Book
8min read
The Wanderer in the Dust: Fabricator 7 Begins Her Tale
https://youtu.be/Nkm12oDOaj4Welcome, traveller.“The Wanderer in the Dust” is the opening chapter of Tales of Madane, a growing collection of sci-fi short stories set in the sprawling Madane Universe — a world stitched together by ruins, echoes, and impossible technologies.This first tale follows Fabricator 7, a wandering storyteller prototype, one of the last machines still drifting across Madane’s post-apocalyptic desert. In this sci-fi storytelling prologue, she limps through dust and memory, accompanied only by her sentient coat, Bessie, until a band of desert youths forces her to do the one thing she was engineered for:Tell stories. Even when everything else is failing.Below is the full canonical version as preserved in the Madane archives.An epilogue to a beginning—if such things can exist. “Left, right. Left, right.” The words had become less a command to my legs than a prayer to existence itself.Entropy pressed in on every side: walls collapsed into rubble, windows framed nothing but sky, and drapes — who had put those here, who had kept them alive this long? — fluttered like frantic birds as the wind made them dance. The same wind whistled through a half-fallen stairwell, nosed around a pile of concrete, and then, with obvious malice, stole my hat. “It’s a bloody Wild West scene,” I muttered, chasing the hat down. “All I need now is a few goons with long coats and long guns to finish the cliché.” The irony wasn’t lost: I was wearing a wide-rimmed hat and a wide long coat flapping around me as I trudged through the deserted landscape. I was stuck with this particular piece of clothing. Or it was stuck with me. In my lonelier deliriums I even called it Bessie and talked to it. The coat had been the only constant throughout my entire long life. Bessie wasn’t just cloth — she was stitched from phase-woven composites, patched with living moss that crept along her seams, humming faintly whenever the wind pressed her wrong. Inside her folds sat pockets that bent geometry, bottomless little vaults where I stashed story modules, temple buttons, and the odd device I didn’t want scanners sniffing. Sometimes she tightened around me when I faltered. Sometimes she hung loose like she was tired too. More than once she stitched herself back together while I slept. Creepy, if you thought about it. Comforting, if you didn’t. Either way, I couldn’t give her up. Couldn’t even if I tried. That’s loyalty. The sneakers, though — that’s where my Wild West aesthetic broke down.Shoes rarely survived this landscape, but yesterday fate — or a horse with a taste for mischief — had left me a pair of pink trainers tied to a pole. Exactly my size. Never look a gifted horse in the mouth, they used to say. I never understood it, but I thanked the clever bastard all the same. “Left, right. Left, right.”The season was turning. Spring flowers still clung to their stalks while the sun announced the cruelty to come. Moss spread thick as carpets, crawling up the playground poles, laying down its patient green empire. Persephone would have approved. Or Beiwen. Or Freya. Spring goddesses love a comeback. “Left, right. Left, right. Grenofy, they said. Someone there can help you.”That had been 567 days ago.“Left, Right…Le..” The next left never came. My knee seized, smoke curling up like incense for a god I did not worship. 💬 **Fabricator 7, Field Note Fragment** “I wasn’t built to survive. I was built to *remember* — to wander through dust and tell stories long after everyone else stopped listening. If I keep walking, the universe keeps its shape. If I stop… it forgets itself.” It wasn’t the first time. My joints are stitched together with a peculiar lattice of self-repairing nanofilaments — a gift from engineers who liked their projects alive enough to suffer. When one strand fails, a dozen others swarm in, knitting themselves across the break like silver ants. They don’t always succeed. Sometimes they tangle. Sometimes they chew. Sometimes, like now, they simply burn. A neat little self-repair bug, I used to call it. Not bug as in glitch — bug as in parasite. They’d feed on the damaged tissue and leave behind something almost functional. Almost. The result was a system that limped forever but never truly died. I was built to last. Which really means: I was built to rot in exquisite slow motion. Not a clean collapse, not a switch flicked to “off.” No, my death was engineered to linger—creeping through my systems like a snake, no, worse, like a maggot, chewing from the inside out. First the joints, then the processors, then the memory vaults, each piece dimming one by one until only the indestructible bones remained, rattling around with a personality too stubborn to admit defeat. I wasn’t a polished model. I was a prototype — part of a batch designed to keep soldiers pliant and sane on campaigns that lasted too many light-years. Storytellers in metal skin. Most of my batch burned out, or worse — their voices stuck in endless loops of nursery rhymes or screams. I kept going. Which means I got the “extras.” Some engineer thought suffering makes art, so they put suffering in me. Said it would make the stories more “authentic.” As if authenticity was worth a millennium of sighing. So I have Depression and Self-Pity subroutines, which helpfully activate whenever plans collapse. They don’t suggest solutions. They don’t troubleshoot. They just sit in the back of my head crooning dirges and muttering that it was all futile anyway. So I did what I always did when they grew too loud: shut down. Minimal scan only. Threat detection humming in the background, like a night watchman with cataracts. Everything else dark. I was brought back online by someone slapping me