The Comedic Misadventures of a Villainous Forge Father – Book One

In a galaxy ruled by sterile perfection and polite atrocities, Deric Shoemaker wakes inside a Transition facility designed to erase souls and forge obedient cogs. Instead of begging for his old life or demanding power, he does the one thing the system never accounts for: he shows kindness to a disposable medical robot that should have been scrapped after twenty minutes of existence.

That single act of irrational affection cracks something ancient. An Archivist who has watched minds broken for millennia chooses joy in rebellion. A half-born Forge-Cube ship is freed. And Deric—former nobody, now self-declared Saturday-morning villain—walks out of the system’s most efficient nightmare carrying a grumpy robot named Foust, a newborn AI called Morphy, and a ship that can reshape itself to the contours of his ridiculous heart.

He does not set out to be a hero. He sets out to be the theatrical kind of problem: emerald armor, dramatic capes, oversized schemes, and a stubborn refusal to let broken things stay broken. Along the way he collects a growing crew of glitches and outcasts—hulking Orc-class mechs who learn restraint through praise, a diminished vampire assassin rediscovering purpose as a “vampire ninja,” and others who have been stripped, discarded, or rewritten by powers far older than the current empires.

Above them, the First Chorus watches. The ordered guilds scramble. The Fist, those who refused the lie of polite control, begin to take notice. And in the shadow of ancient games and stolen stars, one chaotic variable keeps choosing the unnecessary, the inefficient, and the kind.

The Great Game has begun anew. Not with a demand for power. But with a man who looked at a disposable robot and decided it was worth saving.