♈ | INTJ/P | ♀ | SPD + BPD
「Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die...」
Humanity set out to achieve Godhood and failed.
Their attempt left a ruined world behind, one touched by magic for the first time, but blighted by Heaven and Hell seeping into it. The ones who were left behind hide in great walled cities, caught in the throes of a timeless undeath, and almost completely decimated by the monsters set loose from the deepest abyss of their collective unconscious.
The Scions – warrior-mages who ate the fruit of hell and became possessed by fragments of God known as “Archons” – are the only ones who can fight these nightmares and cross the barriers between the worlds. They’re kept locked and isolated in abbeys, reared to protect the cities and their inhabitants. And, one day, to undertake the Pilgrimage, the mythical heroic journey through Heaven and Hell that will finally open the doors to Eden and grant humanity what it once sought and couldn’t grasp: eternal peace.
But, inside the walls of one of the abbeys, rebellion is brewing. Kayla, Joshua, Sarah, Matthew, Vivien and Darren tire of their captivity and plot to gain back their freedom and find answers to the mysteries of their dying world.
Yet it’s not only monsters that stand in their way. Some humans will fight for secrets to remain hidden, while others don’t wish to see the scales of power they’ve so carefully balanced tip. The Scions will have to follow in their ancestors’ footsteps and attain what their predecessors couldn’t to succeed: kill the Godhead and become gods themselves.
Sarah & Matthew, Bride and Knight of the House of Wings
The Scions of the House of Wings stand somewhere in-between; rather, they make all in-betweens their home. They have mastery over both elements and laws: air and gravity, metal and magnetism. Their breath magic is another case of them channeling the power of thresholds; in this case, the one between life and death. They possess an inscrutable connection to the Cosmos without and, through it, the world within, hanging perfectly in balance between body and mind.
Vivien & Darren, Bride and Knight of the House of Crosses
The Scions of the House of Crosses stand as the Roses’ opposite, reigning over water in all its aspects, including ice and mist, as well as rocks and gems, the metaphorical bones of the earth and, not surprisingly, actual bone magic. They prefer dark, deep places, either cavern or sea, places of death and voids, and are paragons of sleep and stagnation.
Kayla & Joshua, Bride and Knight of the House of Roses
The Bride and Knight of the House of Roses, for example, can not only create and control flames, but lava, electricity, as well as bend the forces of any plant and tree around them and, lastly, use blood magic. Theirs is the strength of life, innovation and creation, the forces of chaos and the land.
Humanity set out to attain Godhood and failed.
In the ruins left by their attempt, imprisoned in the throes of undeath, their heirs hide from the demons, horrors of the mind reborn as horrors of the world, and the angels, servants of the God they sought to dethrone.
But, inside the walls of a long-abandoned city, rebellion is brewing. The Scions, magic users possessed by mysterious creatures known only as “Archons”, tire of their captivity and plot to gain back their freedom and find the answers to the mysteries of their world.
Yet it’s not only monsters that stand in their way. There are still humans who will fight for secrets to remain hidden, others who don’t wish to see the scales of power they’ve so carefully balanced tip. The Scions might have to follow in their ancestors’ footsteps and grasp for what they couldn’t achieve to succeed. They might, even, have to kill God itself.
In the ruins left by their attempt, imprisoned in the throes of undeath, their heirs hide from the demons, horrors of the mind reborn as horrors of the world, and the angels, servants of the God they sought to dethrone.
But, inside the walls of a long-abandoned city, rebellion is brewing. The Scions, magic users possessed by mysterious creatures known only as “Archons”, tire of their captivity and plot to gain back their freedom and find the answers to the mysteries of their world.
Yet it’s not only monsters that stand in their way. There are still humans who will fight for secrets to remain hidden, others who don’t wish to see the scales of power they’ve so carefully balanced tip. The Scions might have to follow in their ancestors’ footsteps and grasp for what they couldn’t achieve to succeed. They might, even, have to kill God itself.
A horror fantasy web novel with the option of branching storylines and a TTRPG setting and system.
