Editing Setting:Nutopia/Locations (section)

=Russia=

==The Russian Resource Zone==
In the early 21st century the great Russian bear finally crashed to the ground. She had been hemorrhaging, some argued, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and finally the wounds had taken their toll. Systemic corruption reached a point of no return, and a nationwide agricultural famine brought on by an incredibly virulent phage that assaulted numerous food staples pushed it all over the edge. What began as rioting in the streets of numerous cities threatened to become a full scale civil war, and the world watched with great trepidation as the largest nuclear power threatened to implode. American aircraft carriers floated at high alert off the eastern shore while NATO troops lined up for hastily drawn up invasion plans, and China's massive army stood ready to tear across the Gobi and into the heart of the motherland. The planet's major powers stood ready to put the bear down, in the fear that its death throes might entail nuclear fire.

Then, at the eleventh hour, a savior arrived. Burgeoning biotech corporation Illium produced a cure for the phage that was ravaging the nation's fields. Dispersal of the miracle agent began immediately. Furthermore, a number of Ilium's subsidiaries began to assist the flagging nation in areas ranging from improved medical care to quiet paramilitary actions against major agitators. The world at large breathed a collective sigh of relief, many leaders simply happy that the crisis seemed to be over. Cries from a number of independent groups crying foul at the degree to which Illium and the Russian government were becoming indistinguishable from one another went largely ignored. The corporation had, after all, done much of the work for little profit, and had gone to great lengths to endear themselves to the Russian people.

What came next was slow, but ultimately unstoppable. The bankrupt and tired government of the Russian Federation made an unprecedented decision. Control of Federal subjects (districts, republics and autonomous areas) was auctioned away to international corporations, effectively creating the first corporate states. The first subjects to go were minor zones of little importance, but soon even major centers like Krasnoyarsk, Rostov and Kamchatka were handed over to corporate entities. The last zones to go was the Federal City of Moscow. Purchased by the homegrown Lukinvestprom concern, the only truly Russian megacorp, in a highly publicized and media-covered event, the corporate administrtion of Moscow marked the end of the Russian Federation as a state and the beginning of the Russian Resource Zone. Innocuously at first, Ilium undertook a campaign of takeovers and buyouts, taking control of zone after zone, expanding its area of control from Novosibirsk and outward, as far as Moscow and Siberia. Most of European Russia, however, was controlled by the EU-based Russian Resource Zone Administration Consortium (RRZAC), comprised mainly of London-Prime investment firm L&M Group, the German defense contractor Weimüller and the pan-Scandinavian Aurora Trust. RRZAC made St Petersburg their HQ.

International attention was once again focused on the Bear, seemingly resurrected but now wearing a corporate logo across her tricolor flag. Scrutiny was immediate, but both Illium and the RRZAC seemed squeaky clean. For good reason too, the paramilitary operations carried out by PMC's tied to Ilium and Weimüller in the early days of their involvement had been less about quelling riots and more about tying up loose ends in regards to Illium's invention of not only the cure for the phage that caused the agricultural collapse, but (as persistent rumors like to claim) the phage itself.

Ilium's southern neighbors grew increasingly nervous. China in particular had never incorporated largely due to a centuries old wariness of foreign companies, and the trickle of refugees from the RRZ told horror stories that seemed to confirm their fears. The Bear was being strip mined, her hide being methodically mined for the exotic materials that made the new world go 'round, and massive fields of gentech crops began to rival America's breadbasket in terms of global food production. Illium made efforts to hide the awful working conditions of its mines and fields, but the abuses became impossible to hide: anti-corporate insurgencies were springing up in the countryside, with the New Cossack movement leading the charge. The leader of that particular resistance group was an elusive, merciless commander operating under the symbolic nickname of Stenka Razin, a bandit king of legend. The Russian Resource Zone became a hotbed of conflict, the corporations only having a firm grasp on the major metropolitan areas while the great swaths of rural and wild land became lawless enclaves of mob or vigilante rule.
 
