The old reliable mobile home made its way next to the township with restrained caution.
Eight stories tall, the hermit geist that moved the traveler’s home brought them into peaceful contact with the people of the Realm of Constructed Branches.
The geist then settled in, for the first time in weeks, to take a nap. Or something nap adjacent. Hermit geists rested in the way of storms, quiet and warm, waiting until the atmosphere was right to stir again.
On the ro...
2022-06-29 20:36:43 +0000 UTC
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The old reliable mobile home made its way across the landscape with shaky grace.
Eight stories tall, the hermit geist that had taken the apartment building trudged forward through the Joyous Green Field.
It did not like it.
The residents of the apartments liked it far less. Unlike the hermit geist, many of them had to breathe. This is often a design flaw in mortal beings.
There were many ways for a traveler’s journey to come to an end. Setting down ...
2022-06-29 20:36:11 +0000 UTC
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Last one of these. This one is different, I hope you like it, voting starts this weekend.
_____
The old reliable mobile home made its way across the landscape with admirable poise.
Eight stories tall, the hermit geist that had taken the apartment building trudged forward through the Sands of Salt.
The residents of the apartments, those that remained, were as impermanent as the landscape. Some of them would find stable homes when they came to new vistas. &nb...
2022-06-29 20:35:37 +0000 UTC
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Last one for today. The next thing will be up in a couple days, and then the vote starting on the weekend
_____
I wake up in a strange place, and immediately start to panic.
It takes me longer than I’d like, thrashing the blankets off and rolling to the floor on all fours in my underwear, to remember where I am.
Insomnia is a real problem for me, which should come as no surprise. It’s more of a problem when I need to be up at ‘normal’ hou...
2022-06-27 18:41:38 +0000 UTC
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I want to be the kind of person who explores. I want to be someone who pokes their head into open doors, and takes time to go down unused hallways. Who finds new routes to old destinations, and who has fun being places I haven’t experienced before. When you meet someone like that, it’s pretty clear that they’re having a lot more fun than you, in general. The kind of person who finds their footing best on new ground is the kind of person who might get restless, bu...
2022-06-27 18:40:41 +0000 UTC
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I don’t remember teleporting. Only the sensation of time passing, and of something I could not see. My eyes worked, but they wouldn’t focus; there wasn’t black, there was something deeper and darker and much, much, much more scary.
In the background behind the curtain of reality, past the laws of our universe, outside of time and space and the other tiny trappings we pretended governed everything, there was something hungry and curious and other emotions that had no wo...
2022-06-27 18:40:03 +0000 UTC
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There was a feeling that came about from being on family vacations, once I hit an age that could charitably be described as ‘adulthood’. As a kid, vacations were extra days off school, going to weird places and seeing weird things. But as an adult…
Vacations became something more like a chore. An obligation. I felt like I had to go, like I couldn’t say no, because my parents made it abundantly clear in a lot of small ways that if I did say no, they’d st...
2022-06-27 18:39:27 +0000 UTC
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I am going to wizard college.
I mean, I might be. I might also have just had some kind of LSD flashback and am actually dying in a puddle of my own drool on the floor of a Plaid Pantry sometime just after midnight. This would be remarkable only in that I’ve never actually gotten to try LSD, only less seventies flavored hallucinogens, that I do not think cause weird months-later-aftershocks?
Look, if I’m dying in a drug induced coma, then I don’t really f...
2022-06-27 18:38:14 +0000 UTC
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Thing number two. I have opinions on my own work, and I'm going to withhold them! Take from that what you will.
As a reminder, these chapters now have attached PDFs, because I'm trying to make reading on Patreon easier for everyone.
_____
Eleven thirty PM is a weird time to be working in a convenience store.
There’s a lot to do, but functionally, there is no motivation to actually do any of it. After all, the people who were here before me didn’t ...
2022-06-27 18:37:31 +0000 UTC
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And that's all for this one, for now. Next one in a couple days!
