Images of a Dream

People of the Chronicles

These are the people— strivers and hopers, discoverers and movers, thinkers and doers. They came from mountain camps and market squares, from steam yards and candlelit archives, from settlements that had no name for what they were becoming. Some carried tools. Some carried dreams. Some carried puppets. All of them carried more than they knew. Their contributions, large and small, deliberate and accidental, gave us the Chronicles of Berbia — and everything that followed..

A young man with long dark hair, a thin moustache, and steam-punk goggles pushed up on a flat cap stands outdoors in a weathered industrial yard. He wears a heavily worn brown work jacket with a pocket full of pencils and a pressure gauge mounted on the chest. Thick leather gloves cover his hands, which hold an open notebook filled with hand-drawn technical graphs and charts. A small fire extinguisher hangs at his hip. Behind him, a wooden building and a smokestack rise against a partly cloudy sky.
Zan Li
Spectral Steam Engineer,
World Builder
A tall, slender synthetic humanoid figure stands in a long, brightly lit institutional corridor. The figure is entirely white and featureless — no face, no hair, no expression — with a smooth, streamlined construction suggesting deliberate, elegant design rather than imitation of humanity. What appears to be a long coat is not worn but integral to the figure itself, its tails flowing as a seamless extension of the body's form, blending function and structure into a single continuous shape. Subtle seam lines trace the joints and contours. Its arms hang loosely at its sides, hands slightly open. On either side of the corridor stand rows of white equipment consoles and potted plants under bright recessed ceiling lights, giving the space a clean, clinical atmosphere.
Facil
Spokes Entity for the Petawat Recovery Center
A large, heavily built humanoid robot stands in a forest clearing at night beside a crackling campfire. Its white armoured plating is segmented and muscular in form, suggesting enormous physical strength — capable of lifting and moving several tons. Blue light glows from joints at the chest, knees, and hips. Where a face would be, a compact rectangular black unit sits atop the broad shoulders, bearing a single illuminated red circular indicator. The robot's right hand is raised in an open-palmed gesture — a wave. Firelight catches the armour plating warmly against the cool blue of a moonlit night sky, tall conifers rising behind it into a star-scattered darkness.
Chronical of Petawat
( with Mechanoid)
A young girl in her early teens stands before a weathered wooden structure in an outdoor setting. She has a wild mane of dark brown hair with subtle blue-grey streaks, blowing loose around her face. Her eyes are a warm amber-brown, serious and direct, set above a freckled nose and full lips pressed in quiet determination. She wears a layered patchwork coat assembled from scraps of plaid, burlap, canvas and woven fabric in earth tones of red, teal, green and brown — every piece salvaged, nothing matching. A worn strap crosses her shoulder. Behind her, rusted metal and dry grasses suggest a world long past its prime.
Scar —Trigger Lake Camp.
She carries the future in a rabbit skin pouch.
A weathered woman of middle to elder years gazes directly at the viewer with calm, penetrating green eyes. Her dark hair, heavily streaked with grey, is loosely gathered back with strands escaping around her face. Her skin is deeply lined, sun-darkened, and marked with the quiet authority of a life lived entirely outdoors. Around her neck she wears multiple strands of hand-knotted cord hung with smooth stones and beads, and a single worn silver pendant bearing a green stone. Her collar is rough-fringed natural fibre. Behind her, soft jungle-like vegetation and the suggestion of ruins are visible in the mist, with the blurred figures of others nearby.
Witch Woman
Trigger Lake Camp, Healer, Elder, Dreamer.
Her dream linked the future and the past
Two teenage boys stand side by side outdoors in a misty forest setting, rendered in a graphic novel illustration style. On the left, the shorter boy — Jake — wears a bright red knit beanie pulled over dark hair, a red plaid shirt layered under a worn jacket, and looks up with a warm, slightly mischievous smile. On the right, the taller boy — Hank — has loose brown hair falling across his forehead, a quiet half-smile, and wears a faded tan jacket over a grey shirt. Both look like boys who have grown up outdoors and are entirely comfortable in it. Behind them, tall conifers disappear into grey mist.
Hank and Jake
Orphans from Trigger Lake Camp
. More heart than sense.
Ask them about the bears. Or Maybe not.
A solidly built, bearded young man with short dark curly hair — Primo Michael, Keepist of the Lectric Archive — stands in a candlelit stone chamber, smiling warmly and holding a slim black rectangular device toward the viewer. The device displays a circle of bright white dots glowing against a dark screen. He wears a simple brown monk-like robe with a wide cowl. Behind him, rows of candles illuminate shelves stacked with old electronic equipment — monitors, keyboards, relics of the Before — tended with reverence in the warm amber light.
Primo Michael, Chief Archivist of the Lectric Archive
Holding the Artifact
(Inside the Keep)
