like the other pompous pricks he’d heard of?
What did it even mean? Even if the title ...
2025-12-03 20:24:25 +0000 UTC
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For the first time since it had cut off his leg and hailed him, the Castellan moved. It was a slight thing, a mere tilt of its head so that it could meet his eyes. Yet the motion sent a spike of primal panic through him.
Bronze orbs burned in its sockets, skewering him in place.
Every single one of them tensed in an instinctive response, a burning urge to move and hide like they were mice that had spotted a hawk circling overhead. The thing of bronze and bloodlust was beyond...
2025-12-02 20:30:04 +0000 UTC
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Its form was perfect, a rendition of man cast from bronze that was almost entirely untouched from their previous assault.
From his position on the floor, Kaius ogled at the hard lines of its features. Its entire existence was a testament to craftsmanship. Yet it was also a terrifying monstrosity that had ripped off his leg with casual ease — one that could have slaughtered them to the man in barely a dozen more seconds.
Now it stood at attention, sword planted firmly in th...
2025-12-01 20:33:17 +0000 UTC
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Bronwyn faced what he was certain would be his death stoically, with friends at his back. Swiftly as he could, he clambered down the side of the mountain spire, his eyes locked on the monstrosity that waited for them on an open field of battle.
A challenge in truth. There would be an audience of beasts arrayed in the many thousands, all watching with glassy eyes that were as vacant as they were rabid.
The ghost of the System notification still seared like a brand in his mind.
<...
2025-11-30 20:50:58 +0000 UTC
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An icy chill shot through his veins as Bronwyn felt his stomach drop. The statue. The totem — It was alive, a thinking creature. And it was controlling the beasts.
He might have lacked an identification skill, but he knew it was strong. Too strong for them. He could see it in the way it moved, in the sheer weight of that strange energy that rolled off it. And, more than anything else, the sheer volume of beasts that had fallen under its command.
They had to leave. N...
2025-11-30 00:49:03 +0000 UTC
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Withered rock crumbled under his fingertips as moss and dew made Bronwyn's grip slick. He adjusted his hold, paying it no mind as he calmly adjusted his weight and kept his footing steady on the treacherous path they followed.
The mountain spires of the Spine were an utter bastard to traverse. As beautiful as they would seem, they were drenched in mist and greenery. Each one was sheer enough that a single wrong step would send them plunging into the rainforest below. At this stage, that...
2025-11-27 20:46:13 +0000 UTC
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Kaius didn’t know what was more terrifying: that the Castellan-executor was fucking Mythril, a middle Tier Three, or that the bastard had teleported right into the middle of the mana core’s domed room.
Regardless, the screams of warning were heeded and they exploded into motion. Even if his teammates hadn’t had the wherewithal to analyse the new threat like he had, he knew the panic and terror in his voice would have been enough.
As a single unit, they burst off the ground, ...
2025-11-26 20:38:43 +0000 UTC
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Kaius left his team behind, watching his back anxiously as he waded deep into the fires of mana irradiated from the mana core. He licked his lips, feeling the energy prickle on his tongue. It was like walking through the deepest depths of a storm, a latent charge that threatened to strike at any moment.
Yet for all its violence, he wasn’t worried. Not one bit. If there was anything he was well suited for, it was this task. It wasn’t just his resistance; it was his mentality, his fam...
2025-11-25 20:56:54 +0000 UTC
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Scintillating and tightly controlled, mana wormed through his flesh.
Kaius was focused and driven — finding a window of quiet between patrols where they could duck into a side room and he could reinscribe was difficult. He couldn’t waste this opportunity.
His last Stormlash was all he would need. Since their flight from the redoubt he had shifted his loadout to favour the spell. They were devastatingly effective against the mechanical automata with their metal b...
2025-11-24 20:43:41 +0000 UTC
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Kaius laid his hand flat on the slab of steel which had sealed them into the barracks that had been their home for several weeks now. Feeling the cool touch of the metal on his skin, he held his mana primed and ready, but did not inject it into the structure just yet.
In some senses he found it funny that they had been imprisoned so quickly upon their return to Deadacre, yet the differences between this and their treatment at the hands of Old Yon and his men were incomparable.
In ...
2025-11-23 21:57:01 +0000 UTC
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Sweat streamed from his brow in rivulets as Kaius clenched his jaw. The level was nice, but it was only a reflection of the inordinate effort he had undergone for closing in on two weeks now.
After the mess of stripping his first worker drone, he and his team had shifted most of the remains to a room that adjoined the main workshop that they had holed up in. It was covered in scrap — mania had nearly overtaken him, leaving precise gears, wires, and metal bones strewn across the ...
2025-11-23 20:43:28 +0000 UTC
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“Gods’ damn bastard of an artefact!” Kaius said, setting the cylinder down on the ground. He hurriedly drew a rag from his storage ring and wiped off a plastered layer of viscous oil that had covered his hands.
