Quest:Bloodhound Quest

The year is 2192. More than one hundred and fifty years have passed since the February War, colloquially known as "the Big Fuckup" devastated the Earth. Much the planet has been transformed into a poisonous, scorched desert. The masses of mankind huddle together in Mega-Cities. Millions of people are crammed into too small a space, creating overcrowding and breeding crime. The Big Fuckup changed more than just the Earth, it changed humanity as well. The Human race is now divided into three distinct categories; Norms, Mutants and Clades. Mutants and Clades are outcasts and face intense discrimination and persecution from Norms. Many Mutants have no choice but to live in squalid, rundown sections of the Mega-Cities or camp outside the Boundary Walls in the vain hope that they might someday find a way in. The Government of the Republic of the Americas rules with equal parts jackbooted thuggery and laughable incompetence.

Life is harsh in the Mega-Cities. Earth's ravaged environment creates constant hazards in the form of Fallout storms and UV radiation. Food shortages area fact of life and most Earth-dwellers live on a constant diet of pressed krill, mycoprotein, synthetic starches and soybeans. Global unemployment hovers at about 40%. Everyone who can is buying passage offworld to the newly Terraformed paradises of Mars and Venus or the Outworld Colonies of the Local Cluster.

To combat a spiralling crime rate and give desperate Mutants something to do, the Provisional Government has created the Track/Apprehend/Eliminate Agency, government sponsored bounty hunters who deal with crimes that the local police either can't or won't.

You are Rachelle Rossi, Tracker, Detective, Bloodhound.

New Detroit

The setting of Bloodhound Quest is New Detroit, a Mega-City built from the ashes of the February War. New Detroit was built on the opposite side of Lake St. Claire from the original city of Detroit. New Detroit is an entirely new community. It is an unbroken concrete landscape which covers the entire landmass between Windsor and Barrie on the Canadian side of the Border. New Detroit is a city of over 30,000,000 people who resettled there from all over Canada and the Midwest. Massive Arcologies called Hab-blocks dominate New Detroit's skyline. Most Hab-blocks are built according to standard plan and are massive, rectangular pillars of concrete and steel. The most desirable and stylish dwellings in New Detroit are close to the center of the city, as far from the Boundary Wall and the poisonous, radioactive fallout as one can get. So the further out you go, the more dirty, rundown and desperate the conditions get.

New Detroit is one of Six Mega-Cities in the Republic of the Americas. The other four are Empire City, West-Meg, Ciudad Tejas, New Toronto and Nova Brasilia.

The worst conditions, however lie just across the poisoned, refuse-choked waters of Lake St. Claire in the barrens of Old Detroit. Old Detroit is a city built on the bombed-out ruins of the original city of Detroit. It is a truly immense shanty town, a wretched collection of bombed out buildings, rotting wood houses and makeshift shelters. It's also home to 70% of the Detroit Sprawl's Mutant population. Driven out of the shining towers of New Detroit by Norm prejudice, the Mutants of Old Detroit lead an existence of grinding poverty and desperation. With no Boundary Wall to protect them, they are at the mercy of Acid rain, Fallout Storms and marauding beasts from the Wastes.

Mutants and Clades

In general, there are two categories of Alternately Gened Humans. Mutants and Clades.

Mutants are by far the majority. They are the people whose bodies have been altered in the most random, unstable and unsightly ways. Mutations of this nature are typically degenerative, often taken the form of Dwarfism, malformed or misshapen limbs, neurofibromatosis, down syndrome, cleft lips, rampant cancers and the like. Some fortunate Mutants may possess advantageous mutations such as redundant limbs, organs or strange and Psionic or other weird abilities, but this is a minority. The vast majority of Mutants are simply hideously deformed. Out of the two categories, Mutants have it the worst. Their appearance makes it easy for Norms to single them out and the often grotesque nature of their appearance makes them easy targets for ridicule or violence. The fact that many are too deformed or mentally deficient to properly defend themselves doesn't help either.

Clades on the other hand appear to be humans with some degree of animal DNA. Clades are a minority in the Mutant Community, accounting for only about 20% of the total Mutant Population. Unlike Mutants, whose genomes are unstable and subject to random changes, Clades possess a stable genetic structure which appears to be inheritable. Most common varieties of Clades include Felinoids, Canids and Icthyomorphs. However, the distinction between "Mutants" and "Clades" appears to be one created solely by Popular Culture.