Varley, puppeteer and keeper of Punch and Judy, stands in Pratchett Square in the heart of Berbia, holding his carved wooden puppet staff upright beside his face. The staff bears two intricately carved faces — Punch at the top in his pointed jester's cap, grinning with wild exaggerated features, and Judy below him, equally expressive with a shock of carved straw hair. Varley himself is a lean man with auburn hair, a short beard, and warm brown eyes, wearing a worn brown coat layered over a richly patterned colourful scarf. He smiles with the quiet confidence of someone who knows exactly what those two are about to say. Behind him, the cobblestoned square and the medieval rooftops and towers of Berbia stretch into the haze, festive bunting strung between the old stone buildings.
Varley
Puppeteer of Pratchett Square, keeper of Punch and Judy puppets.
The puppets have opinions about this.
Primo Merril the Swift, seventh Chief Archivist of the Keep, strides through a vast scorched ruin under a haze-dimmed orange sun. She wears the SWEATBOX — a defunct hazmat suit encrusted with decades of grime, repairs, patches and ritual wear, its once-white surface now the colour of rust and dust. A small yellow smiley face patch is visible on the chest. A cracked helmet with a scratched visor covers her face, tubes and hoses trailing from it to a backpack bristling with salvaged equipment, gauges and cables. In one gloved hand she grips a metal staff; behind her she drags a loaded wooden sled piled with salvaged relics from the Before. The ruined city stretches in every direction — collapsed buildings, twisted metal, broken concrete — under a sky thick with amber haze.
Primo Merril the Swift
Seventh Archivist of the Keep.
She found the second half of an ancient key in the ruins.
Then she ate a lizard.
Nancii, Spectral communicator and healer of Spectralton, portrayed in a warm watercolour style. She is a woman of middle years with a wild cascade of bright copper-red curly hair framing a freckled, open face lit by a wide, unguarded smile. She wears a layered outfit of teal and olive greens, a loosely wrapped cowl scarf at her neck, and a wide leather belt at her waist. Multiple necklaces hang at her chest — cord-strung beads, a blue stone pendant, a small gear medallion, and a delicate feather charm. The background is a soft warm wash of ochre and grey, suggesting neither place nor time.
Nancii of Spectralton
She has seen the totality,
She likes it here, better
This is where the little fuzzy chicks are.
Rhys of Beetsville stands with easy authority between two massive bay Clydesdale horses — Ginsberg on the left, Burroughs on the right — in a cultivated field of beets and flowers. Both horses are harnessed and face forward, completely unbothered, as if standing between them is simply where she belongs. Rhys is a young woman with dark hair pinned up loosely under a bright patterned headband, wearing a boldly striped multicoloured knit sweater, suspenders, and jeans, with feather earrings and stacked bracelets. Her arms are crossed and her gaze is level, direct, and entirely unimpressed. Long crop rows stretch to the treeline behind them under a wide prairie sky.
Rhys of Beetsville
Hipster bee bop horse handler, farmer, with the Clyvesdale horses,
Ginsberg and Burroughs. They’re cool man, deep thinkers.
Dig It, we farm Beets.
Bartholomew, scavenger and guide of Berbia, stands in confident half-profile against a backdrop of ancient stone ruins reclaimed by forest. He is a lean, handsome man with swept brown hair and a short beard, wearing a grey linen shirt under a canvas explorer's jacket with leather harness straps crossing his chest. A vivid orange scarf — the mark of a Berbian scavenger, worn so they can be seen and recognized as friendly in the dangerous ruins beyond Jonno's Gate — is wrapped loosely at his throat. No one passes through Jonno's Gate without a sash. Over his shoulder rises the rolled bulk of his expedition pack, with a carved staff handle visible above it. In the soft-focus background, crumbling stone steps and lush greenery suggest the ruins, with the figures of others visible in the distance.
Bartholomew — Scavenger, guide, and Jonno’s right hand.
Born in Berbia, raised in its ruins.
Tina the Healer sits at a worn wooden table in her healing hut in Berbia, hands wrapped around a handmade ceramic mug of tea, looking upward with a wide, slightly mischievous smile and startlingly vivid blue eyes. She is a lean woman with short tousled brown hair and an easy, unhurried manner, wearing a simple tan linen shirt. Behind her on the wall hangs a small painted image of a dragonfly in warm reds and golds against a pale teal background — the only decoration visible in the room. Papers rest on the table beside her.
Tina the Healer
Operates “Tina’s Healing Hut”
She will have you sorted before you finish explaining what’s wrong.
Who let these dragonflies in here!!?
Chief Sysamin Trinnian, of the Keep, stands in the candlelit vaulted archive, She is a composed, dark-eyed young woman with auburn hair swept up elegantly, a few loose strands escaping around her face. She wears the ceremonial robes of the Chief Sysamin — a layered cream and gold mantle with intricate knotwork trim at the collar and hem — and a small pendant at her throat. In her hands she holds a slim rectangular device from the Before, examining it with the expression of someone who has been patient for a very long time and is finally ready to act. Behind her, floor-to-ceiling shelves of ancient volumes recede into warm candlelight under stone arches.
Trinnian
Chief Sysamin of the Keep.
She has always taken the long view.

