Ch. 146 - A Lifeless Husk
Tenebroum feasted for three nights running before it finally decided that the city was now a lifeless husk. That first night, it gorged itself on the great masses of the living, leaving only the souls of the palace for the Voice of Reason to harvest and the remaining generals for its Dark Paragon to feast on.
For the darkness, this wasn’t about harvesting great minds for future plans; this was about victory and a truly bottomless ...
2024-05-06 13:59:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 112 - Out of the Frying Pan
Simon had seen a number of different levels on the other side of this portal, but the graveyard concerned him more than the golem or the ghosts. “Well, they’re both ghosts,” he said to himself, clarifying.
“Who are,” the devil asked, looking up from his writing to study Simon.
Simon ignored that, though, and continued to think about the whole thing. They were both ghosts, but they behaved very differently...
2024-05-06 13:57:01 +0000 UTC
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Tossing in a bonus chapter this week to bring Brewing Bad to 11 ahead of the public. Enjoy!
Ch. 51 - Everything at Once
The following week was a blur. People came and went, things got done, and most importantly, money was spent. A lot of money was spent.
It actually shocked Lucas how quickly golden dragons were going out the door. Until now, the figure in Kar’Gandin’s logs had only ever gone up, but now that trend was reversing, and after paying...
2024-04-29 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 144 - A Wider View
“Is it really over then?” Oroza asked, looking at the images the moon played upon her waters. “Is the age of man over? How long will the darkness rule this time?”
Lunaris shook her head. “The Kingdom of Hallen might encompass your whole world, Oroza, but it is but a small part of everything. The Underkingdoms are still largely intact, so I’m told, and even if the mages did not still stand, or the children of the forest, there w...
2024-04-29 13:59:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 110 - Truly Vile
The sewer stank, as it always did, but this time, Simon didn’t even wait until he was close enough to catch the attention of the carrion crawler. Instead, he used only a very small light spell to guide his feet on the familiar path, and as soon as he turned the corner and saw the bodies at the end of the channel moving slightly while the thing feasted on it, he muttered the word of lightning and sent electricity arcing along the sewage toward the ...
2024-04-29 13:57:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 47 - Party Time
That night, after Gerwin helped Lucas get dressed in his newly obtained finery. At Adin’s suggestion Lucas had gone with the black suit and the ruffled carvat. Lucas didn’t care for the lace cuffs around his wrists, or the way the pants flared around his boots. It made him feel like a sort of well dressed hippie pirate, but Adin assured him that this was indeed the height of fashion for men right now.
Men didn’t seem to get to wea...
2024-04-22 14:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 142 - The Feast Nearby
Tenebroum retreated to the nearest dungeon, four miles away from the city walls, but restless, it moved twice more before daylight made further travel on the surface impossible. It left the dark Paragon to handle the withdrawal of its forces, though its general did not wish to leave.
“Sire, if we push only a little further, we can kill thousands and then bury our remaining legions in the city catacombs proper,” it insisted.&n...
2024-04-22 13:59:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 108 - Another Look
I mean, I was never getting out of here without fighting a dragon, Simon thought to himself as he looked up at the ceiling of his little cabin. After all the other weird levels, that was pretty much impossible, was it Helades?
Still, despite his cynicism, he couldn’t help but smile. He hadn’t gotten see it of course, but he would, and despite the agonizing death he’d endured, that made part of him indescribabl...
2024-04-22 13:57:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 43 - Suffering, in C Minor
Lucas had not expected much from dancing lessons. He’d never been much at parties, but it turned out that his limited repertoire of bumping and grinding combined with a few novelty moves like floss dancing and the sprinkler were less than useless, and only the aging bard that had been hired to teach him the convoluted steps to these horridly archaic dances were even the least bit amused by his clumsy moon walk.
The whole th...
2024-04-15 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 140 - All Night’s Falling
When the sun set on Rahkin that day, Tenebroum vowed it would be the last time that anyone there would live to see it. Even as it reviewed the situation on both sides with its dark Paragon and discussed the intelligence that the rats had offered about the mages and their schemes, it could see that a frontal assault was probably not the optimal move, but it no longer cared.
Just as it had refused to let the first village it had eve...
2024-04-15 13:59:01 +0000 UTC
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Fair warning, this is an impactful scene. I recommend waiting to read it until you can give it your full attention.
Ch. 106 - Answers
“Helades!” Simon yelled, staggering toward the light. “Helades, this is level 30, and I’m here! You owe me some answers!”
“Well, an answer at least,” she said just behind him, making him whirl around to see the Goddess. “And might I say, you’ve made excellent progress. It only took a handful of deaths and a f...
2024-04-15 13:57:01 +0000 UTC
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Hello dear readers, I just wanted to take a minute to give everyone an update on a couple things that are going on.
First, my personal life is getting back to normal, and my wife is doing much better thanks to the medication she's on, so no worries there. Thank you to all your kind thoughts and wishes about that.
Second, Brewing Bad will be slowing down its posting schedule until Broken System is completed. I simply can't keep up goin...
2024-04-14 09:19:16 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 37 - Rolling Deep
2024-04-08 14:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 138 - One More Sunrise
Princess Trianna gazed out over her city that morning and despaired. They had survived another night, but it was hard to believe they would survive another as she looked outbuildings and surveyed the damage.
