Like the previous post, this one was born thanks to feedback from the community. A fantastic comment by Joerg over at Basic Roleplaying Forums asked some wonderful, deep questions about fuel, energy, and infrastructure in Perseverance. It pushed me to think more carefully about how the setting really works day-to-day — and here's the result.

Fuel is life

Perseverance is a harsh, hostile world, especially for human life. The planet's thin air, extreme temperatures, and unpredictable terrain make survival a constant challenge. Technology can give settlers a vital edge — sheltering them from dust storms, helping them cross endless plains, purifying their water, or powering tools and weapons. But all technology on Perseverance has a single, brutal requirement: energy.

Two main energy sources dominate the frontier:

Fusion

The energy of the stars, used by the Commonwealth to power cities, orbital stations, and mining hubs. Fusion plants provide stable, long-term energy — but they are large, complex, and expensive. Like nuclear reactors on Earth, fusion tech is suitable for starships, cities, major facilities — not for everyday vehicles or small settlements. Frontier folk dream of having a fusion generator... and fear the day it fails.

Hydrogen

The true lifeblood of Perseverance's mobile world. Hydrogen fuel cells and burners power skimmers, grav-bikes, low-orbit shuttles, and portable gear. It's lighter, more flexible, and more accessible — if you can find it, steal it, or make it. In the wilds, hydrogen isn't just fuel. It's freedom. It's survival.

Where fusion builds civilizations, hydrogen keeps them alive at the edges.

Fusion Thrones: How Helium-3 Rules the Cities

In Fallpoint and the handful of other major settlements, energy hums through well-maintained fusion grids.

These cities run on imported helium-3, hauled from gas giant mining platforms orbiting faraway worlds. Helium-3 fusion is stable, clean, and powerful — but it isn’t cheap. The Terran Commonwealth and a few corporate cartels keep tight control over its supply.

Powering Fallpoint isn’t just about keeping the lights on. It’s about maintaining dominance. He-3 fusion keeps the orbital ports running, the mining syndicates grinding, and the Commonwealth's hand heavy over the frontier.

The rest of Perseverance? They aren't so lucky.

Life on the Edge: Frontier Energy

Out in the wilds of Perseverance, energy isn’t a luxury — it’s survival.

Settlements, from the burning deserts of the equatorial belt to the frozen reaches of the polar caps, cling to existence by cobbling together whatever power sources they can find. No two towns are alike, but most rely on a brutal, fragile mix:

• Old fusion reactors, relics of better days, fueled when possible by painstakingly acquired helium-3. When helium-3 runs dry — as it often does — settlers turn to refining deuterium, extracted from water reserves, polar ice, or boiled from ancient salt beds. These reactors are temperamental, jury-rigged machines held together by scavenged parts and sheer desperation.

"The fusion core don't run on trust, kid. It runs on blood, sweat, and a whole lotta crossed fingers."

— Dorren Vale, icebelt miner

• Solar farms, stitched together from salvaged panels, shimmer across the salt flats and canyon ridges, baking under the relentless Perseverance sun.
• Wind turbines groan and shriek atop cliffs and mesas, scavenging the fierce canyon winds for every scrap of energy.

Even with all three working, power is never certain. Settlements must choose carefully where precious energy goes: water purification first, environmental control second, defenses third. Comfort is a rare and vanishing luxury.

When a surplus of energy appears — during a clear sky harvest or a good turbine season — settlers don’t waste it. They use it to synthesize hydrogen, the true bloodline of Perseverance’s machines and mobility.

• Electrolysis of water or ice cracks hydrogen loose.
• Boiling fossil riverbeds, salt flats, and ancient seabeds squeezes out every last trapped molecule.

Entire mining shifts sometimes labor for days to produce a single precious tank of ride-worthy hydrogen.

"You ever boiled three tons of salt for half a tank of ride juice? That's Perseverance, son."

— Edda Bright, fuel wrangler

But most settlements can’t survive on what they produce alone. Commerce is survival.

Caravans of rugged skimmers, lone traders hauling precious cargo, daring smugglers running blockade routes, and even opportunistic bandits weave the fragile lifelines between settlements. They carry everything a frontier town needs — spare parts, medicine, food, ammunition — but most critically, fuel.

Helium-3 and hydrogen, especially pure stock, are the true currencies of Perseverance. Without regular trade, without fuel caravans braving the wastelands, settlements don't just suffer — they die.

"The sun gives, the dust takes. Best pray today ain't the day it takes everything."

