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| =Nutopia: a world in ruin. a world of hope.= | | =Nutopia: a world in ruin. A world of hope.= |
| ==Setting Introduction== | | ==Setting Introduction== |
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| Without a doubt, the most pivotal movement in the early 21st century was the accelerated curve of technological advancement known collectively by trend watchers and futurists the world over as the Technological Singularity. As it rushed onward, much debate was had whether the sweeping changes it would doubtless bring would create a New Eden, or a Hell on Earth. | | Without a doubt, the most pivotal movement in the early 21st century was the accelerated curve of technological advancement known collectively by trend watchers and futurists the world over as the Technological Singularity. As it rushed onward, much debate was had whether the sweeping changes it would doubtless bring would create a New Eden, or a Hell on Earth. |
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| The truth would be something less dramatic. Technological advancements of those early years mingled with the wounds of history and grew into events that precipitated radical, unforeseen shifts in the global political structure. The notion of a Corporate state, once the provenance of speculative fiction, became stark reality. Not every existant state was gobbled up by the entities of industry, but a good portion of what had once been ruled by monarchs, dictators, parliaments and presidents stood instead beneath CEOs and Board Committees. The world over instability spread, but the uneasy malaise between the new Corporate States and their traditional counterparts was assuaged somewhat by the wonders of modern technology. | | The truth would be something less dramatic. Technological advancements of those early years mingled with the wounds of history and grew into events that precipitated radical, unforeseen shifts in the global political structure. The notion of a Corporate state, once the province of speculative fiction, became stark reality. Not every existant state was gobbled up by the entities of industry, but a good portion of what had once been ruled by monarchs, dictators, parliaments and presidents stood instead beneath CEOs and Board Committees. The world over instability spread, but the uneasy malaise between the new Corporate States and their traditional counterparts was assuaged somewhat by the wonders of modern technology. |
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| Safe gene-modded crops fed millions who would once have starved, and the construction of a world wide infosphere allowed media complacence to be broadcast directly into the homes, if not heads, of much of the species. While questions were asked about the cost of the seeming peace, about the slow death of privacy and self determination in the name of safety, most ignored these troublesome issues. After all, as the Inquisitor said, "where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread?" The technologies that might have liberated man from the bondage of war, famine, disease, or even death itself stagnated, bottle-necked and rationed by corporations and governments alike. There was no profit in a cure to the ailments that shaped human conflict, only temporary treatment could generate repeat business, engender dependence. Some in control acted in order to stay in the black, others simply to stay in power, the ends long ago forsaken in favor of self sustaining means. The Curve, once seemingly inexorable, found itself slowed. | | Safe gene-modded crops fed millions who would once have starved, and the construction of a world wide infosphere allowed media complacence to be broadcast directly into the homes, if not heads, of much of the species. While questions were asked about the cost of the seeming peace, about the slow death of privacy and self determination in the name of safety, most ignored these troublesome issues. After all, as the Inquisitor said, "where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread?" The technologies that might have liberated man from the bondage of war, famine, disease, or even death itself stagnated, bottle-necked and rationed by corporations and governments alike. There was no profit in a cure to the ailments that shaped human conflict, only temporary treatment could generate repeat business, engender dependence. Some in control acted in order to stay in the black, others simply to stay in power, the ends long ago forsaken in favor of self sustaining means. The Curve, once seemingly inexorable, found itself slowed. |
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| Still humanity crept closer to the Singularity, although the global limbo seemed to be drifting more towards a hellscape than a utopia. Finally, however, the tension that had been steadily building right along with the curve burst its seems, and the world devolved into a planetary conflict. In an event commonly referred to as The Fall long standing hatreds between governments, corporations, and the subjects of each erupted into violence. Border conflicts went hot, riots spilled into the streets, cities burned, entire militaries mobilized and became engulfed in conflict. It was a global cataclysm of war on a scale history had never seen before, and one that the species was lucky to emerge from. | | Still humanity crept closer to the Singularity, although the global limbo seemed to be drifting more towards a hellscape than a utopia. Finally, however, the tension that had been steadily building right along with the curve burst its seems, and the world devolved into a planetary conflict. In an event commonly referred to as The Fall long standing hatreds between governments, corporations, and the subjects of each erupted into violence. Border conflicts went hot, riots spilled into the streets, cities burned, entire militaries mobilized and became engulfed in conflict. It was a global cataclysm of war on a scale history had never seen before, and one that the species was lucky to emerge from. |
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| The humanity that dragged itself through the other side of the firestorm saw a world changed in a matter of months, or in some places a matter of seconds. Most corporate states were in shambles, torn apart by infighting and revolutionaries of a hundred different creeds. The U-States hadn't fared much better, many shutting their borders in an effort to quell internal distress, or simply in fear of the new world beyond their borders. The setback to the evolution of the species was a major one, the Singularity kneecapped with thermonuclear force. | | The humanity that dragged itself through the other side of the firestorm saw a world changed in a matter of months, or in some places a matter of seconds. Most corporate states were in shambles, torn apart by infighting and revolutionaries of a hundred different creeds. The U-States hadn't fared much better, many shutting their borders in an effort to quell internal distress, or simply in fear of the new world beyond their walls. The setback to the evolution of the species was a major one, the Singularity kneecapped with thermonuclear force. |