Like everyone else, she’d heard the terrible battle last most of the night, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to watch. She just lay in bed praying for Siddrim to return to them and save them from this evil. But o...
2024-04-08 13:59:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 104 - No Way Out
Simon waited for his moment; he parried and feinted, and each time, he pulled back as he looked for an opening. It wasn’t long before one of the men he faced off against was foolish enough to charge him.
Simon was still a little too round to cleanly dodge such an attack, but he guided the tip of his opponent’s blade away with his dagger before he moved forward, inside the other man’s guard, and shoved his dagger into the gap betw...
2024-04-08 13:57:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 31 - An Offer You Can Refuse
2024-04-01 14:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 136 - Breakwater (part 2)
“You will never strike me down,” the Templar grunted, even though, truthfully, he wasn’t sure how many more of those he could take.
That blow would kill any normal man, and it had been nearly enough to do him in as well. He cursed himself for not expecting such an obvious trap that he’d seen once before. The oddly distended bodies of the things had all but given away the trap, but he’d been too focused on chopping th...
2024-04-01 13:59:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 102 - Drinks With Friends
“Well, who wants to be the first to try it?” he asked, gesturing around. There were no volunteers.
“How about you?” he asked the man that had tried to gut him for his water skin only a few minutes ago in an attempt to win him over.
“I will not let you poison me!” the man growled, pacing around the edge of the light like an angry cat.
Simon was fairly sure that if he stayed the night here, th...
2024-04-01 13:57:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 106 - Memory Lane
“I want to see them,” Benjamin said finally, after glaring daggers at the man that had once been his friend, “Proof of life. That’s the first step in these sorts of things, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” he said, standing up and tossing a few Polaroids on the table. “Knock yourself out, but we aren’t going in there until it’s time, I—”
“The fuck we aren’t,” Matt said as he walked toward the backdoor. “We aren’t...
2024-04-01 13:56:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 24 - Goblin Hunting
2024-03-25 14:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 134 - Violation
As Tenebroum watched the latest skirmish preparing to unfold outside the walls of the capital, it had trouble focusing on the details. It wasn’t because it was upset that the Templar, with the light in his eyes, had made it unharmed into the city or even that they had as of yet been unable to find where the man had sheltered for so long. Even the growing light behind Rahkin’s walls wasn’t enough to make the Lich too angry.
That the man had failed to fal...
2024-03-25 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 100 - It’s a Trap
2024-03-25 13:58:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 100 - Lingering
Simon hung around for a week. It wasn’t hard. He knew the town better than most, and between the refugees and the news that someone had killed the Baron, it only took a change of clothes to evade the law that really only seemed to be halfheartedly looking for the Baron’s murderer.
Honestly, if having to find half-decent food was the thing that annoyed him most about his current situation, then listening to the gossip in the aft...
2024-03-25 13:57:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 19 - Change of Plans
In that moment, Lucas expected a lot of terrible things to come charging out of the bushes. The size seemed to rule out another pack of goblins, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have a hob for a chieftain.
Lucas could probably take one of those, but if it was a beastman or, worse, a giant spider… well, he should already be running. He was conflicted, but he didn’t think he’d gone into the dark wood deep enough for either of tho...
2024-03-18 14:01:02 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 132 - Bread Crumbs
Ghroshian was not aware of the Templar when he first entered Rahkin, but when the Lich informed them the following night, they were not surprised. They had felt the menace from the moment the man had walked through the gate and scurried to find new, deeper hiding places for many of the rats that made up its greater whole.
It was an old scent. The scent of a predator. However, because everyone had said that Siddrim was dead and gone, it had...
2024-03-18 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 98 - Staying Focused
Before they could get back to doing anything productive, Benjamin had to rest. All of them did. Somehow, they’d managed to come through that tide of green blood without a single casualty, but as a result, everyone was exhausted.
So he kept the breaches iced over, and once everyone had eaten and recovered the following day, Benjamin melted his tiny glaciers so that they could be melted with fire spray so that those entr...
2024-03-18 13:58:01 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 98 - Days of Future Past
Simon recognized the signs quicker than most would have, even with everything that was going on. Even before he found the bodies, he knew what had done this. The crude arrows with their red fletching and the hoof prints that were everywhere made it pretty obvious.
This was the aftermath of a centaur raid. It was a big one, too, from the looks of things.
He even had a pretty good idea of where he was. He wasn’t entirely sure w...
2024-03-18 13:57:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 11 - Ride or Die
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2024-03-11 14:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 130 - The End of Winter
Last winter, all that Jordan had worried about was that he and his slowly increasing band of refugees might run out of food. That was a horror that had never quite come to pass, though it had been a near thing in those first few days of spring. This winter, the ghost of famine no longer haunted them. In fact, though not pleasant, he might have been tempted to call this one cozy.
Against the odds, they’d had a prosperous year, which ...
2024-03-11 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Ch. 96 - A Word of Warning
“Ah… we didn’t know where to find you, you see,” the paper bird said, hemming and hawing like speech was something new to it. “So we’ve been trying oh so hard to get your attention.”
“Who is it you think you’ve found?” Benjamin asked, unwilling to give away anything.
“Clear eyes. Four friends. Three men, one woman, and not of the Rhulvinar. No trappings of the arcane.” This time, it was different birds tha...
2024-03-11 13:58:00 +0000 UTC
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