Luca DR

"There was one, there was none. Once upon a far, far away time; I was born in a home void of anyone. I was lonely, I was sad. I wanted to make some friends.

And so I wove myself some from imaginations mine."

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

[Participant in the April 2023 Royal Road Writathon] A murderous AI has infected a fantasy world, reprogramming [Dungeon Cores] to build an army of unstoppable killing machines and programming magic to create unnatural mechanics in its continuing efforts to eliminate all organic life. This Story is an unconventional gamelit fantasy story infused with some light sci-fi themes and [System] mechanics.

Updates every Monday.

When Asha wakes up in the past after being killed by her fiancé, she realizes she has a chance to save herself and her family from their gruesome deaths. Her first order of business: getting out of the way so the man she loves can be with the woman he loves. But somewhere along the line, Asha starts discovering problems on a grander scale - schemes in the empire and the world that she hadn't noticed the first time around - which may have been the real reason why Asha and everyone in her House was murdered.

Will she be able to solve the mystery behind her fiancé's betrayal, and her own return to the past? Or will she be doomed to suffer another miserable end?

What world is the story set in?

Moonrise: When Hope Returns is set in a fantasy world with magic, aura, demons, and gods. There exists monarchies and nobility, as well as various religions from monotheism to polytheism.

Cultures, customs, and faiths are made up, so there will not always be similarities to real world / other fiction worlds.

Writing style: Present tense with inner monologues

Edited on Chapter 33 release: What kind of character is the protagonist Asha?

Asha starts off as a regressed villainess who doesn’t carry everything over, in the truest sense.

What this means: her character evolves as the world around her & her knowledge change.

Are we going to see a lot of action?

There’s a bit more content that suits the Adventure genre label from Chapter 35 onwards, though the initial chapters are more focused on politics / high society games / setting the stage & characters. 

Is this story told entirely from one viewpoint?

No, it switches between different characters’ points of view. ‘Perspective’ is one of Moonrise’s main themes. Expect unreliable narrators everywhere.

Added on 2nd phase chapters’ release: I’m here for the time loop / time travel. Can I just start reading from Chapter 33?

If you prefer, but I write chapters on the assumption that readers already ‘met’ the cast earlier and sort of know who I’m talking about. Plus the earlier chapters hold hints.

When the colony carrier Caduceus is hijacked by pirates, it manages to fire off a single escape pod as a forlorn hope. Aboard that pod is Marissa Sokolov, an idealistic post-human woman, equipped with an advanced artificial intelligence named Shep. Together, they have a single goal, to find and retrieve the colony ship containing her friends and family. Unfortunately, arriving on Gagneux's World is possibly a worse fate than that which befell the Caduceus. If she has any hope of seeing her people again, she must first fight her way off-planet.

At the same time, the megacorp Infinitech, which funded the colony expedition in the first place, wants to make good on their investment. They hire a private investigator by the name of Tarin Henrikson, a ruthless cyborg more than a century old, who sees the world in black and white. He will stop at nothing to see his job completed, and woe to anyone who stands in his way. Fate will draw the two together as Marissa seeks to find her homestead among the stars.

"You are a brief candle in a long night. You pass through, and we are grateful, but the blackness will take you."

It was yet another village full of complaints. Daine listened, delivered all the justice she had in her power to give and prepared to move on.

Another typical day for a Knight of the Road.

Of course, some disliked her intrusion into their schemes, but they were of little concern. They had tried to stop her before and would doubtless try again.

When she is charged with the protection of the boy, Genoes, however, things change. This seemingly, unimportant stable-boy is far more significant than anyone could know. 

Shadows are gathering around those who seek to bring light. They have their eyes fixed on Genoes.

Can the Lady Darkhelm stand in their way? 

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I release one chapter a week - at 11:15 on a Saturday.

You can get advanced access to the next three chapters at my Patreon.

My Discord is here https://discord.gg/jbX64gnx

Feedback is very much encouraged - please do pop a comment below. It means a lot. 

A fantastical world of guns and magic teeters on the brink of a brave new era. But the GUN CZARS–the world’s most powerful Gunslingers–would see that progress destroyed.

Only one thing can stop them: Roulette, a lone girl determined to walk the path of revenge. Immature and oblivious to her destiny, she must embark on an epic journey to gather strength and allies for the battles ahead.

With Lady Luck on her side, she may just prevail… 

…But what good is luck, when you stand against an army?

(Author's Note: Thanks for reading! New chapters 3x a week, every Monday-Wednesday-Friday

Visit patreon.com/dischtopia to read 5-10 chapters ahead!)

(Tags updated in preparation for Book 2)

It has been an age of peace between the Holy Paladin Order and the Mage Alliance, nearly five hundred years since the last major war on Contenmere, smallest continent on the world of Reath. But the peace remains an uneasy one even now.

