Forty-Four – It’s Raining Relics
Deciding to make a quick-ish pitstop before continuing on to the radio station, we left the stairwell behind and returned to the glorious splendor of the store with its perpetually stocked aisles and real human customers who weren’t going to transform into eldritch horrors at the drop of a hat. I took a deep, calming breath and felt ...
2024-12-10 14:47:26 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Three – Heart to Heart
For a long tense moment, Ed just stood there, frozen, with his hand pressed against the door. Then he gave it a little shove and it swung outward—even though the door had swung inwards only moments before. Just another quirk of the Doorway Anchor system.
Gone was gore-spattered preschool hallway with its squishy pink floor and eyebal...
2024-12-08 18:49:11 +0000 UTC View PostForty-Two – Mr. Wiggles Cometh
While Croc finished its grisly meal, Ed pulled out a small notebook and consulted with a small hastily scrawled map and some chicken-scratch notes, before ushering us down a long hallway filled with thick gobs of spider webbing.
We stepped lightly, avoiding a pitfall trap filled with dozens of sharpened rebar spikes at the bottom of ...
2024-11-27 00:34:10 +0000 UTC View PostForty-One – Wholesale Slaughter
I activated Spike Fault as the front wave of swarmlings scrambled toward us in a wall of giggling legs and smiling, cherubic faces. Spears of earth erupted upward through the oddly spongey surface of the floor, skewering several of the arachnid toddlers and creating a terrain hazard in the process. I swiveled left and right, activating th...
2024-11-26 20:58:13 +0000 UTC View PostForty – Tiny Tots
As high as kites and with our gas masks firmly in place, we kicked open the front doors of the preschool and went in hot with Temp and Jakob taking point. I gripped my hammer in one hand, ready to obliterate anything that got into fuck-around-and-find-out range, while spell cards and tools spun around me in a slow circle. Croc, Ed, and Wo...
2024-11-26 20:22:37 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Nine – Vampires
Even though we were working against a shot clock, Ed had a few extra preparations to make before we could depart, which was good because we needed to catch a few hours of shuteye. I was more than ready to leave this nightmare floor behind and never look back, but everyone was exhausted, especially after the adrenaline from our cookout battle faded...
2024-10-20 16:15:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone, thought I'd share this super rad art for Discount Dan 3. Croc is finally gonna get to visit a water park, although it might not be as much fun as he originally thought. Let me know what you think in the comments! I'd love to hear your feedback!
2024-10-15 15:44:41 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Eight – Conspiracy Theories
“Danke Schoen, for the warm welcome. This is a very lovely home you have here by the way,” Jakob said, his hands folded behind his back as he surveyed the bookcase with obvious curiosity.
Ed snorted and rolled his eyes. “You Germans always were polite ones, but there’s no need to sugarcoat things. You can just sa...
2024-10-10 18:25:21 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Seven – Kannibal Kids
The creature pulled itself from the barn and into the clearing, the full moon above bathing it in silver light and giving us a clear look for the first time. It was a towering abomination of hunger and malice, easily eight feet tall. Maybe even taller, since it moved on all fours like some kind of enormous gorilla with ridiculously long arms...
2024-10-10 15:32:35 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Six –The Cornfields
We had a minute, maybe less before the legion of HOA thralls converged on us and thanks to the houses obstructing the view, I was the only one who knew what unholy hell was about to bury us.
“Time to go!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs.
Jakob was the only one close enough to hear me.
“Get to the cornfield!” I yelle...
2024-10-09 20:33:07 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Five – Footloose
The thump of the music helped mask the billows of rage and the unholy shrieks that emanated from the assembled Kevins and Kathys. Inside the span of an eyeblink, all the perfect people were gone, replaced by an army of monstrous creatures covered in yellow boils, too many eyes, and dangly flesh tubes which served as mouths.
There were sever...
2024-10-09 19:43:01 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys! Quick update on Discount Dan. I'm gonna to post a bunch of chapters today since I finally got some work in, but there's one noticeable change to be aware of. I realized that the creatures on this floor (mostly being in the upper twenties to low thirties) were too powerful for floor nineteen. SO I officially retconned this and Eternal Suburbia is now the 24th floor instead of t...
2024-10-09 18:17:06 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Three – The Fireworks Stand
As per the Keep-What-You-Kill rule of the Backrooms, Jakob and Temperance took the liberty of looting Kevin, while I picked through the eviscerated Kathy’s spatial core.
The haul was better than I could’ve hoped for and after wading through the same type of low-level Relics for weeks on end, it felt good to finally g...
2024-08-27 18:48:35 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-Two – Lawnmower Man
Kevin lumbered forward with an incoherent roar. As he closed the distance, a blade of blue light exploded outward from his belly, whirling toward me with the force of a canon blast. Although the physical lawnmower blade continued to spin away inside his torso, this projectile appeared to be a perfect replica.
I acted on instinct and reac...
2024-08-22 18:54:28 +0000 UTC View PostThirty-One – Sunnysiders
When I climbed out of the truck, I discovered that my eyes were lying to me again. Instead of a bloody-red sky, a vast field of robin’s egg blue stretched out above us in every direction. There wasn’t a single cloud in sight, and it was the perfect kind of day that only happened once or twice every summer. The sun beat down on us like a hamm...
