Vessels Wiki

## **Welcome to the Vessels Wiki**

### About

Vessels started life as an intellectual property / visual development project for Jake Gumbleton's portfolio. From there it morphed to being a graphic novel with writer Drew Dewhirst (still in progress).

Recently the advent of Green NFT’s through Hic et Nunc and the Tezos block chain has allowed Vessels to evolve into a community driven project. The community members, through discord, are now actively engaged with world building, fan fiction and creative input to the project. We have a whole world to create and we want you to be involved in building it! What do the queens guards get up to when they are off duty. How do the Dragon Squad bring down a giant fire breathing monster, where are the missing colonies? Maybe you have the answers to these mysteries?

### Connect with Vessels

* **Twitter**
* **Discord**
* **Website**
* **Browse on OBJKT**

Welcome travelers! Explore the story and community archives of the Vessels project here. We have put together these story pieces from what we know thus far and will keep things updated as new pieces come to light.

## Story

> *"Earth is dead. Used-up and broken.*
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> *Now, on a barely habitable hostile alien world, one lone colony is home to the last remnants of the human race… But it’s cold and lonely out there in the dark void of space, and the last dim ember of humanity is flickering and threatening to die out.*
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> *In a shanty town built underneath, and out of, the floating hulk of the vessel that they arrived on, the colonists are permanently trapped in the shadow of their past. There was no new beginning when they arrived on this brave new world. The chaos and corruption that plagued humanity on Earth was simply exported to the stars. The colony is built on rotten foundations and it is collapsing.*
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> *Collapsing, but not quite lost… Out of darkness and violence, one last hope for the future emerges. An adopted orphan girl with fantastic, horrifying powers that would ordinarily see her branded a witch – Betsy finds that fate seems to have other plans for her. Along with a ragtag group of broken knights and unlikely heroes, Betsy sets off on a path that will bring her face to face with her own destiny, and the destiny of the entire human race."*
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### Then

Predicting the total ecological collapse of Earth within three generations, the planet’s wealthiest nations collaborated to create enormous Colony Ships in order to preserve whatever could be preserved of humanity by relocating a lucky few to new homes in the stars.

Several nearby potentially habitable exoplanets were chosen, but with time running short and data being limited, the choices of potential planets were simply educated guesses. The whole plan was a huge roll of the dice, motivated entirely by necessity. This was simply the only option left if anything was to be salvaged of the human race.

The colonists were a mixture of carefully selected key personal (scientists, military, etc), lottery winners (the lottery would have been needed to minimise rioting/panic amongst the general population due to the very limited places) , and – crucially – the wealthy, ruling elite. The powerful people who had no intention of staying behind on a doomed earth.

The ships were created as a joint scientific effort, but as cooperation began to break down in the face of overwhleming global panic, louder, more nationalistic voices drowned out the spirit of collaboration. Each nation insisted on filling its own ship with its own peoples, with no room for anyone except their own citizens. Our story follows the UK vessel, which even decided to export its archaic class system and leadership structure based around hereditary nobility to the stars.

Leaving behind a world collapsing into a violent ruin of grief-stricken despair, the colonists entered an experimental form of stasis (the only way to survive the long journey ahead) and fell asleep hoping for a fresh start on a brave new world. The physical demands of the propulsion systems of the vessels mean no crew could remain conscious while the vessel was in transit, so the whole human race had to put its faith in the genius calculations of a handful of the world’s best minds.

Years passed.

Eventually the automatic navigation systems of the  UK colony ship completed the pre-programmed journey to the chosen new world and the vessel took up a position floating over a site that had been chosen to provide the best balance of natural resources.

The ship began to automatically wake its cargo of humans.

There was no single great disaster when the colonists arrived at their new home. Things just fell apart with a weary predictability.

The colonists awoke from stasis and discovered that although they had arrived precisely where they should have, a lot of the bleeding-edge experimental systems on the ship hadn’t worked perfectly. A lot of people had simply died in transit. A lot of people had been mutated from exposure to the radiation from the hitherto untested propulsion drives. A lot of people had reacted badly to the drugs needed to make the stasis process work. A few people had been altered by the combination of drugs and radiation to become something post-human that no one had time to really understand. All contact had been lost with the other colony ships and none had checked in to say they have arrived at their own destinations. The survivors on the lone UK vessel had no choice but to assume they were all that was left of the human race.

