(Xbox) Let's Play XGRA Part 2

EVENTS
Fobos All Stars
Class: Subsonic
Type: Speed Limited
Available Points: 60
Race #1: Dunroth's Folly
Location: Dunrothia, Thailand, Khapsamutra
Distance: 2 laps (20.8 miles (33.5 kilometers))
Sponsor Contract: Finish 6th or better (TerraNova/Vixen); Finish 5th or better (Palus/Starcom/Templar); Finish 4th or better (Talon/Manta/Scarecrow)
Race #2: Anomaly 17
Location: Anomaly Facility, Cleito Abyss, Sohmland
Distance: 2 laps (16.6 miles (26.7 kilometers))
Sponsor Contract: Beat Rider Rival (Diva/Gekko; Inferno/Romulus; Jakar/Katerina; Mark IV/Jesuit)
Race #3: Reactor
Location: Santarém, Pará, Brazil
Distance: 2 laps (15.6 miles (25.1 kilometers))
Sponsor Contract: Get a Best Lap Time (TerraNova: 1:45.00; Vixen: 1:44.00; Palus: 1:43.00; Starcom: 1:42.00; Talon/Manta/Scarecrow/Templar: 1:41.00
TRACK SPOTLIGHT
Circuits: Dunroth’s Folly; Dunroth’s Rift
Length: 10.4 miles (16.7 kilometers); 10.7 miles (17.2 kilometers)
Location: Dunrothia, Thailand, Khapsamutra
HISTORY
Airships and zeppelins, appropriated from a retrofuturistic utopia, saunter languidly across the sky. Theravadin crematoria, speculated to be rare evidence of a long forgotten empire in the Khorat Plateau, peacefully coexist with luxury bungalows, developed for the discriminating tastes of the twenty-second century. Aging monks answer queries from the complex’s tourists, as much as they’d balk at the idea of dāna. Indeed, Dunrothia has been frequently shortlisted as a location of choice for the Khapsamutran Ministry of Tourism, a desperate attempt at deflection for a country still struggling to heal.
Just half a century prior, such a refuge would have been a sick joke to anyone familiar with the region’s turmoil. The rise of a Neo-Maoist faction within the Vietnamese Communist Party from the political margins to the heights of chairmanship, the further evolution of a Cambodian despot who considered the Hun era as preparatory calisthenics, and the continued decay of Thailand into a police state after the utter failure of the 2024 Sipsong Revolt. The lone countries that evaded disaster - Myanmar and Laos - only managed to do so because they were swallowed by the superpowers they neighbored. India and China, the deadpan went, wanted box seats to the bloodbath about to occur.
Sure enough, after not insignificant goading by their allies in the CPC and an equally beneficent gift from Norinco, the Kongthap Kabot was waiting for the chance to strike. After years of fruitless conspiracies that the assassinations of reformists and junta critics in the late ‘20s weren’t the handiwork of militant Andamanese separatists, an easy boogeyman constantly invoked by the junta, that wish materialized after an investigation by the Tellurian League gave them the smoking gun they needed.
Instead of the signs that trafficked AKs were used in the killings, as the Thai inquiry reported, it was discovered in 2034 that the ballistics closer resembled that of a sniper rifle than any carbine relative. In fact, the report confirmed a link between the rounds extracted and those fired by an SR-25. Indeed, one throwaway piece of military propaganda the regime released in 2027 was enough to send it all crashing down. An uncovered puff piece about the Royal Thai Army acquiring an arsenal of that specific model, written just months before the first liquidations occurred, was the Maine Explosion of the new millennium.
Vindicated, outraged, and with throngs of likeminded fighters on their side, KoKa mushroomed from a malcontent militia to an unfettered insurgency. Everyone who didn’t flee the country knew what was about to occur: the labored gasps of a regime, as recalcitrant as it was revanchist, on the run from the very citizens they trampled over. What they didn’t know, however, was that the powder keg they expected was surrounded with oily rags. Fortuitously enough, the concurrent rebellions in both Cambodia and Vietnam were fast to align with KoKa. Not out of terror, but out of a common goal of liquidating the autocrats in their midst. By the time peace talks had concluded six years later, a new country had been birthed through the flames of cataclysm.
Meanwhile, China was preparing to finalize their true proposition. Fortuitous enough to only receive spillover skirmishes, they had entrusted their Laotian colleagues to keep tabs on the damage. Their scrupulous reports, publicized in 2046, portrayed Khapsamutra’s alarming prognosis: casualties in excess of 8,000,000 (about 4.5% of the region, estimated at over triple the body count of the Vietnam War), damages conservatively predicted in the tens of trillions, and the grotesque fallout from the triplet nukings of Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Hanoi, rumored to have started because India either dreaded the war breaching Myanmar or itched at the chance to show off their own atomic armory.
