[Sasha Nein, M. Psi, Psychonauts Agent]
The first thing Sasha noticed about Tanya’s mental world was… it was like Ford’s. The castle that Tanya had designed was shattered, the pieces still more or less in the right place if you ignored the fact that large cracks split the structure into dozens of pieces. These cracks were even in the sky, glowing with a malevolent golden light as it...
2023-02-06 15:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostI hope y'all enjoyed the new story! As before, vote for as many options as you want. The winner will have a snippet posted next month on the 1st. 'Mystery box' is a new snippet of some kind. I don't know what it would be yet, but I'm sure I can think of something if it wins.
2023-02-01 15:01:59 +0000 UTC View PostThis one's a little obscure compared to the other stuff I've played with, but with that little Christmas short story Rob Balder sent out to their email list, me and a buddy who is also a fan talked about this concept. The mystery box vote happened to win before I got a different idea, so here we are.
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Most people would assume that the eight ye...
2023-02-01 15:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe corpse of the Soul-Devouring Dragon burned. The amount of mana in a naturally formed stormcloud was immense, even if the amount of mana in that particular one was on the small side, as it wasn’t fully formed. If Casimr didn’t already ensure that all of his students were protected against such hazards, they would all be blind and deaf from the flash and boom of that spell. “And that!...
2023-01-30 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostI had this scheduled to post this morning... but apparently I accidentally set it for PM, not AM. My bad.
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The next area was in a pit, and contained even more germs, another bucket, and another bottle of bleach. Even the figments were mostly the same, with the sole outlier being a viking helmet next to a small pond.
After two more areas of simi...
2023-01-23 23:06:49 +0000 UTC View PostYou get an extra-long one this week, as I couldn't figure out a good spot to cut the battle short. It's going into the cooldown parts of the story now. I have a problem with making fight scenes a little short, I think. Hopefully y'all like it.
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“This is heavy shit.” Peter said after Illivere’s full explanation.
“A God of monsters…” Faron mutte...
2023-01-16 15:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostMary’s mind was… interesting. They manifested in a church, with Being X’s iconography everywhere, and a statue of the Bloody Valkyrie herself, depicted as a cherubic angel. The comparison to the statue in her own mind, before it was shoved into a dark corner of Yomi castle, flitted through Tanya’s mind.
“Now, to search for some emotional baggage.” Tanya announced.
“Age...
2023-01-09 14:59:34 +0000 UTC View PostSorry about the first poll not allowing multiple choices. Please vote again, and feel free to vote for multiple options.
2023-01-02 21:30:16 +0000 UTC View PostThe explanation from his students was pretty basic: They overheard the slavers referring to whoever they were going to sell Illivere to as ‘the dragon’, and that a representative of the dragon had examined her during their captivity to confirm that she was who the slavers said she was. Illivere wasn’t conscious during that, but Faron was.
The representative was… well, no one they ...
2023-01-02 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostI'm glad to see that most of the people who signed up in December stuck around! My patrons have doubled!
As Psychoprotective is now going to be a regular update, alternating with Anima Academy (until AA concludes, which will be... soon-ish.), it is no longer on this list. But you guys are going to get, guarantied, two Psychoprotective chapters this month!
2023-01-02 05:18:16 +0000 UTC View PostI really expected Psychoprotective to win this month. Well, it didn't, so... Here you go.
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One of the few advantages that Tanya provided that Tenko appreciated was the enhanced rate of healing. Normally, being put in a full body cast would take half a year or more, followed by even more months of physical therapy.
With the constitution of a shapeshifter, ...
2023-01-01 16:20:00 +0000 UTC View PostToday was supposed to be an Anima Academy... but I got sick and was unable to do any substantial writing for the last four days. So... extra Psychoprotective for y'all.
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As the activity planning done for the camp was clearly inadequate, the counselors had to improvise. Fortunately, the rain was over, and after breakfast, it was announced that today, ...
2022-12-26 15:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostIn acknowledgement of how many of you likely signed up so you could see psychoprotective 13, I'm officially changing the schedule:
Now:
Mondays: Alternate between Anima Academy and Psychoprotective (early access 7 days)
1st of month: Poll result, public posting on the 8th.
As a note, new patrons: Unknown Justice is currently winning the poll ...
2022-12-23 05:14:02 +0000 UTC View Post[Camilla “Milla” Vodello, Psychonauts Agent]
Milla didn’t expect Tanya to win against the Heartless Machine. These things worked like a tug of war. Each defeat Milla dealt the mental construct gave Tanya additional strength when it came to overcoming her personal demon, but Milla still has three more baggage tags, this wasn’t going to be resolved after two defeats. Will she need a...
2022-12-22 15:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostTwo updates this week, another psychoprotective chapter will be posted on Thursday, with this one becoming public at that time, and that one will become public next Monday as if it was this one. I didn't want the bonus Christmas chapter to be within one day of this one becoming public.
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[Camilla Vodello, Psychonauts Agent]
The Psychonauts had always su...
