[Background] About 150 years ago a virus called PSY-12 destroyed the majority of Earth’s populations. The virus drove people mad and suicidal. The rest had constant nightmares what they’ve called “the nightmares of the Earth”. The people who were immune recolonized the Earth. Some tried to rebuild a technologic lifestyle, others decided to start new, more nature-friendly communities.
This is what happened on Amantani Island (Peru, next to the Lake Titicaca). They call themselves the Kantuta Tribe after the flower which grows there. Outsiders call them “Hippies with guns”. They prefer to live in isolation. During 150 years the local Quechua survivors and the new pioneers (mostly Americans and multiethnic Peruvians) formed a spiritual local community. Their lifestyle includes the usage of ayahuasca.
[Characters]
AVA (the female protagonist): Age 20, creole skin. She is trained to fight and navigate. Her father was Arabic, she has a hamsa tattoo (Fatima’s hand), which is a sign of protection. She traveled the world in a modern-style caravan with her dad (her nickname is Caravan Kid), her godfather and four other crew members. Her mother was from Amantani Island and was murdered when she was twelve because being a merchant and traveling through cities is a dangerous business.
DAVE (the male protagonist): He is athletic with brown hair, pale skin. He is an educated, calm-mannered, artistic, who perceives the “nightmares of the Earth”. He is considered as a highly spiritual member of the tribe. He has two mothers, who are lesbians. One of them had a one-night-stand with a traveler who left the island after a short stay, so he never had a real father figure.
ISTVAN (the scientist): He is a grey-haired, bearded guy in his fifties with glasses. He worked in Hungary at a Research Centre to find a cure for the PSY-12 virus in case the epidemic starts again. They’ve detected the mutant PSY-12 first. They had a radio connection with the American Research Centre for collaboration. When the epidemic started to spread in Europe towards the rest of the world, he got the quest to meet with an American scientist and to set out to get ayauhuasca from the Kantuta tribe as a possible cure.
SOPHIA (the leader): She is a strong character in her forties, who didn’t inherit but earned the position as the main leader of the community. She has a very refined personality but she isn’t the man of many words. Sophie guides her tribe with very firm hands and is very strict when it comes to laws and traditions.
TAQUIRI (the shaman): He is in his sixties, very wise and chilled. He is a man ready for understanding and compromises but he doesn’t believe that people in the outside world can overcome their self-destructive routines without empathy and the Flourishing ritual. When the leader dies, he automatically becomes the new leader.
FRANK (the smuggler): Frank is a one-eyed, sneaky drug dealer, who says he is a farmer just to get hold of the Ayahuasca and to sell it to the outsiders.
CYNTHIA (the mother): She is the mother of the twins (Blue and Ted), an ex-prostitute from the cities, whose only goal was to secure the future of her children. She becomes infected with the new form of the PSY-12 virus. When she arrives at the island in a very weak, malnourished phase since it was difficult to travel through a big distance with two toddlers. The twins are considered as a miracle, no one on the Kantuta Island has ever seen twins.
ELLIE & CARLA (the mothers of Dave): Ellie and Carla is a lesbian couple in their forties who always worked on the Base because they are very social and the like to interact with the travelers. They are free-minded and loving parents of Ava, and they will take care of the twins very well.