Introduction

The below articles were taken entirely or in part from the Encyclopedia HotRodia, 18th Edition, which was published by the HotRodia Publishing Corporation. These articles contain information that was current at the time of writing. For information on more of the historic events in Texan Hotrodders, see the History of Texan Hotrodders.

Overview

The HotRodder Wars were a series of internal conflicts, or a series of small civil wars, that lasted for quite some time. Most written records were destroyed accidentally the fighting, so there is only a very little information that can ascertained with regard to the events prior to the Wars. Fortunately, there were a number of people who wrote chronicles of the Wars shortly after they ended, so there is a fair amount of reasonably reliable recorded history of what went on during the war.

Sowing the Seeds

One of the exceedingly rare known records of the events causing the Wars are found in the personal journal of a man named Cecil Lawrence. According to his journal, at the beginning of the Wars he was seventeen-year-old member of the Texan Titans, which was a member of the Council of Four. It is not known at this time what exactly the Council of Four was or how it functioned. The journal did not detail those things. All that is known is that there were four groups, two of which--The Turbs and Musclecar Maniacs--disappeared early in the conflict and were not often referred to in the journal. All mention of those two groups are found in the first ten pages of the journal and are not mentioned at later points.

The author of the journal remarks on several interesting events centered on a figure that appears to have come from well outside of the contemporary borders of Texan Hotrodders, and probably outside of the region of Texas. This seems to be the case because the author makes note of the figure's accent on several occassions, and seems to have trouble guessing the figure's nationality or ethnicity. There is no mention of any detail, aside from the figure's actions, that would allow us to accurately distinguish this figure from others involved in the conflict and the events that led up to it.

The journal does tell us that this figure, despite having no name, was able to gain the trust of all the groups that had been members of the Council of Four. The author of the journal seems to suspect that this amorphous figure had somehow weakened The Turbs and Musclecar Maniacs from inside their organizations. It is clear that the journal's author felt confident that the figure had great skill and power when he writes, "I am worried that the foreign one may find this journal and kill me. He seems to be afraid of being known even by his public actions, and with George suddenly dying after his journal was discovered I can't help but feel some trepidation. I'm beginning to suspect that our real enemy is within our ranks."

The most we can surmise from this account and others like it is that the figure somehow engendered misunderstanding and conflict in both the HotRod Squad and the Texan Titans, thereby setting the stage for The Hotrodder Wars. It is possible that we are wrong in assuming that there was only one "figure". There may have been several figures working in concert, but for the ease of description we have assumed the existence of only one.

The Course of the Wars

As mentioned before, several individuals recorded the events of the Wars after they had ended and relative peace was once again established. The first such individual was Ferral Masters, a gentleman who had reached old age by the time the Wars were over, and his accounts of earlier events are highly prized because he was the only author who had been alive long enough to witness at first hand the beginning battles. The second individual, Hannah Combustian, was somewhat younger and gathered much of her historical data by interviewing old and young soldiers alike and compiling their accounts of the Wars into a historical record. This account is considered to be the most balanced, but is not as accurate as we would like because it is based entirely on the subjective experience of soldiers who could have misunderstood what was truly happening in the confusion of battle. The third account was written by a man named Beauregard Jones who was very young when the Wars began to escalate and could only provide accurate information about the later events of the Wars as well as the peace and reconstruction that followed. After considering these sources, we have compiled a basic timeline of the course of the Wars, listing only the wars themselves and not the events that ignited them.

• The Musclecar Melee
• The Turb Troubles
• The Battle of Four
• Escalation at Engineton
• The War of the Horses
• The Titan Massacre
• The Rodder's Rise
• Battle of the Bands
• The Fight of the Final Flags

Stalling the Conflict

The historian Beauregard Jones has bequeathed us an account of the end of the Wars and the events that accompanied and followed the Wars. We know from his writings that the much-diminished Texan Titans and the frustrated and fatigued HotRod Squad met at the city that was then called Rodderton (later known as Rodder City) to put an end to the Wars. It was there that the Federation was formed, complete with the structure of Agencies we see today.