tarakis

Hirrus Callabryn is cursed. Afflicted. Infected.

He’s also aware. For once.

After a player-led event turns his once peaceful town into a band of ravenous monsters, Hirrus obtains a sentience usually unobtainable by non-player characters. It might be a gift of the gods, or a mistake, but Hirrus doesn’t care. It means he can track down and find the players responsible and stop them from doing it again.

Thing is, players don’t like their plans being interrupted. And in this game, there’s no resurrection until the weekly reset. Will Hirrus be able to cut a path of destruction across the land to get his revenge, or will the players be able to overwhelm him and bring him to justice?

After being told to lock herself in the basement and hide when soldiers suddenly showed up in her remote village, Ria finds herself abandoned and must learn to survive. Will she uncover the truth of what happened to her family and her village? And what will that mean for her future as she begins to make her way in the world?

Book one is now complete! 

Updates Tuesdays.

[Background for cover was edited from a photo by Myicahel Tamburini provided by Pexels]

(The second book in the Descendants of a Dead Earth series, taking place immediately after the events of A Tinker's Damn, which can be found here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/30309/a-tinkers-damn-book-1-of-descendants-of-a-dead)

Deadlier of the Species turns its attention to Samara, of the Protean Clan. Recruited and trained by the clandestine Wetworks organization, Samara has left a long and bloody trail of bodies in her wake. But natural born killers are rare, rather they are created, molded by powerful entities to do their bidding in a shadow war where there are no borders, and everything comes with a price...including your soul.

But now that she has been freed from her chains, Samara has a few old scores of her own to settle...and perhaps a new cause to fight for as well.

McCallister was done with the world.  The world wasn’t quite done with him.

When the Tamani blew a hole in his ship, his friend, and his career, Richard McCallister called it quits.  No more TerraCorp work.  No more cheerfully donning the uniform and pretending he couldn’t see the cracks in the bulkheads around him.  From that moment, he’d be his own man again.

Until the message came – a whisper, carried through the few contacts he had left to the Dust, the farthest reaches of settled space.  A warning that the Tamani had returned.

When it arrives, McCallister is presented with a choice: He can run, finding a darker corner of the universe that the Tamani haven’t found yet.  He can stay moving, and stay alive.  Or he can turn back into the maw of their approaching doom and pluck his friend’s legacy from its teeth.

Winning means honoring his partner’s memory. Losing means sharing his fate.

The choice is his.

Buck Jones was born in 1850 and died in 1880. He was an outlaw, and technically still is.

 The world may change, the species may differ, and the circumstances may twist, but Buck knows one thing for sure.

Always draw first.

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 a 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.

The story is 700+ chapters, and repeating characters do not start appearing until the Vuxten chapters. If you're in a hurry for repeating characters then this story will not be enjoyable to you. The interwoven plot is not based on a single person but the entire war, with its effects upon multiple people.

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge for April 2022]

BOOK ONE IS AVAILABLE ON KINDLE AND AUDIBLE NOW

Some disasters can only be avoided if you know they’re coming, and even then, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

On Karell, you are either blessed by the gods, granted a unique power and the ability to gain experience and levels, or you are forgotten.  Micah Silver was a boy picked for greatness.  Chosen by the gods to bear a mythic power, he longed to take his place amongst the heroes and legends he grew up reading about.

Unfortunately his primary blessing only allows him to travel into the past by sacrificing his class, wealth, and levels.  Even if Micah's unwilling, fate has a way of forcing you to take up your destiny, possibly at the cost of everything.  Over and over again.

NOTE - Most of the first three arcs have been taken down for Kindle Unlimited Exclusivity related reasons.  Click here if you'd like to know more (THIS WILL LINK YOU TO A CHAPTER LATER IN THE BOOK, POTENTIALLY RESETTING YOUR BOOKMARK PROGRESS)

A comedy.

All life on Earth has been stolen away by The System, transported to another world at the behest of a distant galactic empire, who lived in terror of humanity's potential.

Ben was a normal, slightly above average man, and had been about to go on the first real vacation of his adult life. Now he must contend with danger and mystery in a world of monsters, magic and treasure, armed with nothing but his wits, and the special item given to him by The System.

This is his adventure.

Welcome to The World.