When The Fall came Russia exploded into overt violence. The populace of the cities rose up together with the rural resistance in a move that would be broadcast and mirrored the world over. Illium and RRZAC fought back hard however. The Moscow Arcology was silenced in less than a day by a voracious airborne hemorrhagic fever dumped into its ventilation systems, while Ilium's prized model city Novosibirsk turned overnight into a Stalingrad-style street warfare nightmare. Some of the aging nuclear stockpile was detonated where it lay, sterilizing swathes of Russian countryside, other missiles fired almost at random, a few warheads slipping past the Chinese defense net and causing massive devastation. Chinese forces hardly needed so much provocation, they had been preparing for this moment for a long time. They leapt across the Mongolian border and shot north, only to be greeted by the horrors that Illium's gentech had made of the Russian military. Russia's southern border turned into a meat grinder, air thick with artillery, bullets, disease and a few tac nuke detonations. The Chinese push was halted, the PRC was more concerned with disaster efforts at home then hurling more men into a hellstorm.

The Eastern parts of the RRZ today are desolate and barren. Disease and Fallout are the most pressing problems for obvious reasons, NBC gear almost becoming a necessary facet of everyday life in some areas. The southern conflict ground Illium's forces into a stump of a once mighty military, but some units (such as the infamous cyborg genemerc war criminal Kashei the Deathless and his ghoul army) remain active, alternately mad, murderous or simply trying to survive. East RRZ poses what one might call a penultimate test for adventurers the world over, portions of the landscape itself having become more inimical to life than any roving mercenary pack. If they can brave these dangers, however, the rewards may be great. Illium buried its most valued facilities deep, so great treasure may remain for those brave enough to grasp at it.

===Novaya Sibir, The Heart of Darkness===
The event that many consider to have sparked The Fall was the infamous Central Park incident. A corporate sponsored event was hijacked by a network of Crackers, and a film of a secret corporate facility broadcast across the globe.

That facility was in Russia, the penultimate house of Illium's horrors known as Novaya Sibir. Illium made its fortune in the biotech industry, and it continued to do so even after the effective takeover of the largest nation on earth. Russia's resources, once organized by a business-like mind and bolstered by the wonders of advanced pesticides, livestock enhancements and cutting edge pharmaceuticals, became an economic force to be reckoned with, and made the landowner farmer community of Russia a wealthy and influential class. The American heartland felt the strain most keenly, struggling to keep up with the well organized, cheap Russian gencrops. Soon enough the flood forced an economic shift in the US, no longer the world's major breadbasket it was forced to look into other sectors such as arms production and transportation technologies in order to compete. All this economic upheaval abroad meant two things. One, corporate interests were on the rise, soon countries were allowing various entities larger and larger stakes in hopes of replicating russia's success, or even in hopes of simply surviving. Two, the international eye was off the frozen northern expanses of Siberia, an Illium was well aware of the blind spot.

The most obvious atrocities were the re-opened soviet mines. Nuclear sources around the world had long ago switched to Thorium as a catalyst, a cleaner and far more abundant alternative to the more infamous actinides. Illium's management, seeking to consolidate their place on the world stage and diversify corporate assets, initiated wide-scale Thorium mining operations, and set upon Russia's vast oil and rare earth mineral reserves. They began strip mining the tundra, huge pits spread like the sores of some flesh devouring plague across the snow and scrub, choked with heavy metals and radioactive dust. In the interest of keeping the profit margin high, safety efforts were minimal, and the workers taken from the destitute underclass of prisoners, illegal immigrants and human trafficking victims supplied by mafia organizations. The death toll was  unacceptably high, even for Illium. It was in searching for a way to improve the lifespan of its miners, and eventually that of the effective slave class across the country, that the Novaya Sibir facility was created. 

A medical complex was erected around the famous Lake Baikal, already a trade hub for the region. Ostensibly in place for treating the frequent radiation sickness cases, the facility was in fact designated as the headquarters for the "Biological and Commercial Synergy Research Task Force". The group was comprised of the best scientists and medical personnel Illium could lay hands on. They searched for the best minds with the least ethical qualms the world could offer. The company feverishly protected its brain trust, RRZAC-funded industrial espionage, headhunting and the occasional assassination being a constant concern. As such Illium assigned a number of its best in house contractors as well as a few appropriated Russian military units to work security for the task force. 