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| Many call the time after The Fall "ACE", After the Common Era. Humanity has had 25 years to settle into the ashes of its old form, but whether a heaven or hell will be made of the wreckage remains to be seen. The men and women who make their lives in the runis will be the ones to determine, in a very real way, the course of Humanity. Will The Fall merely be the catalyst for a slow, agonizing extinction? Or will we struggle through the birthing pains into a new being, finally attaining the next step in our combined journey. These are questions that will be answered by the choices of individuals with the will to decide who and what they are, what they want the world around them to be. This is the world of NUtopia. | | Many call the time after The Fall "ACE", After the Common Era. Humanity has had 25 years to settle into the ashes of its old form, but whether a heaven or hell will be made of the wreckage remains to be seen. The men and women who make their lives in the ruins will be the ones to determine, in a very real way, the course of Humanity. Will The Fall merely be the catalyst for a slow, agonizing extinction? Or will we struggle through the birthing pains into a new being, finally attaining the next step in our combined journey. These are questions that will be answered by the choices of individuals with the will to decide who and what they are, what they want the world around them to be. This is the world of NUtopia. |
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| =In-Setting Perspectives= | | ===In-Setting Perspectives=== |
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| | '''Recorded from an interview with noted hiver luminary Anton Tokarev from his home in Spire''' |
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| It's 25 ACE, after the common era, after the Corps fell. | | It's 25 ACE, after the common era, after the Corps fell. |
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| Humanity has no doubt had its share of dictators and tyrants, but this is the first time that the whole world was integral in their destruction, and evidence of that war is etched across the surface of the planet. Abandoned cities and nuclear craters serve as surgery scars to remind us of what we had to do to excise the cancer of oppression and forced subservience. | | Humanity has no doubt had its share of dictators and tyrants, but this is the first time that the whole world was integral in their destruction, and evidence of that war is etched across the surface of the planet. Abandoned cities and nuclear craters serve as surgery scars to remind us of what we had to do to excise the cancer of oppression and forced subservience. |
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| | '''Source unknown, supposedly a communique issued on a sealed military channel, allegedly by infamous CSC pilot Red Widow''' |
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| | Back before the Fall, you were the shit. The finest, most psychologically stable, tried and tested not to go insane even as the lab techs crammed more and more implants into your skull, overloading your brain with information. Unwaveringly loyal, unceasingly lethal. You fought in the Hidden Wars, the conflicts that didn't exist in the official records. You dueled with rival companies' Mercs in arctic wastelands, in desert heat, in space and underwater. When the shit really hit the fan, they brought you out to suppress riots back home and you watched the little men scream and run from the mere sight of you. You felt divine. And why not, do you believe in God? Now imagine that God spoke to you, personally. She upgraded you, made you stronger, had you enact her will. But it was more than that. She was always there, with words of love and encouragement and comfort. Then the fall comes and God falls silent, murdered by usurpers, the enemies of civilization. |
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| | Then they approached you. The new victors. The communities. The God killers. They invited you to their new free utopia, their uplinked, organic, low-tech, democratic little enclave of peace and prosperity and hope... |
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| | And you took one look at that and said fuck it. Fuck the anarchists, the globalists, the oh-so-helpful new government officials and their let's-get-along tripe. Fuck the way they look at you as you stroll down the market street. Fuck the inquisitive Operators and their "so where were you in -32?". Fuck'em and let it all rot. |
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| | So you and your unit left. For the wasteland, where true freedom is won with the railgun barrel and the hydraulic claw, where you wander the old ruins of your former makers for maintenance and spares and kill your old comrades who have gone insane from isolation and abandonment. When death is around the corner, that's when you're truly alive. This is how it's always been. |
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| | And you're happy. There's Jane, and while the both of you left your humanity on operating tables, sometimes when you make camp for the night and catch a few minutes downtime, you interface, and online your avatars looks just like you did in basic training, 50 years ago. And you smile at each other as you embrace, and you think... This can go on forever. If you can fight and if you can win... You'll be immortal. |
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| ==Game Information== | | ==Game Information== |
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| wip. Information being retrieved and formatted from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=xm5yzxw5udvk9rllab3kurk8&page=1#4 | | wip. Information being retrieved and formatted from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=xm5yzxw5udvk9rllab3kurk8&page=1#4 |
| All works created and/or carefully stolen by our good friends [mailto:TravisRosenlieb@gmail.com Nutopia_Flufffag], Pengu1n, quicksilver (especially for putting things together on the tvtropes site), and [mailto:teka.rain@gmail.com teka] | | All works created and/or carefully stolen by our good friends [mailto:TravisRosenlieb@gmail.com Nutopia_Flufffag], Pengu1n, fortheloolz, quicksilver (especially for putting things together on the tvtropes site), and [mailto:teka.rain@gmail.com teka] |
| . If you feel you should be on this list, let me know, i am forgetful. if you don't want your name attached to this abomination.. too bad.. mwahaha. | | . If you feel you should be on this list, let me know, i am forgetful. if you don't want your name attached to this abomination.. too bad.. mwahaha. |
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| http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/7310859 | | http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/7310859 |
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| ==Player Information== | | =[[Nutopia:Players|Player Information]]= |
| Those brave souls going into the dark places and risking themselves are known as Delvers. They take risks and struggle in ways few can imagine. They all have their own reasons for going out there, whether is money, revenge or humanity.
