Alright, alright, alright, there are a lot of really good suggestions floating around. What do you guys think of me scrapping this poll, and allowing you guys to brainstorm some good names for about an hour(here and on the thread) before placing them all back on a fresh poll?
Also, Eoin suggested this:
"Honestly, if thats the way you are going, then might as well have him declare his own chosen identity during his showboating. Ozymandias does make some sense given ...
2025-05-02 00:40:15 +0000 UTC
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Spoilers below
Paul is given the name after a staged video of him executing Lung, Hookwolf and Skidmark is posted, and goes viral, on the PHO and legacy media. Special provisions have been made for the names "Ozymandias" and "Charon" in case any one of them is chosen (Paul would be a bit theatrical to...
2025-05-02 00:24:28 +0000 UTC
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The PRT/Media has been unable to communicate this mysterious cape wreaking havoc on Brockton's Bay's criminal underbelly. They still need to give him a name, however, and decided on the alias...
2025-05-01 23:58:20 +0000 UTC
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2.x (Prelude)
The apartment was silent, insulated from the sirens that still wept intermittently across the city. Clean lines, minimalist decor, steel and glass reflecting the muted glow of the skyline beyond the armoured windows. Order. Control. Everything my public life, my other life, strove to impose on the chaos of Brockton Bay. Tonight, that chaos lapped closer to the foundations than it had in a long time.
I stood by the window, swirling the amber liquid ...
2025-05-01 19:58:16 +0000 UTC
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1.x (Interlude)(Piggot)
The call confirming the Ward’s status came precisely two minutes after Glory Girl had arrived at Brockton General, according to the time stamp on Dragon’s initial alert. Gallant. Dean Stansfield. Deceased. Another child soldier dead on my watch. The thought landed flatly, devoid of the sharp horror it might have evoked in someone less acquainted with the grinding reality of this city. It was simply another entry in the ledger, another cost ...
2025-05-01 18:33:58 +0000 UTC
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1.x (Interlude)(Victoria)
The city felt thin tonight, stretched taut like old elastic about to snap. Brockton Bay always had an edge, that low thrum of something about to go wrong, but this was different. Sharper. The air itself tasted metallic, ozone-and-fear flavoured, even high above the streetlights where the drizzle misted against my shield. Below, flashing lights painted streaks of red and blue across wet asphalt – police cruisers, fire trucks, ambulances – ...
2025-05-01 16:56:21 +0000 UTC
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1.x (Interlude)(Kayden)
Cold seeped into Kayden’s bones, a damp chill that had nothing to do with the persistent drizzle and everything to do with the black, glassy substance encasing half her body. It felt like ice, drinking the meagre light and warmth from her skin. Pain was a dull throb in her shoulder and ribs from the initial blast, which she only barely avoided by taking cover behind a van. But even that ache was overshadowed by the stiff, unyielding pressure of her prison.
2025-04-30 21:40:24 +0000 UTC
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1.10
“Hard tasks need hard ways.”
—GOD EMPEROR, LETO II
The purloined jeep handled sluggishly, its suspension groaning under the added weight of salvaged weaponry and the inert, groaning form in the backseat. Paul drove with detached precision, navigating the rain-slicked streets away from the scarred coastline and towards the neon-bled glow of the Boardwalk district. Sirens echoed in the distance, a growing chorus converging...
2025-04-28 22:54:49 +0000 UTC
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1.09
“Don't sit with your back to any doors.”
—GURNEY HALLECK
The world returned as a suffocating pressure, a liquid weight crushing lungs accustomed to air, however thin or polluted. Cold shock jolted through limbs still echoing with the phantom concussion of the blast. Water—dark, churning, filled with the grit of pulverized brick and the acrid tang of chemical residue—flooded mouth and nostrils. He fought the instinct ...
2025-04-28 22:53:25 +0000 UTC
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1.08
“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it ...
2025-04-25 22:01:38 +0000 UTC
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1.07
“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
—FIRST LAW OF MENTAT
Paul stepped out of Fugly Bob’s and let the door click shut behind him. Grease-laden air clung to his clothes for a heartbeat, then the harbor wind carried it away and left only salt and diesel. He paused, making a small ritual of stillness: one breath to clear the l...
2025-04-24 18:59:38 +0000 UTC
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1.06
“Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained.”