Adding to the problem, it quickly became apparent to the scientists and experts onboard that the nobility – who had obviously ensured that they and the royal court were the first people to be awarded places on the vessel – had conspired in secret with the designers and manufacturers of the vessel to have the ship built to their own specifications…

Much of the precious space on the enormous ship had been used to transport equipment and supplies for the ruling classes. The foundations they needed to set up a new kingdom on a new world over which they would rule unopposed as they had done back on Earth. A ready-made royal palace, along with the other infrastructure required to rule, pre-built and ready to unload from the colony ship. The wealthy set about systematically dismantling the vessel and setting up their pre-fab kingdom down below.

The scientists and experts were horrified to discover all this, realising that space that could have been used to save more of the human race had been given over to preserving the nobility’s status and luxurious lifestyle. There was a brief and bloody attempted revolution. Many scientists and experts were killed, but ultimately the monarchy retained total control, violently establishing their kingdom and ruling through brutality and fear. With nothing to hold them back or keep them in check, the ruling elite returned society to a state more akin to medieval feudalism, repopularising the ideals of knights and members of the royal court, as well as violent punishments for anyone who resisted.

The rest of the population were left to fend for themselves from this point, bussing down to the planet’s surface with whatever tech they could think to grab, with no hope of ever returning to the vessel that had transported them to this world, nor any idea how they would survive there.

They found the planet itself inhospitable and barely survivable. Living outside the walls of the royal palace, many more perished in those first days. Gangs formed and collapsed and more vicious gangs formed in their wake. A crude form of society sprang up. Fishing and hunting become early trades in which it was wise to specialise. Stealing and murder became almost equally sensible lines of work. Life found a way. But only just.

The ransacked colony ship would never fly again but the anti-gravity engines could keep the ship afloat almost indefinitely, so the skeleton of the abandoned vessel hovered permanently over the city below, casting a shadow that humanity was unable to escape. Some gangs returned to the vessel, despite the dangers of mutation caused by leaking radiation, and used the ship as a base from which they looted and plundered the world below. These gangs formed into one larger faction known as the Sky Pirates.

### Now

Years later, the Queen rules with absolute authority, surrounded by her aristocracy and aided by her royal court. She has unnaturally extended her lifespan to the point where she is effectively immortal, using technology and experimental medical treatments to refresh and renew the cells of her body. She is reliant on science for this so she must keep a few experts around, much to her disgust, though she keeps them tightly under control.

She allows the population a degree of freedom in order to keep uprisings and rebellions to a minimum, and holds regular tournaments in order to amuse the unwashed masses. Victory in these tournaments is the only real way for people on the outside of the royal court to taste some of the opulence and grandeur that the aristocracy enjoy on a daily basis. The tournaments are impossibly dangerous, violent spectacles where mech-pilots fight it out to prove their honour in combat. Mech suits, like all technology, is rare amongst the general population, and highly sought-after.

The one thing that the Queen fears and considers a threat to her power is the strange and unexplained ‘magic’ that certain humans seem able to harness and wield. These humans are branded ‘witches’ and ‘warlocks’ and the population of the colony are trained to hate and fear such people. They are banished and hunted, though they are proving tricky to eradicate completely. The reason why some humans develop these abilities and the origin of this power is unknown, though it seems to have some strange link to the exotic indigenous life on the planet.

Some magic users have reached out with their abilities and made contact with a mysterious, intelligent alien race that seems to dwell on the planet’s ocean floor. This race, know as The Deep Ones, would seem to have been lying dormant for eons, but is now awakening thanks to the presence of the humans on the surface… And they’re not happy.

### Main Characters

While there may be more once the final graphic novel is released, the main cast of Vessels are:

* Betsy
* Gabe
* Peter
* Rex
* Gawain
* Silver
* Anais Malfette
* Dante
* Sir Robert
* Ravage
* The Queen
* The Professor (Meridian Wilde)
* Sally

## NFT Project

Vessels has evolved with Jake's discovery of NFT's on Tezos blockchain. He began minting unique characters from the Vessels universe while working on the graphic novel. The community members, through discord, are now actively engaged with world building, fan fiction and creative input to the project. Jake has expanded the designs of the NFTs as well, minting ships, dragons, story panels, and community crossover projects.

### Fan Fiction

One of the creative things happening in the Vessels discord are the fan fiction writing contests. Community members take a prompt and come up with adventures, pulling together different combinations of characters and settings. These are usually pretty free-form, but occasionally a particularly inspired submission will become enshrined as a brand new addition to the Vessels universe. These are always a lot of fun and the discord comes together to celebrate all the creativity!

This wiki will also serve as an archive of the contests, submissions, and winners!

* Fanfic Challenges
* Crew Challenges

### Tokens

* Full Gallery
* Ships (work in progress)
* Creatures (work in progress)
* Factions (work in progress)
* Lore Cards
* Story Beats
* Special Series