— Speaker Shan —
“Perfect. Just perfect~…” A grin grew across his face.
He couldn’t stop himself, not in the face of this new development. Joyous opportunity, just what their cause needed. These sunset fools would be distracted now. They’d be watching closel...
2025-08-26 00:36:00 +0000 UTC View Post
[AN: Just some Heather/Hermione/Luna refresher pics to start us off. They have aged, after all (~20-21 now).]
— Hermione —
It was the morning of their second day in ...
2025-08-21 23:56:48 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“Oh, poor girl…” Didi sighed upon hearing of Marika’s initial shenanigans with Destined Death. It was a sympathetic sigh, but far from an approving one. “That’s a terrible trap to fall into, especially in one’s first days of godhood.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t be so quick to judge, my Death,” I said, defending Marika. “Not when you don’t know the full story. Destined Death was… not as it sounds.”
To illustrate my point,...
2025-08-17 23:59:17 +0000 UTC View Post
— Hades —
“Oaf!”
“Pruddish scholar!”
“You without a thought in your head but waves and shaking earth!”
“And you with too many meaningless thoughts, so you might never see the truth!”
“Relinquish your titles and take only the name ‘Horse-Fucker’!”
“Relinquish yours and take only ‘Bird-Shit for Brains’!”
“Whoreuncle!”
“Niecevirgin!”
Hades could only sigh from the sidelines. No matt...
2025-08-14 00:45:37 +0000 UTC View Post
AMBERLEY II: INITIAL UPLIFT
“I’ve been named a heretic by oppressive and stagnant powers that be. And for what? Wishing to innovate, to advance, to better humanity? I am faithful to the God-Emperor, to the Omnissiah, to Humanity itself. I wish only to spread His progress and His design. If that will see me personally damned, so be it. My sacrifice will be a worthy herald for the advent of Truth.”
— Logis Magos Pree Yith in a private testimo...
2025-08-09 00:03:59 +0000 UTC View Post
CIAPHAS IV: DAWNSGRACE
“Here, a new beginning dawns. Here, and nowhere else, we lay a brilliant, glimmering foundation. Here, something unmatched in greatness will rise. We stand against the passing of time, against ashes to ashes, and against dust to dust. Callous forces beyond our control will attempt to ruin all we build. But so long as the dawn rises with each new day, the chance to be better than we were remains.”
— The once-lord of Dawn...
2025-08-05 23:34:36 +0000 UTC View Post
LYONEL I: THE GRIEF-STRICKEN KING
“Even in the most trying of times, the gears of governance must continue to turn. Bureaucracy and recordkeeping and logistics and infrastructure, and yes, even corruption — all are necessary to the lives and societies we know. So, through grief and glory, strife and success, hardship and hard work, dutiful men turn the axles they have access to. This is what keeps the world whole and working.”
— St...
2025-08-02 00:50:49 +0000 UTC View Post
RHAENYRA I: THE REALM’S DELIGHT, THE REALM’S DESPAIR
“Old or Drowned, Seven-in-One or Fourteen Flames, the gods will always have surprises in store for us. ’Tis the way of life, of grief, and of triumph. ’Tis how we act and react that defines us as faithful.
“Sometimes, even the smallest of men have pivotal roles to play. Sometimes, even the largest will fade into obscurity. And, when the time comes for immortality after death, it only takes one man...
2025-07-29 23:33:06 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“Ophis, I need you to roll two checks for me,” I said. “The first… We’ll call it Initiative, though you’re not going to be in combat. It’s the Initiative for your sleepwalking, more accurately. Just 1d10 to see how you walk, with no set Difficulty except that a 1 will injure you. Then, the second will be a Perception/Arcane Awareness check for your oracular ability. Difficulty 6.”
“Un,” Ophis nodded in understanding.
“3,”...
2025-07-25 16:22:56 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“The night is dark and the day is bright. Both are full of terrors. You may be some of them. Eventually… One day, you might be powerful, unbound, enough to wield the spark of creation on your tongue and fingertips, unchecked by all but reality itself.
“But for now, you are seven searching souls, cast into a side of the world you’ve never known, Awakened to things better left unknown. Listen closely. Question frequently. Hoard every sc...
