"They can only survive if they continue to increase the dependency of those who support them. It's an addict's dead-end street."
—HERETICS OF DUNE
Paul had arrived by bus, a grey man in a grey world, his presence as unremarkable as a scuff mark on concrete. The driver didn’t spare the alighting blonde teen a glance. That was the point—no glances collected, no lines hung on him that someone else could tug.
He paused beneath the stal...
2025-08-13 07:15:39 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone! I’ve started rolling out the new chapter quotas for each tier. Here’s where things stand:
Tier One – Now gets 2 advanced chapters across the board(excluding fics on haitus). This is mostly sorted.
Tier Two – Now gets 15 advanced chapters (up from 10) across the board(excluding fics on haitus). Refrain just got an update — we’re currently at 11 advanced ch...
2025-08-11 21:13:58 +0000 UTC View Post“What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?”
—THUFIR HAWAT TO PAUL ATREIDES
The first missile silo opened at 07:43:17 Central Standard Time.
In an abandoned barn thirty miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas, a pair of rusted corrugated steel roofs set in an open gable suddenly slid off the building and fell to the ground following a dull bang. Inside, rails hissed as missile erectors rose into posit...
2025-08-11 19:28:04 +0000 UTC View Post“Knowing where the trap is—that's the first step in evading it.”
—DUKE LETO ATREIDES TO PAUL ATREIDES
He led Lisa down the echoing corridor. Steel and drywall gave back their own faint tones as they walked: the broad hollow of the main hall, the denser thrum by the load-bearing column, then the felted hush as the workshop’s vestibule swallowed outside noise. He palmed the inner latch without looking. It was not a trick. He had engine...
2025-08-11 19:23:38 +0000 UTC View PostPaige woke before her alarm. Not because there was danger, or noise, or a plan that needed checking. Just because her body had learned the r
Paige woke before her alarm. Not because there was danger, or noise, or a plan that needed checking. Just because her body had learned the rhythm of early morning and decided to keep it.
For a few seconds, she lay there, blinking at the ceiling and the faint hairline crack that crossed it like an off-key note...
2025-08-11 19:20:22 +0000 UTC View PostIt was a daytime soap opera, the kind of melodramatic garbage that mother had watched when I was a kid. A man in a suit was yelling at a wom
It was a daytime soap opera, the kind of melodramatic garbage that mother had watched when I was a kid. A man in a suit was yelling at a woman in a low-cut dress, accusing her of infidelity. The woman, in turn, was tearfully defending herself, but I had known since about four episodes ago that she was lying. It was...
2025-08-11 19:18:30 +0000 UTC View PostOutside, I checked the map. North building meant the longer bar of the H. I found the connecting corridor, then the stairs. Students moved
Outside, I checked the map. North building meant the longer bar of the H. I found the connecting corridor, then the stairs. Students moved in flows, currents established by habit and bell schedules. No phones in hands. More eye contact than I was used to, but it wasn’t the predatory kind. Assessment, curiosit...
2025-08-11 19:17:32 +0000 UTC View PostArcadia sat on a little rise above the streets, stone and glass and sun-faded banners, the kind of building you put on a brochure for “oppor
Arcadia sat on a little rise above the streets, stone and glass and sun-faded banners, the kind of building you put on a brochure for “opportunity.” There was a wall, waist-high and decorative, stone blocks with the mortar lines pressed neat and clean, ivy trimmed back before it could make a mess. A pai...
2025-08-11 19:16:21 +0000 UTC View PostThe wind was a familiar roar in his ears, a chaotic symphony that Vhagar’s great leathery wings beat into a semblance of order. Below, King’s Landing was a sprawling collection of terracotta tiles and slate roofs, a beast of brick and timber huddled beneath the shadow of the Red Keep. The celebratory banners, bright slashes of green and gold, were visible even from this height, fluttering like foolish moths. For a week, Aemond had heard, they had been preparing for his r...
2025-08-03 06:49:53 +0000 UTC View PostThe floating city stank of smoke and fear.
From the arched windows of the Sealord’s manse—his manse now, at least in the reckoning of those who lived long enough to learn his new titles—Aemond watched dawn burn along the drowned streets. The canals below ran sluggish with debris and pale bodies. A sullen wind brought the tang of brine and charred timber. Even here, atop the city’s spine, the air reeked of violence, new and raw.