— Gerta Malin, canyon homesteader

"We burn the sun, catch the wind, boil the stones... and still some days it ain't enough."

— Mira Vos, Dust Runner mechanic

Without energy, without hydrogen, a settlement's lights gutter out, its walls crumble, and its people scatter to the dust or ice.

Energy keeps the frontier breathing. Hydrogen keeps it moving.

And out beyond the last sputtering generator and cracked solar panel, the dust waits.

Fuel for the Road: Hydrogen and Skimmer Life

On Perseverance, travel isn't a luxury. It's a necessity — and every kilometer burned costs blood and fuel.

Hydrogen isn't just the bloodline of skimmers and grav-bikes. It's the lifeline that connects isolated settlements, carries goods across dust flats and frozen ice roads, and gives desperate communities a thread of hope.

• Imported hydrogen — refined, high-purity, expensive — is shipped in armored convoys from Fallpoint and the orbital docks, guarded by mercenary companies and the Commonwealth Guard alike.
• Locally produced hydrogen — dirty, unstable, precious — keeps the frontier moving where official supply lines never reach.

Convoys of hydrogen canisters are some of the most valuable — and vulnerable — cargo on the planet. Armed traders risk bandit attacks, dust storms, and mechanical failure with every run. Smugglers sell scavenged or stolen hydrogen, often cut with impurities that can destroy skimmer engines or even explode under stress.

"A skimmer without fuel’s just a coffin waiting for a storm."

— Jakob Strenn, skimmer wrangler

In remote settlements, hydrogen production is an act of desperation: miners and settlers boil ancient salt beds, electrolyze ice and muddy river water, or even scrape frost from canyon walls to crack into fuel. But it's never enough. There's always another engine needing a refill, another ride that won’t start, another desperate trek into the wilds.

"Boil enough rock and you'll squeeze a ride out of it. Maybe. If the gods are smiling and your scrubber don't catch fire."

— Old miner proverb

Every working skimmer on Perseverance — from battered courier bikes to lumbering cargo haulers — carries its own cache of hydrogen like a knight bearing a shield. And every frontier rider knows one truth: when the fuel runs out, hope runs out.

Because in the wastelands of Perseverance, mobility is life.

And hydrogen is the price you pay to keep moving.

Dust Runner’s Lifeline: Field Fuel Harvesting

Big, independent skimmers like the Dust Runner don’t just rely on luck to survive the frontier — they carry their salvation with them: a field hydrogen harvester.

Mounted under her cargo bay, the Runner's rugged Type-9 scrubber system allows her to:

• Crack water into hydrogen and oxygen through rough electrolysis.
• Extract trace hydrogen from brines, mineral slurries, or hydrated desert salts.
• Condense water vapor from thin, dry air — painfully slow, but sometimes the only hope.

"When you run dry out there, you don't pray for rain — you pray for a working scrubber."

— Mira Vos, Dust Runner mechanic

Harvesting hydrogen in the wild is slow — glacial slow. In good conditions, it might take twelve hours to refill a partial tank. In bad weather or low-resource zones, it could take days, or worse, never yield enough. Every hour the Runner squats idle, engines cold, is an hour inviting raiders, dust storms, or worse.

The harvested fuel is dirty, raw, and barely stable. Without the Runner's battered purification tanks — themselves prone to clogging and corrosion — the scrubbed hydrogen would eat through engine valves and burn the skimmer out from the inside.

"The 'Runner's scrubber saved my hide more times than I can count. 'Course, she almost cooked me too, once. Damn thing eats hope and spits fire."

— Jace "Burn" Halloran, Dust Runner pilot

Field harvesting isn’t a backup plan on Perseverance. It’s how you survive between miracles.

When every settlement is a hundred klicks apart, when black-market hydrogen’s too dirty to risk, when your convoy's broken and the nearest friendly face is two days away — the scrubber might be the only reason you ever see a sunset again.

Conclusion: Fuel as Power, Fuel as Survival

Out here, energy isn’t some invisible hum behind the walls.
It’s the currency of survival. The blood in the veins of every town, every skimmer, every desperate rider crossing the dust.

Fuel is fought for, stolen, hoarded, smuggled, and worshiped.
Without it, Perseverance would fall silent — its machines rusting, its settlements abandoned to the sand and the cold.

Control the fuel, and you control Perseverance’s future.
Lose it — and you’re just another skeleton on the dust trail, another cautionary tale told over cracked radio waves and dying campfires.

"Out here, fuel ain't just life. It's freedom. It's war. It's everything."

— Caleb Dorn, ex-Commonwealth preacher