If you show potential through the promise of entertainment and danger on deserted racetracks long abandoned through roaring lava, searing ice and treacherous environments - The Vessel will happily cheer you on, but it will never let you back.
Hello! Welcome to my Hotwheels-inspired, post-apocalyptic (kinda), hyper-futuristic yet pre-societal tribe.... Science fiction story! Just so you know, as I update this, it will contain gay, lesbian, transgender, and neurodivergent characters. If that bothers you... You may as well decline to read the prologue, cuz this story isn't for you. ;)
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The Earth is swiftly failing, and the people are desperately in need of a new power source, having drained it of old-fashioned materials like coal and oil years ago. These people jump from wind and solar to water and sand while theories run rampant - fuzzy memories of stories and tales that speak about a time long gone, when a new and desperately needed source of energy was introduced to the world by a company named Solaire Inc. The company was known for supposedly harvesting energy from the cosmos, transforming it, warping it beyond recognition, and attempting to harness living power, only to finally let it run wild among the cities of the living. It was said to have entered and saved the lives of those who were cautious, rewarding the gentle and kind, while punishing those who let such strength get to their heads. The children of the world were told they could not handle the otherworldly responsibility, and only the virtuous could receive it's blessing. But these are only stories. Only rumors spread by dreamers and idealists.
Of course, it is only a rumour if you listen to those who don't want you to seek the real truth.
The truth is that humanity had already been wiped out, once. Destroyed by its own impotence, by itself, overridden with a hunger for power as societies went to war with each other over trivial issues that their ancestors hadn't realised should be solved, lest they be developed into something much worse. The wars raged until they had gone so long that children were raised to adulthood knowing nothing but battle and hardship. Then came the last door to close - a group of the most intelligent and most talented abandoned their kind when they needed them most, the ones they had been attempting to help, to treat plague and famine, to build homes and stable leadership, to maintain peace and order, and left on a vessel no one since has been able to describe.
They left a message of warning - next time, you should listen.
They took with them all of the gifts they had been denied to give, and soon after, without them, the planet perished. There were no humans left. The only memory of them became simple tales and warnings that the divine power bestowed upon those that were living could not be maintained by anyone on the surface, and the stories ended with unending praise for their few survivors upon The Vessel.
Hundreds of thousands of years later, a group of the survivors decided they had experienced enough of the strict government ordinance that had been swiftly put in place in the sky, abandoning The Vessel and determined to scrape the remnants of any energy left of the Earth and build a society again. However, they realised very quickly that they had no knowledge or even hints to where they might begin to find it. It was overgrown and overwhelming, foreign land that no one had touched in generations upon generations. The weather was unpredictable, and the monsters that roamed shadows were unlike anyone could describe, much less be prepared to fight. Running out of resources from The Vessel quickly, those who abandoned tried to return, but were refused. They had made their decision, announced their lack of faith, and fell. That was to be their future. They were condemned to the Forgotten Planet.
Three hundred years later, the search and the struggle continue for power, having made but slight progress. Thea, a woman from The Vessel, preserved by incremental cryo-sleep, has given the new colony insight and resources she brought with her in order to aid the people in their search. She, along with one other, a man named Seth, work long and hard together to build a system of advanced technology that can track surges of great power, coming from what they hypothesize are The Relics, the name they have given to concentrated and shapeless containers of raw energy used to power government counties leading the world in it's dying moments.
Finally, once a singular power source is found glowing bright on the screen Thea has built, a group of explorers uses Seth's guidance to enter a portal into what they believe is the Energy Field, sent to recover one of the power sources. What they find there is incredibly strange and unbelievably unheard of, but no one will ever, forget the descriptions of that day, and such words would be repeated among The Vessel for years to come.
The environment is filled with what appears to be long spreads of varied roads, made up of many different materials, designs and colors. They wind around the area stretching hundreds of miles, passing through treacherous environments, often playfully creative and maddeningly, yet amusingly difficult to traverse.
It becomes very clear after only a day of research that the area surrounding the Relics... Are racetracks.
This changes everything. Those in the Vessel are alerted to something they had never thought possible - cars, and by extension racing, although something read about in history books and told to children in fantastical woven tales of forgotten society, were obsolete. There was no need for vehicles in the settlement that lived in the sky, but here came a chance to watch, to gander, to be amused by the l obviously faithless and lesser society that lived upon the Forgotten Planet. Everyone in The Vessel now called for competition and entertainment, offering unheard amounts of resources and materials to those willing to be watched, and soon the two societies reached a mutual agreement - The Abandoned would race, and The Vessel would cheer.
Four years later, after long and formal preparation, the races are drafted according to who has the most support from The Vessel. Three captains for three full teams, each accompanied by a full pit crew, and one supervisor, chosen by Thea and Seth themselves. All young, spry and attractive. All marketable, in one way or another.
Ahead, unknown horrors lie in wait, twisting among the living dead planet, along with untold riches from the society most people on Earth have only heard of.