The division between Mutants and Clades is an artifact of popular culture. The line between the two is rather blurry, and many researchers reject the labels entirely, preferring instead to use the appelation of "Disgenically Gened Individuals" when referring to Mutants.

A Future History

The Big Fuckup

The 21st century was not a pleasant one. Trends which began in the waning years of the 2000's continued throughout most of the century. The Rich grew increasingly richer, Corporate Elites cozied up to the doddering old Governments of the world and conspired to take more of Earth's dwindling resources for themselves. There were some glimmers of hope, the privatized Aerospace industry jumpstarted the Space Race with China and the United States competing to see who could build the best space stations and get the first men to the Moon, Mars and Beyond. Experiments into Fusion Power and Gene-hacking promised a brighter future for all. However, these small glimmers were lost in the bleak wasteland of the 21st century. Once Third World problems like Poverty, Disease and Malnutrition spread to the huddled masses of the First. Hope was dead, Pride was lost, consumed in the everyday struggle to survive.

These problems came to a head on a cold February morning in 2044. The United State's missile defense grid mis-identified a Chinese satellite launch as an ICBM strike. Before anyone even know what was happening, a "limited" thermonuclear exchange broke out between the United States and the Sino-Russian Alliance, within hours, other states joined into the carnage to satisfy alliances, strike at more powerful neighbors or simply out of spite. When the smoke cleared, the Earth lay in ruins. The Ozone layer, weakened by generations of pollution had been destroyed. Whole cities vanished and the wounded planet was hemorrhaging water vapor from holes in the upper atmosphere. Despite the damage, Missile Defense and Continuity of Government plans worked out better than expected. The old states held on to power. When the surviving population dug themselves out of their holes and learned the truth, that the total devastation of the Earth had been caused by nothing more than simple Government Incompetence, they dubbed the conflict "the Big Fuckup."

As the rebuilding began from the February War, the nations of the world rapidly aligned against each other. The Remnants of the United States banded together with Canada and South America to form the United Republic of the Americas. They were opposed by the rise of the Sino-Russian Federation. A third power, the Pan-Oceanic League was created by the political union of Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand as a mutual defense pact against the other two.

Mankind set to work re-rebuilding a devastated world, but as it would turn out, Nature wasn't done with us just yet.

The Great Contamination

The smoke had barely cleared from the February War when the first mutant births began. At first, the tales of children born deformed or altered in inexplicable ways were dismissed as wild fantasies cooked up by the scarred psyche of a population reeling from nuclear war. However, the problem soon became much too large to ignore. The Contamination, whatever it was, spread like a plague, soon hundreds of millions were affected. Both Adults and Childen found their bodies warping and twisting in unnatural ways. Most Mutations were debilitating, many proved fatal, but some yielded strange and unnatural powers. The first Clade births in particular created a firestorm of controversy. All genetic researchers agreed that Radiation could not account for children being born with animal traits like hyper-sensitive olfactory receptors, reflective corneas, gills or fins. At first it was treated as a public health crisis, but as the permanency of the Mutants began to sink in, sympathy quickly faded and was replaced by fear, distrust and outright hatred.

It's still hotly debated exactly what caused the changes. The most popular theory is that the Gene-hacking experiments which were quite common just before the War were somehow responsible. It is known that Gene-hacking uses Retroviruses as a transmission vector for the modified gene-sequences. The Theory holds that during the chaos, one or more Gene-hacking clinic accidentally released their Retrovirus stock into the population. There, the virus was exposed to radiation and mutated disabling the safety controls which prevented the Virus from reproducing itself in the wild. The main rival theory is that the high levels of Radiation induced a kind of Phylogenesis in developing fetuses which caused previously vestigial traits like gills or tails to not be re-absorbed by the body during gestation and leading to these traits being expressed in fetal development. There are other ideas such as a wild theory that so many people dying at once tore open holes leading to other dimensions and that the Mutations are the result of exposure to these extra-dimensional energies. Such ideas are generally scoffed at.

Either way, Mutants were increasingly viewed in a negative light by the rest of society, as first the burden of caring for so many deformed started to weigh down the already bloated public health systems of the developed world. Added to this, many Mutants who felt rejected by society turned to crime in order to support themselves. Even without weapons, the natural abilities possessed by some turned out to be formidable. Mutants were no longer victims, they came to be seen as instigators of crime and lawlessness. In this environment of growing hostility and even outright hatred, someone decided it would be a good idea to throw a lit match into the gas-filled room.

