Life Of The Party, Part 1: The Three Tenets

Jay C. Yan

While one could never hope to fully catalogue the diversity of this planet’s desert-crossing endeavours, this document provides an outline of common practice. It primarily focuses on basic structure and organization, with limited attention to internal culture, more varied and requiring more care than can be discussed with brevity.

The Van

Ranging ahead of the convoy, the Van is usually small, as little as a single vehicle or scout on foot. Pathfinders and surveyors, the Van tests the terrain with sensors and their own hide to ensure safe passage for the rest of the convoy. Without them, it would be far too easy for an entire convoy to be lost to a buried white sand deposit or sinkhole, or simply lose the route. Ground penetrating radar/sonar suites scan for white sand, unstable ground, and similar buried threats, while the crew use eyes, ears, and intuition to look out for other dangers. Arms and limited armor are also common in more violent areas; canny ambushes are often only found by sticking your nose in them, and it’s good to have some firepower to brandish when negotiating passage with bandits or local warlords. Medium vehicles, such as Camels or literal vans, dominate, possessing the capacity to operate independently and carry all the necessary equipment, without the ponderous weight of a Long Runner. They are otherwise kept fairly light for their size, often with aftermarket kits and larger tires to improve all-terrain capability. Despite physically leading the group, this is rarely a position for people high on the social ladder. It does not tolerate distraction. However, many a convoy leader or respected elder has experience in the Van, which demands and vindicates trust like nothing else. 

To those who find this scroll, heed my words. I, Balthazar Caro, the last sane man on this damned rock we know as Terra Finis, have created a record of our baseness and depravity. Terra Finis—the Last Earth! Would that this name were true, for what the rabid dogs who call themselves men have done here has shown that they deserve no future, no descendants to inherit their legacy of horror. Every part of this diseased boil we call a world has become host to its own, unique nightmare.

Gate Mechanics

A gate is type of small wormhole that connects two distant points in space. Gates result from a quirk of hyperdimensional geometry where the presence of a gravity well in an area affects certain particles in quantum entanglement, causing the higher-dimensional space between them to fold in on itself (for the details of why this happens, wait 2500 years for Markus Tannhauser to publish his book on the subject). Like any waveform, spacetime can be added and subtracted from itself, and in certain cases the foldspace phenomenon ends up being subtracted enough to bring the two consanguineous entangled particles close enough to each other in higher-dimensional space to cause a noticeable spatial discontinuity at either end.

The following transmission was intercepted from the CP-04/4748.6 gate on 1 Spring by a deep-space listening post. Its point of origin is unknown—it could not have come from Terra Nova, yet consists of a series of what seem to be bizarre jokes that only make sense if written from a Terra Novan perspective. Wolfe in the science division suggests that this transmission may originate in an alternate universe and entered our own through foldspace, but I think he’s been drinking too much Fort James Special. This is clearly some sort of strange hoax, but further investigation into the reason behind its existence may be warranted. –J. Pliatikos, Talon Intelligence Command, 5 Spring 1954