Short, but I like where it ends...
Milo rolled twice and then got his feet under him, crouching behind a barrel. He heard the small click as the crossbow was cocked and knew the direction the sound came from. But if the person who was shooting at him was good, they had already moved. Darkness didn't effect his vision, but he couldn't spot anyone. Their skills were high enough that they were overwhelming his perception, similar to how his own skill worked.
He concentrat...
The Cheese Caravan was in full swing, and Limburger Hollow was celebrating. The local musicians had joined with those in the caravan to put on an enthusiastic show. The Caravan was supplying cheesy snacks and fruit drinks to anyone who would provide music. Francis Longwhisker, the famous bard of Gouda Hollow was singing all the old favorites. Dancing and music ran long into the night, nearly to the next day.
The caravan was doing a brisk business trading cheese for the goods the Hollo...
This is a short chapter. It finishes off the writathon, and has a lot of tables with skills following the text. I'm not putting the tables in here, as they just don't work in Patreon.
I have a little work left on Tunnel Rat to get Milo finished in the writathon. When that is done, I'll be coming back to the Smoke and replenish the chapters here on Patreon so we get ahead on each story again.
--------------------------
Ozzy was on the deck near the open hold making c...
The wagon of Merchant Greensleeves’s was first in line as it entered the outer edge of the caves surrounding Limburger Hollow. He called a halt to the caravan and ordered a one-hour break for rest and food. With just 1 guard and his personal scribe, the Merchant drove his wagon up to the entrance to the Limburger Hollow. The two guards were immense specimens, and he wondered what their bloodline was. They wore steel plate armor and wielded impressively large halberds. He was happy to see th...
2022-12-02 02:23:00 +0000 UTC View PostRedfawn beat on the glass of pickle jar she had been captured in, but she wasn't strong enough to break enchanted pickle glass. Through the green tinted glass, she saw her other fairy friends being roughly stuffed into jars as well. The Bad Pickle Boyz had captured all of them! Gingersnapple was in the jar nearest to her, with Tuliptoes, Cherrypit, and Moonflower further down the row.
Greggy Gurner was taunting them.
"Ha! Silly flutter-things were thinking y'all wuz the smartiest, b...
A short one. Hard to think of spider jokes :)
The avenging army of the Iron Spider trudged onward to victory. Their crafty general had chosen to move through the lower tunnels. Their general had set an easy pace for them. She was marching along slowly at the front of the army, her fearsome Prescence keeping small enemies at bay.
There was plenty of time to dig small mammals and large beetles from their lairs, and plenty of food in these unused caverns. The spiders generally moved...
2022-12-01 19:30:53 +0000 UTC View PostThis was one hell of a raid! Just getting to the main fight was a test!
Brannigan had called a recent break to let the healers administer first aid and mend some wounds, and then some additional time to let the clerics get their mana back. The first part was all survival and dealing with trash mobs on the way to the big fight at the end. The area was infested with stone-lurkers, psycho-shrooms, huge carnivorous moles, giant vampire bats, and poisonous centipedes of unusual size. The loc...
2022-12-01 19:29:23 +0000 UTC View PostMilo watched Petey walk away. He seemed like a nice guy, and the twins got along with him. Well, except for when they framed him for stealing jelly beans. Having wanted to hit the twins in the head a few times, Milo felt Petey was entirely justified in bending their legs. Maybe he was even helping them get a contortionist skill.
As he headed across the street to the Tower, he saw two young whelps tacking up a notice to an announcement board. As he got close to it, it seemed to light ...
The Puffyfur Tea party was in full swing.
There had been some disappointment that Professor Tallsqueak would not be attending, and bit of confused emotions about Larry attending. These had been swept aside when Professor Arlothe came into the planning committee to tell them how proud he was of them for inviting Larry. When told that Larry could not have cheese because he was in the 'Special Fighting Class', they made a decision to skip cheese altogether at the party. They substituted se...
2022-11-28 21:44:41 +0000 UTC View PostI'm wondering whether this chapter should follow "Too Much Bleu" directly, or if the Dwarven Holiday in Chapter 146 should come first. Thoughts?
Milo was unsure of what was going on, and on so many levels! He took Gilad aside and spoke to him. "What's happened to Bluesnout, and what is the Conclave all about? I'm just following your lead, I'm not really a master."
