Eight Thousand Years after the Glassing of Earth, Terran Descent Humanity has largely become a post-scarcity society based on consent and enjoying life. With the discovery of another ancient race beyond the "Great Gulf", events and history collide to draw the Terran Confederacy into war against an hundred million year old empire that has always won and believes it always will. With allies and enemies of multiple species, the Orion Galactic Arm Spur will be wracked by warfare the likes of which have not been seen. Cracked, harried, wounded, and damaged, Terran Descent Humanity willfully throws itself against the universe itself.

"The universe hates you and will take away everything you love, laughing while it does so." - Terran belief.

A wiki is available (although under construction) at: https://fcgestalt.fandom.com/wiki/First_Contact_Gestalt_Archive_Wiki

Told largely from the viewpoint of other species, the story is currently ongoing. It involves graphic depictions of violence, war, adult language and situations, drug use, and other mature topics.

The story will be updated on weekdays, so keep an eye on this page for more chapters.

Humanity has finally taken the next step into space. Governments run research stations throughout the solar system while private enterprises mine asteroids for rare metals and exotic minerals. However, space remains beyond the reach of the everyday person. In contrast, virtual reality technology has led to an explosion of full immersion entertainment for the average consumer, and many people turned to VR for the thrill of spaceflight.

One game, Parallax Gate, lets its players experience living in an interstellar civilization. For maximum realism, its developers created a world solely defined by the players' personal skills and ability.

Mark Asami, a student of aerospace engineering at MIT, dreams of bringing spaceflight to the masses. To his disappointment, his first year courses barely relate to his interests, so he passes time as Aero Rayne in Parallax Gate with his roommate and their organization, the Temple Wraiths. Before they realized, a chain of in-game events drew them deeper into the game's world and politics than they ever intended to go.

Humanity is extinct.

In their wake, they left behind powerful artifacts and wonderous relics, most of which are still yet to be discovered.

Alien life flourishes in the ruins of ancient human cities. Hundreds of distinct species and cultures. But they all worship the "Old Ones" as gods, for who else could have created these impossible devices: ships that can fly, droids that can think, and gates that form bridges between worlds.

One power-hungry Empire has learned to use these gifts to conquer and dominate all other alien cultures. With each passing day, they grind the people of Gaiam deeper under the bootheel of oppression.

But when an old, jaded thief stumbles upon an ancient, living secret... a new revolution may be at hand.

This is the story of The Last Human.

Jason had thought about punching a Shil’vati.

Who hadn’t?

Not only had the aliens conquered Earth with almost trivial ease, the seven-foot purple amazons also had the audacity to start running the planet better than Humanity ever had.

He'd never do it though. He was a reasonable guy, just trying to get by under his new feminine overlords.

Wasn't he?

The class divide still exists in the future, and it has gotten much worse. There are many different types of worlds, from the paradise worlds where everyone is immortal, to the resource depleted, war-torn planets where every day is a struggle just to live.

Freya O'Malley grew up on Earth, the worst of the war-torn planets, and wants nothing more than to leave. With few options, Freya joins the Federation Marines. But, unlike the past, it's a struggle to earn enough enlistment points to stay in. With the prize of a citizenship on a paradise world at stake, competition is fierce. Every week is a new war. Can Freya earn enough points in the constant warring of the Marines to modify her body and mind to stay competitive? Can a girl from the wrong planet make it against those who have all the advantages?

Posting every Monday. Chapters will be roughly 4k or more words. 

Edited by Aldous starting at chapter 19.

If you like this story think about checking out my other web novel Super Soldier not Super Hero.

Please come and enjoy the discussion at Discord

 If you have any extra cash laying around and you feel like supporting the story you can donate here at Pateron or PayPal.  Patreon donators have options to read unedited chapters before anyone else can read them if you can't wait for the next chapter.

Threedak is a simple Dhajtel. Every night she scavenges and hunts for her tribe in the great desert, relying upon her skill and ancestral memories to avoid the night's many dangers. Her life remains largely the same until one night, one of the gleaming angels that hangs in the night sky falls into her desert. Deciding to investigate, she happens upon a scene far beyond her limited understanding.

The Dhajtel aren't alone. The galaxy is far vaster and more hostile than Threedak's people can even begin to comprehend.

Entrusted with the knowledge and memories of a dead race, it will be up to her to forge Dhajtel society into something that can survive the storm that is to come.

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(This novel is heavy on Kingdom/Empire Building and is an attempt at fairly hard (grounded in real science) Science Fiction)

Cover credit to DrakonStorm

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A couple authors with reptile MC's have started a discord, feel free to hang out with us.

Reptile MC Discord

Sci-fi dungeon crawler.

Set in the far future when humanity has reached the stars and finds it is not the first to do so. Alien technology has been left behind by a long dead race. Ancient cities, abandoned starships, temples and fortified bunkers all contain artefacts and devices far in advance of what humans have been able to produce. Technology that feels more akin to magic, so powerful it can allow a single person to dominate a star system. But these relics of another time have been left well-defended and behind bewildering and impenetrable security measures. 

