pirates

Captain Rob Sinks: Part Three

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(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

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(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 →

Captain Rob Sinks: Part One

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 6 Comments

(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 →

Twitch Stream Story: The Dusk Runner

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: the story of a clipper-class airship called the Dusk Runner.

The great cities of mankind’s first and only steam empire had risen into the sky with brass spears and aluminum windmills. The airships used to see these towers, like a mineral garden sculpted from a dwarf treasure hoard, but they were no longer visible. The city produced its own clouds in vast numbers; they became a second sea obscuring the upper reaches of the entire empire. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 7

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

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

A world lies in ruin, its debris drifting on a bottomless sea. Its remaining people, from all places and periods, have one chance of survival. One world will take them, but they must make the journey on their own. Between the two lies the minefield: a vast varied expanse of debris both magical and scientific. Salvation is on the other side.

Three figures emerge from the fog of their sputtering world: Jules the pregnant draft dodger, Bitbeard the cryptocurrency pirate, and Dishokk the deposed white tiger beast. They see the minefield before them, knowing little, and walk forward. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: An Unopposed Sword Clashes

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt:  A kid gets taken by a band of space pirates and eventually finds a magic katana.

Even the bag over Maximus’s head was strange. It wasn’t burlap; it was some kind of rubbery fabric capable of holding a charge. He knew that because, every time they bumped his head into something, a jolt of static moved between the bag and the tip of his ears. He was only thirteen, just young enough to fit under the giant man’s arm like a briefcase. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Fights (Finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

(reading time: 1 hour, 2 minutes)

A Beast Fights

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The tables for the feast had buckets crafted into them because bergfolk celebrations often devolved into dancing right where you ate; this way they could not be kicked aside. The buckets were filled to the brim with all sorts of strange refreshments: spiced green cleansing water, warm red oystie sauce, pure blue toil water, and a foaming drink called scrub-throat that kept its bubbles for days. The bergfolk swished them about in their mouths and noses, sometimes holding one nostril closed so they could blast a fountain of it out the other. Alast watched as a woman gladly opened her mouth to accept a jet of cleansing water fired from a neighboring nostril. It might’ve been rude not to join, but Alast couldn’t bring himself to do it; he let any liquid that came his way splash across his shirt instead. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Fights (Part Eight)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 34 minutes)

Cracking the Knuckles

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Captain Rob moved through abandoned streets. The folk of Dhonshui had been evacuated from the part of town near the gates, a district called Quig, before the assault began. The closed mint was there and Rob made his move as soon as the last rows of soldiers came through. Luck was on his side, as Inguin had not done anything about the bronze disk Alast had hidden the piece of the Reflecting Path inside. The search Rob had endured for the supposedly swallowed piece was not his favorite thing, but it was far better than anything Yugo had planned. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Fights (Part Seven)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 1 hour, 26 minutes)

Trespassing Reflections

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Second Stone Door was now out of their reach, according to the information they received at the next ekapad station. Yugo’s only stated goal was the tiles, and he did not seem happy about one slipping from his clutches. His forces moved faster than ever, off the established roads and into any territory they saw fit. There were not enough aker shortcuts to keep them ahead of bonepickers indefinitely, so a change of course was required. Continue reading →

Captain Rob Fights (Part Six)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 1 hour, 45 minutes)

Yugo’s knuckles

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“Damr told you to what?” Roary hissed just as he hopped up and closed the door. The current and former cabin boys were in the school’s kitchen; Rob had ordered them to earn their keep by peeling and washing vegetables for Oobla’s cooks before they stepped in to prepare dinner. Alast stood behind the slate counter with an oddly-curved blade in his hand perfect for skinning squish-squashes. The pile of vegetables and their leafy tops was so towering that Alast and Roary had quickly turned to conversation to stave off boredom. Continue reading →