_____
Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change
Available Power : 1
Authority : 2
Bind Insect (1, Command)
-
Nobility : 1
Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)
Empathy : 1
Shift Water (1, Shape)
Spirituality : 1...
2022-06-26 03:16:55 +0000 UTC
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Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change
Available Power : 2
Authority : 2
Bind Insect (1, Command)
-
Nobility : 1
Congeal Glimmer (1, Command)
Empathy : 1
Shift Water (1, Shape)
Spirituality : 1
Shift Wood (1, Shape)
Ingenuity : 1
...
2022-06-26 03:16:05 +0000 UTC
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Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change
Available Power : 1
Authority : 2
Bind Insect (1, Command)
-
Nobility : 1
-
Empathy : 1
-
Spirituality : 1
-
Ingenuity : 1
Know Material (1, Perceive)
Tenacity ...
2022-06-26 03:15:19 +0000 UTC
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Unnamed - Apparatus Of Change
Available Power : 1
Authority : 1
Bind Insect (1, Command)
Nobility : 1
-
Empathy : 1
-
Spirituality : 1
-
Ingenuity : 1
Know Material (1, Perceive)
Tenacity : 1
2022-06-26 03:14:40 +0000 UTC
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I wake up, both more and less confused than yesterday.
Yesterday being a convenient illusion that my mind allows me to make use of. The more I am ‘here’, wherever here is, as ‘this’, whatever this is, the more I am starting to think that a lot of reality is convenient illusions. The scholar memories show a lot of time spent thinking about exactly that idea. They also show a lot of time spent being very frustrated at the lack of available confirmation. I s...
2022-06-26 03:14:06 +0000 UTC
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Today is gonna be the first of three samples of stories posted over the course of this week. There'll be six chapters of this, I am now going to be including PDFs of all chapters of everything in the posts, and the vote will be up at the end of the week for Patrons to decide what I dive into more of next.
As you might have guessed by the name, this is my stab at a dungeon core story. Specifically, one where the core attempts to integrate and build a society,...
2022-06-26 03:13:18 +0000 UTC
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Presented separately for dramatic effect
_____
Children of Sol
Broken and scattered
The dark is at the door
And our Oath calls us forth
Wake up, one last time
There will be no second chance
2022-06-24 22:27:43 +0000 UTC
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Jom-specific soundtrack for this chapter is the song Showdown, by Jose Pavli
_____
I don’t have a bridge. I have a command center.
I don’t know what the difference is. I do not care. I like how command center sounds. I think bridges are for ships?
Legally speaking, the station is classified as a ship, because it can move. I did not file the paperwork for this or anything, it’s a legacy aspect. But I’ve added a lot of engines,...
2022-06-18 17:58:57 +0000 UTC
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“Why are you down here?” Dyn’s voice radiates through the small gap in the bulkhead that I’ve been wedged into for the better part of an hour.
I do not know how she knows I am down here, because I am inside a wall, with only a small layer of secondary alloy keeping me from the void of space, and she would have had to have gone through three internal airlocks, and two crew hazard warning projections, just to get to where she can stand and yell at me.
They sent Dyn...
2022-06-15 07:23:16 +0000 UTC
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Normally, there would be a chapter of The Daily Grind today. As you may have noticed, possibly unsurprisingly if you read the last couple author's notes, there is not.
Writing the Daily Grind has been an exercise in creative endurance for me. I like to think that the good bits have turned out okay, and the bad bits are concealed nicely by the good bits, but boy howdy have I written a lot of bits. At a chapter roughly every week, baring personal health stuff, it's been ...
2022-06-12 01:33:59 +0000 UTC
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Onward.
_____
I am dreaming. I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. All my sisters and I have.
It’s a strange thing, to make the decision to dream. To sit down as a group, and decide that maybe, we should be more deliberate. After all, we don’t sit on the station and just let the knowledge of what guns and computers and decks we have flow past, plucking ideas out of it at random. No, we explore. We poke around. We spend our ...