—SUK DOCTOR YUEH
The dawn crept through Brockton Bay like diluted iodine, thin and vaguely toxic. Paul sat before his monitor in that amber hush, the soft rasp of a toothbrush echoing from the hall where Martha readied herself for work. News threads scrolled beneath his fingertips. No mention of masked killers, no leaked forensics hintin...
2025-04-22 03:42:29 +0000 UTC
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1.05
“A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.”
—GOD EMPEROR, LETO II
The Veder apartment drifted in midnight torpor: a pulse of refrigerator freon, the remote susurrus of freeway traffic, Tom’s faint snore two rooms away. Paul lingered at his bedroom window until every tick of the household convinced him no eye would open. Then the sash slid up, the evening air rushed in, and he eased himsel...
2025-04-22 02:26:03 +0000 UTC
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1.04
“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”
—GOD EMPEROR, LETO II
The house lay in weekend stillness—pipes ticking, refrigerator sighing, the city’s distant sirens softened by coastal fog. Paul moved in deliberate silence, bare feet finding the marks he had chalked on his bedroom carpet: a square into which the universe was momentarily compressed
He began with slow Hindu squats—thirty, t...
2025-04-22 00:56:37 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Twenty-Five: The Siege of Braavos (Pt. 2)
Ash drifted upon the lagoon like black snow, settling in the gutters and on the tiled roofs that had not yet caught. From the highest balcony of the Sarren manse, Jace watched Braavos smoulder, orange tongues still licking at the poorer hovels beyond the Iron Gate. At daw,n the Titan’s great horn had sounded twice for water‑carriers, yet the cisterns beneath the Palace of Truth lay nearly dry and now even the...
2025-04-21 21:20:36 +0000 UTC
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1.03
“Beginnings are such delicate times.”
—PRINCESS IRULAN
The hour before dawn possessed a hush that Brockton Bay seldom granted—a stillness broken only by the faint whirr of a desktop fan and the soft, rhythmic clicks of a mouse. In that dim glow Paul sat erect, eyes tracking the march of text across an aging flatscreen. The desk lay bare except for keyboard, notebook, and a mug half‑filled with lukewarm water. Each ob...
2025-04-21 21:17:29 +0000 UTC
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I drafted a cool scene for Refrain, but I'm not sure if it would make the final edit. Decided to post it here for your general enjoyment:
“Your bravado might’ve been impressive, had I not been able to smell the fear on you—ripe and rank, like a dog that knows it's about to be kicked.”
Skidmark bared his teeth. “Who the fuck are you calling a dog?”
The villain didn’t flinch. Didn’t even look at him. Just turned and started walki...
2025-04-21 00:43:09 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Twenty-Five: The Siege of Braavos (PT. 1)
“The tones, the timbre, the subtleties—they are a secret language all their own.”
―Frank Herbert, Dune
…
The city of Braavos glittered like a broken constellation against the ink-black lagoon. From dragonback, Addam Velaryon thought, it looked fragile—nothing more than lanterns strung upon water, a paper city built for mummer’s plays, too slight to withstand even t...
2025-04-19 14:52:55 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Twenty-Four: The Great Burning
An Extract from A Chronicle of the Dragon’s March East
compiled in the 132nd year since Aegon’s Landing by Archmaester Haradric of the Jade Quill, Keeper of Ships’ Logs and Correspondence, late of Oldtown
“Men will raise walls until they scrape the sky, yet dragons require only kindling.”
—fragment attributed to Maester Beltharios, The Ruin of Bronzegate
2025-04-19 14:51:22 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Twenty-Three: Eastward Expansion
“The horselords come, we give them gifts, the horselords go.”
―Qavo Nogarys to Haldon
…
Ghoyan Drohe had been dead a thousand years, yet the city would not stay buried. Mounded walls of Rhoynar mud‑brick streamed outward like the ribs of some colossal carcass, and now the Red Cloaks were grafting new flesh atop the bones: timber palisades, stone blockhouses, and a ditch so wide a hor...
2025-04-19 14:49:23 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Twenty-Two: Spring Sorrow
“Valyrian steel was always costly, but it became considerably more so when there was no more Valyria, and the secret of its making were lost.”
―George R. R. Martin
…
Old men ought to dream of hearth‑fires and mulled wine, yet most nights, Vaegon Targaryen dreamed of fouler things. In those dreams he heard chains grind, saw scales ripple beneath black stone, tasted ash upon his tongue—tast...
