“The magic has been available since before most species ever make it to space, but cloning is still considered anathema in most cultures. Some, in desperation, turn to it as a means of procuring organs for the injured or sick, but for the most part, it has been almost entirely unexplored as a result of various cultural taboos. Yet as with most things that are driven beyond the limits of acceptability, among those who are already outlaws, acceptance of certain practices can be found.”<...
2025-08-22 16:00:08 +0000 UTC
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“If you’ve never travelled the stars, you’ve never lived. It sounds like a pilot’s bragging, but it speaks to a more fundamental truth of planetary civilization. There is a plateau that any sentient species eventually reaches when they run out of resources on their home planet or living space for their population. At that point, crises begin to emerge, and if the species has not taken steps to expand their horizons beyond the literal horizons of their world, those crises will cont...
2025-08-20 16:00:12 +0000 UTC
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“Do you like scantily clad members of the same and/or opposite genders of the same and/or other species? Do you like games of chance with a greater than 1 in 97560 odds? Do you enjoy drinking and/or consuming various narcotic substances until your judgment is impaired and you believe that you are having fun? Then come on down to the greatest casino/bar/drugstore/hotel/establishment in the known universe!”
—Glamrock Advertising Copy, First Draft
“Right, so...
2025-08-18 16:00:11 +0000 UTC
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“In so signing this contract, no sovereignty is ceded, nor rights abraded. Let it be known to all that any arrangement established by legal means can also be dissolved by such means if it is found that both parties are failing to maintain the agreement in good faith. In this matter, such good faith shall include treating the other party as if they, too, were behaving in good faith, without suspicion or undue attention given to their works and actions. Breach of this assumption of good c...
2025-08-15 16:00:16 +0000 UTC
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“A man who owes nothing to anybody is not free. For in his pursuit of freedom, he has instead found ascetism. Detachment is not freedom, it is simply the absence of all. It is only on the bridge of a ship that true freedom is found, when all of reality stretches out before you, not as an enemy to be faced but a frontier to be explored, that you finally understand the truth of freedom and its immensity.”
—Foreword to Introductions to Interplanetary Flight, Volume One, ...
2025-08-13 16:00:18 +0000 UTC
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“At various times throughout the development of the Empyrean, there have been crisis points when the entire enterprise could have crumbled. Times when internal disagreements or external pressures might have resulted in the dissolution of the system of government or the destruction of the political or trading power of the collective. Yet at each of these points, there has been an invisible hand guiding the Empyrean through troubled waters. Information that was pertinent to the situation ...
2025-08-11 16:00:15 +0000 UTC
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“When there is a failure of the Ardent crest to preserve the lives of our operative, their death is automatically reported. From there, visual confirmation by a ranking officer is required to certify the accuracy of the crest’s reading, and then it will be entered into official records. Friends and family of the deceased are contacted directly through the slate network to inform them of the death. If a visual confirmation cannot be made, statements are to be gathered from oth...
2025-08-08 16:00:11 +0000 UTC
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“When captured by any enemy, your first duty is to escape. If the opportunity presents itself to do the enemy material harm during that escape, it is advantageous, but no opportunity should be considered if it poses any degree of risk to that first duty. The second duty, when in the possession of the enemy, is to maintain silence. To give them no assistance in extracting information from you. What you do not say, they cannot hear. What they cannot hear, they cannot know that you know....
2025-08-08 16:00:11 +0000 UTC
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“Quake thee with thy tyrant’s gift.
Soulless flesh bars paths you seek.
Blossom wide the heart of stone.
Starbreaker awaken what lies beneath.”
—Prophecy of Aion Origin
“It is a fact universally acknowledged that there is an upper limit to what mages can achieve. Our progression to new heights of power is ever tempered by our mortal frame. Or more succinctly, the body can only contain so much mana before ...
2025-08-08 16:00:11 +0000 UTC
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“As one knows, the elves were the first of all people after the Aions vanished, ruling empires that stretched from one end of the galaxy to the other. Empires that were not born out of weakness, nor that were held onto through kindness. No, they were both forged and kept chained by the Varaelfin, the mage-warped caste of heartless warriors that every Ponadar kept and bred as if they were prized cattle. For more millennia than even the most ancient records reach back, they were responsib...