Gilad tapped the ring on his finger. "Did you find this ring? Take it from the last Scout Master? After no one could...
I'm happy with the theme of this chapter, but it may need some expansion. Comments and advice welcome as usual.
A party of explorers marched through the caverns far below Shadowport. Contrary to conventional wisdom, they were neither quiet nor stealthy. Some people might argue that was because they were anything but conventional, and how much wisdom the group currently had was also doubtful.
But the truth of the matter was simple: If there was anything big and dumb enough ...
"So, it's just you and I again, Mr. Ozzy. Time to take a look and see what sort of ship we have here."
The ship was 40 feet long and 15 feet wide with a single mast. Her poop deck was raised four feet above the main deck. A small set of stairs led down three feet into a short hall with three doors. The left and right doors led to small cabins, only six feet wide, and ten feet long. Portholes looked out on the sides, and a wooden screen let in light and air from the main deck. They we...
Three people were ignoring the mayhem that was happening inside Baron Pinchpenny's keep. The first was the Baron himself. His hearing was not good, and even if he had noticed the screams of panicked horses and the shouted orders of guards, he would have ignored them. He paid good money to those men, and he could care less what little problems they had to solve by abusing a few peasants.
The second person, was the Legion Centurion in charge of the far side of the Baron's keep. The Leg...
The road to Northguard was in a sad state of disrepair, and the man riding the horse chose to stay off of it and take the side of the road instead. Less chance of his horse stepping in a hole and going lame. Based on Pinchpenny's reputation, he had expected bad roads. But this bad? Wagons would shake themselves apart in ten miles. Which was about the distance between this little guard post and the city he was heading to.
The guard post was two little shacks on either side of the road...
How the hell do you get into trouble so fast, Woodrat? You were barely half a minute ahead of me!"
The cold green eyes turned towards Ozzy. He saw small flashes of lightning in the whirling white smoke. The creature didn't immediately attack, and he wondered if that meant there was a chance to retreat, or if it was just taking its time killing them. Ozzy had spent enough time around Joe to get a feeling for how truly powerful he was. If this creature was the same, they were in trouble...
Captain Woodrat and his mate set out across the Sargasso, doing their best to keep to a straight course, but becoming sidetracked time and again by the lure of a derelict ship nearby. To explore them all would be the work of a dozen teams exploring for a year, and long before that the strangle weed would be growing again. Woodrat had no idea of how long they had until that happened. Might be a year, and it might be a week. He didn't really want to be here when it happened.
For all he ki...
2022-11-24 03:22:27 +0000 UTC View Post"Good job, Captain! You found breakfast."
As he saw Woodrat lifted into the air by the tentacle, Ozzy threw concentrated on the chain wrapped around his arm and through it. It wrapped several times around whatever had his captain and he pulled the long, sucker-filled arm back towards him. Woodrat appreciated that he wasn't immediately getting tossed into the Krakens beak-like maw and drew his sword. It took only two slashes to sever the tentacle and he crashed to the deck and was dra...
Larry awoke early. Larry always got up early. His tummy was too growly in the morning to sleep, and he always pondered the important question: What's for breakfast?
He looked over at his Jelly Been bush that Gingersnapple and Redfawn had given him for saving their Jellybean farm from the Frozen Fog Boys. Larry had been very cold while guarding the farm all night and bopping the little muskrats on the head when they got too close. He had danced and danced to keep warm, only pausing whe...
P'tashPak'r, the Exalted General of the 10th Host. P'tashPak'r, the cripple. P'tashPak'r, the abomination and exile.
No more. She was going back, to return to glory and kill her most hated foe. It had been so many years. First the humiliating years after she had lost the duel with her enemy, and the subsequent defeat of her army. Barely alive, her spiderlings had carried her legless body from the field of battle, and cared for her wounds.
To the rest of the Spider Clans, she ...
Milo had appropriated a spare corner in Cichol's Arcane Library. He needed the privacy and the advice of the old mage to work on a special project. The table he was working on had a polished stone top, and legs carved from the thigh bones of several large creatures. To one side was the knowledge he had accumulated in the Tower of Strife. Cichol was happily copying it all to have for his own library.
Besides the journal, Milo had found three books with infomation on runic formations, s...
The next few days flew by for Milo.