The result of this effort was an always brilliant, often obscenely inhumane medical research unit with its own paramilitary detachment. The BCSRTF, more commonly referred to as simply "Black Masks" (referring to the gasmasks frequently worn by its operatives) or "Plague Doctors" (since the task force was given access to all archived Russian and Soviet research on biological weapons, including the black plague and anthrax) became the most feared boogeymen in the whole of Russia. They were fed a steady diet of experimental stock from the hospitals of the country, but eventually they hungered for healthier stock, found in ample supply in Illium's prisons. The Black Masks made deals with underground criminal organizations and even anti-Ilium movements, "disappearing" dissidents and purchasing humans from slave traders. It was open season on anyone with an "interesting" genetic abnormality, but even seemingly normal, baseline Russians were used as sacrifices on the altar of profit and patent; Ilium had the human genemod market cornered, and more and more monstrosities were being bred, shaped and molded in the Siberian wilderness.

The center of operations for the group was an utterly secret facility constructed deep beneath the waters of Lake Baikal. Resting at the bottom of those frigid waters were a network of habitats and laboratories, connected to the surface by a tram line linked to the old Baikal Deep Underwater Neutrino Telescope facility. Access was gained by a submersible down to the telescope, and then tram to the facility proper. It was in that inner sanctum that the most extreme of the Plague Doctor's experiments were conducted.

Given the atrocities committed at their hands one might expect that the Black Masks were pretty high on the planet's collective hit list when the revolution came, and one would be right. An organized effort was mounted to hunt down its personnel, and especially the chief researcher, brilliant but completely insane Dr. Priya Lal, but little headway was made. Common consensus is that the Black Masks saw the writing on the wall and evaporated into prearranged hiding places before things really got going. They left behind them the horrifying relics of their machinations, whole worker populations genmodded into almost unrecognizable things suited only for their designated tasks, the monstrosities of the Russian military and a trail of vivisected corpses, left like grisly breadcrumbs in their wake. 

About a year after the general end of full scale hostilities known collectively as the Fall a signal emerged from the Novaya Sibir facility. There was an SOS, played on a loop, seeping from a floating communication buoy on the lake. It begged for rescue, life support in the submerged habitats was allegedly failing, and those that arrived to help would be rewarded with biotech far in advance of anything currently available. Several attempts have been made to make good a rescue, but none have succeeded. Environmental factors make even getting down to the base nearly impossible. The lake is covered by ice for much of the year, meters thick in places, limiting the window of opportunity for expedition to a few summer months. Most attempts abort before even making it into the docking station at the Telescope, hazardous conditions and strangely hostile wildlife forcing away would be visitors. The few who have actually docked with the facility either turned back due to the apparent damage to the station or were never heard from again. The popular theory is that the life support in the habitats did in fact fail, and anyone who actually makes it down the tram lime is greeted with a wall of water and bone crushing pressure. That hasn't stopped people from trying however, while the number of expeditions has dwindled, the promise of treasure is simply to great a pull for the place to be completely ignored. There's also the fact that the voice heard in the SOS message appears to belong to Dr. Priya Lal, "the Lady of Nightmares" herself...

===The Moscow Arcology, City of Blood===

When the Russian Resource Zone was first created, native corporate giant Lukinvestprom stepped up to take the reins. Even as cameras flashed while the key to the city was delivered to LIP's CEO, the corporation was reeling from the massive expenditure. This was an investment way over LIP's head, and everyone knew it. But it was a vital symbolic move - Moscow had remained in Russian hands. And many interested parties in the former Federal intelligence agencies, as well as underworld bigwigs, had placed their trust in LIP's ability to keep Moscow firmly in Russian control.

Lukinvestprom acted quickly, pumping money into Moscow's many research institutes and laboratories. The company became a think tank, hiring out scientists for projects worldwide. Russia's academics flocked to Moscow for a chance to work on dedicated teams, with cutting-edge equipment, in well-funded laboratories. With the intelligentsia came a liberal spirit, an air of freedom of thought and expression that proved later to be resistant to corporate agenda and spin - and as some would argue, that very air of freedom led to Moscow's downfall.

