Where Rivers Run Dry (+lore)

LORE

Because of course there is. Also yeah there's no real order to this so uh yeah enjoy lmao.

THE DINOSAURS:
I think the first thing worth bringing up is the dinosaurs. Or really just the prehistoric life as a whole.

In the year 2040, it was discovered that even the fossilized remains of prehistoric life still contained trace amounts of their raw biological matter that could still be analyzed and even replicated. However, if scientists were to depend solely on that, then all we'd have is the feet of a species due to the material in a footprint or the tooth of another for the same reason.

Ergo, nearly 100 animal species were used to recreate a single species, which also explains why these species are far more vocal than their prehistoric ancestors due to mammalian vocal organs. This was also a way to provide a simple naming system, going by the animal's genetic parents as well as unique traits. For example, due to their genome containing a high amount of canid genes, maniraptorans have dog names (ex: Monolophosaurus are called "crested coyotes" deriving from the genes of the coyote, Canis latrans, and the characteristic crest of the Monolophosaurus).

Many of these resurrected species are also bred and engineered for specific jobs. For example, giant sauropods like Dreadnoughtus are used as busses while animals like Placerias, a type of tusked mammal-like reptile, are kept as livestock.

THE ROBOTS:
Next up, the robots. These have a very complicated history that also merged with the history and set up of the setting for "Where Rivers Run Dry", so this will be relatively short.

Robots were first introduced in the late 2030s as simple-purposed and rather slow-witted droids. They performed menial tasks such as customer reception, calculations, cleaning, etc. . Things became more efficient. Of course, the robots made mistakes, but they were minor ones that could easily be fixed by humans. However, when the first complex helper AI was employed into the US military (it was an AI controlled fighter jet known as "Robocop" as an homage to the famous film and its titular character), things became very different.

These smarter robots quickly overtook the simple and welcomed prior robots. They also claimed to have "emotional programming" as to help understand their human masters. However, this was nothing but a marketing lie made to build trust. Things became increasingly strict with zero opportunity for forgiveness, understanding, or compromise. Many lives were lost because of this.

THE STAGE:
Yeah this is the most complex part of the lore for "Where Rivers Run Dry" and also explains why I gave the short story that title (yeah the bar's name was a compromise).

Throughout the 2030s and 2040s, humanity faced its greatest threat. It wasn't war or a disease, but rapid climate change that rivaled the ravaging force that brought about the Permian Extinction 250 million years ago.

The rapid climate change brought about extreme weather conditions that turned places like the Amazon Basin into scorching prairies and places like Florida into vast swamps that drowned and regrew as quickly and intensely as the tides of the sea went in and out. Speaking of which, the climate change also shrank Antarctica to a fraction of its size in 2024 and also expanded the Sahara Desert of Africa to make it nearly triple in size. This is also what prompted resurrected prehistoric wildlife to replace the now-extinct normal species that died off due to climate change.

At the same time, things in the political world were, to put it kindly, "going to shit". Lies became commonplace and less than half of all humanitarian and environmental goals were met. Tiny conflicts erupted all over the world. The biggest hotspot for this? The United States of America.

Riots were commonplace while opinion-based turmoils ravaged many lives, arguably even more so than the disruption of the forces of nature. In the end, things could only end in two ways:
A) A civil war that would cause the US to implode and collapse, leading to a regionalized "extinction event"
B) A split would tear the once great nation apart but also barely keep it alive

Naturally, still holding onto the basic human need for survival, option B was selected. It didn't make it any easier, though. The United States were split in two parts, North and South.

The south was claimed by what can be summed up as "the rebels". What drew them to go back to such rugged lands is unclear, though many claimed that it was because they were going back to a simpler time where man and nature lived in harmony and the world was one constructed by biological beings rather than mechanical ones.

The north was claimed by high-class folk like businessmen, scientists, and politicians. They made the northern states barren wastelands that were now covered by sprawling shimmering cities where nearly everything was a robot. That bus you take in the morning? It's a robot. The fridge? It's a robot. Your home's security system? It's a freaking robot. Everything was connected in an immense network serving the ruined government. Nothing went unnoticed.

Naturally, the rebels from the south were very much against this. Ergo, there is now a raging war happening between people on dino-back and hive mind robots firing missiles and guns, both sides fighting for what they believe is just. Many lives have been claimed by this war, with very few things in this world rivaling the death toll. Except a few things...

THE MAGIC:
Yeah okay so I got a comment from a friend on the actual story who said that Maya, a nomad from Oklahoma, had been turned into the terminator. More accurately, however, she had been turned into a mix of Robocop and Warwick from League of Legends.

In the northern part of the now divided US, there were some scientific sicknesses that were festering, most notable of being what many call "magic".

Here, magic is often created when science goes too far and augments a human's mind and molecular composition so much that not only is the subject's sanity shattered but lots and lots of changing have to be made to their anatomy.

Most notably, the same fluid that absorbs then augments genetic material that we used to resurrect prehistoric life is often stored in tanks that are stitched or bolted into the subject's body. These tanks also regularly inject doses of this serum into the subject, trapping them in a state of constant mental and physical agony. However, there are other physical and anatomical changes such as dozens of scars from experimentation and mechanical limbs.

The reason these sciences are called magic is because of the fact that the subject is heavily "augmented" to the point that they are what some of these mad scientists call "a new species".

Such scientific augmentations allow for abilities like pyrokinesis. In the case of pyrokinesis, the subject is often injected with hormones and their metabolism is highly altered, making their internal structure produce more heat which gets sent through special veins into pores in the hands which allow the subject to literally shoot out jets of flame. However, this also usually involves numbing the pain sensors in the extremities as well as making the host far more irate.

One final example of this magic is telepathy. This involves giving the subject an extremely heightened mind via an altered form of the aforementioned serum. This allows the host to send radio waves into the mind of another that bounce back and show the what the target is thinking the same way echolocation shows what's in the area for cetatians like whales and dolphins. However, with enough focus and ire, the subject can impose their will upon another, though this usually comes at the cost of both subjects' sanities.

Magic can also be used on animals, though this usually gives the animal heightened senses and stamina. There are a few cases, however, of dinosaurs being able to breathe fire like dragons of myth or let out vocals so loud that they can shatter eardrums in a few moments.

Yeah that's a lot for a comparatively tiny story LMAO