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HISTORY
Needless to say, China was giddy to escalate their courtship with Khapsamutra. Putting aside the massive repairs to public works that had to be undertaken, Chinese officials gambled that the armaments and support they granted the once dark horse revolutionaries were enough to cement a lasting alliance. As vehemently they asserted that they never desired to groom a puppet state from the chaos, it was undeniable that the relationship between the two countries would considerably benefit the former in the long term. With a population that rivaled Bangladesh’s in an area nearly seven times its size, it would have been a politico-economic misfire to not establish contact.
Across the Pacific Ocean, a real estate developer and entertainment mogul named Trevor Dunroth was mulling over the perfect place to build his magnum opus. Ostensibly a tribute to his deceased wife, Padma, the aristocrat’s obsessive fascination with the pop cultural mythos was what undergirded his vision. Obscenely wealthy, politically active, and regularly coveted by travel magazines, Dunroth had only halfheartedly listened to the reports of Southeast Asia imploding, only paying attention when the news of nuclear warfare interrupted his umpteenth marathon of the prequel trilogy. That comment, a tasteless icebreaker at worst, would reverberate in the coming decades as the histories of Dunroth and Khapsamutra converged.
To his credit, Dunroth’s cumulative reputation was far warmer than other developers’ from his side of the globe. After all, thanks to his limitless coffers and his apparatchiks in both Disney and the Tshogdu, he had reincarnated the country of Bhutan, in his own words, “from an agrarian flyover to a Mulanified Macau.” True, he was a lightning rod amongst some of the more traditionalist bastions of the countries he did business in, even if he could reframe their disgust as basic xenophobia and further reason for being there. The luxuries that he could provide for them, he argued, guaranteed that his critics had a dragon to slay before they could harm his enterprises.
Nevertheless, to Khapsamutrans shell shocked and wary of interlopers, there was something intrinsically sinister in Dunroth’s pitches. Yes, he and his cronies outbid Chinese contractors countless times. Yes, the odor of foreign intervention and the stench of a puppet state seemed weaker from him than the delegates from the Politburo. Yes, his plan to build a tropical paradise for the moneyed elite was exactly what the country needed for an economic miracle. And yet, the very publicity stunt that propelled Dunrothia into public notoriety still lingered on their tongues like gunpowder. In an alternate timeline, the Wat Hupkhao Complex could have been the national symbol it deserved to be. Hidden for centuries deep in the jungle, unblemished by the scars of war, and as excellent a chance it provided to add its builders to the history books.
At least, before the Khapsamutran government approved the sale of the property for an infusion of direly needed money. Diligent as they were, the pressures of reconstruction had preoccupied them enough for one of Dunroth’s shell companies to slip through the net. He had no intent of demolishing the property, but the threat of destroying a cultural landmark was exactly the kind of fire he could set and extinguish. With a sockpuppet at his disposal, he was impervious to the firestorm that had descended. As much as he grimaced whenever his stunt was construed with desecration, “rescuing” the property had won him the respect of classical historians. Hyperfocused on the minutiae of millennia past, yet staggeringly ignorant of the connectable dots of the present; Dunroth knew they were vulnerable to his business savvy and bribes.
As much as he dazzled the visitors, investors, and apologists alike who had booked reservations in his resort, Dunroth’s reception amongst Khapsamutrans has been far more polarized. True, for those who had immediately benefited from his involvement, the country had made profound strides from the dystopic war zone still blighted by its past. Frequently likened to Singapore, the times had finally provided the population the prosperity they direly needed. KoKa had been catapulted from a militant group to a legitimate political party, adamant that they’d never repeat the transgressions of the past.
However, for every single have, there were a dozen have-nots. With most of the revenues from Dunrothia routed to either the developer’s vault or the urban settlements, the rural majority of the country was left to fend for themselves. Those who could scrape together the funds required for repairs were able to ride the wave, albeit barely. Everyone else, thanks to an overburdened bureaucracy with particularly skewed priorities, were either granted patch jobs when they could be scheduled or were completely ignored. It’s no wonder that, among Khapsamutrans hostile to Dunrothia, the comparisons to the Bamyan Buddhas were absolutely justified. If anything, they empathized more with doctrinal purists than a nerdy Machiavellian, their destructive convictions at least more respectable than a bogus hostage crisis and a tawdry tribute.
With the XGRA holding races within the resort, no doubt Dunroth’s further enrichment of his cash cow, the locals continued to liken it to Henry Ford’s rubber plantation. Of course, the additional irony of the dominant party’s familiarly corporate name was another matter entirely. It was painfully apt: having escaped the talons of despots, only to end up the plaything of a more acceptable octopus. The whole continent had been deafened by war, and the overall malaise was closer to quibbles than grievances. As humiliating as it was to even consider it, perhaps the ultranationalist contingent of KoKa, an ally of convenience during the Khapsamutran Revolution’s direst days, had a point the entire time.