Desert Rose

“Our destruction, my sons. The city of the Thiff-steareya. It is forbidden. For it stands to wipe us off of the face of our home world.”

My great grandfather made it his life’s great mission to ingrain into our heads, the day our ancestors arrived. It did not matter if we were in bed, out in the fields, or if we were working on our sacred artifacts. And when the great Morea ‘Id spoke, everyone would stop and turn to him.

In 2334, years after colonizing Red Star, Mars, Earth sent a colony ship to see what was beyond the outer rim planets. However, the navigation system malfunctioned, and the ship was forced down onto the Jovian moon of Io where it crashed within what would be known as “The Forever Plane”—named as such as it for what seemed like forever before they were able to leave the treacherous valley

Morea would flail his hands and tell of how the chariot streamed through the dark sky, skipped multiple times, skidded, and then sank into the sand---turning a lot of into a dark onyx-colored glass that, they would soon, could filter the light and heat of the atmosphere. One hundred of the ship’s compliment died in the crash, along with any telemetry or communications equipment. They embarked on their new life, adopting their own society and codes. We became Ioian on the day they stepped onto the surface of that Jovian moon and in a hundred years, they built the great city of Tal Elib Vee, powered by geo-thermal reactors within the central complex of the city.
Our people established other cities, all connected by magnetic liftrail and we were able to traverse the Forever Plane by one of those maglift rails. Our ancestors were careful to balance the changes we made to the moon: to allow her to heal, to offer our firsts and to honor the land that had allowed us to thrive. The balance was intact until the arrival of another colonist ship. The new craft was accompanied by a fleet of ships bearing the marks of the Thiff-steareya: EarthStar Defense Command.