Alright, alright, alright, there are a lot of really good suggestions floating around. What do you guys think of me scrapping this poll, and allowing you guys to brainstorm some good names for about an hour(here and on the thread) before placing them all back on a fresh poll?
Also, Eoin suggested this:
"Honestly, if thats the way you are going, then might as well hav...
2025-05-02 00:40:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Spoilers below
Paul is given the name after a staged video of him executing Lung, Hookwolf and Skidmark is posted, and goes viral, on the PHO and legacy media. Special provisions have been made for the ...
2025-05-02 00:24:28 +0000 UTC View PostThe PRT/Media has been unable to communicate this mysterious cape wreaking havoc on Brockton's Bay's criminal underbelly. They still need to give him a name, however, and decided on the alias...
2025-05-01 23:58:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe apartment was silent, insulated from the sirens that still wept intermittently across the city. Clean lines, minimalist decor, steel and glass reflecting the muted glow of the skyline beyond the armoured windows. Order. Control. Everything my public life, my other life, strove to impose on the chaos of Brockton Bay. Tonight, that chaos lapped closer to...
2025-05-01 19:58:16 +0000 UTC View PostThe call confirming the Ward’s status came precisely two minutes after Glory Girl had arrived at Brockton General, according to the time stamp on Dragon’s initial alert. Gallant. Dean Stansfield. Deceased. Another child soldier dead on my watch. The thought landed flatly, devoid of the sharp horror it might have evoked in someone less acquain...
2025-05-01 18:33:58 +0000 UTC View PostThe city felt thin tonight, stretched taut like old elastic about to snap. Brockton Bay always had an edge, that low thrum of something about to go wrong, but this was different. Sharper. The air itself tasted metallic, ozone-and-fear flavoured, even high above the streetlights where the drizzle misted against my shield. Below, flashing lights ...
2025-05-01 16:56:21 +0000 UTC View PostCold seeped into Kayden’s bones, a damp chill that had nothing to do with the persistent drizzle and everything to do with the black, glassy substance encasing half her body. It felt like ice, drinking the meagre light and warmth from her skin. Pain was a dull throb in her shoulder and ribs from the initial blast, which she only barely avoided by taking cover b...
2025-04-30 21:40:24 +0000 UTC View Post“Hard tasks need hard ways.”
—GOD EMPEROR, LETO II
The purloined jeep handled sluggishly, its suspension groaning under the added weight of salvaged weaponry and the inert, groaning form in the backseat. Paul drove with detached precision, navigating the rain-slicked streets away from the scarred coastline and towards the ...
2025-04-28 22:54:49 +0000 UTC View Post“Don't sit with your back to any doors.”
—GURNEY HALLECK
The world returned as a suffocating pressure, a liquid weight crushing lungs accustomed to air, however thin or polluted. Cold shock jolted through limbs still echoing with the phantom concussion of the blast. Water—dark, churning, filled with the grit of pulverize...
2025-04-28 22:53:25 +0000 UTC View Post“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these pattern...
2025-04-25 22:01:38 +0000 UTC View Post
“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
—FIRST LAW OF MENTAT
Paul stepped out of Fugly Bob’s and let the door click shut behind him. Grease-laden air clung to his clothes for a heartbeat, then the harbor wind carried it away and...
2025-04-24 18:59:38 +0000 UTC View Post“Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained.”
—SUK DOCTOR YUEH
The dawn crept through Brockton Bay like diluted iodine, thin and vaguely toxic. Paul sat before his monitor in that amber hush, the soft rasp of a toothbrush echoing from the hall where Martha readied herself for work. Ne...
2025-04-22 03:42:29 +0000 UTC View Post“A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.”
—GOD EMPEROR, LETO II
The Veder apartment drifted in midnight torpor: a pulse of refrigerator freon, the remote susurrus of freeway traffic, Tom’s faint snore two rooms away. Paul lingered at his bedroom window until every tick of the household co...
2025-04-22 02:26:03 +0000 UTC View Post“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”
—GOD EMPEROR, LETO II
The house lay in weekend stillness—pipes ticking, refrigerator sighing, the city’s distant sirens softened by coastal fog. Paul moved in deliberate silence, bare feet finding the marks he had chalked on his bedroom carpet: a square ...
2025-04-22 00:56:37 +0000 UTC View PostAsh drifted upon the lagoon like black snow, settling in the gutters and on the tiled roofs that had not yet caught. From the highest balcony of the Sarren manse, Jace watched Braavos smoulder, orange tongues still licking at the poorer hovels beyond the Iron Gate. At daw,n the Titan’s great horn had sounded twic...
2025-04-21 21:20:36 +0000 UTC View Post“Beginnings are such delicate times.”
—PRINCESS IRULAN
The hour before dawn possessed a hush that Brockton Bay seldom granted—a stillness broken only by the faint whirr of a desktop fan and the soft, rhythmic clicks of a mouse. In that dim glow Paul sat erect, eyes tracking the march of text across an aging flatscreen. T...