2025-08-08 16:00:11 +0000 UTC
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“How does one describe the indescribable? How does one learn the limits of the limitless? These are not idle fancies to the mage, and they are not philosophical conundrums to be pondered. They are the reality in which those who master their magic must face.”
—Arcanum Volitarus Precimiens, Haeshmalifrae Juniperwood
There were a lot of meaningful looks exchanged amongst the council members as Sylvas’ words echoed through the chamber. One that, afte...
2025-08-08 16:00:10 +0000 UTC
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“The resulting century of war as the Varaelfin shook off their chains was apocalyptic. Billions were slain. Planets were cracked. Even the stars themselves were sundered. But despite the price, the Varaelfin, now barely more than a legion in strength, eventually reached their victory and shattered the last Ponadar upon the mountains of Alvarhain, heralding the age that we all live in now. An age in which the God Reavers’ pacts and deeds have been purposefully lost to time, and a vigil...
2025-08-08 16:00:10 +0000 UTC
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“There are some things in our past that invoke true horror. Some things that we are truly, and I mean truly, not meant to preserve. Things that by just knowing about makes us…somehow worse than we were before. One of these things is the sealed histories of the Ponadar and the elves of the Empyrean Alliance. Yes, references to them exist in modern texts, identifying them as mages beyond measure. Powerful. Dangerous. All things that were true… are true. Yet any reader who has found th...
2025-08-08 16:00:10 +0000 UTC
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“Some posit that this limitation of manifestation is simple survival instinct; they are reliant upon a common affinity with the mana of a region to maintain their physical form while on this plane of existence, but I believe that we are looking upon them as creatures when they are fundamentally not. An eidolon is not a creature. It is, so far as I can ascertain, a natural formation of mana that happens to bear a resemblance to a creature. A pattern, much like a spellform, albeit infinit...
2025-08-08 16:00:10 +0000 UTC
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“The eidolon is magic given flesh. This state has not what we would call true sapience, but it certainly has imbued instinct and will to act into what should be mindless constructs. They are formed around their central affinity, with it providing the core of their form and habits, but the vast variety of eidolonic phenotypes observed suggests that either there is some deeper complexity to those affinities which has not yet been made clear or they are subject to some form of evolution de...
2025-08-08 16:00:10 +0000 UTC
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I'm afraid that those of you who are looking for a more in depth recounting of my rescue from Xylera's lair are going to be disappointed, because it was around then that I passed out. One moment I remembered staring at the patch in front of me, then the next I was elsewhere with a small, vaguely mousey woman looking over me in a room of pure white.
“Oh good, you're awake,” I heard her say the moment that my eyes started to open, the instant and heavy exhaustion that had fallen over ...
2025-07-14 23:33:50 +0000 UTC
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I found myself completely stunned as I stared at the shifting words and shapes that was the curse, the sheer shock of seeing what was in effect an ancient programming language here, of all places, pulling me out of the moment. I probably would have stayed there too had it not been for my earlier comment, which Xylera had wasted no time in picking up upon.
“Ah! Glory to the day, you can read it!” She said excitedly, her head dropping down until it was directly beside me. “And you a...
2025-07-13 14:52:05 +0000 UTC
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One of the biggest things that I’ve learned in my years away from earth, is that as a general rule dragons don’t generally scare or surprise.
And truthfully, why would they?
From the moment that they are born, they are not only physically stronger and smarter than most beings, but are also magically resilient, capable of shrugging off practically anything that could so much as bother them, be it blade or spell. Such a thing, as you would no doubt expect, breeds a kind o...
2025-06-25 19:07:47 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone!
We’re back again with another super exciting announcement – the official version of Starbreaker: Volume 3 is now available for both your reading and listening pleasure on Amazon! As I’m sure you long term followers already know - this series has been an absolute delight for me to write so far and ...
2025-06-24 04:00:06 +0000 UTC
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“And here’s one cheesy, meaty, bread platter as ordered,” I said upon my return to Joshua and Sandra who had found the aforementioned bench I’d pointed out to them and were peacefully leaning into one another.
“About perfect timing Matt!” Joshua said the moment that I showed them the food. “Sandy, here was a minute or two away from starting to snore.”