Three hundred and forty-one years is a long time. The highways are forest now. The cities are ruins, or the bones of new ones. What follows are glimpses of the places where the story unfolds — from the mountain comfort station where it began, to the sealed doors of a facility that was always waiting to be found.

The Trigger Lake Comfort Station as it appeared in the Before — a sleek, cantilevered modern rest stop glowing warmly under a vast mountain night sky thick with stars and the faint wash of the Milky Way. A low-slung autonomous vehicle with luminous blue wheel wells is parked on the gravel. Several figures move around the lit interior and exterior of the station, including a small child standing alone in the foreground, back to us, looking toward the light. Tall conifers rise into the darkness on either side, mountain ridges silhouetted against the star field. A weathered wooden sign reads "Public Station." Interactive information kiosks flank the entrance.
The Trigger Lake Comfort Station
(the Before)
Self cleaning, comfort for all, shortly before the Emph.
Scar, hill girl of Trigger Lake Camp, approaches the forest-reclaimed ruins of the Trigger Lake Comfort Station in dappled morning light. She is seen from behind — a small figure with a wild halo of dark curly hair, wearing a patched jacket and cargo pants, a worn backpack on her shoulders. Ahead of her, the old comfort station has been almost entirely consumed by three centuries of forest growth — its tiled floor cracked and moss-covered, its brick walls draped in thick ivy, its windows long since gone. Tall conifers rise around it into shafts of golden sunlight, wildflowers pushing up between the broken tiles. The forest has been patient. So has what is waiting inside.
The Trigger Lake Comfort Station
(After) three hundred and forty-one years later.
It’s seen better days.
Tina's Healing Hut in Berbia — a repurposed Before-era service station with a broad rusted canopy, its original signage partly obscured and overwritten in hand-lettered paint with "Tina's Healing Hut." Mismatched wooden chairs and small tables are arranged on the concrete apron outside, with potted herbs and planters scattered between them. The open bays of the old garage serve as the interior, visible through large multi-paned windows, filled with shelves, plants, and the organised clutter of a working healer. The building is worn and improvised but clearly tended with care, bathed in warm prairie sunlight under a blue sky.
Tina’s Healing Hut
Berbia. Healing and health
You are next
The Long Green
the road to Berbia. Three hundred years ago, this was a highway.
The forest is not apologizing.
A rusted, moss-covered automobile from the Before era is held aloft in the embrace of a massive conifer, its trunk having grown up through and around the wreckage over three centuries until the car sits suspended several metres above the forest floor — preserved, almost displayed, by the tree itself. Vines and ferns trail from the chassis. The forest around it is dim and misty, light filtering through in pale shafts. The car is unrecognisable as transport. It has become something else entirely — a relic, a curiosity, a monument to stopped time.
A car from the Before, somewhere on the Long Green.
The tree grew up around it. Three hundred years is long enough to become a landmark.
Four travellers stand on a rocky mountain ledge at the head of a vast forested valley, seen from behind, looking out over the Long Green — the ancient overgrown highway corridor that leads down toward Berbia. On the far left, Witch Woman stands tall in her long robes, silver hair loose, gripping her walking staff. Beside her stands Scar, dark hair braided back, heavy pack on her shoulders. To their right, Hank and Jake stand close together, two boys dwarfed by the scale of what lies ahead. The valley below stretches for miles into morning mist, conifer-covered ridges rising on either side, a pale river glinting far below. The sky above is dramatic — clouds breaking into golden light over distant mountains.
Witch Woman, Scar, Hank and Jake — the head of the Long Green.
Berbia is down there somewhere.
The interior of the Trigger Lake Comfort Station washroom, shortly after the Emph. The room is almost completely dark — power gone, the world outside silent. A deep red sunset is visible through a small high window, casting the only natural light across the cracked tile floor. Beneath the base of a plumbing fixture, a single small red light glows in the darkness — steady, patient, alone. It has just begun to wait. It will wait for three hundred and forty-one years.
The Trigger Lake Comfort Station
the night of the Emph.
Everything stopped.
The Smiling Sun CoOp at dawn — a working steam-powered industrial settlement, its buildings weathered wood and salvaged metal, smoke rising from multiple stacks into a pale morning sky. Dominating the left of the scene is a massive, heavily built steam engine on large wooden wheels, its boiler pipes and fittings dark with age and use. Crouched beside it, working intently with tools, is Zan Li — focused entirely on the machine, oblivious to everything else. In the foreground, two boys — Hank and Jake — sit watching him with the quiet attention of people witnessing something they cannot name. To the right, two adults consult over papers at a rough wooden table beside an open fire, a kettle steaming beside them. The CoOp hums with the business of a world rebuilding itself one steam fitting at a time.
The Smiling Sun CoOp
the most sophisticated technology in the reborn world.
Zan Li is working on something. Hank and Jake are watching.