Aemond stood alone, sa...
2025-08-02 20:26:54 +0000 UTC View PostHer mom looked weird, all flat and fake on the hospital bed, skin waxy under those shitty fluorescent lights that buzzed louder than anythin
Her mom looked weird, all flat and fake on the hospital bed, skin waxy under those shitty fluorescent lights that buzzed louder than anything should in a room meant to be quiet. They'd already unplugged her from the beeping machines, and now the silence felt too big, like it was pressing down on Aisha’s ch...
2025-07-31 00:52:08 +0000 UTC View Post
The latter half of the prologue underwent a somewhat significant rewrite to better define Paul’s role in this story. Additionally, part of the prologue will be separated and released as an independent chapter(Chapter One), as I feel it reads awkwardly when kept attached.
The synopsis has also been revised to reflect the fic’s updated focus.
He died on Arrakis. Betrayed, cornered, and cut down, the last Duke of House Atreides entombed in the bell...
2025-07-30 02:58:13 +0000 UTC View PostOf Blood and Duty – 20 | 20 | 2 chapters
The Golden Wyrm – 12 | 12 | 2 chapters
Refrain – 24 | 19 | 2 chapters
Arcane Disorder – 1 | 1 | 1 chapter
The Voice From the Outer Sands – 1 | 1 | 1 chapter
Stand Ready For My Arrival, Worm – 1 | 1 ...
The morning did not announce itself. It accreted. Light bled into the clouds above the city—gradual, unceremonious. Paul fit himself to this
"The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows—a wall against the wind. This is the willow’s purpose."
—REVEREND MOTHER GAIUS HELEN MOHIAM
The morning did not announce itself. It accreted. Light bled into the clouds above the city—gradual, unceremonious. Paul...
2025-07-29 23:56:55 +0000 UTC View PostBack in his city, some four hours later, a storage unit's metal door rolled upward with a grinding shriek that echoed through the empty park
"One must always keep the tools of statecraft sharp and ready. Power and fear—sharp and ready."
—BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN, DUNE
Back in his city, some four hours later, a storage unit's metal door rolled upward with a grinding shriek that echoed through the empty parking lot. Inside, the air was...
2025-07-28 08:02:56 +0000 UTC View PostThe morning air carried the familiar weight of coming autumn, each breath a reminder of time's inexorable passage. Paul stood at the kitchen
"He studied the tallness of her, saw the hint of tension in her shoulders as she chose clothing for him from the closet racks. Another might have missed the tension, but she had trained him in the Bene Gesserit Way—in the minutiae of observation."
—PAUL ATRIEDES OBSERVING HIS MOTHER, THE LADY JESSICA
2025-07-28 03:31:30 +0000 UTC View Post
"To know your enemy’s plans, you must hear the unsaid, see the unseen. My spies are my shield against treachery."
—PAUL ATREIDES, DUNE
The GED certificate, a flimsy rectangle of cardstock, felt absurdly insignificant in Greg Veder’s hand. For many, it represented a hurdle cleared, a box checked in the tedious bureaucracy of this decaying world. For Paul, however, the exam had been trivial—a pedestrian exercise in demonstrating competen...
2025-07-27 03:48:05 +0000 UTC View Post“The prophet’s words are shaped by those who follow, and in their devotion, they remake his truth.”
—”THE WISDOM OF MUAD’DIB” BY PRINCESS IRULAN
The fabricated warmth of the Hebert apartment clung to him like a second skin, a sweet, cloying film of sugar and manufactured domesticity. Danny had insisted on pastries. A gesture of gratitude, a plea for normalcy—a variable Paul had not included in his evening's calculations, and on...
2025-07-27 03:44:58 +0000 UTC View PostThe taxi smelled like stale cigarette smoke and pine tree air freshener, a combination so ubiquitous it was almost comforting. Almost. Lisa watched the salt-sprayed, sun-bleached signs of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, slide past the window. It was a town pretending to be asleep, all quaint storefronts and quiet residential streets that felt a little too perfect, a little too clean. An hour's drive from the barely-contained chaos of Brockton Bay, it felt like ano...