At the End of the World is a fiction project featuring a unique blend of fantasy and Gothic horror. The fantasy staples of magic, mythical creatures, and armored knights blend seamlessly with Gothic horror’s idolization of the middle ages, its love for the occult and monsters that represent repressed desires. This is exactly what the demons and beasts in this story represent; all of them are creatures born from the conflict between the animal instincts and angelic minds of humans, from the abyss between survival and logic.
Gothic horror also lends Victorian aesthetics to the environments and attire of the characters. The story is steeped in mystery, with twists and turns, truths that seem obvious only to be torn down by the next piece of information revealed to the characters and the readers. Despite the intense and vivid fight scenes, the four main characters and their relationships with each other, the world around them and the one within themselves are the main focus of the story. Their quest to kill God is also a self-discovery journey towards healing and learning. Their path is not smooth or devoid of moral choices, quite the opposite. Every decision has harsh consequences. There are no good or evil choices, simply ones that need to be made.
Inspired by popular works such as the Soulsborne franchise, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica and Alice in Wonderland, as well as Biblical eschatology, Sumerian mythology and Carl Jung’s take on psychology, this story has everything it takes to become a modern hit.
This campaign aims to create the first arc of the series, At the Fields of Fire and Blood, on three mediums that build organically on each other and go from pure narrative to role-playing game, with a hybrid “Choose your own adventure” version in between.
Novel: At the Fields of Fire and Blood: The Novel is a horror fantasy novel set in a dying world that follows the journey of four main characters, as they try to gain freedom from the city that has imprisoned them, and set out on a Pilgrimage to kill God and save the world and themselves. The storyline will be linear, released first as a daily serial on the website, and later in ebook.
CYOA: At the Fields of Fire and Blood: The Adventure is a choose your own adventure book with RPG elements for 1-4 players. Players take on the role of the four Scions (Kayla, Darren, Vivien and Joshua), people who have entered contracts with powerful entities known as Archons and inherited powerful relics and rituals through their bond. At the Fields of Fire and Blood is played as an interactive novel, with players making choices when prompted and given the choice to play out the battles with the horrors the characters encounter. While there are no good or bad endings and the primary objective of the adventure is to get through the narrative in a way that satisfies you, it is encouraged to try to find all the pieces of lore and all the secrets.
RPG: At the Fields of Fire and Blood: The RPG is a cooperative, narrative heavy TTRPG. The players will create a customizable character to take through either the provided or original campaigns. The provided campaigns can be played with no GM, simply by reading the introductory text, making your choices and then reading the outcome. This also allows for a solo mode. The game relies on both these choices and the solving of encounters to progress. The game ends once the narrative reaches its conclusion, regardless of whether or not all the secrets were unveiled.
Please check it out and consider supporting it and spreading the word!
Some of you may have heard of webnovels / webfiction by now. Huge successes like Worm or The Wandering Inn have certainly not gone unnoticed by speculative fiction fans and most of us have heard whispers about that legendary site: Wattpad. Still, webnovels remain a niche product, with its audience being mostly teenagers. People might avoid them because the quality of the novels wildly vary and it takes too long to sift through so many options until you find something decent. But how is that different from looking through self-published books? Another reason is that people might simply not know where to look. Especially with webfiction guide not accepting new users, there's no other sites that list webnovels from various sources for you to look through. Or are there?
Well, buckle up, fellow speculative-ists, I'm about to help you out with finding new, free fiction that releases at a faster rate than that one book if you've waiting for for 5 years!
(Full disclosure: I am a webnovel author. You may find my name / novel pretty quickly on one of the sites I will mention in this guide because I'm on trending and high up on the dark fantasy tag there. I'm not writing all of this for self-promotion purposes, however. It honestly makes me sad to see amazing webnovels doing poorly while average ones do amazingly simply because the audience is severely skewed. This is my attempt to broaden the audience a little bit, while giving other speculative fiction fans the chance to find amazing stories and fellow authors another outlet for their creations.)Let's get into it:The cons of webnovels
Quality does vary greatly and you'll have to sift through tags and read synopsis, reviews and first chapters looking for something you like and that is a bit timeconsuming. I still think it's not much different from looking for books you might enjoy, if you search efficiently.