When the Lord Protector Lutan pursues an old grudge and an entire village winds up dead as a consequence, it looks like a return to open warfare is inevitable unless he can stop the necromancer he’s hunting from reaching the safety of his own people, however, this is not his story.

. . . Alec had lived a very quiet life in the village of Respite, seeing little in his future other than collecting the valuable deadwood of the ancient, magical and above all, deadly Forest Von Mori.

But, now as the sole survivor of his village, and captive of that same necromancer, things are not only different but, more disconcerting than the glaringly obvious, something doesn’t seem right; why is the necromancer so determined to protect him? And just what principles is Alec prepared to forsake to survive . . .

Tragedy forges a heart of darkness.

The Kingdom of Kaereste is at peace after decades of war. 

The drums of battle have gone silent, and the killing fields still, but those who man the Aldranari Line know you can never trust an elf. 

Calder Shiels knows this better than most as the sole survivor of a brutal attack that left him an orphan and ignited decades of war between elves and men. Now a man grown, he serves as a Sentinel in the Queen’s Legion at an outpost on the edge of nowhere.

When his milefort Grymsgate comes under attack by elven forces, the tenuous peace is shattered, dredging long-buried memories into the light and a forbidden gift that may prove to be Calder’s salvation.

Now accused of desertion and cast from the Legion he spent his life serving, Calder finds himself adrift and without purpose until a chance encounter puts him on the Path to Vengeance.

Spellblade is a riveting story of murder, revenge, and lust for power in a world ruled by The Great Lie of the elite.

“The Spellblades are dead, their bones dust in the wind.”

”Are they? I wonder…”

Following a strange call coming from the region known as Desolation, Iterna sends a team to find out its source. Ratcatcher and Augustus Rho, two explorators from Iterna, were tasked with ensuring the safety of specialists and escorting them to the source of this disturbance. However, their mission goes awry when the elder of the Bento Tribe and the monstrous Mother, the ruler of the Desolation, both end up chasing after them.

Can the team reach its goal safely, and will they ever get answers to just who exactly they are escorting and why?

The threat: the destruction of all life on Earth.

The agents: a young man with a system, and a military woman in charge of Bureau of Supernatural Affairs.

Albert woke up and saw a Quest waiting for him, written in words hovering in the air. A System. But the System did not come without a reason. And the reason was to give him power to fight a full-scale invasion of planet Earth at the hands of an unknown species, waging war against Humanity. 

One day. One step at a time. First he must become strong through fire and tribulation.

And he's not the only one fighting for humanity. There is another, a woman of pure steel and resolve working against all odds to save humanity.

Follow Albert Grassman, a college student on his way to becoming a mage worthy of his name, thanks to a powerful System and invaluable allies.

Follow Samantha Cromwell, head of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs in her attempts at containing a planetary threat and shielding the world from the horrors that come with magic, at the price of her own soul.

And hope that they save the world from annihilation.

After fulfilling the duty all arch necromancers are tasked with, Sylver Sezari was not expecting to ever wake up again.

But he did.

And after crawling his way back into the land of the living, he’s alive once again. In a strange land, a strange time, and with a strange floating screen in front of his new face.

Either through plan or chance, he’s alive again, and planning to enjoy himself to his heart's content.

-The story isn’t grimdark, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows either. There will be lighthearted and positive moments, as well as some sad ones. That being said, it’s a whole lot more light than dark.
-This is a LITRPG story.

Chapters are published every 2 days at 21:00 GMT.

Author’s note:
-It can get very GORY. I’m somewhat desensitized to gore and violence. So while the story isn’t full of gore for the sake of gore, it can get a little too descriptive.
-The MC is a necromancer, so corpses and decay, and all the things that come with it, will be mentioned from time to time.
-I’m a huge fan of Egyptian, Slavic, and Greek mythology, so expect quite a bit of that. That said, so much is altered, you’ll be hard-pressed to guess how exactly it is being used.
-Despite being ‘immortal’ the MC can die. In the event he does, the story doesn’t end, simply time skips forward. Which in some cases is going to be worse than just dying.
-I love plot twists, as much as I love red herrings and Chekhov guns. Deus Ex Machina’s not so much.

Cover: https://angshumandhar.artstation.com/projects

Jeb Trapper tried to kill himself. The gun jammed.

Two months later the vet is participating in underground trials of ecstacy to treat his PTSD.

Everything seemed to be going great until...

 >>>The System has Been Installed<<<



Now he's got to choose the difficulty of his tutorial.

Just one problem.

He's high as a kite, and nothing seems Impossible.

A:GS book one is up and running on Amazon!

Book 2!
Book 3!