2022-12-19 15:16:26 +0000 UTC View PostMana cultivation was usually used as a measure of monster strength. Materials that were infused with mana were stronger, more durable. Living beings were not an exception to this. Monsters had significant amounts of impure mana at their disposal, and some could be composed of truly massive quantities of it.
But this was not something exclusive to monsters, just innate to them. Anyone who ...
2022-12-12 15:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostSomething that Casimir’s gone through a lot of effort to learn was how to use the tremorsense divination without also giving away his exact position, on top of giving all of that valuable topographical information to whoever was paying attention with mana sense. This was primarily accomplished by getting better at sensing mana, and then just using less of it to divine the underground terrain....
2022-12-05 15:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post“How did it come to this?” Whispered Tenko as he languished in the cage, half-dead from wounds. They didn’t want to say it was because they tempted Being X by being too content with their circumstances… but it very well could have been that,
Tenko (no family name) had been born on Yellow Island, a place in the “Grand Line”, which was one of five seas (read: oceans) in the worl...
2022-12-01 15:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostDecided to see if I get more votes if I post the poll at the same time as the story for that month. Once again, vote for a new, 4k+ chapter of one of the below, or vote for THE MYSTERY BOX for me to post something new!
I remembered to enable multiple choice this time.
2022-12-01 15:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostIt occurs to me that it's entirely possible that one of you may not read the normal thread for this except for the first ones. Foolish, but understandable. So I'm going to link it, just in case. 9 was posted as a holiday bonus.
https://forums.spacebattles.com...
2022-11-28 15:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post“Okay, I’m pretty sure she was in this one before she rabbited.” Casimir said confidently as he examined the magical remnants of the desk. “Liches leave a pretty distinctive imprint on the local mana when they reform.” Distinctive… but when they deliberately wiped their trail, it was still difficult to make out. Not impossible, however.
“Any clues as to her whereabouts?” D...
2022-11-21 15:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostNeeded a break, posting this instead.
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[Milla Vodello, Psychonauts Agent]
Milla was worried for Tanya.
This was not an unusual situation, mind you. Even without a blood connection, Milla considered Tanya her precious daughter and nothing could change that. It’s a mother’s prerogative to worry for their children, particularly when they’re so… ...
2022-11-14 14:58:19 +0000 UTC View PostHere we are again! Shall Courtly Chronicles win again? Or shall I instead spent that time making more Psychoprotective? Or perhaps... the MYSTERY BOX!
Edit: Dangit, forgot to enable multiple choice again. And apparently I can't edit that after posting.
2022-11-08 22:01:15 +0000 UTC View PostArtifacts were somewhat… deceptive as a category of magic item. What made it an artifact? In the past, when the term was coined, it was basically a category that meant ‘it’s old and we have no fucking clue how this works’.
They don't use conventional enchantment methodology, but they are still clearly objects of incredible magical power. Back then, a complete mystery. Now? Not so ...
2022-11-07 15:00:00 +0000 UTC View Post[Tanya Degurechaff von Goethe aka Tenya Deguchiya aka Archduchess von Goethe, circa 1929, age 14]
The feeling at court was rather optimistic about the war. With the rest of the continent properly suppressed, they could focus much larger concentrations of forces on the communist threat.
The war crimes tribunal was still ongoing, but Tanya got the feeling that De Lugo would walk from ...
2022-11-01 14:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostEventually, David managed to navigate the social scene of the adventurer’s guild well enough to get a hold of someone who could be of assistance: An elite-ranked shaman by the name of Polium Cloudskimmer, epithet ‘The Swamp King’.
The Aviost was visibly aged, his left eye clouded over and his movements slow and deliberate. His black feathers were streaked with gray, and his beak, a ...
2022-10-31 14:00:12 +0000 UTC View PostRefer to the announcement posted last night, please. Fans of Psychoprotective should be happy, at least.
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The names of all of the stations were pretty ominous, but ‘The School of Missed Chances’ was… less so. There were plenty of things that Tanya regretted over their lives, and this sounded like it would collect them.
When Tanya left the train st...
2022-10-24 14:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostYeah, I don't have nearly enough written for this week's Anima Academy. What I do have is a massive backlog (I'm finishing up chapter 13) of Psychoprotective because my muse is stubborn like that, so I'll be posting one of those tomorrow instead. I'm hoping that I won't need to do that two weeks in a row, but it's possible.
More to the point, I've been given a sizable commission project...
David’s wife was apparently named Pyra, a beauty with bright red hair and control of over a thousand head of cattle. It was the largest operation in the area, with over one hundred hired hands, and if one wanted to be political about things, it was exactly the kind of family that would be extra-keen to marry powerful adventurers to help maintain their position.
“David’s never brough...
2022-10-17 14:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostCasimir did not have a plan.
It was more that he had a few ideas. Nothing that could be considered a “plan”, per se. Fortress-style enchantments had many weaknesses, but they also had innumerable strengths. At any moment, she could turn the negative magic drain back on, absorbing whatever David and Casimir cast to oppose her. At the same time, the fact that it wasn’t on meant that s...
2022-10-10 14:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post