Novels tend to be dropped. A lot. The golden rule that everyone tends to follow is: if it's less than 20~30 chapters or 200 pages, don't touch it. Filter out everything that is on hiatus. Big yes to novels that have at least one arc / volume / book finished.
The pros of webnovels
They're almost all completely free. Authors will have patreons, paypal and ko-fi if you want to tip them or get extra rewards, but that's it. If you don't like something, you've wasted nothing but a bit of time.
Fast releases. To make their novels competitive, authors tend to release new chapters at the very least weekly, with the most common release schedule being 2~3 times a week. Some even release daily. Some, still, release several chapters a day. You can follow the novel, forget about it during the week or for a month and end up with quite a stash of chapters to binge.
Being part of something that is being created "in real time". Webnovel authors will often ask for input from their readers, have fun polls where they ask them to vote on certain things, active discord servers, etc. You can also come up with and discuss theories and character growth as the story advances. It's a livelier community than getting a book that's finished and then you just talk about a full, finished project.
Where to look for webnovels?
With webfiction guide not accepting new members, it becomes a bit harder to find an impartial list of quality webnovels. You can still look at their top webfiction guide, but you're likely to have heard about some, if not all of the authors there. So, what to do when you've read through this list already (or browsed through it and nothing caught your attention)?
Muse's Success - This is a "sister site" to webfiction guide that serves as a directory. Webnovels have to be added manually either by fans or the authors and there is a rating system, but I can't vouch for how reliable it is.
If you want to forego directories and go right to the source, however, I'd say RoyalRoad is the biggest site for speculative webfiction. Yes, Wattpad exists, but it's largely for romance (some with speculative elements, of course), but it's also a bit of a mess to navigate and it's very unkind to new authors and works more like a SNS than an actual writing site. RoyalRoad offers better options in terms of following webnovels, looking through and filtering tags, getting rid of fictions you don't want to see, etc. It's a very good platform, overall, the best of its kind, I would say. It does lack a mobile app, but that's being worked on at the moment.
The Tops and Lists
Of course, the first place most people will look at is the tops and most viewed lists on any site. Don't be surprised if you find yourself disappointed with some of these. It happens. Make sure you don't stick to the first page only.
Best Rated - As the name indicates, this is a list of the best rated novels in the entire website. Some of them are already finished and have been so for years, some are still ongoing and have been so for years. You can select the complete only and active only best rated depending on whether you're looking for completed or on-going novels, too.
Trending - This is a list of 50 fictions that are doing the best at the moment, on the site. They call them the "rising stars" because they tend to be newer fictions, but you might find some older ones there as well.
Popular This Week - Again, as the name suggests, the novels that have been most viewed and rated the past week.
These lists tend to be somewhat repetitive. If you're on the top 7 on trending, you get a lot of exposure and that makes you rise on Popular This Week and Best Rated. It's kind of a cycle. So, what to do if you're done reading everything that interested you on these?
Search Feature
Maybe you're out of more popular stuff to read and want to dive deeper. Maybe you like finding hidden gems. Maybe you want to scratch an itch for a very specific genre. Don't fear, the search feature is here. And I'm too. I'm going to link you directly to the speculative genre tag searches. All you have to do is further filter the searches for anything else specific you might want or not want, choose whether you want on-going or complete fictions, pick which content warnings you're fine with. Filter as little or as much as you like! Though I'd say to filter a little bit if you want something specific, don't filter too much or you might end up missing on awesome novels just because the author forgot to tick a box or decided to put in a gore warning for that one scene where someone gets an arm cut out.
Fantasy - Historical Fantasy - Horror Fantasy - Horror - Sci-Fi - Horror Sci Fi
Final Notes
Don't filter for completed if you want finished books but are fine with ongoing series. Authors will usually make a listing for a series but not mark it as completed until the entire thing is done.
