Justifying constant Fury Road

[SmiloDan]

Hi!

How can I justify or explain why a bunch of different quasi-post-apocalyptic, quasi-Stone Age tribes would be engaged in a constant circum-continental chase/race? Mostly through desert, grassland, and jungles.

They would be using a combination of megafauna (both mammalian and dinosaurs, living and undead (and maybe even golemesque)) with palanquins and outriders on exotic mounts (axebeaks, smilodons (of course!), dino-raptors, bears, horses, etc.). No wheeled conveyances because Stone Age.

Ideas:

1. Weird Religious Rite
2. Weird Migratory Prey
3. Weird Ceremonial Treasure
4. Weird Insane Compulsion (there will be Cthulu-like overlords)
5. Something else is chasing them
6. Weird Ceremonial Reward (rule city-state? Marry royalty?)
7. Chasing mobile source of an aura the chasers need to survive

Thanks!

[quibblemuch]

8. It hasn't occurred to anybody to stop. Untold aeons ago, this thing started, maybe for a good reason. But you know how it is - reasons obsolesce long before the behavior ends.

[The Sword]

Why not use the same premise as The Wacky Races?

[Markov Spiked Chain]

I think a combination of 2,5&7:
Elementals (fire, earth, and air) of various sizes spring up throughout the desert and gather strength (and intelligence?) Many of them move fast, so the tribes have to be able to follow and chase down their prey.
The only source of sustenance is this magical energy, and the tribes can harvest it for food, water, and fabrication of elaborate vehicles.
But sometimes the elementals have enough time to get to truly epic proportions out in the deep wastes.

Then you have to run. Run and find allies from your old enemies. Because the alliance that takes one down can dominate the area for years.

[quibblemuch]

9. Squatter's Pox - there is a curse on this land. Anyone who stays more than a week at any location rots away from the inside. Only constant motion (which has become ritualized as racing) staves off this magical disease.

[DominusMegadeus]

You can justify anything with religious zeal. Zon-Kuthon told them to march forever a couple centuries ago. And so they did.

[quibblemuch]

DominusMegadeus wrote:

You can justify anything with religious zeal. Zon-Kuthon told them to march forever a couple centuries ago. And so they did.

"And lo, did the Dead who walk in Gratitude say unto them 'Keep on truckin, and truckin on shalt thou keep.' And there was much space and Gar-See-Yah was pleased that they did keep truckin. And so shall we all, until the Riff is done."

[Oxylepy]

If that ends up being your logic, please have someone named Kaysee who runs a caravan

[quibblemuch]

Oxylepy wrote:

If that ends up being your logic, please have someone named Kaysee who runs a caravan

"And I looked, and I saw a Lady in Red, and she sat upon a train and I heard a great voice saying 'Son of Man, behold trouble ahead and trouble behind. Thou art better off dead.' And the number of that great train upon which the Lady in Red rode was one hundred and two."

[Java Man]

Dream beasts form from the minds of sleepers, upon waking the beasts gain substance and will soon hunt those whose minds spawned them.

The solution is to sleep in shifts while moving. To be cast out from the caravan is death.

[quibblemuch]

10. If you're not committed to a specific geography, why not have the entire continent dissolve behind the racers, only to reform somewhere over the horizon? A world constantly renewed to the east, while disintegrating to the west. Or vice versa, if you want them riding into the sunset.

[avr]

Megafauna? I've read that herds of some of the big dinosaur herbivores would wreck their immediate area pretty fast just by eating what they need, so staying on the move would be essential. Then the big predators would have to follow. Makes a pretty good prey lure IMO.

[Avoron]

Time Glitches:

Time doesn't work around here. It ebbs and flows, shifting in enormous patches around the terrain. Like storms. Like ocean currents. If you pass through the right places at the right times, you could live a thousand years without aging a day. If you don't, you could wake up one morning having aged to your deathbed. Crops wither and die or bear fruit overnight, or hang in static limbo indefinitely.

It's not an easy life for the tribes here. Stay in one place too long, and the time glitches will catch up, moving in like the tide and leaving a village full of corpses in their wake. But they've survived. They've kept moving. They've learned to keep an eye on nature, scouting and retreating as the glitches tear their way through the grass and the trees, following the packs and herds. Often, they follow one another, keeping their distance but keeping up the chase in a frantic dance across the continent.

Crops cannot be relied upon here, so they've taking to hunting. Beasts cannot be relied upon here, so they've taking to hunting each other. Sometimes one tribe sees another as a threat. Sometimes one tribe sees another as an opportunity. Sometimes, as the winds of time shift across the terrain, some tribes are predators and some are prey.

Sometimes, time glitches.

[Shadowborn]

Definitely incorporate 5. However, it could be that whatever is chasing them stopped long ago. Religious fervor/tribal legend has hyped up the thing to ridiculous proportions. Not only is the thing chasing them unstoppable, it will roast their souls in its belly for millennia. The central mythology of the tribes could evolve to say that not only is there something chasing them, but there is a place of safety, a paradise for the tribe that reaches it first.

[SmiloDan]

Oh! Like the Wild Hunt?

What are The Wacky Races?

[Create Mr. Pitt]

Unique magical beasts that have parts of great magical or economic value.

[SmiloDan]

Maybe magical beasts that contain an addictive substance? Or a curative substance that temporarily relieves or forestalls an infection of some kind?

I'm kind of leaning towards magical beasts that provide a medicine that halts the development of xenomorph chestbursters or slaadi tadpole parasites.

It might be a sacred hunting ceremony, and the chasers are ritually infected with the parasitoid. The winners, or last survivors, might be rewarded with a holy treasure or anointment of some kind.

Maybe some kind of eusocial haplo/diploid organism that produces Royal Jelly? Not quite the Great Modron March....

[Shadowborn]

SmiloDan wrote:

What are The Wacky Races?

Wacky Races

[RaizielDragon]

This makes me think of the movie Snowpiercer, about a train on a constant loop around the earth, because reasons.

One idea could be that the planet on which it is set turns very slowly, or is very big. So that the day/night cycle is extremely long. Spend too long on the day side and your roast, but spend too long on the night side and you freeze. So you have to constantly run from/towards the sun, depending on if you live on the rising or setting side of the planet. Maybe it turns at just the right speed so that there is a strip of biosphere along the edges, in which there is life, but as it slowly turns into the sun, the plants and other life slowly dies out as the beating sun gradually evaporates all the water and burns away all life until it's nothing but a blazing desert, until finally it circles around to the other side, where it cools off again, and the waters flowing in from the frozen side re-saturate the ground and new life, buried in seeds beneath the sun-baked earth, springs anew.

Could even have a cool West/East tribe type deal, where people speak of a mysterious tribe that lives on the other side of the planet, but no one who has ever tried to make the trek there has returned.

[SmiloDan]

Another part of the world is going to be a combo of Snowpiercer, RailSea, and A Half-Made World.