As Ilium and the RRZAC tightened their control of vital Russian areas, fledgling Lukinvestprom was pressed from all sides into ceding authority to the foreign megacorp interests. In the long run, the resistance it could muster, financially as well as militarily, proved ultimately futile, as Ilium agents infiltrated key board positions and influenced shareholders. The hostile takeover occurred overnight, and the population of Moscow woke up to find themselves Ilium subjects.

This did not go down well with the Moscovite population. While overt resistance was quelled by Ilium PMC's, the arcology's residents accepted their new masters only grudgingly. A number of dissident scholars and political figures left the megacity to pursue career options in RRZAC-controlled Petersburg or in other, more recently founded corporate states. The brain drain was tangible, and Ilium struggled to put a positive spin on the events. Installing the former CEO of Lukinvestprom as Moscow's administrator did nothing to quell civil unrest, and in the face of mounting resistance, Ilium's management began to discuss solutions. Dr. Priya Lal of the infamous Black Masks proposed her own solution, one that at first could not even be whispered in private conversations but soon found its way into board meeting agendas. The Moscow Arcology was to be considered expendable, its population purged by means of bio-weapons.

Meanwhile, several prominent figures emerged in the Moscow resistance movement. Free thinker and poet Ljubov Ryazanskaya began collecting the stories of survivors of corporate atrocities; she was quickly silenced but the damage was done; information had already got out. The horrifying tales were difficult to believe or stomach, but an increasing number of anarchists and malcontents took it upon themselves to publish and distribute the stories. In the wake of the quietly growing PR scandal a seemingly mundane and unimportant figure arose as the figurehead of the Moscow insurgency. His name was Ivan Semenovich Belilov, affectionately nicknamed "Uncle Vanya" by his followers. A for all intents and purposes baseline human, Uncle Ivan's calm, jovial demeanor belied the fact that he had once been a top-level intelligence operative, a Colonel in the GRU. He made no efforts to hide that fact, however, happily referring to himself as Colonel Belilov in official communiques issued from secret bunkers hidden in the Moscow subway system. His movement grew, bolstered by ranks of radicalized intellectuals, disgruntled security men and profit-hungry mafiosi. Even in spite of the increasing number of terrorist strikes against key Ilium infrastructure and personnel, the corporation seemingly ignored Belilov's movement.

Then it happened. The Central Park incident that sparked the fall began originally in Gorky Park, as a team of Crackers (some subsequently linked to Belilov, some to the RRZAC, some to fringe anti-corp groups - this was a concerted effort of many hands) took control of Ilium's entire global media network during an anniversary celebration of Ilium's reign. Instead of propaganda images, feeds from the Siberian mining operations (painstakingly collected over many years at a great personal risk by a variety of agents) were displayed on corporate channels all over the world. In an instant, a rebellion arose that would eventually topple corp rule worldwide. And its seed was planted in Moscow.

Ilium was backed into a corner. Information about countless atrocities had leaked irrevocably out into the public domain. The corporation moved, less concerned with the protection of its interests than with punishing the impudent resistance. Dr. Priya Lal received the go-ahead order, and within the hour, massive quantities of a hitherto unknown airborne pathogen with horrifying effects(bearing the prosaic name Agent IX) were released into the arcology's air recirculation systems. The death toll was immense. Belilov and his followers went underground, literally, sealing themselves inside hermetic Soviet-era bomb shelters with internal air filtration. It seemed as if the Colonel was aware of the bio-warfare plans. Was he an Ilium plant? Or had he just been exceptionally lucky and gifted? The verdict is still out on this, even though conspiracy theorists are keen to point out that Uncle Vanya's wife had died under mysterious circumstances in the days following the plague's release.

Even after the Agent IX outbreak subsided, Moscow has remained dead, its surviving population hidden in old metro tunnels, Ilium merc patrols and feral hybrid organisms roaming the streets. Delving in Moscow is a sad, risky business, but it does have its own perks; in contrast to other warlords and chieftains, Colonel Belilov is quite friendly to Delver teams, allowing them free access into the arcology through his territory and supplying them with rations and energy. Some whisper the Colonel recruits Delvers to locate Ilium's old cache of mental conditioning and behavior modification research, in order to find a cure for the killswitch placed by his former corporate masters inside his head.