“As if you wouldn’t have been right behind me,” the woman countered with a good natured elbow as she snatched...
2025-06-10 17:00:12 +0000 UTC
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There are generally three emotions that most people experience when seeing a dragon for the first time.
Fear, as you’d expect, is right at the top of the list, for there are simply few things more primally terrifying than seeing a gargantuan, serpentine beast appear before them, its presence all but screaming danger.
Next most common, and also just as understandable, is awe. Awe at the magnificent creature that graced, no, blessed, you with their presence, the smoothnes...
2025-06-10 17:00:12 +0000 UTC
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So traditionally there are a few different ways a story like mine starts.
Getting hit by a truck and dying is probably the most common of them, cliche notwithstanding. Picking up a cursed item or book and getting whisked away is probably the next most popular trope, followed by magical caves, wardrobes, or freestanding circles of rocks. After all that, I think getting summoned as a hero or villain is probably the next most common, though I’m honestly not sure which may win out over th...
2025-06-10 17:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone! I hope that you are all enjoying Starbreaker: Volume 3 as you read along! We are almost right up to the end here and I hope you enjoy the big finish next week!
As a couple housekeeping notes since I will be away next week on some desperately needed vacation, Volume 3 of Starbreaker will only be available until June 21st for you all to catch up to. I'm sorry I know this is a very short window to binge the entire story - but with the book coming out soon on the 24th, I will ...
2025-06-10 16:50:30 +0000 UTC
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Valtoris ran his hands along the wings of the phoenix and dark fire trailed along behind his fingers, flaring off into the night sky. “There are times when I feel as though you are the only one in this vast cosmos who understands me.”
The bird was a predator, one of the fiercest in all of the cosmos, traveling between the stars, hunting other creatures of great arcane power. It would strike them with force to knock the strength from them, bear them down to solid ground, and then tea...
2025-06-09 16:01:19 +0000 UTC
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“War is not considered to be one of the elements that makes up the universe. Yet we classify eidolons under that category. The personifications of combat and destruction. Never has there been a mage with such an affinity, yet we accept the existence of eidolons because we accept in them there is the possibility of such evil.”
—Extinction Events: An Oral History of the Eidolon Incursions, Mackran Litchen
The stasis spell that had survived millennia could not...
2025-06-09 16:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“Everything the Alliance has told us, made us believe, is a lie. They are not our protectors. They are our jailors, controlling all that we see and hear. They work to keep us blind and dumb, placated, and weak, while they, the masters of all, gorge on the secrets the universe has to offer. That ends today. It is time we rise to take back what is rightfully ours. It’s time that we take back control of the truth.”
—Truthseeker propaganda, Anonymous
Sylvas t...
2025-06-08 16:00:03 +0000 UTC
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“There are many tools that one can use to further one’s goals, but none that must be used more sparingly than betrayal. When used correctly, it can allow for spectacular things, ridding oneself of rivals, plots, and conspiracies in a single fell stroke. However, should that stroke falter, should it be anything but absolute, then one risks creating an entrenched opponent unlike any other. One that will stop at nothing to see their vengeance.”
—The Necessity, Valtoris...
2025-06-07 16:00:05 +0000 UTC
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“Planetary Annihilators, very much fortunately, are among the least numerous of the eidolons that we encounter. It requires a massive amount of mana to not only birth but also sustain them. So more often than not their existence in any given place is limited by what is available to consume. An average worldsoul can grant them sufficient mana to remain functional for upwards of a century, but that is assuming that such a thing does not cause them to ascend beyond their planet’s reach. ...
2025-06-06 16:00:07 +0000 UTC
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“Time is not the enemy. Given time, every puzzle is solved, every problem surmounted, and every wound dressed. Triage is the difficult part, not the inevitable march of time. Which issues need to be addressed now, and which can become tomorrow’s problem. Which crisis will blossom to consume all things, and which will fade without someone pouring in the fuel of attention.”
—The Passage, Tor Hecante
Sylvas didn’t even have time to consent before Mira bega...
2025-06-05 16:00:08 +0000 UTC
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We've got some progress to share on the cover art front!! Here is the WIP of book 3's cover!
2025-06-05 12:43:31 +0000 UTC
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