Sxiseen Wuudo is a retired champion tour racer from Jeyrha and the most recognized vehicle seller on the planet. He owns several establishments across Geba, but Karesh is the one that matters, the one everyone passes through, and it is where he made his name after his racing career ended. He sells to the person and their situation. He knows which hull fits which life, when a buyer needs weapons and when they need speed, and he steers by the job rather than the badge. He has fourteen children and mentions this at every opportunity, particularly when selling cargo haulers.
Fifteen Years
He started as a very young boy in the local rover leagues in Jeyrha. In those early days he had never flown or helmed anything, did not understand the engineering of the vehicles he was sitting in, did not know how fuel systems or cells worked, and did not know there were different types of fuel. His mastery of all of it came later, and that late education is exactly why the salesman now knows everything there is to know. He learned because he had to, not because someone handed it to him.
Over fifteen years of professional racing he accumulated five wins on the great Endurance Route from Thazvaar to Jeyrha, seven Berinu Tours, one Geba Tour, two Manalheim Cups, six Karesh and eight Berinu Sprint podium finishes with no outright wins. His crew still holds the record for most consecutive tour wins for Veykar.
Karesh Sprint
It was the sprint events that ended his racing career. The long-format races were crew events where his team could compensate for the advantages that Tactician-Class racers held in cognitive processing and reaction speed. In the individual sprints he had no such compensation. He was a natural-born racing alone against minds that processed faster than his, and he placed second. Six times in a row in Karesh. He went east and placed second another eight times in Berinu with no wins. Everyone in his life told him to go back to the long form. Yelidra Veykar told him. His crew told him. His fans overwhelmingly told him. His ego would not allow it. He could not walk away from the sprints until he had won one, and he never won one.
His sponsors turned on him because he had abandoned the larger, more profitable races they had backed him for and was losing the events he had chosen instead. The reputation he had built across fifteen years of tour dominance eroded under a string of second place finishes that nobody had asked him to pursue. While he was still ahead in legacy he married the love of his life, the Thazvaari eclipsed soul performer Vesindra Vaer, and the two of them disappeared into the luxury of Kharan's Gulf for several years.
The Pitch
He returned with an incredible sum of varens and claimed he had access to the best vehicle hardware on the planet. With both himself and his wife being notable public figures, people were willing to fund the retired tour racer's vision of what a vehicle shop should be. He said he only needed a space in the Karesh Mega Hub to open, and the funding came extremely quickly, totaling 6,700,000 Auren. The problem was that he had not actually acquired any vehicles, did not have a location secured, and had no way to source the hardware he was promising. His only manufactory connection was through Veykar sponsors who no longer favored him after watching him lose sprint after sprint to Haavu-Solarn racers while carrying their badge. He did not expect the funding to arrive as fast as it did, and the reputation grudge was real regardless of his crew still holding the record for consecutive Veykar tour wins. He now had varens and preorders with no space and no product.
He secured the top level of the Karesh Mega Hub, which was ideal for airship display and sales, and used the remaining varens to purchase a warehouse less than a kilometer away, tear it down, and have a fuel depot built in its place. He had no sources for fuel.
Yelidra
He tried to contact Yelidra Veykar several times and was ignored. He sent gifts with messages attached, and they were returned with nothing but a voice clip on the relay tracker of her laughing. "Try something else, dear."
His wife, who was close with the poet, writer, songwriter, and explorer Tsexic Raad, knew that Tsexic had a direct connection to Yelidra through the softness of his heart. The plan worked. When they were face to face over his wife's and Tsexic's trackers, the first thing Yelidra said was: "You must be running out of varens if you're trying this hard to contact me. Your wife is selling just fine, what could you possibly want? Have you come to lose more races for us? Maybe if you stayed in touch this wouldn't be so strange."
He gave her his pitch honestly. She agreed that he could sell both Solarn and Veykar, on the condition that new Veykar airships were always front and center in his showroom and that he would play Veykar advertisements twice every hour. She would not contact any of the other manufactories on his behalf, as it would appear that she was asking, which is not something she does. She told his wife it was wonderful to see her and that she would be at the festival to watch. To Sxiseen she said only: "Nobody told you to retire. All you had to do was go back to the long form. I told you. Your crew told you. Your fans told you. But you wouldn't listen until you'd won a sprint, and you never won one. Don't disappoint me again." And she ended the call.