===Novosibirsk, The Liberated City===

The city of Novosibirsk, Central Russia's industrial and academic hub, was where Ilium had decided to position its headquarters. Its corporate motto being "We build better lives", the corporation transformed the metropolis into a showcase for its advanced medical facilities and bio-augumentation workshops. Thousands of genemodded pets and plantlife were released into Novosibirsk (especially into the gated Ilium "Novo-alpha" and "Novo-beta" compounds built for employees), in a carefully controlled and managed ecosystem. Genemods took care of city waste, purified the air and water, and provided the citizens with entertainment and company. Life inside the gated Ilium was idyllic, where careful management of external and internal homeostasis ensured the welfare of its citizens. Well, at least the ones in Ilium employ; life outside the Novo compounds was much the same as before incorporation.

News of the Moscow atrocity were quick to reach Ilium citizens, even inside the employee compounds unrest and rebellion erupted. While Dr Lal's controversial solution was deemed acceptable for use against Moscow, Ilium executives were too afraid to use Agent IX right on their doorstep. Instead, all available merc forces were called in to quell the uprising. Genemod and cyborg armies arrived instantly via underground maglev lines, connecting Novosibirsk to all other Ilium facilities in Russia, and a weeklong nightmarish war began. PMC's were met with resistance in every hab-block, falling pray to ambushes, homemade IED's and traps. Rogue scientists released genemodded animals with kill orders against the merc onslaught, or took up arms themselves, such as the infamous ex-Ilium nanophysicist Georgij Antonovich Korolev, who rallied the population of Ilium's Novo-alpha compound in a very successful uprising under the assumed name "Georgij Svobodny" (George the Free). A statue commemorating Georgij, wielding his characteristic prybar, now stands in the compound square.

The mercs fought back with a cold, efficient and merciless brutality. Of particular note were the efforts of Ilium's Conflict Resolution Division 1A, nicknamed the Ghouls, under the command of Colonel Sergej Vladimirovich Kamenny, nicknamed "Kashei the Deathless" after an undead sorcerer of Russian folklore. The Ghouls were all a particular type of biomerc, highly augmented with cyborg implants and prosthetics to allow nightvision, wall-scaling and silent movement, as well as metal-rending claws for infiltration and close combat. Their bodies were skeletal and gaunt, with a high metabolic rate in order to fuel their enhanced brains and energy-hungry motors. In order to be efficient on the battlefield, Ghouls supplemented their metabolism via high-energy field rations, as well as by eating the corpses of recently killed prey. Kashei sent his ghoul army on a campaign of terror via the city's sewer system, and the Ghouls bypassed barricades and erupted from hidden passages into insurgency strongholds. Kashei's tactic was successful until day 4, when a fierce battle saw the rebels take over the city's water treatment facility and flood Novosibirsk's sewer system. At that point, the Colonel was forced to use his forces in a more conventional assault, however Ghoul nightly raids were still taking a large toll on the rebel forces.

Then, when all seemed lost, the New Cossacks arrived. All the fighters Stenka Razin had at his disposal were there. They had made their way to the city undetected, creeping through rural areas where Ilium had no surveillance feeds or security drones. The fresh batch of experienced guerrillas quickly established footholds in the city and gave the tired resistance a chance to recuperate. In the following two days, control of Novosibirsk was wrestled from Ilium, and as the smoke settled over the final battle on the steps of Ilium's HQ building, two victorious factions emerged. 

The New Cossack movement, with its nationalist, bio-conservative and militaristic ideology, claimed most of the city for themselves, while the anarchistic, techno-utopian Free Nova Commune (comprised of former Ilium employees and city residents) only had enough strength to hold on to the Nova-Alpha compound. Today, the factions enjoy a peaceful coexistence, though the severe ideological differences have ensured relations remain chilly. Delvers don't stay long in Novosibirsk (since home-grown scavenger teams have already stripped ruins of anything useful in order to rebuild the city for its new rulers), but those who do, stay in Free Nova since the Cossacks distrust and dislike foreigners, cyborgs and techies and grant entry into their domains only to a select few of the Delver community.