Nearly 500 years into the future. The Earth is no longer habitable. Our home world has been destroyed, and all is lost.
There is a glimmer of hope, though, for a brave few have found a new home. We now call it New Earth. This distant planet has a breathable atmosphere with earth-like conditions, this is where our scientists have found our promised land. The settlers are exploring the surface and making the most of it. This new planet was uninhabited, in fact even the alien civilization who offered the invitation for us to come and settle aren’t sure if there are sentient beings here. For now, the settlers have decided to take full advantage of the new planet.
It’s a beautiful planet full of lush verdant forests, and scattered lakes. It had primitive plant and animal life. A group of settlers did their best to take up the offer and formed a homestead on the planet’s largest continent. The group has set up a small village and is building a sustainable community. They powered their futuristic technology with Earth’s remaining fossil fuels from the underground caverns and their magic greenhouse dome would help to keep the climate as close as possible to Earth’s.
With the help of the alien technology the group has built up a form of transportation between them and the alien homestead, which is perhaps a hundred miles away. The ultimate goal of the scientists is a colony of five thousand, which would be the population limit as set by the aliens. The trip to and from the homestead was made in a short amount of time in those transporter machines which appeared when the aliens wished to communicate. The shortcoming of these machines had proven to be the fact that anything living could not be transported through. Which meant the people traveling in the machine would have to remain in the same area for the journey.
That meant, for the settlers of New Earth that meant that they were restricted to the area surrounding the village. The settlers are flexible and enjoy exploring and hunting the local wildlife. They don’t like the idea of limitations as it meant they wouldn’t have ample resources from the planet.
It was a beautiful morning hour as some of the villagers were working out in one of the many calderas. This large crater is a primarily volcanic crater and while it is a large crater, it still looks like a lake, still it is very deep at its center, and has some interesting land formations around the rim. The crater has some small islands at the bottom and at one point the land is above sea level, and has a large canal which snakes around the outside of the crater from the valley opposite the caldera.
A tall slender man with a bright sunny disposition, Dean is one of the few who made it through the apocalypse to make it to New Earth. Dean had most of his relatives perish in the disaster, and he still has survivor' guilt. He has a particular place in his ample heart, though, for Lloyd.
Lloyd is still considered one of the most handsome specimens of humanity. He is nearly 6 foot tall, with the broad shoulders of a man who has worked on the frontier for most of his life. He's friendly and a great conversationalist. Although his pleasant and well-mannered nature can lead to taking for granted the people in his life; the very people he cares about the most.
Dean and Lloyd had set out to explore the surrounding area and hunt the local wildlife. They decided to head out that morning for the small, nearby island which was in the middle of the large crater. The island seems to be a good place to start, as the fauna there didn't look all that dangerous. The two hunters trekked their way towards the small island. They were using a long game trail which cut through a dense overgrowth of trees and shrubs of roughly five or six inches in height. The trail was filled with tangles of twisted thick plants that had vines and brush along the ground which covered much of it in a thick jungle-like canopy.
Working their way through the thick growth, they would need to watch their step, not to get caught in the vines or other obstructions. At times they would have to move branches out of their way to break through and while it meant it slowed them down, it didn't stop them from finding their way. As they worked their way through the dense growth, the ground between the plants was littered with leaves, roots and other vegetative debris. They would have to be careful they didn’t catch their feet or trip over anything as they approached their destination.
They crossed this marine growth until they reached a point where the trees and shrubs were broken by a natural clearing.