2025-04-21 21:17:29 +0000 UTC View PostI drafted a cool scene for Refrain, but I'm not sure if it would make the final edit. Decided to post it here for your general enjoyment:
“Your bravado might’ve been impressive, had I not been able to smell the fear on you—ripe and rank, like a dog that knows it's about to be kicked.”
Skidmark bared his teeth. “Who the fuck are you calling a...
2025-04-21 00:43:09 +0000 UTC View Post“The tones, the timbre, the subtleties—they are a secret language all their own.”
―Frank Herbert, Dune
…
The city of Braavos glittered like a broken constellation against the ink-black lagoon. From dragonback, Addam Velaryon thought, it looked fragile—nothing more than...
2025-04-19 14:52:55 +0000 UTC View PostAn Extract from A Chronicle of the Dragon’s March East
compiled in the 132nd year since Aegon’s Landing by Archmaester Haradric of the Jade Quill, Keeper of Ships’ Logs and Correspondence, late of Oldtown
“Men will raise walls until they scrape the sky, yet dragons require only kindling.”<...
2025-04-19 14:51:22 +0000 UTC View Post
“The horselords come, we give them gifts, the horselords go.”
―Qavo Nogarys to Haldon
…
Ghoyan Drohe had been dead a thousand years, yet the city would not stay buried. Mounded walls of Rhoynar mud‑brick streamed outward like the ribs of some colossal carcass, and now the Red Cloaks we...
2025-04-19 14:49:23 +0000 UTC View Post“Valyrian steel was always costly, but it became considerably more so when there was no more Valyria, and the secret of its making were lost.”
―George R. R. Martin
…
Old men ought to dream of hearth‑fires and mulled wine, yet most nights, Vaegon Targaryen dreamed of fouler things. In those dr...
2025-04-19 14:47:05 +0000 UTC View Post“My lungs taste the air of Time,
Blown past falling sands…”
—GURNEY HALLECK
Paul dreamed.
He dreamed of blood and desert wind, of arid sands stretching to the horizon, awash in the bluish haze of spice. He dreamed he stood again on Arrakis, immersed in a future half-seen—his limbs burning with the potency of the Spice Agony...
2025-04-13 18:39:36 +0000 UTC View PostI’m running a quick poll to find out which story you’d prefer me to update more often—Arcane Disorder or Refrain. I have three writing days per week to split between these two (the other three go to TGW, and I keep one day off for myself). Whichever story leads get two chapters for that week, while the other gets one. Let me know which one you’d like me to focus on.
P.S.: I’ll r...
2025-04-12 11:16:31 +0000 UTC View Post“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.”
—BENE GESSERIT AXIOM
He woke into darkness.
Not the comforting dark of sietch caverns hidden beneath dune-scoured deserts, nor even the blackness of a starless night on Arrakis. This darkness throbbed behind the eyes—an inward place of discontinuity.
Paul Atreides became awa...
2025-04-12 01:53:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe bell rang, a dull clang that echoed through Winslow High's corridors like a hammer striking warped steel. I shoved my notebook into my bag and stood up to head for my next class. Yesterday had been a blur. I was still running on the half-baked adrenaline of last night's fight—if I could even call it a fight. More like a frantic scramble to stay alive. But after defeating Lun...
2025-04-12 01:51:58 +0000 UTC View Post
In the hidden corridors of time and mind lies the great gamble. So it was that Paul Atreides—Muad'Dib, the one foretold as Kwisatz Haderach—steeped his soul in the Water of Life. Yet where he should have emerged to the familiar spice-laden dust of Arrakis, he instead awoke to the mocking giggles of a high-school classroom. His body not his own. His memories fleeting, borrowed from a boy nam...
2025-04-12 01:43:36 +0000 UTC View PostI lingered a short while at Wort’s workshop, well after the clockwork alarm had rasped its sour warning to go home. The clients had already left, a hush settling among the dormant tools and half-finished contraptions. I stood beside the battered bench I’d called my own these past few weeks, steeling myself before speaking.
“I’ve something I wan...
2025-04-12 01:37:42 +0000 UTC View PostI was still tightening the final bolt on an old and battered prosthetic leg when the clockwork alarm wheezed out its mechanical chime: a rasping series of clicks that ended in a shrill ding. The resulting groan from the line of men behind me was audible enough to elicit a wince from me. Their faces were grimy from hours at work and in the mines, and their e...
2025-04-09 22:19:15 +0000 UTC View Post“I have my own kingdom here.”
―Saera, when asked if she meant to return to Westeros
…
The sun hung low over Sunspear’s spires when Qoren Martell stepped onto the grand terrace, heart pounding with a subdued tension. Below him stretched the palace courtyard, awash in vibrant silks and braziers that burned with aroma...
2025-04-09 04:01:10 +0000 UTC View Post“Each of them bears the mark, each has been tested under the ritual. Each would gladly give his life for you, Muad'Dib.”
―Stilgar
…
For a time, the hall under the House of Black and White lay as silent as a grave. Not even the faint drip of water disturbed the hush, nor the muted shuffle of bare feet on cool stone. The Faceless Men gathered ...
2025-04-09 02:56:25 +0000 UTC View Post