“Shattered axles. You’d think the damn thing cut your purse.” Kenva teased, a hint of a smile crossing her mouth, though she wasn’t watching his work too closely. She was far more diligently focused on the collection of de-limbed, functional worker automata that the...
2025-11-20 20:43:39 +0000 UTC
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While Ianmus watched on with curiosity, Kaius pawed over the slain remains of a worker drone. They were odd up close. Now that they were no longer charging at him, with their multi-jointed limbs whirling in a violent flail, it was much easier to take in the fine details of their construction.
Whoever had designed these things was either a madman, a genius, or both. They seemingly pulled inspiration from multiple creatures of the natural world, armour construction, and various other disc...
2025-11-19 20:26:26 +0000 UTC
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Metal growled in distaste as Kaius dragged one of the limbless, still-living worker drones into the room they had chosen to make their base of operations for the foreseeable future.
Now that he was no longer being pursued by a horde of automata, and far less frantic for it, Kaius could see that the place was more than just a kitchen. It was an oddity of a space — part cooking area and part workshop. A dizzying array of tools lined one side; the back of the room’s racks of shelving h...
2025-11-18 20:49:45 +0000 UTC
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Thick hardened steel, built to withstand war and violence, slammed home with a basso thunk. Kaius felt the jolt in his marrow, despair welling within him like the door itself was a guillotine, and his fate had been just as sealed as he watched it close.
With the despair came frustration. How? Why? Their entire descent, the facility hadn’t reacted to their presence and now it sealed itself? Had it been a trap? A ploy by the automata to lull them into a false sense of security?
...
2025-11-18 00:29:19 +0000 UTC
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Got to take the missus to an important appointment, and only half done with editing. Should be out in a couple hours -- only ten mins of work to do when I get back.
2025-11-17 20:40:39 +0000 UTC
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A dense net of bush at his back, Bronwyn stood at the edge of a steep canyon that ripped its way deep into the earth. Before him lay Strangspine. It was as awe-inspiring as the first time he'd laid eyes on it.
Unfathomably long and multiple leagues across, it dominated this region of the Frontier. The difference between it and its surroundings was stark — almost impossible. While the dense bush they had passed through was humid, Strangspine hit them like a wall of water. An omn...
2025-11-17 00:57:41 +0000 UTC
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Tangled and dense, the vast wall of bush slowly dispersed before them. The trail they had been following was overgrown, poorly tended to, and had likely been untouched since Tyne’s Rest had fallen to the invasion of beasts. After a long night of stories and reminiscing, they had set off first thing in the morning, closing the last few leagues between them and the first of the fallen villages they would encounter.
Like a regular forest, the bush was particularly punishing. Thick, crack...
2025-11-15 01:14:36 +0000 UTC
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Tongues of flame reached skyward, each one a crackling lash that threw off shadows in the deep dark of the brush.
Spectres lurked there — things of fang and claw from times long past. Bronwyn wasn’t scared of them. Not anymore. It would take more than the weight of old failures to unsteady his footing.
Still, he hadn’t taken off his armour. His blade lay naked in the dirt beside him — a rippling surface of bluish steel, glistening in the light of their campfire.
<...
2025-11-13 21:04:23 +0000 UTC
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Hardwood creaked and groaned as the wheels of their cart juddered over yet another rut. Deep in the bush, the roads were poor quality. They were paved to an extent, but rain had worn away at their foundations, and the ever‑encroaching growth of the bush made travel difficult.
This early in the morning, such a bumpy ride was particularly unpleasant. But there was nothing for it; even at the best of times, these passageways would have seen little maintenance — let alone now, whe...
2025-11-12 20:35:14 +0000 UTC
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Kaius ran through the wide-open halls of the imperial ruin, bay windows flashing past to reveal workstations and creations of unknown artifice alike.
Backtracking as they were, their path was littered with the detritus of their previous battles — twisted remnants of turrets hung from the ceiling while the shattered bodies of worker drones scattered the hall.
He revelled in the feeling of his strength returning after the beating he had received in the surprise fight with th...
2025-11-11 20:47:36 +0000 UTC
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Kaius widened his eyes, slamming his blade home once more into the ragged hole he’d left in its chest as he unleashed a Bound Maelstrom. He didn’t know what was coming, but whatever it was had to be dangerous. The mana within the automaton was peaking, growing aggressively turbulent and unstable.
Yet rather than weaken, the Centurion only pulled him in tighter with its spiked lower limbs, drawing its shield in close behind him to seal him in a deadly coffin.
“Fu...
2025-11-10 20:20:12 +0000 UTC
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Kaius wheezed, shoving down the burning agony of the hole in his chest. He didn’t know what the centurion's beam had been made of, but it was potent. It had scythed straight through all of his defences.
Hells, his second-tier scalemail had practically been melted into slag! There were drips of metal still glowing as they splattered to the ground at his feet.
Rotten roots, none of that mattered. The wound, no matter how dire, was healing swiftly.
...
2025-11-09 21:41:54 +0000 UTC
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