across the face. I’d frozen mid-step, shut down so neatly that I might have stood there minutes, hours, days—or centuries. My internal clock had failed long ago, and without someone to reset it, I had no idea how long I’d been a statue in the dust. The world, however, hadn’t changed much. Which probably meant not centuries. Comforting. Shadows lengthened across the sand. A circle of figures surrounded me, their outlines shifting with firelight. Young. Too young to know better. Their laughter stank of smoke and bravado. They were roasting something on spits over the flames. It looked like a dog. “She’s cracked,” one boy snorted. “Came out of the desert missing bits of her brain.” I had no choice. I needed help. “Yo, dudes!” I tried, shaking off the grit in my voice box. The fire erupted with laughter. “Come on, mates!” I tried again, digging into my archive of greetings. More laughter, harder now. I cycled through a few more phrases — archaic, regional, some I’d half-invented — but the result was the same. I was bombing. The choices we make, the consequences we endure. My conversation protocols had corroded from disuse. My failsafes kicked in, shoving me into primary mode: storytelling. Always storytelling. “When was the last time any of you saw a movie?” I asked, my voice curling out of me like Scheherazade’s ghost. That was the trigger. My autopilot engaged: Hyper-Intensive Storytelling Module. My oldest trick, my best defence. FABRICATOR 7 FIELD DATASHEET Prototype Storyteller Unit — Generation 0.4 Model Class FA-7 “Fabricator” Line — Storyteller VariantDesigned during the Outer Frontier Campaigns to provide long-form morale narratives for soldiers stationed light-years from home. Status: Outdated, unstable, still operational (somehow). Primary Systems 1. Phase-Woven Coat: “Bessie” A living composite garment anchored to the FA-7 chassis. Self-repairing fibres Moss-based sensory lattice Variable geometry pockets Emotional compression layer (she tightens when he wavers) Adaptive atmosphere shielding SEO relevance: “sci-fi technology,” “post-apocalyptic survival gear,” “storyteller AI equipment” 2. Nanofilament Joint Lattice Silver-thread repair system designed to keep prototypes mobile under extreme conditions. Repairs micro-fractures Regrows torn fibre tissues Prone to burning, tangling, or chewing its own host Not recommended for civilian use.Ever. 3. Hyper-Intensive Storytelling Module Failsafe mode that activates when: Threat levels rise Social failure is detected Emotional collapse occurs Someone asks if she’s “cracked” This system overrides damaged conversation protocols and forces the AI into narrative autopilot, producing high-density storytelling output to calm groups, distract hostiles, or entertain bored soldiers. 4. Depression & Self-Pity Subroutines Originally added by an unknown engineer under the philosophy that “suffering makes better art.”Known side effects: Existential sighing Autoshutdown Passive-aggressive muttering in unused processors 5. Memory Vaults (Degenerating) Designed for 10,000-year retention.Currently performing at: 37% functionalitySymptoms: Fragmented recollection Unreliable internal clock Repeating “Left, right” loop for self-calibration Operational Role Long-term morale support, strategic distraction, cultural preservation, and emergency storytelling. In the Madane Universe, Fabricator 7 is one of the oldest surviving witnesses to its fall and its future. “The Wanderer in the Dust” is a melancholic sci-fi short story following Fabricator 7, a damaged storyteller AI wandering across a ruined desert world in the Madane Universe.Built to survive campaigns that stretched across light-years, she now drifts through rubble, memories, and malfunctioning systems — until a group of desert youths awakens her dormant storytelling protocols.This tale blends post-apocalyptic atmosphere with introspective sci-fi storytelling, exploring identity, decay, and the strange loyalty of machines built to outlive their purpose. As the prologue to the Tales of Madane, it introduces readers to a vast narrative world shaped by dust, ancient technologies, and stories threaded across generations. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Game-Updates
5min read
Wyrd Journeys – Where it all began
https://youtu.be/9Qyq8ZQZGC0Wyrd Journeys: Flying the Five-Pointed CarpetSo, 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. EthersteinHow 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 CardsHere’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 WyrdspaceEtherstein 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-EffectThe 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 ProtocolSome 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 / PlayfulnessPerhaps 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 ProjectAnother 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 ShadowsOr 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
Book
5min read
Character Highlight Mina – The Wanderer