There are those who are compatible with the alien technology, who can augment themselves to face the evermore extreme protocols in the depths of the alien ruins, and by doing so attain greater power. And there are those who just want to sell what they find to the highest bidder.

The rewards are high, but you have to be prepared to go further and risk more to discover the greatest secrets of a civilisation that vanished long before the first human walked upright. Secrets that could irrevocably change humanity's future, or end it.

Humanity once ruled space, building an empire that stretched across hundreds of stars.  Now Earth is a cold cinder in the void, its colonies and ships annihilated in an instant.  For five thousand years the surviving races have huddled in the dying light of those few stations which avoided total destruction, eking out their existence in the shadow of the long-dead humans who built their homes.  When a piece of that lost legacy resurfaces, the few who still remember humanity have one last opportunity to find the truth and avenge the fallen.

Cover by Harry Rowland - https://www.instagram.com/rowl_art_/

The series, Stories of the Apex, is a collection of self-contained science fiction short stories with different (but sometimes reoccurring) lead characters all following a central plot.

The story begins shortly after first contact with the peaceful Broda, a non-predator alien species that discovers Earth seeking new worlds for trade. Being a violent predator species among a galaxy of prey, humans soon decide to take up the cause of their new friends by opposing the plague species known as the Krador.

ON INDEFINITE HIATUS

This story (and any others I write) now has a DISCORD!

Thousands of people around the globe randomly find themselves "hosts" for alien technology that allows them to alter their minds and bodies in an instant through holographic menu systems. With the touch of a button, any of the hosts can become super strong, gain magical abilities, purchase a giant robot, or become a master in any of an almost infinite number of skills that range from advanced combat techniques to fidget-spinning. However, the hosts also become targets for nightmarish, shape-shifting creatures that have come to Earth following the newfound extraterrestrial tech. The menu systems can grant their hosts great power, but it may not be enough to survive the horde of murderous beings hunting them down.

An ancient conqueror awakens to find his galactic empire in ashes. A street rat discovers a core that changes everything.  A noble woman must fight for her place in her family and for her very survival.  

Vengeance. Artifex spent hundreds of years, forging an empire that could protect humanity from the endless hunger of the Unity.  Now he finds himself in the ruins of all he built, and the people who betrayed him have made a deal with the Unity…

Power. The brutal sands and endless struggle for survival is all Safira has ever known.  But a lucky find gives her the chance to be so much more than a scavenger. But opportunity and danger go hand in hand, and escaping with her life just got that much harder.

Ruthlessness. Elinor North has spent her entire life struggling to prove herself.  As the head of a cadet branch of the powerful Montclair family, she must fight against enemies from both within and without, for her rivals are not just outsiders - they are her own kin. 

All of them are light years apart, but inexorably tied to the ulterior motives of those around them and a shared destiny that will shake civilization to its foundations.

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

Engineer reborn as a dungeon core in a fantasy world.

Ike was a hobbyist clockmaker and former aerospace engineer enjoying his retirement on a habitat station orbiting Saturn. Unfortunately, his hard-earned peace was disturbed by a rapid decompression event and his resulting death.

Contrary to his expectations, Ike found himself reincarnated as a handicapped and supposedly-man-eating dungeon core in a fantastic realm of wonder, magic, dragons, and wizards! Faced with a luckless start in this hostile new world, Ike will have to employ his new-found near-perfect recall of his past life experiences along with ingenuity to survive and manifest his ambitions while struggling with morality.

Discord

This story could be about the Tellask Empire, ruler of a thousand suns and faced with imminent peril at the hands of the Orakh hordes.  It could be about Paltai Amberell, the scion of a noble elven House, fallen upon hard times and seeking to find the key that will restore his family's name and save the Empire itself.  It could be the story of his voidship, The Viceroy's Pride, powered by magic and crewed by a team of crack marines as they search for adventure and the solution to the Empire's myriad problems.

Instead, this is the story of Daniel Thrush, human electrical engineer, befuddled researcher and survivor of the debacle that was first contact with a spacefaring civilization. Due to a combination of luck, magic, hard work, and more luck he is thrust into the center of events as Earth is shoved onto a much larger stage rife with semi-immortal elves and magical kingdoms that predate the Earthly invention of agriculture.

Earth is outnumbered, and we have precisely one wizard.  Dan.  He's not very good at it, but he's going to have to learn in a hurry or watch everything he knows get torn apart by massive spacefaring empires straight from the pages of a fantasy novel.

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Some readers have noted that the MC tends to be weak willed and pushed around a bit.  A significant portion of the story is his character growth into not being a pushover (i.e. him being passive is in the early chapters on purpose).  I'm just including this caveat/warning to make sure that readers aren't surprised/upset and that they stick with it until he learns to stand up for himself.

His arc begins to crystallize around chapters 25-27.  If that's too long to wait, I get it, I'm just trying to do my due diligence and warn you that the character development is a bit of a slow burn.

