Ficool

historical

Forbidden West: Ballad of Akelldema Miyamoto

Born in late 1864 beneath the cold skies of Hokkaido, Akelldema Miyamoto enters a Japan caught between fading steel and rising industry. His father, Hiroshi, once a formidable samurai, has sheathed his blade to serve as a physician to a powerful lord, walking the narrow path between tradition and survival. Through harsh herbal regimens and disciplined breathwork, he forges his son into something steadier than most boys his age, preparing him for a future neither of them can fully see. By 1879, unrest coils through the country. Old loyalties are hunted. Food grows scarce in certain districts. Rumors move faster than horses. In the lord’s estate, Princess Aiko Takamori stands at the heart of fragile political balance, and Akelldema, still only fifteen, finds himself drawn into her orbit even as the ground shifts beneath them. When violence can no longer be contained, Akelldema, seventeen and nearing manhood, is chosen to escort Aiko and seven loyal companions across the Pacific to California. What awaits them is not only gold and opportunity, but the consequences of ambition unbound. In the American Wset, the brilliant and obsessive Dr. Nikolai Richtofen has traded provisions to a desperate tribe in exchange for their medicine man, seeking to master life itself. His experiments awaken a corruption that seeps into the blood, spreading by bite and turning the living into something hollow and driven by a darker will. Separated from the princess and believing his duty has failed, Akelldema is cast into a fronteir where greed, secrecy, and infection thrive in the shadows of mines and desert laboratories. Armed with his father’s teachings and the discipline to resist the taint in his own veins, he must hunt for the truth, protect what remains of his honor, and confront the man whose curiosity has begun to unravel the boundary between life and something far more dangerous.
Future_Gadget_Labs · 3.4k Views

Scholar's Mate

“In an age where knowledge cuts deeper than knives, Victoria is about to learn far more than is safe for any soul to bear.” Victoria and Robert were torn from the gentle dullness of their ordinary century and cast into a realm governed by proto-concepts—those ancient, unblinking truths from which life, death, and divinity themselves are carved. Proclaimed “Heroes” by a world too desperate to question its own choices, they were commanded to rise in strength, confront a Demon Lord, and deliver salvation to a land that had never been theirs. Robert donned the mantle with the fervour of a man stepping into destiny. Victoria… hesitated. And in that hesitation, something old—older than scripture, older than light—turned its gaze toward her. She felt its attention like a draft through a locked room. In a moment poised between terror and terrible understanding, she accepted its offer: a contract sealed in silence, a year of her life exchanged for a thing that should never have been permitted to exist. Not in this world. Not in any. She did not yet grasp that, in straying from the Hero’s ordained path, she had not merely shifted her fate— she had begun to unwrite the very scaffolding of her humanity. Now Victoria walks like a phantom through a world that has marched on without her— one year behind the celebrated Hero, yet burdened with an insight so sharp it threatens to cut her free from mortality itself. She can now trespass upon knowledge forbidden to scholars, sorcerers, or even those who stand at the pinnacle of human mastery. She commits the kind of acts whispered only of beings who have stepped beyond the human threshold… and never returned. And in a world built on primordial, immovable truths, one truth endures: Knowledge is power. But power, when mishandled, becomes a curse that devours its bearer— quietly, inevitably, like rot beneath embroidered silk.
NovaLumin · 103.4k Views

Fallen Eagle [Kingdom-Building; Military Strategy]

The year is 1459. Constantinople has fallen, and the Romans are no more. Nearly fifteen hundred years after its founding, the greatest empire the world has known has ceased to exist, swallowed whole by the Great Ottoman tide. In the dying embers of the Byzantine world, its last rump states stand on the brink of collapse. Their fall will mark the end of any remnant of Roman rule. Nestled in the mountains of the Crimean Peninsula, the tiny Greek Principality of Theodoro clings to a desperate existence, living in the shadow of Byzantium's destroyers. Its fall is not a possibility; it is a historical certainty. Dr. Nikos Karagiannis is a History professor ripped across worlds into the body of Theodorus, a bookish third son in a disgraced house with a prophetic name, but little prospects. Nikos has no magic or divine blessings. What he does possess is the knowledge of the political blunders, the shifting alliances, and the military tactics that will lead this land to ruin. "The city is fallen and I am still alive." – Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine Emperor. What to Expect: Historical Kingdom-Building: A gritty, grounded take on rebuilding a nation where logistics are king, supply lines are lifelines, and battles are won with strategy, not superpowers. A Brutally Realistic World: The protagonist is not the center of the universe. Allies and antagonists have their own ambitions and plans, and will act accordingly. Meaningful Character Arcs: A story where characters are forged and broken by the crucible of war and politics. Dramatic and tense character interplay abounds, and no one is safe. You have been warned.
TheodorusSideris · 11.9k Views