Palus Somni Mystery Tragedy Supernatural Slice of Life Psychological Horror
It is the final days after the end of the world and you only have one month left before the last sanctuary erupts into chaos. There's a dead body hanging from a tree and cadaverous giants watch you sleep at night. The end is already here, you just don't know it yet.
Now rated in the top 3% of all novels on Royal Road!
Palus Somni (‘Marsh of Sleep’) is a worldbuilding webnovel about what happens when your God forsakes you.
Inspired by gothic horror and mingled with British myth and folklore, join the Alucinari nuns as they struggle with day-to-day life after the world has ended.
Every night when the sun sets the monstrous Gol, colossal beings with too many teeth, awaken and roam the marshlands. Only those with a faithful heart will be spared. Young acolyte Wille has never seen the walls fail, but when a fellow nun is murdered within their sanctum the very safety of the monastery is thrown into question. Did the Gol find a way to breach their defences, or is there a human traitor amongst them? The answer lies both far in the past and deep beneath the earth, through the maze of ancient catacombs.
With a cast of over thirty different characters, watch as your friends and enemies spiral into inevitable madness at the hands of a callous and unforgiving world. Discover the secrets of Palus Somni through letters, diary entries and notes found scattered across the monastery. Uncover the mystery of the grotesque giants that stalk the night and bring your challenge to the Gods themselves.
Each character has their own handmade pixel art, and every update includes a music recommendation for a dark atmospheric dungeon synth album that you can listen to while you read.
Slice of life meets cosmic abomination: Palus Somni is a collection of intertwining stories, some chapters are stand-alone tales while others feed into the overarching narrative. It is an exploration into a community, and rather than focusing on any one character the story meanders through the convent, exposing the hopes and fears of its inhabitants.
Story updates every full moon.
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Chapter Selections
1. Canto I - A Visitor in the Night
2. Canto II - The Tatter Tree
3. Canto III - Death Comes
4. Canto IV - Letters by Lamplight
5. Canto V - Into the Larder
6. Interlude - Inka's Tale
7. Canto VI - The Rookery
8. Canto VII - A Kiss for Claudia
9. Canto VIII - Echoes in the Dark
10. Canto IX - No More Silence
11. Canto X - Funerals and Fading Fears
12. Canto XI - The Willow-Woven Basket
13. Canto XII - The Quiet Space Between
14. Canto XIII - The Margins
15. Canto XIV - Primordial Pilgrims
16. Canto XV - The Dream Eater
17. Canto XVI - Hide and Seek
18. Canto XVII - Saint Francesca of the Inquisition
19. Canto XVIII - Here Comes the Arm
20. Canto XIX - The Road
21. Canto XX - Chrysalis
22. Canto XXI - The Lord of Everything Under
23. Canto XXII – Conventional Habits
24. Canto XXIII - Fall From Grace
25. Canto XXIV – This Too Will Burn
26. Canto XXV - The Wille and the Wisp
27. Epilogue
Ignis
The duaghter of a Navigator house, with all of the obligations and connections that imples, and a few more besides. House Dannan has many obligations and competing interests, and you get to play a part in resolving at least some of them. How much trouble couly one yopung Navigator possibly get into? Quite a lot, as it turns out.Part 2 of the Aegisverse Saga. As to the Sexual Content warning: precisly one chapter will have such content, and it will be clearly marked in the title and description of the chapter. the chapter in question is entirly skippable from a plot standpoint if you do not want to read such content. Second Person is used throughout. If that isn't kosher with you, best to back out now. A Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader fanfictionComplete, with a total of 44 chapters and ~45,000 words. On the series - This series was first written as a Choose Your own Adventure (CYoA) on the /r/HFY forum. The between chapter votes have been omitted, as they are not part of the story, despite their influence on it. On the the Author's notes - These were included in the original document, and are included here for the purpose of completeness. Spelling, grammatical, and formatting changes have been made in the process of archiving this story and re-formatting it for publication on Royal Road. None of the contents of the story has been substantially affected. Cover by gej302!