That lit match came in the form of Adrian Pavel. Pavel's book: "The Mutation Bomb" posited that Mutant births would eventually outstrip Normal ones leading to Mankind's degeneration into a race of invalids who could not care for themselves. He claimed to have found evidence proving the Retrovirus theory. Furthermore, he claimed that the virus was still active and that some Mutants were acting as carriers. The Media took Pavel's ideas and ran with them. Finally, in Oct 21's 2057 the anti-mutant Hate exploded worldwide in a single night which would come to be known as "The Devil's Eve." Massive Race Riots broke out in virtually every Mega-city. Norms swarmed the streets looking for Mutants to attack. Millions of Mutants were driven from their homes and corralled hastily-erected ghettos "for their own protection." Thus, the modern order was born.

The Colonial Era

While the flames of Mutant hatred were raging on Earth, something else was brewing in Space. Early colonization efforts proved successful and within a few years, humanity founded their first functional Mars colony. The colonists began the long and arduous task of terraforming the planet. As Mars was being reshaped, experiments into artificial wormholes and exotic matter bore fruit. It was discovered that it was possible to create stable wormholes. Mankind spread out into the stars, colonizing and settling most star systems within 15 Light Years. Alien life was discovered on the fourth planet of the Tau Ceti system, but so far there has been no sign of any intelligent life.

The Procyon Rebellion

After more than 100 years of colonization and terraforming, Mars and Venus had been transformed into veritable paradises. Colonists were flooding in to the Mars and Venus colonies as well as the partially terraformed worlds of the Outworld colonies. Many of these colonists were Mutants, however they quickly discovered that the Labor Contracts they had signed with the Mega-Corps were highly exploitive. Not only were they forced to work in some of the most hazardous conditions in the Local Cluster, they were not given any form of Hazard pay and that they Mega-Corps could fire them at will and withhold their pay if they refused any orders whatsoever. Furthermore, these contracts contained some interesting fine print which allowed the Mega-corps to renew the contracts as many times as they liked without paying their mutant workers a dime. Relations between the Sol System and outlying colonies grew strained. The Colonists felt they lacked adequate representation back home. Eventually, these rumblings turned into an all out war. The colonies of Procyon, Lutyen's Star, Ross 614 and Sirius declared themselves the independent Free System's Alliance and attempted to expel all Earth government and Mega-Corporate agents. For once, the Republic of the Americas and the Sino-Russian Federation, once bitter enemies, were forced to become allies to crush the ambitions of their rebellious colonies.

Unfortunately, the colonists found themselves seriously outmatched. In a desperate bid to level the playing field, the FSA freed all indentured Mutant laborers in their space. They then promised to end Mutant segregation, grant Mutants equal status under the law and protect the civil rights of any mutant who travelled to their space. They even offered to arm any Mutants who wished to rise up against their Norm oppressors. This marked the creation of the Mutant Liberation Army. Allied with the FSA, the MLA carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks all over Earth space.

Unfortunately it wasn't enough. The FSA were simply outmatched. The war raged on for over a decade as the Earth Alliance hopped from planet to planet and Orbital Habitat to Orbital Habitat. Crushing, subjugating or annihilating any force which stood in their path. The Colonists and their mutant allies fought bravely, but in the end Procyon II fell and the FSA was forced to surrender. However, the Mutant Liberation Army refused to give up the fight and continue terrorist actions against Norms to this day.

The entry of Mutants into the war gave the people and easy scapegoat for their troubles and inspired dozens of violent pogroms against the Mutant population on Earth. Anti-Mutant sentiment, which had been on the decline was now spiraling out of control. Each action by the MLA became a fresh outrage and a new reason why Mutants were no good scum who could not be trusted.

The Formation of the Track/Apprehend/Eliminate Agency

The end of the Procyon Rebellion saw a Local Cluster which lay in shambles. MLA terror attacks had crippled parts of Earths infrastructure. The Mega-cities were decaying from lack of maintenance. Whole populations had been displaced and in the chaos it was easy for people to slip through the cracks. Criminals found it quite simple to hide from Authority in the colonies or the ravaged ruins of Earth. Eventually, to combat the rising crime rate on Earth and elsewhere and to give dispossessed Mutants something to do, the Track/Apprehend/Eliminate Agency was formed. TAE Agents are legally licensed and bonded Bounty Hunters who are authorized to hunt down Criminals. Local police are legally compelled to co-operate with them, but few are eager to do so.

Bloodhound Quest Pt 1: [1]
Pt 2: [2]
Original Thread: [3]
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