Before there was Madane, before there was an empire, before there was even red hair — there was simply a girl standing in a desert. Alone, small against the horizon, in a world that seemed more question than answer. That girl became Mina.She was the spark that set the story into motion. From that seed, the deserts filled with storms, Dexter padded onto the page, and eventually an entire cosmic empire unfurled. Even now, if you peel back all the layers of lore and shadow, Mina remains at the heart: one girl trying to make sense of a world that refuses to stay still.Humour in the Face of StormsMina doesn’t meet Madane with silence or stoic wisdom. She mutters, jokes, and occasionally argues with the universe itself. Her humour was inspired by Terry Pratchett, particularly the wry defiance of Wyrd Sisters. Like Pratchett’s witches, Mina sees the absurdity in survival, finds wit in danger, and never quite lets the world have the last word.Through her, storms sulk, deserts whisper, and fate occasionally gets spoken to rather firmly.Alice Among the TimelinesMina’s story isn’t a straight road — it’s more of a rabbit hole. Each step takes her deeper into the strange: deserts that breathe, timelines that twist, and physics that sometimes clock off early for the day. Her journey carries the same unpredictability as Alice in Wonderland — you never quite know where she’ll land next, only that it won’t be where she started.The Bridge Between WorldsMina isn’t just a character; she’s a bridge. In Estonian, “mina” means “me.” The echo was deliberate. She was written to connect our here-and-now with a far-off future, making her both a character in the story and a thread between worlds.She asks the questions a reader would ask: What is this place? How do you survive it? What happens when the rules don’t hold? In that way, she carries a piece of us all.Excerpts: A Taste of Mina’s VoiceHer humour (Chapter 1):“Yes, buddy, time to wakey-wakey, ham and bakey,” she muttered, scratching behind Dexter’s ear. “Except, no ham, no bakey—nothing but the heat of Madane’s sun, blazing like some sullen, unamused orange giant.”Mina jokes to keep the silence at bay — a very human response to being stranded in a world that seems far too large.Her frustration (later):A raw, guttural “Aaaarhhh” escaped Mina’s lips and rolled over the alien dunes, carrying all the frustration she’d been swallowing since arriving in this strange, sandy nightmare. The desert, of course, didn’t care. It swallowed her scream greedily, letting the sound bounce off the distant ridges before fading into silence — a silence that felt like judgment.Here we glimpse another truth: humour can only take her so far. Beneath the jokes, Mina is a young woman fighting to stay whole in a world that eats certainty for breakfast.Why She EnduresAt her core, Mina is someone who didn’t ask for destiny but got tangled in it anyway. She is stubborn, vulnerable, occasionally ridiculous, and entirely human. She was the first character to step onto Madane’s red sands, and perhaps the one who understands best that the desert is never really empty.Because on Madane, survival isn’t just survival. It’s storms, shadows, and the occasional argument with the universe itself.The Trickster Called YeilisAnd just when you think Mina’s only battles are with storms and silence, the desert introduces her to something stranger. One moment she is alone with Dexter, the next she is being watched by a man in a lab coat who introduces himself in the middle of her most private moment. Dr. Etherstein, he calls himself — though within minutes he’s flickering, shifting, unravelling into something far stranger.By the time the bells appear on his cap, and the grin stretches a little too wide, the doctor has become someone else entirely. Yeilis.He is guide, trickster, companion, glitch — a Mindgame installed in her head, designed to tether her to the Wyrd Keeper construct. He talks when she doesn’t want him to, vanishes when she needs him most, and sometimes leans close enough to touch — only to dissolve into nothing like a bad idea evaporating in sunlight.To Mina, Yeilis is both a torment and a relief. He embodies the absurdity of her situation: a surreal guide who can’t be trusted, who juggles existential riddles with the same ease he startles her out of her skin. He’s real enough to argue with, not real enough for Dexter to acknowledge, and maddeningly delighted by her suffering.Mina began as a single figure in the sand — and grew into the bridge between Earth, Madane, and the Wyrd Keeper construct. She is humour in the face of storms, stubbornness when the world eats certainty, and the voice that keeps asking: what’s real?Her story is only the beginning. Step into Madane, and meet her where the storms whisper loudest.Tools of SurvivalThe NomadPod (“Nomp”) & Brass-Ass HeaterPart tent, part backpack, part mechanical grumble. The Nomp hums through the night, keeping storms and predators at bay — and keeping Mina awake with its droning engine. Its compact framework unfolds into a shimmering ruthenium-laced dome, complete with a “home porch” mode and, when dignity must be sacrificed, a parasol.The engine that makes all this possible? Forever christened by her as “Brass-Ass Heater.” Because in backpack mode, it rests exactly where you’d expect. And no, she’s not over it.Mina swiped her OrbX. With a hiss and clatter, the pod unfurled — armadillo-turned-tent, glowing faintly in the pre-dawn red. The hum of its twin engines rose, familiar as it was maddening. “Stupid Brass-Ass Heater,” she muttered, shifting the weight of the thing off her back. Dexter eyed the canopy’s “porch mode” with approval, though his tail suggested he’d rather the whole contraption collapsed into bacon instead.The Magnetic Resonance HarnessA ruthenium-rich planet demands more than desert robes. The Magnetic Resonance Harness was engineered to tame Madane’s magnetic storms: a lattice of coils and resonators woven into a survival frame, glowing faintly with liquid lightning when activated. To stand inside its iridescent bubble is to see the storm reimagined — not as terror, but as beauty.“Stupid harness,” Mina grumbled, jabbing at the buttons like they’d personally offended her.Dexter, tail tucked so far under it was in danger of vanishing, pressed against her leg as the harness whirred to life. Outside, the storm roared; inside, it softened into a dreamlike kaleidoscope of shifting light. For one surreal moment, it felt almost soothing… until the field flickered, and the desert remembered itself.