Concept: a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting where the First Empire was brought low by their own hubris and annihilated utterly, except for their comprehensive – and apparently indestructible – automated public transit network, whose trains still run perfectly on schedule when everything else the Empire built has crumbled to dust. Nobody knows what (if anything) is controlling the network, but there always seems to be a train coming along in just a few minutes whenever you need one, even if anticipating that need would have required some sort of prescience, and the civilisations that rose from the First Empire’s ashes are built around the sites of the network’s former stations.
Further random thoughts:
- The trains are capable of incredible top speeds and punch right through nearly any obstacle placed on the tracks, so efforts to block or redirect them generally fail,
- They also take their role as public transit seriously, and seem to actively resist attempts to control access to them; if a station is secured against public access, the trains will simply pick a new stretch of track nearby and begin to stop there instead.
- The trains will forcibly eject anyone who attempts violence against another passenger, so the interior of the cars is an enforced neutral zone. Creatures that would ordinarily be wholly inimical to humanity can be encountered safely while riding the rails – though the trains won’t stop them from following you off when you disembark!
- The attendant difficulty of forcibly removing passengers from the trains renders them something of a sanctuary. Fugitives sometimes end up living on the trains full-time as a result, bartering with regular passengers for their daily needs; it’s whispered that even those who’ve offended the gods may find safety on the trains.
- Owing to the trains’ apparently prescient ability to anticipate public demand, efforts have been made to predict the future – or at least the flow of commerce – from the patterns of the trains’ schedules; this typically meets with limited success.
- Reports of the trains showing up in times of great need even where there are no tracks to run on are unsubstantiated, and are generally dismissed as superstitious folk-tales.
(Of course, it’s not all sunshine and roses; the trains are entirely amoral outside of their mandate, and will happily show up in the nick of time to provide a murderer with a convenient escape, or transport an invading army straight to your doorstep, provided that army doesn’t try to prevent others from boarding, and refrains from harming anyone while they’re actually on board!)
Tags:
#trains #story ideas I will never write #violence mention #death mention
Brinens and Things 