“What is this?” Marco asked. “Why is this?” “It’s a stage. For people to do entertainment on. Surely you’ve seen one,” the woman said. “I me
“What is this?” Marco asked. “Why is this?”
“It’s a stage. For people to do entertainment on. Surely you’ve seen one,” the woman said.
“I mean, yeah,” Riv said. “But where do you get the actors and musicians and all?”
“Actors have their place. Most people who find themselves out here fin...
2025-08-11 21:14:57 +0000 UTC
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Elisa jumped right on the party. “You’ll find love one day, Riv. And then you will get her drunk enough that she still thinks it’s a good id
Elisa jumped right on the party. “You’ll find love one day, Riv. And then you will get her drunk enough that she still thinks it’s a good idea to cuddle with you the next morning.”
“Let me shoot them,” Aethe said. “We don’t need them, if you think about it. We can find others.”
“Not yet,” Marco said. “Wait ...
2025-08-10 21:00:01 +0000 UTC
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The wizard’s house was a longer walk than any of them expected, though Marco could tell his team didn’t mind. They were still glowing with t
The wizard’s house was a longer walk than any of them expected, though Marco could tell his team didn’t mind. They were still glowing with the joy of brand-new gear.
Unfortunately, despite making their way around so many houses, he hadn’t been able to pick out something for himself. The way his class worked was simple and very conve...
2025-08-09 20:30:12 +0000 UTC
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Riv caught on right away.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. You staying alive keeps all of us alive.”
Everyone tossed their coin bags on the table while Marco tried to arrange his face in such a way that didn’t indicate that the money they were spending was just a small fraction of their total wealth. The price that the Barbarian had quoted was scarily close to what they had on them in person. It didn’t matter what the true price of the equipment was if the seller cou...
2025-08-08 20:19:08 +0000 UTC
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“Welcome to Quilton,” the smaller of the two men said. He had a pair of handguns at his side, and Marco suspected from the way he wore them that his class allowed him to use both of them effectively at once. “I’m Tauncy, a guard and the authority on new entries. This person with the fighting staff is Bhul, a big heap of cheap muscle who follows me around.”
“I’m his brother,” Bhul grunted. “And also his boss, though he doesn’t seem to understand that I could fire him ...
2025-08-07 21:57:57 +0000 UTC
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The crew assembled around the mast, each doing their best to keep the little fairies at bay as they swept towards them like floodwater. Marco fired his gun wildly as he sliced back and forth with his rapier. Elisa slammed her palms into the ground again and again, making little explosive blasts of fire that seemed to do a very good job of keeping her side clear. Riv, like Marco, had nothing better than sweeping his club back and forth, making Fairy fly around every time but slowly letting the...
2025-08-05 20:22:42 +0000 UTC
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“So we’re sailing towards occupied territory.” Riv said.
“Yes.” Marco had his hand on the wheel, but was hardly paying attention to the sailing. The ship was moving fast in the direction they wanted to to go, and that was good enough for the moment. “We are.”
“And we don’t know what that territory is occupied by. Could be people, monsters, monsters of people.” Riv said as he raised his hands above his head to make an imposing pose. “Undead gods. Terrors of th...
2025-08-04 23:36:04 +0000 UTC
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Riv woke up a few moments later, none the worse for wear besides feeling like he had taken a dump in an icy part of the sea. As soon as Marco confirmed no longer-term issues, he sped back to the island to find the old man who was the key to everything.
When they found him, Thatch was sitting in the same part of the temple as he had been when they first met. Hunched over, he was busy tracing something in the sand with a stick. He looked up as they approached, as bland and unsurprised as ...
2025-08-03 21:04:35 +0000 UTC
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Riv let out a long breath. “You want us to sink it?”
“I don’t know if you can. But if it shows itself again. I want you to try,” the man said.
Marco didn’t answer immediately. He just looked toward the ship, still moored safely in the cove. The breeze had picked up, and the tide had begun to roll in harder.
“If it shows,” Marco said, “we’ll try to deal with it. One way or another.”
"Thanks." The old man set down his bowl. "I didn't even h...
2025-08-02 19:31:02 +0000 UTC
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The forest was quiet and surprisingly uniform. There were no birds, no animals, and no changes in terrain. It was all just green and gray, the same few trees repeated endlessly like they had been copied over and over. The crew's boots made soft crunching sounds on the thin layer of dry needles and twigs that carpeted the path. No one said much. Tension crept in like a mist.
After an hour of walking, the path widened slightly and the trees fell away just enough to reveal what they were l...