2025-07-20 23:11:32 +0000 UTC View Post
AMBERLEY I: ROYALTY'S FIRST CONTACT
“I fear not the warrior or persecutor or tyrant. They are simple men at their cores, relying on the pure strength of violence to shore up their inherent and insidious weaknesses. No, more than them, I fear the ones who rise so high on the back of their deceptions and manipulations. No man is more dangerous than one who knows the utility of a few well-placed lies. I should know. I am one of them.”
— Duke Cle...
2025-07-14 23:47:14 +0000 UTC View Post
CIAPHAS III: VIOLENCE IN DEBUT
“It’s a shame that hurting and thinking don’t often go hand in hand. Many situations call for a unique and exceptional blend of knowing your enemy and knowing the strength of your arm. When that fails, pure violence is a poor substitute. But it is still a substitute.”
— Founding Saint Arabella the Liberator, Order of the Sacred Rose.
— Ciaphas Cain —
“One strap and f...
2025-07-10 23:51:07 +0000 UTC View Post
CIAPHAS II: BEAUTIFUL DECEPTION
“Some wise and not-so-wise men call me a hero. I can’t help but laugh at that sometimes. I’m far from what they think of me. In my most private thoughts, it’s not ‘hero’ I call myself, but Fortune’s Fool.”
— Ciaphas Cain, confiding in Inquisitor Amberley Vail late at night after a personal affair better left undescribed.
— Ciaphas Cain —
“Emperor be g...
2025-07-06 23:19:27 +0000 UTC View Post
CIAPHAS I: ... STILL ALIVE!
Editorial Note:
Those who know of the Cain Archive will likely also know of me, Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Amberley Vail, to some degree. At least, in reference to the Archive. I have long been associated with this amusing and bemusing collection of memoirs, as both editor after the fact and something of a recurring character within.
If you are stumbling across the Cain Archive for the first time with this,...
2025-07-02 16:14:20 +0000 UTC View Post[TLDR: The occasional Dead End chapter will continue, but I’m going to be turning the rest of my focus from The Grind to a new story: ‘Ser Ciaphas of House Cain: A Westerosi Vacation’ (or something like that, it’s a working title).]
So… I’ve been saying I’m going to continue The Grind, but while writing the latest Dead End chapter, I came to change my mind. You know how it goes: had a brainworm idea, muse latched onto it, won’t let go, etc.
...
2025-06-27 15:57:05 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“-There I was, on a, Enthusiastic Nighttime Walk™, coming one way, with the Crimson Fucker going the other. ‘Course, if I knew that back then, I would’ve turned around on a dime and turned in for the night…”
It was good to be back where we belonged. The vacations were fun, but the Dead End was where we always returned. Didi, Alice, and I settled back in, with no one the wiser to us having been gone for a few months on our time. To the Dead...
2025-06-27 15:54:58 +0000 UTC View Post
— Varys —
King’s Landing was not a city that tended towards ever sleeping. Some might call it the center of the realm. Varys disagreed. The center of the Seven Kingdoms wasn’t any one place; it was the people — differing and disparate, lordly and small — who kept the realm alive.
Though he supposed, if there were ever one place to be, it would be King’s Landing. In front of the throne that held sway over countless millions of lives. Set beside the ot...
2025-06-22 16:18:49 +0000 UTC View Post
— The Stranger —
Turning, turning tides fell upon an old town by a sunset sea. IT watched. IT lingered, always out of sight. IT guided and guarded, damned and destroyed. IT was the end that came for all.
The people of that old town by that sunset sea were stuck, split, and shattered. Magicks meant to protect made the situation worse from within. More entered. None left. Foreign men trapped beside men whose ancestors had walked these lands since th...
2025-06-19 22:51:37 +0000 UTC View Post
— Willas Tyrell —
After a… stressful, to say the least… arrival in Oldtown, their host was finally setting foot on Battle Isle, the Hightower looming high above. They came with Wizards and Witches, a Prince and the younger generation of House Tyrell, an Archmaester and a Sand Snake.
Yet Willas Tyrell, Heir to Highgarden, couldn’t help but feel sorry for the men-at-arms they’d been forced to leave behind at the Hightower docks. He gave a short ...
2025-06-14 23:58:36 +0000 UTC View Post
— Atlas —
We walked through a picturesque scene cast in green. Some several hundred thousand people were living under the Hightower’s immediate dominion, and now, under House Hightower’s color of war in a rather literal sense. The green war flame touched everything, a constant reminder to be wary, to be vigilant, to stand ready to fight.
