
by P. Avery
When Mara first finds him, he is a nameless goblin with no family and no place among people. She gives him the name Ash. Then, after hearing music for the first time, he decides he wants something no goblin is supposed to want. He wants to become a bard. Unfortunately, the system was never built for goblin bards, and most villagers would rather reach for a weapon than listen to him play. Armed with a red scarf, an instrument made from scraps, and the true stories he gathers along the way, Ash begins creating a path the system itself does not understand. Scrapbard is a character-driven, slow-burn progression fantasy about an unlikely hero learning his craft one broken instrument, hard-won skill, and imperfect song at a time. There is magic, danger, friendship, gradual advancement, and plenty of crooked music, but more than anything, it is a story about finding worth in small, strange, and broken things.**Release Schedule currently Mondays and Thursdays @ 7:30am PST/10:30 EST/3:30 PM BST**
No streak history
Rank updated 14 Aug 2026, 02:28 UTC
Entry forecast updated 13 Aug 2026, 04:15 UTC
Overall Rising Stars shadow rank
deep field · ~#376 of 7,628 · 326 below #50
By genre
beats 99% of similar stories
beats 6% of similar stories
beats 65% of similar stories
Firing on all cylinders
Traffic and conversion are both strong for a story this size. Readers are finding it and sticking — if Rising Stars is the goal, this is the moment to push.
At this conversion, the Action Rising Stars bar (≈8 new followers/day) costs about 406 views/day — the story currently gets ~59.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 20–49 chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.
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