“Three broken things cross a dying world trying to figure out what they are before it kills them first.”
Welcome to The Mimic’s Lament, a dystopian sci-fi/psychological horror webtoon about identity decay, memory loss, biomechanical monstrosity, survival, and a deeply questionable found family held together with rust, trauma, and bad coping mechanisms.
Set during The Great Reformation in the bio-engineered world of Novara, the story follows a feral former human, an amnesiac machine carrying a dead scientist’s soul, and an artificial being made from loneliness itself as they travel across a collapsing planet haunted by abandoned laboratories, rogue security systems, and the ghosts of what they used to be.
Story by @starbvg
TAGS
The Mimic’s Lament
The Archive (lore + references)
The Scrapheap (art)
Signal Static (memes/incorrect quotes/shitposts)
✦ SYNOPSIS
Deep beneath the ruins of an abandoned Ithenor laboratory, something wakes up.
Saber, a semi-sentient Varelli with the mind of a former human buried beneath instinct and hunger, accidentally reactivates Cairn: a strange bird-like Craftkin with fragmented memories and the lingering soul of a man named Zack. Neither of them understands what happened in the laboratory. Neither of them remembers the truth. And somewhere in the dark, something else has already been watching them.
The Mimic was once an unfinished artificial lifeform designed to replace a grieving scientist’s family. Left isolated for countless months after a catastrophic incident, it learned how to reshape itself from scrap metal, abandoned machines, and fragments of other creatures until it became something unstable, intelligent, and deeply alone.
Now the three travel together through the fractured world of Novara: hiding from rogue drones, surviving biomechanical wastelands, uncovering forbidden experiments, and slowly realizing that the greatest threat isn’t what hunts them. It’s what lives inside them.
✦ MAIN CAST
🐾 SABER
Former human ✦ any fem/neutral pronouns ✦ ???
A sleek canine-like Varelli with blade-sharp teeth, glowing blue eyes, and instincts that constantly fight against the remnants of a human mind. Saber is paranoid, stubborn, and perpetually ready to throw herself at danger before it reaches anyone else.
Unfortunately, moments of peace tend to reveal something much softer beneath all the survival instincts: anxious puppy behavior, accidental attachment issues, and the terrifying realization that she still wants comfort despite everything.
⚙️ CAIRN
Craftkin ✦ any masc/neutral pronouns ✦ dead (technically)
A sarcastic, bird-like machine carrying the fragmented soul and memories of a scientist named Zack. Cairn remembers almost nothing about his former life beyond flashes of laboratories, alarms, and a profound sense that he did something unforgivable.
Protective to a fault and emotionally constipated in the way only exhausted men with memory loss can be, Cairn hides behind dry humor and petty comments while slowly unraveling the truth about what he created.
🐛 THE MIMIC
Hollowskin-esque Craftkin ✦ it/its (usually)
An experimental artificial being originally designed to imitate human life. After spending countless months isolated and half-conscious within a dead laboratory, it learned to reconstruct itself using whatever materials it could access.
Its current body resembles a massive segmented centipede composed of mismatched mechanical parts, though it can rearrange itself into smaller or more humanoid forms when necessary. Every segment moves just slightly out of sync, like multiple creatures attempting to pretend they are one.
Confused, curious, manipulative, and desperately lonely, The Mimic wants one thing more than anything else: to belong somewhere. Unfortunately, it learned what humanity was by watching people at their worst.
CAIRN, arms crossed: "Can an AI write a synphony? Can an AI turn a canvas into a... beautiful masterpiece?"
THE MIMIC: (Pauses, then looks at him) "Can you?"
CAIRN: (Pauses. STARES. No response comes out)
If you enjoyed this piece from Lumoria, you can support my work here:
Commissions | Adopts | Support the studio
Every boost helps the ecosystem grow, from scraps → studio vaults → full creations 🦇🌙
CAIRN, while gently rubbing SABER´s stomach with a claw: "Lil pup got hurt so she got a little shaved tummy right here. :3"
SABER: (Flicks tail contently, then rolls to her back.)
CAIRN: "Right? Little bald spot. Little baldy." (Points) "You´re bald. You´re bald!"
THE MIMIC: (Simply looks at CAIRN, who is technically bald 💀)
CAIRN: "Everybody hates you for it. It´s disgusting and it´s why nobody will ever love you."
If you enjoyed this piece from Lumoria, you can support my work here:
Commissions | Adopts | Support the studio
Every boost helps the ecosystem grow, from scraps → studio vaults → full creations 🦇🌙