8 172Spellcraft
This is the revised and rewritten version of Spellcraft! Explore the world, meet new and interesting monsters, and kill them for their loot. It was a tale as old as gaming, and it bored Conlan to death. He always had more fun finding little chinks in a game’s systems. He loved figuring out how to exploit those systems and turn them to his advantage. And ever since the release of Lotus, revolutionary hardware that finally delivered the dream of stepping into a fully immersive VR world, he'd had more items on his game breaking agenda than ever before! Lately he’d been using those skills to mess with Horizon Online Entertainment. He figured screwing those bastards over was the least he owed the corporate pricks for killing his sister in one of their Lotus VR modules. They had too much money to face justice from the courts, but he was hellbent on destroying them in the court of public opinion! Only there’s only so much he can do to fight Horizon from inside their games, and a whole new digital battlefield is opening up: Lotus Online. The greatest and most immersive VRMMO ever created, the ultimate expression of the Lotus hardware made by the masters who created that hardware, and Horizon is trying to invade that new world and take it over the same as they’ve taken over everything else! Yeah, not if Conlan and his best gaming buddy Kris have anything to say about it. Because Conlan has a secret weapon. He’s discovered something in Lotus no one else has: Spellcrafting. The chink in Lotus’s armor. He's always loved crafting, and he's discovered a system that might just allow him to take over the game world, kick Horizon out, and hit them right in the bottom line in the real world. Assuming he can survive all the invading Horizon bootlickers trying to kill him long enough to pull off the greatest exploit of his infamous game breaking career! Spellcraft is a 225,000 word GameLit novel that is totally finished. New chapters are released every other day!
8 149Noire
After being entombed for almost half a millenium, a young girl named Tsukihime was awakened by a family of three on one of their scavenging trips. Since then, she lived with them, only a few among the descendants of the survivors of the almost world-ending Luna Catastrophe. Her memories still blurry due to unknown circumstances, and her foster family desperately hiding her unique powers from the two warring factions that now struggle to conquer the Earth, Tsukihime searched for a purpose of her newfound life. A relic of the past, she longed for answers that seemed to be always out of her reach. But with a definitive turn of events, all of that will change. Updates: -will now be co-published on Webnovel -scheduled release will be one or two chapters per week -Please leave a comment and ratings, constructive critisms are very welcome here~ -Will make a Discord account, be in touch~ -Follow me on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCecK-KP-squtlLvPPyf8RTg for memes and updates
8 171The Rest is Riddles
[COMPLETE] Straight-A student Jane Huang cares only about acing her classes and graduating college... until a terrifying encounter with an otherworldly monster plunges her into the mysterious world of Mir. To return to the home she loves, Jane must become an 'avtorka' - one with the gods-given power to write in Mir's Book of Truths and change reality. A brutal series of tests awaits her, each designed by the gods to target her weaknesses and shatter her resolve.Helping her train for her godstests is Nikolay, a ruthless battlemage whose Oath to protect his dying ruler is slowly killing him. Nikolay needs Jane to break his Oath - or so Jane thinks - and despite their mutual enmity, she agrees to help him. But as Jane endures her godstests, she is drawn into a web of magic, mystery, and deceit that forces her to question Nikolay's motives, the godstests, and the very nature of reality itself.***Earnesty Writing Award Fantasy Winner!*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdMY61yxdPg**First Place in the Punk Rock Awards, 2022, Action/Adventure****First Place in the Dream Awards 2020, Adventure****First Place in the Golden Awards, Adventure****First Place in the Mono Awards 2020, Adventure****First Place in the Shimmer Awards 2020, Adventure****First Place in the Sunshine Awards 2020, Adventure****Second Place in the Paper Awards 2020, Adventure****Second Place in the First Impressions Award (SUAW) 2020****Third Place in the Golden Awards 2020, Fantasy****Third Place in the Noble Awards 2020, Action/Adventure****Third Place in the Imperial Awards 2020, Adventure**
8 203The Healer From The Fringe
A young, scheme-prone Healer teams up with a old soldier, a Demon-slaying huntress, and a Battle Florist as they explore, grow, and endure a fantasy world full of Classes and Levels, mad Kings, and misguided cults. As questions and struggles mount, the team's loyalties, beliefs, and capabilities are expanded and put to the test. War mounts on the horizon, and clarity is sought with grasping fingers. UPDATES EVERY MONDAY AND FRIDAY
8 99Arranged
The only thing worse than acting like you're together with the one person you totally and utterly despise is being FORCED to act like you're together. And then possibly developing a crush, although you know without question he is the biggest jerk you have and will ever meet. When Kristin and Ryder first met, it was fireworks. If you consider fireworks explosive, fiery and dangerous of course. Although they have their hands full with their consistent insults and attacks at each other, they suddenly find themselves responsible for both their future and their families.
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