Some webnovel authors will self-publish. If you become their patron early on, you'll be getting cool stuff, helping them on their journey and getting a free book at the end. You might even get a character named after you!
Rate, review, all that, but please be kind. A lot of webnovel authors are very young and / or just starting out. If you see a story that you absolutely despise and / or can't read, it's best to move on and click the "don't show me this novel again" button than to rate them a 0.5* and ruin their day. Did you enjoy a story, however? Splurge. Make an account (or log in with google) and slap on that 5* advance review on it.
You're gonna see a lot of, hmm, particular tropes. Don't give up. Please. For the sake of all of us that don't write them and need more readers. I'm begging you.
To paraphrase something another user said on the RR discord: "You tend to find good writing and the same boring old ideas in mainstream fiction, while webfiction is filled with original ideas and worldbuilding but the writing is sometimes not the best". I think that sums it up pretty well. If you're looking for innovative ideas while seeing and helping writers grow at the same time, give webnovels a try.
I hope this guide was useful and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
The world is dying. Heaven and Hell broke and collapsed, creating a post-apocalyptic landscape that is part purgatory, part platonic world of ideas, blighted by the horrors of the human mind. The sun lies dormant in the east, atop God’s tower, while the west is plunged into darkness and haunted by all that lives there. There is no day and night cycle, nothing grows, nothing dies, nothing changes, unless magic is involved.
Angels hunt creatures for their blood, to feed it to God so he can finish gestating.
Demons kill and destroy aimlessly, their origins inexplicable and unknown.
Stranger beings wander the ruins of what’s left of the world.
Humans need not eat or sleep, caught in a state between life and death. They cannot die or be born naturally, but they can be killed and they can be made.
The few that survived with their sanity somewhat intact have locked themselves into warded cities, but their protections are feeble and often ineffective. The Order that united them is long gone, broken into factions known only by the sins for which they have fallen. The Houses that protected them are crumbling, falling into ruin as their members were culled down by angels and demons, as well as their own mad quest to save the world; the Pilgrimage, a vain attempt to steal into Eden and murder God himself.
Soon, only the Scions will remain. Those that were left not due to merit, but because they were the last choice for being heroes. Those whose memories and minds are as damaged and eaten through as their world. Those who agreed to take on the mysterious Archons within their bodies and, through that contract, had ancient relics and rituals passed down to them.
They converge onto a long forgotten neutral ground, trying to save themselves. A heroic journey through a nightmarish wonderland. A pilgrimage to God’s tower, to make the world whole again. To cleanse the world of the horrors infecting it. To kill the God who will doom them all with his birth.
At the Fields of Fire and Blood is a dark fantasy webnovel currently being published and trending at RoyalRoad. Perfect for fans of the Soulsborne and Madoka Magica franchises, as well as enthusiasts of victorian tales in the vein of both Gothic Horror and Alice in Wonderland. Releases three times a week, check it out!
(Art commissioned to @nezumiyasha with more coming!)
Become a patron of Crisyah today: Read 4 posts by Crisyah and get access to exclusive content and experiences on the world’s largest membership platform for artists and creators.
I set up a Patreon, so please give that a look if you’re interested in supporting my writing and / or checking out the available perks. Thanks in advance!
The world is dying. Heaven and Hell have broken and collapsed, creating a post-apocalyptic landscape that is part purgatory, part platonic world of ideas, blighted by the horrors of the human mind. The sun lies dormant in the east, atop God’s tower, while the west is plunged into darkness and haunted by all that lives there. There is no day and night (...)
Hi, guys!
I’ve decided to start posting the chapters to royalroad as well, so for those of you that have an account (or wouldn’t mind making one), it would really help out if you rated / followed / commented there! I’m still deciding whether or not I’m gonna move there permanently and post links to it, rather than full chapters, to other platforms, but it’s a tempting option, simply because it makes things so much easier.
For now, the serial updates every Saturday at 7pm, but there might be a few surprises coming.
I’m looking into setting up a Patreon with extra suffering– I mean stories, access to early releases of chapters and art and some other goodies, so stay tuned for everything that’s coming!