2025-04-19 14:47:05 +0000 UTC
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1.02
“My lungs taste the air of Time,
Blown past falling sands…”
—GURNEY HALLECK
Paul dreamed.
He dreamed of blood and desert wind, of arid sands stretching to the horizon, awash in the bluish haze of spice. He dreamed he stood again on Arrakis, immersed in a future half-seen—his limbs burning with the potency of the Spice Agony. Within that dream, he rose as Paul Muad’Dib, Fremen war-cry echoing across the dunes.
In t...
2025-04-13 18:39:36 +0000 UTC
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I’m running a quick poll to find out which story you’d prefer me to update more often—Arcane Disorder or Refrain. I have three writing days per week to split between these two (the other three go to TGW, and I keep one day off for myself). Whichever story leads get two chapters for that week, while the other gets one. Let me know which one you’d like me to focus on.
P.S.: I’ll refer back to the results of this poll at the start of each week to make sure my understanding of the...
2025-04-12 11:16:31 +0000 UTC
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1.01
“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
—BENE GESSERIT AXIOM
He woke into darkness.
Not the comforting dark of sietch caverns hidden beneath dune-scoured deserts, nor even the blackness of a starless night on Arrakis. This darkness throbbed behind the eyes—an inward place of discontinuity.
Paul Atreides became aware of a heart beating faster than any Fremen drum—too fast. His eyelids felt heavy, dragging him t...
2025-04-12 01:53:23 +0000 UTC
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ARC 1
The bell rang, a dull clang that echoed through Winslow High's corridors like a hammer striking warped steel. I shoved my notebook into my bag and stood up to head for my next class. Yesterday had been a blur. I was still running on the half-baked adrenaline of last night's fight—if I could even call it a fight. More like a frantic scramble to stay alive. But after defeating Lung, or helping to, and meeting Armsmaster for the first time, I'd woken this morning feeling like I w...
2025-04-12 01:51:58 +0000 UTC
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In the hidden corridors of time and mind lies the great gamble. So it was that Paul Atreides—Muad'Dib, the one foretold as Kwisatz Haderach—steeped his soul in the Water of Life. Yet where he should have emerged to the familiar spice-laden dust of Arrakis, he instead awoke to the mocking giggles of a high-school classroom. His body not his own. His memories fleeting, borrowed from a boy named Greg Veder.
Cast into a strange universe where grim forces and towering powers clash, Paul...
2025-04-12 01:43:36 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Six
I lingered a short while at Wort’s workshop, well after the clockwork alarm had rasped its sour warning to go home. The clients had already left, a hush settling among the dormant tools and half-finished contraptions. I stood beside the battered bench I’d called my own these past few weeks, steeling myself before speaking.
“I’ve something I want to show you,” I said, retrieving a fold of rolled parchment from my satchel.
Wort lifted h...
2025-04-12 01:37:42 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Five
I was still tightening the final bolt on an old and battered prosthetic leg when the clockwork alarm wheezed out its mechanical chime: a rasping series of clicks that ended in a shrill ding. The resulting groan from the line of men behind me was audible enough to elicit a wince from me. Their faces were grimy from hours at work and in the mines, and their expressions soured further at the sound. For my part, I felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m sorry,...
2025-04-09 22:19:15 +0000 UTC
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Chapter Twenty-One: The Watchers of the East
“I have my own kingdom here.”
―Saera, when asked if she meant to return to Westeros
…
The sun hung low over Sunspear’s spires when Qoren Martell stepped onto the grand terrace, heart pounding with a subdued tension. Below him stretched the palace courtyard, awash in vibrant silks and braziers that burned with aromatic oils. Musicians played lilting Dornish melodies, and guests—lords, knights, envoys from Wester...
2025-04-09 04:01:10 +0000 UTC
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INTERLUDE: Among Us
“Each of them bears the mark, each has been tested under the ritual. Each would gladly give his life for you, Muad'Dib.”
―Stilgar
…
For a time, the hall under the House of Black and White lay as silent as a grave. Not even the faint drip of water disturbed the hush, nor the muted shuffle of bare feet on cool stone. The Faceless Men gathered in a tight circle around the pool, hooded figures of different heights and builds, their faces unrea...
2025-04-09 02:56:25 +0000 UTC
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