2024-08-21 20:44:57 +0000 UTC View PostThirty – You Scream
I inched my way over to the window.
When I glanced out, the breath caught in my chest. I’d been fully expecting a hoard of nightmare goblins, conjured from the deepest pits of hell, all fully ready to rip the flesh from my body and wear it around like a cheap costume fished out of the Spirit Halloween bargain bin. Instead, I found a pack of c...
2024-08-21 19:55:59 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-Nine – Ice Cream
I pushed my way through the metal freezer door, fully expecting to step out into a kitchen or maybe a school cafeteria. That sort of fit with what I was expecting of a level called the Everlasting Suburbs. I was willing to bet dollars to donuts that there were at least a few school zones. But nope. I was dead wrong. Instead, I stepped out into th...
2024-08-21 19:54:31 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-Eight – Way Down We Go
Using Unerring Arrow and the Variant Kiosk Network Map, it only took us a few hours to make our way toward the first entry point, which would bring us all the way down to floor nineteen.
I’m not sure whether it was the Barracuda in a Barrel title driving all the natives away or the fact that I floated a few feet above the f...
2024-07-23 14:45:05 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-Seven – Runic Upgrades
As eager as I was to immediately head down to the nineteenth floor and turn some Dwellers into meat paste with my new abilities, Jakob was still hard at work in the lab, and I had a few more provisions to prepare.
I only had a handful of Health Grenades left and I’d burned through all of my offensive spell Grenades during the showdo...
2024-07-12 18:47:51 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-Six – Gift Horse Offerings
We spent the next day preparing for the descent.
Jakob was the only one who’d visited the nineteenth floor but surprisingly, he only had a few vague tidbits to share which basically boiled down to be ready for anything. Especially mind-fuck games. The entire floor was what the Cendral referred to as a “Cognition Hazard.” App...
2024-07-12 12:37:49 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone, I wasn't particularly happy with that last chapter, so I took another stab at it. This one feels a lot better. More natural. Love to hear what you think!
Twenty-Five – The Vote
“There’s no way we can trust her,” I said, staring at the handful of items laid out on my private hotel room table: A Rare-grade Relic call...
2024-06-22 19:51:43 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-Four – Proxy War
“If you hurt my dog,” I growled at the woman, blood still streaming from my nose, “I swear to the good Lord above that it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
The woman looked at me and offered an easy tight-lipped smile.
“Why would I ever want to hurt your poor, sweet, precious pet?” she asked, raising a single eyebrow. ...
2024-06-13 19:38:37 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-Three – Party Crashers
Six Aspirants to be exact.
All congregating around one of my third-floor doorway anchors. The one closest to my fancy new kiosk.
There was no doubt about who we were dealing with, since I could see them clearly on the CCTV screens in the security office. The whole lot of ’em looked like extras from a Mad Max flick—crude body...
2024-06-11 22:20:58 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-Two – Backrooms Bullshit
Even though my Grand Reopening was going as smoothly as could reasonably be expected, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. This was the Backrooms after all, and in the Backrooms, there was always bullshit of one sort or another to deal with.
This particular bullshit had a name.
Jackson.
Tribune of the...
2024-05-16 20:07:11 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty-One – Grand Reopening
There were furries everywhere.
In a past life—one before the madness of the Backrooms—this would’ve been my worst nightmare. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d actually had a nightmare just like this once or twice in the before-fore times. Instead of being horrified, however… I was elated. One word I never would...
2024-05-07 20:58:54 +0000 UTC View PostTwenty – Title Change
Although the Codex regularly provided me with valuable insights about the Dwellers who inhabited the Backrooms, this was the first time I’d seen a direct research report. It lacked the general assholishness of most of the entries, which meant it probably wasn’t being delivered by my Localized Administrator. This was also the first time I’d ev...
2024-04-26 18:15:02 +0000 UTC View PostNineteen – Doctor Frankenstein
While Camo Joe went about his business, I snagged the rest of the security cameras and shoved the whole lot of ’em into my personal storage. My new Security Chief’s assessment was right—scaling up my security would be a challenge, especially with finite resources. But after seeing how well the first camera had integrate...
2024-04-24 00:34:25 +0000 UTC View PostEighteen – Upkeep
The Brownies were every bit the miracle workers that Ajax had made them out to be. They were zealots of the highest order, their religion was laundry, and there were none more devout. By the time I made it back to the Spin Cycle, my bathrobe had been washed, dried, pressed, and neatly hung with care. Unfortunately, it was still an ass-ugly kno...
2024-04-16 20:19:21 +0000 UTC View PostSeventeen – Land of Plenty
We found Bertrim and the rest of the priests celebrating in the laundromat, and this time they weren’t alone. There had to be at least three hundred or more of the laundry brownies—some wearing baggy overalls, others wearing floral dresses.
“Well now, this is certainly an unexpected turn of events,” Jakob said, as we eye...
2024-04-11 13:15:07 +0000 UTC View PostSixteen – Resonant Mana Signature
The three of us immediately started to pick over the corpses, all with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, the Silent-but-Deadly Assassin I’d fried with my Sterilization Field hadn’t left any Relics behind. It seemed my spell had obliterated the creature so thoroughly that not even its spatial core had survived the attack. Th...
2024-04-09 17:24:50 +0000 UTC View Post