The Badges
He called everyone he had ever worked with asking for leads on the best vehicles, and later, in honest desperation, simply for vehicles of any kind. One of his former crew told him to go to the engineering academies in Ngorrhal or Jeyrha, or even the test fields in Coastal Thazvaar, because the students still loved him and there was no chance they wouldn't at least know something. He went to all three. Not only did he find fans, but every one of them was willing to help and several showed him hardware that the manufactories had not yet begun shipping.
The Sentinel Division academy said no. While walking their facility he noticed they were running suspension trials on a rover designed for steep terrain at speed, and he saw the flaw in it immediately. They disagreed. They told him the platform could handle the steepest grade directly into incline elevation on uneven terrain at high speed and that nothing could overturn it aside from a direct charge underneath. He told them it was untrue and demonstrated why, showing how easily the vehicle could be overturned at half speed because he had driven through worse conditions competitively for many years. He then pointed at models they had already produced that solved the problem correctly. This changed their minds. They agreed to support him on the condition that he would test drive experimental models in the same manner from time to time. He agreed.
Haavu had always been a supporter of his racing career and said yes without hesitation. Joxi said yes after learning that Veykar and Solarn were already confirmed, because those names validate anyone who sits beside them. Saojuul contacted him for permission rather than the other way around. Zhikhan and Brena were the exceptions. He had no way to reach either of them, but years later, after the shop had proven itself, both would approach him on their own terms.
Fuel
He had a showroom, the badges, and preorders. He did not have fuel. He called Getrin Desmoor to ask for a lead. "Are you able to get to the Inland? The mountains toward Berinu from Inland Thazvaar are rich with connections for these sources, but very dangerous. I would look there, but I will not join you. You will always need to figure out transportation. Beware of the Jerhit. Take contractors with you. Take four. No. Twelve. You can afford it. Good luck, friend!"
It was the first time Sxiseen had seen the planet at ground level. He had spent fifteen years flying over everything at extreme speed and had never once set foot in the regions between the relay coverage that the governed world takes for granted. He saw the Energy Wars fighting. He saw trafficking. He walked through grey zones and understood for the first time how wild the world really was beneath the routes he had raced across for his entire career. He found his fuel contact, secured a transport route through white zones only up to Kharan's Gulf, and arranged shipping across the Geban Sea to Karesh. He came home determined to be successful and to open several establishments whose revenue could help fund efforts to rid the planet of the black and grey zones he had walked through.
Karesh Vehicle and Vehicle Systems
He announced the opening of the shop and in the first year grossed over 13 million Auren before costs of transport, shipping, employment, and contract security. As time went on the variety of customers expanded far beyond what he had anticipated. People brought information, different schematics, strange thermal cells, odd vehicles, and components he had never seen. He always calls Getrin when something unknown or exotic crosses his floor, because Getrin always knows what it is or knows someone who does.
Years after his first trip to the Inland he returned to the region around his original fuel contact and built several refineries. He spent years asking Yelidra to use her influence to have Solarn secure the corridor, and his wife wrote several songs for Yelidra to use in exchange for her support in having a small relay anchored in the region. He already had a plan of employment for the local population before the relay arrived. The plan worked. The corridor was secured, the relay went up, the refineries were staffed with people from the surrounding area, and for the first time the region had connectivity and work. It also drew the attention of pirates who saw a newly anchored relay and active commerce in territory that had previously been empty, and the contractors who guard the corridor now fight them constantly.
Getrin
Deep in the Endurance Route from Thazvaar to Jeyrha, sitting second, his crew discovered that three of their cells were bad. A cell does not go faulty on its own, and Sxiseen never learned whether those three were manufactured defective or sabotaged. On that route a crew is given twelve cells for all their vehicles and no more, so by the end you are nursing the last one across the line. Down three over the Kela stretch, their thermal cell failed, and they chose to put the vehicle into the ice fields deliberately rather than burn the engine and propulsion to nothing chasing the finish.
Getrin Desmoor was there on the edge of the ice. Why he was there has never been explained, and Sxiseen stopped asking years ago. Getrin ran over, helped pry the burned cells out, and gave them four thermal cells and one electromagnetic assist cell for good measure. They had no varens to pay him. He told them they could pay him back when they won and to get moving. The cells were not normal. They ran so fast and so hot that they kept drinking more heat the harder the crew pushed, and coming back into Jeyrha they had to burn the electromagnetic assist cell just to bleed their speed down to the legal limit to make the approach. They won. Sxiseen paid him back.
Out of that day comes his one rule about vouchers. A voucher from Getrin Desmoor is the only voucher Sxiseen honors with no charge and no questions asked. Every other voucher on the planet has a price.