Basic Claw Drills. Sparring. Breakfast with Larry followed by stories of Larry in Flowerland. Engineering class. Lunch with Larry and dancing afterwards. Mining Class. Dinner with Arlothe and Cremona. Advanced Fighting Class followed by a bath and several hours studying arcane texts in the library.
He was busy, but happy. He monitored section E for troubles, and kept track of the days until the big swap meet event he was going to with Butch ...
A day earlier Rufus and Miriam had delivered the first of the upgraded war-machines that would be installed in the towers of the new keep. For now, they would go on the walls of the old keep. Georges had needed the room in the forge at Sedgewick, and he could tell that Centurion Marcus had been itching to test out the new machines. A series of targets were being set up at various distances and Georges had included two dozen wooden ballistae bolts for practicing. The regular bolts with Dark St...
2022-11-21 15:03:22 +0000 UTC View PostBrain Burning. Posted stuff out of order. Wrote 10k yesterday and trying for 10k more today. Writathon pushes me to get more done and makes me wish I could just write every day, but makes me a little crazy.
================
To Woodrats disgust, the next two ships they explored contained nothing he considered as treasure. One was a tall three-master tilted at a 45 degree angle, making it difficult to explore. The dark cargo hold was the domain of salad and a large tentacled creat...
I've been debating where to slide in the chapter on Jack and decided it will be 214. Then we get back to our duo and their quest for a bigger boat.
Woodrat made the decision to head back to their little pile of wreckage and load up the ship's boat. A camp on the salad was too exposed a place at night and it bothered him. A group of charred sailors could attack, a beastie from the smoke could find them, or the salad might get frisky. After a life at sea, he wasn’t comfortabl...
2022-11-21 03:55:45 +0000 UTC View PostOf the secondary characters, Georges has slowly beome one of my favorites along with Rufus, McTeeth, and Zephyr. I see him as a very solid worker, who knows what he likes to do, and is happiest doing it. He wants to build things, whether its better catapults, perfectly straight roads, or huge fortresses. His entire focus is going to be on achieving goals. That doesn't mean he doesn't work well with others, quite the contrary. He knows he has to build a team, trade favors, and get others invol...
2022-11-20 23:06:25 +0000 UTC View PostGeorges was standing on the highest point of Rowan keep, which happened to be a pole that extended 200 feet into the air.
He'd needed a good view of the area from a tall point to make the best use of one of his skills. The highest point in Rowan Keep was barely a hundred feet up. His team of workers had built fifty feet of wooden scaffolding on top of the highest tower, and when that wasn't high enough, the workers added a long beam made from a tree shaved down to the size of a telepho...
The heat began rolling over Ozzy in waves. Woodrat quit struggling and went quiet after a bit of time, and Ozzy was feeling feverish. His heat was going up at a constant rate, with a spike as each new wave hit. What happened when he exceeded his limits? Woodrat had mentioned something about men who burst their furnaces, and that didn't sound pleasant. He lowered his heat by burning fuel and making smoke, until his smoke was at the limit. It was a temporary fix.
Everything he'd seen in...
If you want to know what Jack Fyrebeard looks like, imagine your well dressed dandy of a pirate who is lean and quick. Jack Sparrow fits this stereotype, but he wasn't the inspiration for Fyrebeard. But if we start with sparrow, replace the hair and beard with bright red hair ablaze with flames, and bring his gear up a few notches in quality, then you have an idea of how this god looks in my head. And he smiles. He smiles all the time.
He smiles because he's a trickster and a con-man,...
Writathon is a beast that I need to slay. I really wanted to do it, but felt bad giving extra love to one story and not the other. So I made the mistake of just deciding to write faster.
Normally I alternate back and forth, doing some work on Butcher for a Couple of chapters, and then some Milo stories. Writing faster means doing everything else faster, including making my brain go faster and remember all the details. Why can Milo do that? Because of my own wish fulfillment. I need a ...
Tweedle and Ringtail were waiting for him at the start of dinner. They had on sturdy outfits of dull brown, backpacks, a bandolier of knives, rope and grapples, bedrolls, and a bag of jelly beans. They'd had two bags, but had shared with Larry. Several of the smaller children snuck away from parents to listen to Larry tell stories after dinner, from the safety of nearby window close enough that they could listen. More people in the Hollow were warming up to Larry, but it was a slow process. A...
2022-11-16 02:39:13 +0000 UTC View Post