“Gods be good, New and Old…” Renly muttered.
“Methinks our stay here is going to be slightly eventful,” ...
2025-06-10 23:30:30 +0000 UTC View Post
— Atlas —
Highgarden was a grand show, a genuine exhibition of feudal politics.
The capital of the Reach. The ‘Heart of Chivalry’ (though not Knighthood, for the Vale still held that claim close to heart). The axis on which 12 million people revolved — living, dying, thriving.
It was the most populous and productive Kingdom in the realm. Its lands were fertile and vast compared to everywhere else, bar the North. They were ru...
2025-06-06 23:15:54 +0000 UTC View Post
All across Vale, the first snow of the year fell. Chill in the air, white on the streets, it should’ve been the perfect time to stay inside. But Vale was a city of millions, one of only five major civilization centers on Remnant. It was an axis on which the world revolved. As such, it was lively and bustling even as the year showed its first signs of closure.
A time of closure… But only for the year. There would be another, and another after it, and another after that, and so on. On...
2025-06-01 21:29:54 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“-Never, never, NEVER do it again, Jaune. Please, just talk to us,” Juniper wrapped up her lecture with an earnest plea. “Next time, we’ll figure something out. Together. As a family. I couldn’t bear to lose you, not like that. You don’t know how utterly horrifying it is to wake up to your son missing from his bed without a word…”
After many, many exchanged words, Jaune looked suitably chastised. My older sis...
2025-05-27 23:26:17 +0000 UTC View Post
From: OzoftheClocktower @ Beacon.edu
Subject: Dead Ex-Wife
To: StudentBody @ Beacon.edu
My ex-wife is dead. I’m throwing a party. Classes are dismissed for the day. If you wish to join me in righteous celebration, there will be free food and punch in the Auditorium tonight at 8. Enjoy the free day and the party if you choose to join me. That is all.
Sent from my scroll
P.S. Glynda, reading over my shoulder, cla...
2025-05-23 21:20:07 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“-But really, it’s a matter of preference. And personally, I prefer not dying to stupid, entirely avoidable complications, such as clients who think they know better than the Hunters they specifically hired to protect them. Our times come when they come, but we shouldn’t seek them out a moment sooner if we can help it.
“That’s why Escort missions are the scourge of Remnant. More exhausting than any Search and Destroy missio...
2025-05-19 23:25:59 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“For years, you’ve trained to become warriors. And today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest,” Ozpin said.
Beacon’s incoming class was lined up at the top of a cliff overlooking said forest. Nearly a hundred young adults, all potential Huntsmen and Huntresses, were arranged and listening closely to every word out of Ozpin’s lips. They’d learn better soon enough… Ozpin was a great Huntsman, a good man, and a half-decen...
2025-05-15 16:22:46 +0000 UTC View Post
— Jaune Arc —
He still felt sick. Air travel didn’t agree with him at all, Jaune found. No, it just ended in upchucking, embarrassment, and terrible first impressions. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be a recurring problem… Huntsmen didn’t fly all that often, right…?
Even just thinking it, Jaune knew that couldn’t be true. How else would they get to their dangerous and impressive missions across the world? Gods, why did he want this again…?
No… ...
2025-05-11 22:19:53 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“Sean…?” Barbara asked warily, incredulously. “What exactly are we getting ourselves into here?”
Jason was similarly bewildered, “How the hell do you have a sister and an extended family here? We just arrived?!”
“Mr. Barkeep moves quickly,” Damian just nodded. “This is hardly a surprise.”
“So…” Alice cocked her head curiously. “I have an aunt and new cousins?”
Didi was already smiling widely, “More F...
2025-05-07 23:34:45 +0000 UTC View Post
— Sean —
“Hmm…” I hummed to myself, seemingly out of the blue, as Didi and I closed up for the night. “The Bat kids have been in a real mood lately.”
A few days after Raven’s ‘ritual’, things had mostly returned to normal. She’d come back for more once already. The insatiable half-Demon wasn’t about to give up real pleasure and satisfaction now that she’d gotten a taste of it. I was more than happy to fuck her mindbroken as often as she w...
2025-05-03 01:03:34 +0000 UTC View PostThis is mostly just to get a feel for what people want to see most from the coming arc.
2025-04-28 23:47:31 +0000 UTC View Post