2025-08-01 19:51:41 +0000 UTC
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The tentacle struck like a whip, smashing across the deck and ripping away one of the railings. Riv roared and charged, swinging an axe into the rubbery flesh. The impact was less than it would have been with his club since his class was called Sturdy Clubber, but where the club would have likely bounced off, the axe cut in. Marco took a shot at the kraken's eye, then rushed in to stab the same tentacle before it found a grip on anything.
"NO!" Aethe yelled. "Marco, the wheel. ...
2025-07-31 20:04:45 +0000 UTC
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Marco checked the description for the Tortoise Gull’s Conquest.
<+
Armored Sails
The sails of your ship have gained a slight resistance to slashing and piercing damage.
+>
That was how his Conquest skill worked. Every time they defeated some odd monster or some especially hard challenge, there was a chance his ship or equipment would grow from it. Marco declined the upgrade. It didn’t make sense to get rid of the stronger Crabshell Clad...
2025-07-30 20:19:39 +0000 UTC
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The ocean was a big place.
People usually described it as probably infinite. People had climbed aboard big ships packed with food and sailed into the unknown, sometimes traveling for years before returning. Wild-eyed and messy-haired, they told of waters that stretched on forever, punctuated by island after island, monster after monster, and wonders without end.
Or so Elisa was telling Marco. He was having a hard time believing it.
“It’s just infinite,” Elisa stated. ...
2025-07-29 20:43:11 +0000 UTC
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One of the things about writing is that you don’t always get to choose the perfect idea and write about that. A hundred percent of everybody has this problem to some extent or another, because there are only so many ideas a person can have, and you don’t get them all at once. You are choosing from a short list of of potential ideas in the best of times, trying to figure out what you can write the best.
The first two times I wrote books, I got very lucky in this process. The Dead...
2025-07-27 19:28:20 +0000 UTC
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Marco woke up in his room, or at least one of the many rooms on the island that looked exactly like it. He was pleased to find he woke up alive when not waking up or waking up dead somewhere were options. He didn’t feel quite ready for the afterlife or lack of it. That revulsion towards perishing only grew stronger when he saw Aethe already sitting by his bed, quietly reading a book on the Outer Seas.
“Is that good?” Marco asked.
“It’s lies. Probably.” Aethe folded the...
2025-07-26 19:36:18 +0000 UTC
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“That’s right, little captain. Everyone has their little tricks. You wanted your friends to be safe. For now, they are. But that tug you feel in your legs? That’s the whirlpool sucking you to the bottom. You only got a bit of it, but your friends can hardly move by now. Every step they take will burn like fire and cut like knives. Real damage, real pain for every broken step the skill allows them. They’ll stay put until I come back. I’ll still get them. It’s just a delay.”
2025-07-25 20:54:56 +0000 UTC
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Marco pushed another dose of his magic into the ship. It was all that he could do at the moment. For reasons he couldn’t entirely explain, he didn’t need Elisa to explain what was going on. He felt every cannon shot that hit The Foolish Endeavor and a fire was starting to burn in his heart. “Noted. Not much we can do about it now, anyway. Just stay under cover, all right? No more taking risks like that. I’m giving it everything I have.”
The enemy fire continued as the...
2025-07-24 20:30:02 +0000 UTC
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When night finally fell, it was Aethe who moved the out of the trees. Marco watched her flit from cover to cover, getting to the first boat and disappearing down its hatch like a greased shadow.
“Explain how this is safe again,” Marco said. “Please, Elisa.”
“It’s not safe. It’s a mission involving dozens of pirate ships.”
“Just tell me it’s safe, then tell me how it works,” Marco said, more urgently. “I didn’t ask for honesty.”
“So the way...
2025-07-24 20:00:34 +0000 UTC
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“How are we not there yet?” Marco slashed vines and branches out of his way with his rapier. It wasn’t really built for the work, but the upgrades it had absorbed from dead pirates made that less of an issue than he would have thought. “We’ve been walking for days.”
“Hours,” Elisa said, double-checking her estimate with the position of the sun. “Not even that. Traveling through rough terrain takes time, Marco. It’s not like in the books.”
“And why the hell ...
2025-07-23 20:00:09 +0000 UTC
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As soon as the door closed behind him, the woman’s forehead hit the tabletop.
“Marco, you sure do bring me interesting problems,” she said. “I don’t think you realize just how close that was.”
“I got a sense. What are the normal rules of parlay, anyway?”
“It’s an obscure law,” Elisa explained. “Parlay with a stationary target, like a settlement, comes with some risk for the island. When parlaying, they have to allow a certain number of troops on their...
