RAW SOURCE: Maf: A Brief History of the "Original Colonists" — Part Three

URL: https://perryjones.medium.com/maf-a-brief-history-of-the-original-colonists-part-three-da7b1a0513dd Published: Jul 12, 2022 (republished 2026)

Content (close paraphrase, unfiltered)

The Ark Royal rests on the ocean bottom, two miles down, for 7 months. The crash killed 3,051 people and injured 17,236. Crew and passengers strip the ship (bulkheads, deck panels, ceiling panels, cabling) to build deep- sea submersibles to transport all 300,000 people 208 miles west to land.

The first submersible unloads just before midnight; the local day is later learned to be June 22, 1893. 33 people step ashore, then 31 more minutes later, then 35 more 15 minutes after that. By dawn, over 2,000 have encamped on a sparse field beyond the beach. Captain McHenery's staff estimates 8,380 total trips will be needed. Each submersible takes 6 hours per round-trip. 313 submersibles depart at 15-minute intervals; the full evacuation takes 160 hours. Early arrivals make contact with local farmers and fishing crews.

The Colonists are astonished: native inhabitants of the planet "Maf" are giants — 6 to 7 feet tall on average, some up to 8'4". The Colonists claim to be refugees from a totalitarian government "in the far east," their fleet sunk by a typhoon, and that in their homeland people range 5'2" to 6'6". The locals are skeptical but accept the story rather than challenge it.

Two months later, the Colonists move inland planning to build a city, but local farmers/ranchers and coastal fishing villages refuse to sell land. Three government representatives of the nation of Peplle ("Pep-lay"), riding tall horse-like creatures, arrive to negotiate. Over a few days, a deal is struck: the Peplle government will buy out a mostly-uninhabited coastal peninsula from its private owners and cede it entirely to the Colonists. Most Colonists (a few thousand chose to live among the locals instead) relocate to the peninsula.

A large family group, the Jones family (200+ members, effectively leading nearly every Ark Royal activity, many former officers/crew), is honored with naming the new city — Jonesboro. It is a large city from day one, population just under 300,000.

A few months later, Colonists arrive at the lush, hilly, well-watered peninsula with cliff-backed beaches; the former farmers/ranchers have moved inland, leaving a few tools and three broken tractors. Trade develops with towns and cities across Peplle. Colonist scientists shuttle back and forth to the Ark Royal, retrieving scientific instruments and embryos/seeds of Old Earth flora and fauna. Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, hawks, eagles, and deer are among the first animals developed in labs; cats and dogs aren't needed since over 11,000 had been pets aboard the ship.

In 1898, in honor of Vee and his LMT Corporation (which built the Ark Royal and saved them from nuclear annihilation), the Jones family incorporates a new LMT Corporation on Maf. Also in 1898, Colonist aeronautical engineers secretly build their first aircraft using scavenged Ark Royal materials, flown only at night to avoid detection — the local population, per local newspapers, is contemplating but hasn't yet built heavier-than-air flight. Equipped with radar, radio-detection, infrared, and cameras, the plane surveys and maps the coast and hundreds of miles inland.

Over the next 50 years, Colonists build out the city using local materials — bricks, concrete, quarried cliff stone, timber. People spread out across the huge continent, some settling in new communities, others continuing inland.

In 1922, Perold Jones leads an expedition out of Jonesboro along the north bank of "the great river" intersecting the continent. By 1937, with clandestine LMT aircraft assistance, they reach the continent's opposite shore. Rather than stop, Perold Jones — wanting more — determines to cross the vast ocean beyond, a journey requiring months.

In 1939, aboard one of three huge seaplanes he'd commissioned, Perold Jones reaches a group of islands far to the northwest — the Janastian Islands, home to many small nations each on their own volcanic island, separated by just a mile or two (sometimes a few hundred yards) of cold water. Winters are extreme (30+ feet of snow in a season, individual storms dropping 9–12 feet); summers are cool and sunny. The islands host a "robust and advanced society."

Six-foot-four Perold Jones feels he's finally found his "home." In Janast, the nation of the main island, he changes his name to Perold Jonas and enrolls in a college in the capital city, Jolin — the Durin College of War.