2022-06-09 05:24:55 +0000 UTC
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Because today's public post is that one weird station log chapter, I've decided to post two chapters because I am terrified of people getting bored of my work.
_____
“I don’t fully understand how I could have been here this whole time, and not noticed… any of this.” Lily says.
Now we are eight.
She is sitting in the galley with me and the rest of our sisters. And, I suppose, a few other people too. The galley used to be a massive empty room th...
2022-06-09 05:24:11 +0000 UTC
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Months pass.
I keep waiting, patiently, for the next crash to come. I know it will. Eventually. It always does.
I try to keep myself separate, somehow, from the way my home is growing. But it doesn’t work. Because even if I know how it all ends, I cannot help but desperately want what is offered.
Friendship. Warmth. Life.
This time around, the arc of it started with finding Glitter and bringing Ennos into being, and ...
2022-06-06 04:04:33 +0000 UTC
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Something a little different today. And with this, the Daily Grind is on break for a while, until book four starts up. There will again be a Q&A when the public chapters finish book 3, and any questions from patrons will at least be addressed if not answered directly, so if you've got any, the comments section here is the place to put em.
Thanks for reading, everyone.
_____
Roster :
By Species :
Humans - 188 ...
2022-06-04 04:33:01 +0000 UTC
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Someone has tampered with my garden.
I mean, they didn’t steal anything. Or break anything. Or… anything bad actually.
What I should say here is that someone has improved my garden. Why they would do this, I do not know. Possibly because they have some ulterior motive to steal my precious produce.
“Ennos!” I command, in my best commander’s voice. “Open a case log! I have detective work to do!”
“Lily…...
2022-06-04 03:37:40 +0000 UTC
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A narrative climax for everyone else is a Tuesday for Lily.
_____
Now we are six.
My sisters sit watching while Ennos and I weave a symphony of hardware in the form of a blueprint. A simple engineering file, which actually isn’t simple at all, and which will be acceptable input to the drone fabricator.
All this new power and I’m still going back to that old trick of ‘remote controlling’ a drone while inside it. Heh.
I’m trying to focus on he...
2022-05-31 23:18:18 +0000 UTC
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I am very tired
_____
Three hundred kilometers away, the city seed works.
Comparative log analysis lets us know that it probably went active roughly eight days ago. Which is good. Any longer and things would be problematic. Things are already problematic, I guess. So, more problematic.
“Demon.” One of the new kids calls it in a hushed rattle, seeing it on screen.
She’s wrong, obviously. Demons aren’t rea… demons *prob...
2022-05-29 03:35:56 +0000 UTC
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After some feedback, I've decided that last chapter is a great place to end off book three. So, this week, we have an epilogue, next week will be an appendix with some supplemental information just for fun, and then I'm gonna take a break from The Daily Grind for a little while.
Not too long. A month, maybe two. I want to finish Kitty Cat Kill Sat. I want to start writing a million other things. But I also love these characters, and I think I'll always want...
2022-05-27 19:32:10 +0000 UTC
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The hull of the Last Ship slips by the station, the mercantile dreadnaught on a close approach to Earth and giving approximately zero cares about any stealthed or disabled objects in its path.
It turned out, when you had a hull profile forty miles long, and self healing ablative armor plates, you didn’t really notice if things got out of your way or not.
I don’t really know when I started mentally capitalizing that title as a proper noun. I doubt the ship itself cares. &...
2022-05-24 18:32:38 +0000 UTC
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I’m dreaming again. Or something dream-esque. It’s not a dream, really. I’ve had some experience with dreams; all of mine are nightmares. When I dream, I dream of gunshots, and lost chances.
This isn’t like that. But I’ve been here before.
“It’s gonna be close.” A voice sounds. My voice. Not from me, though. But that’s something I’m getting used to, when I’m awake.
“She’ll get there.” Ano...
2022-05-23 15:57:52 +0000 UTC
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I'd like to ask everyone to read this with an e
2022-05-21 06:25:39 +0000 UTC
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