This is NOT a harem novel.  Nothing against them, just not what it is.

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Updates Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday

Feel free to bother me on our discord-

Discord!

Discord here: https://discord.gg/uXFSejNH

Kade Wilson is a retired Cop and an competitive Gamer. For the last 4.5 years he has held the number #1 spot on the VR World Games List. And while he did not win his last championship game he struck it rich. And to top it all off he is approached to be one of 500k hand-selected beta testers for an entirely new kind of game, an offer that he is incapable of refusing. Now he is trying to make money, take possession of relict find, stop pirates from harrassing them... all while trying to figure out who is a friend and who isn't.

This is a work in progress and largely unedited. There shouldn't be too many spelling and grammar mistakes in there but then again, I am just the writer... Bear with me or contact me if you find something that is just too bad for you. Actually, I appreciate any reports of errors (spelling or continuity) that you find and let me know about. In the discord I have a dedicated channel for these reports. If you don't want to join... I do read the chapter comments. ;)

There is one thing I want to point out though. And that is that I chose to place this story in a LitRPG and game universe so it doesn't have to be 100% scientifically correct. Also: Clarke's 3rd law! 

Pylo was a woman of trade and travel!

She had set out for a life of adventure and exchange with strange new life. She would make deals and exchanges with new fools and new civilizations. She would boldly swindle like no one had swindled before.

A super-intelligence is only limited by its ambition. If you could do anything, what would you do?

Megacles has a pretty good life. Also, she's horny, lonely, bored, anxious, and a bit of a drunk. She decides to fix all that with science. It works okay, until she accidentally builds a doomsday device. At least she’s not bored anymore.

This is a simple tale of love, hope, sex, rejection, revenge, secrets, extortion, thievery, dead billionaires, killer robots, space monkeys, mind control, superhot lasers, god-like power, and the destruction of the Earth.  And drugs. Almost forgot the drugs.

Check out the reviews - people like it, maybe you will too.  Or, just read Chapter 1.  It's a good example of the book.  If you like it, you're good to go.  

Cover Photo by Jean Fan (JFotography.net)

The Immaterium poisons everything; the living and the machine. The Tau, the Necrons, and the Eldar chip away at humanity. 

In the dark future of 40th Millennium there is only war.

And if you somehow still survive, the Tyranids will eat everyone anyway. 

Against humanity’s hopes, neither leaving Earth nor expanding through the galaxy could change our nature. As mankind expanded throughout the stars, so too did our problems. Struggles which will haunt humanity until the unforgiving galaxy finally claims the last human life.

Almost four hundred years have passed since the downfall of the Solar Commonwealth, our first and last joint interstellar government. Mankind has broken apart into dozens of subspecies, hundreds of religions, and tens of thousands of nations. The Solar Federation and the Confederation of Mankind never ceased their struggle to become the Commonwealth’s true successor. The Long War continues ever on. All while numerous outside forces threaten the survival of them both.

Now, however, something unpredictable has happened in one of the forgotten corners of Human Space. A man from another era has received a mission. Will he merely become a footnote in history? Or perhaps he is the herald of the end of the stalemate and the conclusion of the Long War?

He woke up in the bowels of his crashed ship. His arms were gone, as were most of his memories. Stumbling out of the cockpit, the skull-faced man could scarcely anticipate just how mythical a living human was in these parts - let alone one with a custom body such as his.

-= New chapter every Wednesday! =-

What would you do if you found an ancient spaceship?

Michael Freeman is a disabled veteran who had just been fired from his mind-numbing cubicle job, which allowed his opportunistic girlfriend to dump him. Now, he only wants to spend some time in his grandfather's mountain cabin to unwind away from the drudgery of daily life with a cold beer in his hands.

Standing in his way is an ancient spaceship with an emotional AI, nanites that have invaded his body, an international crime syndicate, a suicidal FBI agent on a vigilante mission, terrorists... and this is just the beginning.

What can one man do when faced with insurmountable odds? Call it quits? Or… call some of his old army buddies and blow those obstacles to smithereens.

Can he become more than he had ever dreamed, reaching further than any man before? Staying under the radar of the powers that be while righting a few wrongs of the modern world.

He is sure of three things:

1. He really doesn’t want to follow the rules anymore... aside from his own.

2. Space is the ultimate frontier, and he had been given a turnkey technology to reach it—if they let him.

3. Those that want to hurt him and the people he cares about will rue the day they were born.

You do not always get what you wish for… sometimes, you get one hell of a lot more.

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“Really entertaining, and a promising future.” - RR Reviewer

“Good old sci-fi novel” - RR Reviewer

“Sci-fi with a realistic MC” - RR Reviewer

“Wow, seriously... just wow” - RR Reviewer

“I'm hooked!” - RR Reviewer

“A well crafted story.” - RR Reviewer

“A Sci-fi Novel I can appreciate” - RR Reviewer

“This is f....ing good.” - RR Reviewer

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Advance chapters available on Patreon

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The original art for the cover picture was made by N. Dasco