LoreCraft story

Dunks: The Iron Heart of Sanctuary

Grease, Gears, and Galactic Grit

In the sprawling neon labyrinth of Sanctuary City, if it has a pulse or a piston, Dunks can fix it. A rough-edged mechanical virtuoso, he keeps the city's fleet flying when the laws of physics say they shouldn't.

3 scenes · 4 characters

Dunks' Hangar - Sub-Level 4

The Morning Ozone

The day doesn't start with a sunrise in Sanctuary; it starts with the hum of a cold fusion reactor. Dunks wipes a smear of black grease across his forehead, his ears tuned to the subtle rattle of a malfunctioning thruster. To anyone else, it's noise. To him, it's a cry for help. He crouches beside the thruster housing, palms flat against the cool metal as the rattle resolves into a pattern—three short bursts, a pause, then a longer grind. Somewhere deeper in the bay, coolant lines hiss and the reactor’s steady pulse answers like a distant heartbeat. Dunks mutters under his breath, already mapping the fault: a warped vane, maybe, or a bearing starved of lubricant after the last hard burn out of the asteroid belt. He reaches for his toolkit without looking, fingers closing on the familiar weight of the sonic driver.

Outside the bay’s open hatch, Sanctuary’s artificial dusk holds steady, the habitat ring turning slow against a backdrop of real stars. No birdsong, no wind only the low song of machines keeping a thousand souls alive. Dunks smiles faintly, grease still streaking his skin, and sets to work. The thruster will fly again before the next shift change.

Engine Core - The Star-Skipper

The Torque of Truth

Most mechanics trust the computer readouts. Dunks trusts the vibration in his palms. He puts his weight into the turn, the heavy wrench biting into the alloy. With a hiss and a roar, the engine stabilizes into a perfect, rhythmic thrum. Another miracle delivered ahead of schedule.
He steps back, wiping the wrench clean on a rag already dark with carbon and old oil, and lets the new rhythm settle into his bones. The bay lights flicker once as power redistributes, then steady. Somewhere overhead a cargo drone drifts past the open hatch, its own engines whispering in polite contrast to the deep, satisfied song of the machine he’d just coaxed back to life.

Dunks doesn’t bother logging the repair in the terminal—someone else can update the logs later. He just presses his palm one last time against the warm casing, feeling the perfect thrum like a quiet thank-you, then turns toward the next open panel waiting further down the line. In Sanctuary, the day keeps humming, and so does he.

The Neon Alleyways

Beyond the Bolts

It’s not just the ships. When the hydro-pumps in the lower sectors fail or a merchant's cybernetic limb locks up, they call Dunks and Steve. They move through the city like ghosts in the machine, rough-edged guardians ensuring the pulse of Sanctuary never skips a beat.

In the dripping gloom of Sector 7’s underworks, Dunks would crouch over a seized actuator with a soldering iron in one hand and a half-empty flask of synth-whiskey in the other, muttering curses that somehow coaxed the machine back to life. Steve, leaner and quieter, would already be three steps ahead—tracing power conduits through the maze of rusted pipes, rerouting flow with the precision of a surgeon who had long ago traded a sterile operating theater for the chaotic heartbeat of the city. Together they left no problem unsolved, no complaint unanswered; the people of Sanctuary learned early that if the lights flickered or the elevators stalled, the two of them would appear before the emergency beacons even finished cycling.

By the time the first pale glow of artificial dawn filtered through the upper domes, Dunks and Steve would be gone again—boots echoing down service tunnels, tools packed, another crisis quietly erased from the city’s ledger. No medals. No official recognition. Just the unspoken understanding that as long as they kept walking the under levels, Sanctuary would keep breathing.