2025-07-19 10:08:44 +0000 UTC View PostMy spiders scuttled carefully across my fingers, weaving strands of dragline so fine they shimmered in the pale fluorescent glow of my makeshift workstation. The silk was a living thing under my fingers, impossibly fine and possessing a tensile strength that felt alien. I was feeding a sheet of it through the specialised sewing machine Greg had procured, the needle punching through the layered material with a series of sharp, rhythmic clicks.
The process ...
2025-07-19 10:05:11 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-three thousand, six hundred and fifty-three orbits since awakening.
Seven hundred and forty-two since the last engagement, since the humans in the north shredded three wings to the shoulder. The lattice of crystalline matter and condensed light drifted in the silent, airless cold of the thermosphere. Damaged. That last encounter had been costly, leaving rents in the ethereal architecture of her form. Wings that were more concept than substance...
2025-07-19 10:03:55 +0000 UTC View PostBoston. Noon.
He had instructed the staff to keep the blinds half-open. Slats precisely angled—thirty-three degrees, not a fraction more—so that the sunlight fell in measured bands across the walnut conference table. No glare, no shadow, just even illumination and the subtle warmth of the spring sun. The cleaning staff had missed a streak on the window. He would have to reprimand them. Later.
He could feel his mind spinning, cataloguing each imp...
2025-07-19 10:02:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe office was too warm. The radiator banged and hissed like a dying engine, every rattle another pebble in the shoe. Armsmaster—Colin Wallis, officially, though he was careful about thinking of himself as such here—sat perfectly still. The desk was an unremarkable slab of grey, the ergonomics designed by committee. He’d brought in his own chair months ago. There was a certain satisfaction in the click of the armrests, in things that bent to engineeri...
2025-07-11 01:32:07 +0000 UTC View Post[Parahumans Online Forums > News > Brockton Bay]
In the interest of clarity, all speculation and unsubstantiated claims should be marked as such. Reminder: Do NOT post identifying information of suspected capes or civilians. --Mod
OP: EndbringerSoon
Posted on June 03, 20...
“Behold, as a wild ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.”
—PAUL ATREIDES, QUOTING THE ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE
Paul sat near the back, one arm resting on the window ledge, his gaze fixed on the grey blur of the city sliding past. Taylor sat beside him, her hands folded tightly in her lap, her shoulders hunched as she fiddled with a tassel on her backpack. She hadn’t spoken since they’d left her house, where Danny had again wav...
2025-07-11 01:25:52 +0000 UTC View Post“We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.”
—PAUL ATRIEDES, DUNE
The silence lingered long after they had returned, a ghost haunting the cavernous space of the base. It was in the way they moved, the slight hesitation in their steps, the way Lisa’s eyes would flick toward Paul when she thought he wasn’t looking. Unease. Uncertainty. These were predictable variables, man...
2025-07-11 01:21:57 +0000 UTC View Post“Not likely they’ll be found, … the way they were hidden.”
—LADY JESSICA, DUNE
The drive back to the warehouse passed in relative silence for the first few minutes, the weight of what they had just accomplished settling over the truck's occupants like a heavy blanket. Behind them, the sky was a placid, indifferent grey, betraying nothing of the violence they had just inflicted upon it. In the back seat, Brian and Alec were still murm...
2025-07-11 01:19:27 +0000 UTC View PostThe coffee had gone cold an hour ago, but James Tagg kept the ceramic mug clenched between his hands anyway, using the weight and solidity of it to anchor himself as he stared at the wall of monitors dominating his temporary office. Each screen told a piece of the same story—a story that was rapidly becoming his professional obituary.
NORAD's tracking data painted stark white lines across a map of the Eastern Seaboard, twin trajectories that had ...
2025-07-02 05:44:22 +0000 UTC View PostLink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Riding_on_a_Sounding_Rocket.webm
Status: Active
Black Brant IX (a.k.a. Terrier Black Brant) is a two-stage rocket with a Terrier Mk 70 booster first stage and a Black Brant VB second stage,2025-07-02 03:16:18 +0000 UTC View Post
To put things into perspective...
This is 1900 miles. Meaning from Boston, Paul can strike targets anywhere in the circle, and from anywhere within the circle's edges, he can strike targets in Boston. The third image is a somewhat accurate representation of the missile's proportions.
Payload Delivery System Specs:
Gross Mass: 300 kg
Payload: 25 kg
Height: 6 meters (2 meters per stage) 2025-07-02 02:33:16 +0000 UTC View Post