Daniel Stewart was chosen to alpha test a brand new Immersive VR game, "The Realms". What he doesn't know is that he has also been Chosen by one of the Powers of a far-off world, and is now a pawn in a game much bigger than any he thought he would ever participate in. Will he survive and thrive in this strange new world, or will he stumble and fall, shattered by the ambitions of another? Does he have what it takes to walk the Paths of the Chosen?

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Inspired by the Chaos Seeds novels, TheDespaxas's The Gamer, and a wide variety of games and books, although the world, characters, and systems are my own. Expect high fantasy, magic, combat and intrigue, love and loss, grief and passion. This story is intended for adult audiences and contains explicit sexual content, profanity, and violence (including sexual violence, although not by the protagonist and not as a focus of the story). Chapters with such content will be clearly marked, and all explicit sexual content will be behind spoiler tags. I prefer my stories to have happy endings, and especially in these uncertain times, I feel that it is important to maintain hope. While this tale will reach some dark places, I promise to you that, when all is said and done, the villains will be justly punished and the heroes will prevail and prosper. Remember: it is darkest before dawn, but dawn always comes.

Please note also that although this story does not have the [Harem] tag, it does have an extremely slow build into a polyamorous relationship. Additionally, starting with Champion (book two of the series), the [Multiple Lead Characters], [Female Lead], and [Non-Human Lead] tags would also apply to varying degrees.

This is a complete, ground-up rewrite of the original Paths of the Chosen, following feedback from here and elsewhere. It is now written in the third-person limited omniscient perspective and in the past tense. In addition, while the major plot beats are unchanged, most of what comes between them has been reconsidered and rewritten, with pacing and characterization as a special focus.

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Update schedule: 2 chapters per week (Monday and Thursday), not counting bonus chapters. Chapter length is roughly 2,500 words on average, +/- 1,000 words. Chapters with explicit content tend to be longer so that they are still worth reading for those who would prefer a fade to black.

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Cover art by Agri Karuniawan (@artofagri). View more of their work at https://www.deviantart.com/iamagri.

Updated daily at 23:06 UTC

NOTE! This trilogy is finished. It was published by Aethon Books on Amazon starting with book one on 5/1/2021. All books have been removed from RoyalRoad. This story was posted on RR in its entirety for free before being removed.

Magnus Cromwell kills for a living.

He’s organized, professional, efficient. Like a machine. But when his family’s life is on the line? That’s something else. That calls for the kind of warm-blooded vengeance that scorches earth and summons tungsten rods from space, leaves a whole lot of melted flesh, and no one to tell the tale.

It should've been a blue milk run. As by-the-book as it gets. With his sister Nina out safe and the opposition decimated by hypersonic gunfire, MC wondered where they got the guts to even try. Then something hits him. Lays him out cold, and leaves him waking up to a fantasyland with nothing but his armor and a half-written note to guide him. It's a strange place where even stranger predators eye him for their next meal. Where his life’s on a timer, and where the darkest horrors haunt his dreams, painting visions of death.

There's no right day to mess with Magnus Cromwell. But the universe sure managed to pick the absolute worst one.

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- MC is stone-cold, strong(OP), and gets even stronger, but he'll still face his fair share of challenges, both internal and external.

- LitRPG-lite. No stats and an unconventional system. Expect abilities and progressions, but there will only ever be a handful of them.

- Science Fiction and Fantasy collide, with a touch of mystery, Lovecraft, and body horror.

- Professionally painted art scenes!

- This series is finished.

A Huge thank you to RoyalRoader MikeWe for the banner, and to NoDragons for his help editing the synopsis. Cover and scene art by the talented John Molinero

Discord: https://discord.gg/s6e5rTj

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

In the future, Man has traveled the Cosmos.

In the future, Man has discovered many other races.

In the future...Man has no home.

200 years after the great war that destroyed Earth, humanity struggles to survive; fractured, divided, wanted by no one.

Until Maggie, of the Tinker Clan, makes a discovery, setting in motion a chain of events that could change everything.

Earths Engineers are a double-edged sword. They can fix or improve anything, but no sane Xeno Engineer will touch it if it carries the Human Altered warning..

A series of interconnected tales from our distant future. It's not a novel, most of the chapters are stand-alone.

Also thanks for the awards.

https://discord.gg/eU4SgFr