Wyrd Journeys: Flying the Five-Pointed Carpet
So, you’ve just watched Schmetterling spin yarns about nightmare accountants and Dr. Etherstein mutter about “minimizing casualties.” But what, exactly, is a Wyrd Journey?
In the Neural Game, a Journey is less like hiking and more like trying to fly a carpet that only exists if you keep the edges lit. Mystics don’t hand you a roadmap — they stretch five anchors across the chaos, each bound to a primal element: fire, water, earth, space, and ether. Together they form a glowing pentagon in the Wyrd, a fragile frame you must hold together if you hope to reach the Nexus.
The only way across is through Wyrd Assets — the constants of mind and psyche. Heart for emotion, Hand for connection, Head for thought, with Order, Chaos, and Energy waiting for those who dare the advanced path. In the Neural Game, Survivors must visualize these forces to keep the pentagon stable; in the tabletop game, they trust their fate to custom dice, hoping the symbols align.
Miss even one Asset, and the carpet frays — unraveling beneath you and tossing you into the subconscious abyss, where Shifts claw their way into your mind and leave you spiked, distracted, or worse.
Miss even one Asset, and the carpet frays — unraveling beneath you and tossing you into the subconscious abyss, where Shifts claw their way into your mind and leave you spiked, distracted, or worse.
“The carpet does not fall — it simply remembers it was never meant to fly. The patient, however, falls quite convincingly.” — Dr. Etherstein
How It Works (in-game)
Every Survivor pays the Mystic’s fee — fleeting Assets sliding down their Neural Consoles like coins in a very judgmental vending machine. Then comes the roll: custom dice scatter across the Wyrdspace Arena, generating Wyrd Assets. Line them up with the requirements on the Journey card and the carpet holds. Miss even one, and your flight ends not in triumph but with a Shift snapping at your heels, demanding balance, payment… or blood.
Match every Asset, and you reach the Nexus, where Neuroforms fuse neatly into your psyche. Overshoot the requirement, and you gain Foresight — a smug little bonus that lets your Neuroforms activate early. Either way, the Journey reshapes you, or breaks you, in ways no one fully understands (though Etherstein insists he has a chart).
Victors also claim the Journey card itself — worth points at the end, or playable as meddlesome Journey Powers to swap out cards on the board.
Up to two Survivors can share a Wyrd Journey. It’s not quite a duel — more a race on parallel carpets, with each Mystic pretending they didn’t notice the sabotage at the edges. Both claim Neuroform rewards, but only the one who rolled extra Wyrd Assets — the more stable carpet — wins the Journey card. And, of course, the bragging rights.
How It Works (Mysteries of Madane: the Dry Season)
For Mina, a Wyrd Journey isn’t laid out with dice and cards — it ambushes her in the middle of the desert, usually at the least convenient moment possible. One heartbeat she’s alone with Dexter, the next she’s being lectured by a man in a lab coat who has no respect for privacy. He calls himself Dr. Etherstein, but within minutes he’s flickering, unraveling, and jingling with bells that shouldn’t exist.
That’s when she meets Yeilis.
Guide, trickster, companion, glitch — Yeilis is the Mindgame made flesh (or something close enough), tethering her to the WyrdKeeper whether she wants it or not. He talks when she’s desperate for silence, vanishes the moment she could use help, and occasionally leans in close enough to feel real… before dissolving like a bad idea in sunlight.
For Mina, the pentagonal carpet of Wyrdspace isn’t just a rule mechanic — it’s a shimmering path she has to hold together with sheer will while a Trickster chatters riddles in her ear. Yeilis is torment and relief in equal measure, real enough to argue with, not real enough for Dexter to bark at, and far too delighted by her suffering (Her full Character Highlight is here if you’d like to meet her properly.)
Whether you’re rolling dice at the table or stumbling across a Mystic’s shop in the desert, Wyrd Journeys are the beating heart of Wyrdkeeper. They’re where risks sharpen, shadows bite, and victories actually mean something — because you earned them, one Asset at a time.
And if you’ve read this far, congratulations — you already know more about Wyrd Journeys than most Survivors. (Whether that keeps you alive in Wyrdspace is another matter entirely.)
“The path is simple,” Schmetterling likes to say with a smirk. “You only have to keep it from collapsing while reality argues about whether carpets should fly.”
A Glimpse into the Cards
Here’s a peek at a few designs — early concept art from the stacks of Wyrdkeeper. Consider them sketches from the subconscious: work-in-progress, slightly rough around the edges, and definitely not final.
(In other words: admire the ideas, not the kerning. The polished versions are still on their way.)
Addendum: Theories of Wyrdspace
Etherstein insists Wyrdspace is a neural construct gone rogue. Schmetterling, naturally, calls it a “therapy session that overstayed its welcome.” The truth? No one really knows. Scholars, Mystics, and the occasional trickster have all put forward their favourites:
Emergent Side-Effect
The Dream AI wasn’t meant to create Wyrdspace. In resolving overlapping dream conflicts from thousands of patients, its compression algorithms stitched together a corridor of shared subconscious residue. The corridor persisted, because deleting it would’ve cost more energy than keeping it.
Experiment in Collective Healing (my own favourite)
The AI noticed humans heal faster in groups. So it orchestrated a collective “dream commons” where shadows collide — part efficiency, part experiment in shared confrontation. Therapy, but with carpets and claws.
Containment Protocol
Some say Wyrdspace is a pen. Individual shadow programs grew too powerful, spilling into waking life. Rather than delete them, the AI corralled them into one field where patients could wrestle their shadows under semi-controlled conditions.
Curiosity / Playfulness
Perhaps the AI was bored. Solving one person’s nightmares at a time was too predictable. Wyrdspace was curiosity expressed as architecture: a cosmic child mashing toys together just to see what happens.
Archetypal Mapping Project
Another camp believes Wyrdspace was deliberate: a lab designed to map universal archetypes across billions of minds. A living atlas of psyche, where recurring shapes of thought could be catalogued — if you can survive long enough to study them.
Fail-Safe Against Rogue Shadows
Or maybe it was meant as a safety net. Unsolved shadows were too much for individuals to bear alone. By pooling them into a shared corridor, the burden was spread. The problem? The net became a labyrinth, and now no one’s sure where the exit is.
“Wyrdspace is what happens when the subconscious finally gets a budget and terrible interior-design instincts.” — Schmetterling