2025-07-23 19:33:34 +0000 UTC
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Frisk’s step was more like a leap performed at light speed. Marco saw the captain tensing for a moment before he cleared a good eighth of a mile of ocean water in a single blurred movement. He had been feeling tough lately after taking down so many pirates, but that all evaporated in a single instant as he came to realize what the captain had done was actually an attack, a single rapier thrust that had pierced across a chasm of air to a single, chosen pinpoint of space between the old woman...
2025-07-22 20:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Marco nodded. “She took a risk on us. Feels right to pay that forward. I just hope she can use it.”
He moved to the rail, watching his prize bob slightly in the waves. “We tow it, unload what we can, and let her decide. Maybe she rebuilds it. Maybe it becomes a tavern. Maybe it burns. Not our call.”
They worked in what was starting to be a well-practiced way, lashing ropes on the new ship until it would follow theirs. Riv actually stayed behind on the other craft, working ...
2025-07-22 19:37:28 +0000 UTC
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Marco turned back to where he knew the captain must be by now. The man was rising to his feet near the wheel, carrying what looked like a halberd. A guard weapon, really, not something you normally saw at sea and not something Marco had ever had to deal with. His armor was expensive and glistening. Marco had hoped the enemy ship was just specialized for speed and that this was where most of the value of their ship came from. It now seemed it was specialized for speed and for crew quality, at ...
2025-07-21 20:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Marco sat alone in the ship's cramped navigation chamber, which was really just the edge of Elisa's bed. He was eyeing the map they'd sketched, surprised at how many assumptions were baked into it. Everything Elisa wasn't sure about was marked with a question mark, and more things on the map had that mark than didn't. To be fair, it seemed she was sure there was something there under each of the question marks, just not what any particular thing was because it had been decades since the last ...
2025-07-21 19:17:50 +0000 UTC
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As the sun set, they saw lights ahead. Aethe climbed the rigging for a better look.
"Lanterns," she said. "Patterned. Some kind of signal. Could be trade related, I guess?"
"Could be," Marco said. "I'll bring us in slow."
The lights belonged to a single structure, a huge derelict ship chained to two enormous floating barrels. On the deck, a small marketplace had been built and then expanded. Hand-painted signs advertised various goods and services from the prow back, but it ...
2025-07-21 00:32:47 +0000 UTC
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Marco swung the wheel, sending The Foolish Endeavor in a tight hook toward the pirate ship. He pumped raw power into his craft, channeling every bit of energy he could into movement. The craft lurched forward in the water like it was being pushed by an invisible hand. The other ship was a step too slow to react, which let The Foolish Endeavor line up perfectly perpendicular to the broadside of the enemy's boat.
"We boarding?" Riv rushed past Marco to the front of the s...
2025-07-20 20:00:07 +0000 UTC
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After another ten minutes of maneuvers, Riv stomped down the stairs from below deck, a notebook-wielding Elisa in tow. "She's stuffed to the gills, Captain. I've seen warships with less rations."
“Have you really?” Marco asked.
"Well, no, it's a figure of speech."
"They packed efficiently too. I see why Kelda wanted us to take note of it. It's art down there, once you look close." Elisa flashed her notebook at him, where column after column of inventory had been made. "E...
2025-07-20 19:30:11 +0000 UTC
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"It's an evil class. No big deal," Kelda said with an even tone. “You see a lot of them out around the edges of things. It's only back there that they get rare.”
"What?"
"You aren't real quick on the uptake, are you?" Kelda moved closer and shook her head. "Tell me, Marco. Do you think of the ocean as big?"
"Yeah? I mean, it took us days and days to get here. Even with a shortcut."
Kelda shook her head. “That's what I thought. You little island folk never really ...
2025-07-19 19:40:01 +0000 UTC
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Kelda caught them before they could actually get to digging.
"Pirates," she said, "are on my mind today. They've been getting more aggressive, as you saw. I talked to Floater yesterday, and he told me exactly how easy your last battle with them was, which means they've gotten entirely too confident."
"I wondered about that." Marco sat down across the table from Kelda after she waved for some people to bring them food. "What is your idea here?"
"Well, to be clear, I wasn't th...
2025-07-19 19:11:35 +0000 UTC
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Riv handed his pack off to Aethe, rolled up his sleeves, and started digging. The forest floor gave way to him like it was made from marshmallow, and his shovel cut through roots and soil alike with ease. A few minutes later, the obsidian-like rock had grown from the size of a few fists pressed together to a bigger domed surface about the size of a kitchen table.
“This is worked.” Riv ran his hands across the stone. “It’s smooth. Consistent. This is man-made. Judging by what I...
2025-07-18 20:50:02 +0000 UTC
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