Quest:Bloodhound Quest
The year is 2185. More than eighty 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, islands of normalcy in a world of chaos. 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 Provisional Government (Still Provisional after 80 years) rules the planet 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 after Construction first started. 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 as one can get. So the further out you go, the more dirty, rundown and desperate the conditions get.
New Detroit is one of five Mega-Cities in North America. The other four are Empire City, West-Meg, Ciudad Tejas and New Toronto.
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 are a minority, of the Mutant population it is estimated that only about 20% are Clades. Clades are differentiated from Mutants by the fact that their Mutations are far more stable and, often unlike Mutants, can actually be passed down to their offspring. Clades typically belong to one or more categories and have a stable set of traits rather than a seemingly random conglomeration. The exact number of different Clades is far too large to list here but some of the most common include Gillmen, Armor Dillos, Psions and Moreus. Moreus are so named because they are primarily human but posess one or more animal traits. The name was taken from the HG Wells novel "the Island of Dr. Moreu." Alternate names such as Kemonomimi have been suggested, but Moreu is the one that appears most to have stuck. Of the Moreus, approximately 75% possess Feline traits and might be described as "Catgirls" (even though the gender distribution is 60/40 Female to Male). They are the most visible Clades and get the most attention from the Media to the point that "Clade" and "Catgirl" are almost synonymous.
Also of particular interest are Psions. Psionic abilities manifest across both the Mutant and Clade spectrum, however more than 60% of all Psions show no signs of outward mutation. The classification of Psions as Clades is a questionable one.
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 "Eugenically and Disgenically Gened Individuals."
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. 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 Russia, 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."
Eventually, an international convention was called and all attending member states agreed to the creation of a World Government to prevent another February War from occuring. Member states would be, in theory, able to retain autonomy within their territories. However, in practice the Provisional Government seized more and more power every year. Exhausted by the war, the Member States were more than happy to relinquish power to the Provisional Government if it meant being able to absolve themselves of responsibility for anything that happened.
Mankind set to work re-rebuilding a devastated world, but as it would turn out, Nature wasn't done with us just yet.
The Mutant Plague
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 a population fleeing the ruined countryside. However, the problem soon became much too large to ignore. Mutation spread like a plague, soon hundreds of millions were affected. Many children died in the womb from the deformities but many more survived. 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 set in, sympathy quickly faded and was replaced by fear, distrust and outright hatred. Race riots exploded world-wide, Mutants worldwide were attacked by angry lynch mobs. Efforts to strike back using pre-war Hate Crimes laws were deliberately stymied the Provisional Government, who adopted the stance that Mutation was a disease, not a Race, Creed, Lifestyle or other protected class and thus did not gain any protection from the law.
It's still hotly debated exactly what caused the changes, but almost all experts agree that simple Radiation would not be sufficient to cause such widespread and variant mutation. 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 Formation of the Track/Apprehend/Eliminate Agency In order to escape from the increasing environmental devastation of the Earth, the Provisional Government oversaw massive construction and urban renewal projects. These projects known as the Mega-Cities were seen a symbols of humanity rising to overcome the devastation of the Earth. However, overcrowding and crime soon became serious issues. As more and more of the Provisional Government's energies was focused on terraforming and colonizing other planets, Earth was simply left to stew. 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.