Captain Rob Sinks: Part Four

(reading time: 1 hour, 30 minutes)

The Living Sixteen
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The marsh of gore beneath the Fith did not go on forever. The Fith only showed in patches in the Pipes, the rest of the ceiling composed of bedrock or rounded rusted metal. After two drops of walking Vyra leapt up onto a stone plateau with bonepicking. Rob followed.

“Private privies!” he exclaimed at the sight of it: a city constructed like no other he had ever seen. The buildings moved, the layered circles of their construction shifting back and forth like seaweed in a gentle current. Many had walls of perfect crystal clear as glass that sang along with the motion. The towers were taller than he could see and occasionally coupled with each other. Yet despite the constant activity of the stone, the place was abandoned. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #17: Exigecki’s just a Hoax

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

Secksigeeki

He leaned over the edge of the boat, letting a rope of orange-stained drool drop into the sea and drift away. His name was Bob Badcork, and this was, if his stomach was telling the truth, the sixth time he was going to vomit that day. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #33: Pinky Promise

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

King of Horror                                 Nutella Game                    Texan’s Rough Life

“Sire, you can’t remain in here all day,” Attendant Syrril said. She walked over to the king’s four poster bed and pulled back the curtain. The king was a young man, but the recent stresses had aged him noticeably. His dark eyes took a moment to focus on his loyal attendant’s face. She couldn’t even guess what he thought he was seeing: a ghost, an otherworldly ectoplasm, or perhaps some kind of giant speaking insect with an odd number of legs. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Sinks: Part Three

(reading time: 54 minutes)

The Pipes

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There was a time in Porce where the tiles, toils, and sinks were not the height of civilization. Before the Age of Building, before the Age of Tragedy, things lived within the walls and pipes of Porce, feeding on moisture and lighting their way by thought. Modern tales spoke of the Pipes as the underworld: a pit of damp suffering where evil souls and bodies were stored for all eternity, denied the mercy of complete rot. Those who believed in the eight gods and those of the Toil Papers both believed this. They were only partly right. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Sinks: Part Two

(reading time: 1 hour, 38 minutes)

Enough Stock for Soup

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Veer Keystonr could not see much of anything from his place at the bottom of the lifeboat. He could only trade information with the other bodiless members of the Calcitheater Rob had rescued. (Blaine’s Note: Veer is a skull we mentioned earlier, recognizable by the iron crown bonded to his head. He tutored Alast in arithmetic when he first joined the crew. In fleshed life he was a human ledger, and his memory for numbers seems to have only improved since then.)

“It was Qliomatrok! Can you believe it?” one of them muttered. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 20

Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

The pips have rolled again, The conveying Minefield connects the Trap to a new world. Three enter, seeing only a shredded sky in the distance: Enoch the mood-swinging cartwheeler, Spleck the shoe shine polish dust bunny, and Moroot the unemployed depressed rutabaga. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Sinks: Part One

(reading time: 1 hour, 23 minutes) (reading time for entire novel: 12 hours, 52 minutes)

By

Blaine Arcade (in a sense)

The Second of Four Bathroom Breaks

As a child not quite out of diapers yet, did you ever have the fear that the toilet would suck you down into it and you would drown or be crushed, or both, in its pipes? I didn’t, but I’ve heard people say things like that. It’s always a joke; they’re always reflecting on how dumb they were, how frightening new things are, and how a toilet might carry with it all the fears associated with water in general. If you showed one to a small animal it would just think of it as another place it could potentially drink or drown. Continue reading →

Chat Lib #11: The Corner of Conflicted Street and Action Figure Avenue

Chat Libs is a ‘Mad Libs’ based activity over on our Twitch live stream.  The audience suggests a scenario, I write a story template with missing words, and they fill in the holes.  Hilarity ensues.  If you wish to participate you can join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade

Scenario: A Self-driving Car Kidnaps its Passenger

A baker’s dozen wheels on the ground was the starting pistol of the experiment. The Jehoshaphat roadster model 2.0 was the first self-driving automobile cleared for blind street service, meaning customers just looking for a fast and color blind taxi had no idea it was a driverless wonder. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 19

Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

The pips have rolled again. The conveying Minefield connects the Trap to a new world. Three enter, seeing only a shredded sky in the distance: Trevor the well-behaved child, Rargle the parody of rabies, and Flippers the lost and confused emperor penguin. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #16: Witchy Wolfi

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

TheWolfChkin

She hadn’t touched a coin in two years, so there was no money to purchase a mirror. She’d learned many skills in her isolation, but not how to blow glass or build the furnace she would need to do that in the first place. Wolfi Cheekin had only her tiny wooden house on the edge of the woods and the skills she brought with her the day she was cast out. Continue reading →