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| =Delver Classes=
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| From a purely mechanical standpoint it is important to point out that Nutopia is at heart a classless set up. That said the archetypes below represent simple broad divisions of Delvers by capability. Within these categories there is a great deal of wiggle room, and they exist as basic guidelines. While blending between these categories is not unheard of, understand that a jack of all trades is a master of none, and that in some cases the detriments of one category would greatly impair the acquisition of abilities from another.
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| ====Soldiers====
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| These guys are the workhorses of a Delver team. They specialize in combat, the kind of combat varies wildly from soldier to soldier. Snipers in light, agile stealth armor stand right next to brutal close range beasts in the heaviest of power armor totting rotary cannons in each hand. They have access to the widest array of combat modifications both cyber and bio, and access to a fair amount of nano mods as well.
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| A player who chooses to roll a Soldier has access to all the weapons and armors of the world, the Corps spent decades making a fortune in the various arms trades, and the Soldiers are the ones most qualified to take full advantage of the fruits of their former master's labor.
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| Outside of the many roles they fill on the front lines soldiers can serve a number of functions when the bullets aren't flying. Close combat claws and the inherent strength or their armors let soldiers get through barriers and overcome obstacles their fellow delvers cannot navigate, as well as allowing them to simply carry more than others. The less strength oriented delvers can bring maneuverability to the table, high speed and amazing manual dexterity second only to crackers are not uncommon, and exotic methods of mobility like flight, climbing claws or special adapted swimmers are not unheard of. Soldiers are also the most familiar with the direct mechanical actions of their gear, meaning they are often the go to individual if a railgun strip comes out of alignment or if a servo in your leg is on the fritz.
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| Soldiers come from a variety of backgrounds. Many were employees of the Corps low level security forces, others are immigrants from Unincorporated States' militaries. Motorpool sports a considerable community both special forces and technicians from both Corps and U States, while Babel has a large population of "Swimmers" soldiers cyber and/or biomodded for combat beneath the waves and in the deadly close quarters of battles aboard ship.
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| ====Hivers====
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| Among the Delvers, Hivers are often the most eccentric individuals. They are drawn from the ranks of musicians, artists and dancers, sculptors and poets, architects and engineers. These are individuals who for one reason or another decided to take a radical step to accentuate their chosen craft, and those that become Delvers are perhaps more eccentric still, as performance artist come combat engineer is a transition not often seen in earlier ages.
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| The decision for an individual to become a Hiver is not one to be taken lightly. The implants involved and the conditioning needed to control them are invasive and at first quite painful. The most common implant sites are in areas of dense muscle, limited capacity Maker blocks are implanted in the quadriceps, triceps, deltoids and latissimus dorsi beneath the skin. Some of the surrounding tissue is the bolstered and modified to provide energy for the Makers, while the skin covering the implants is biomodded to allow the pores to dilate far beyond their usual size, letting fresh batches of nanites come through the epidermis. Near the implant sites exterior plugs are introduced, allowing tubing from an external feedstock tank to be attached, as the Makers need material to do their work. The Makers are hardwired together via sub dermal cabling, as a wireless link might allow a malicious Cracker to hijack them and dissolve the Hiver with his own Nanites. All of this is then hardwired to a cortical sheath that allows the Hiver fine control over his new “organs”.
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| The cost of these implants is high, without further extensive implantation the lost muscle mass is difficult to compensate for, leaving the Hiver comparatively weak, especially next to a gene-bulked Soldier. The use of the surrounding tissue to supplement power to the Makers also gives Hivers a much higher metabolism than most, and the repeated ejection of nanites can be damaging to the flesh, so when not doing anything terribly pressing they can usually be found scarfing down whatever high carb/high protein food is available. The general weakness and the need for ejection ports for swarms greatly limits a Hiver’s ability to use most of the heavy weaponry her fellow Delvers wield and keeps her out of anything other than specially modified armors.
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| The upshot to all this is immense, however, Hivers are the most versatile class of the three, both in and out of combat, and can accomplish amazing things with the implants that cost them so much. In combat Hivers can act defensively and offensively, outside of battle they can build shelter and supply all manner of useful items and materials. Even more radical is the way Hivers can go about doing these tasks. For example, in combat an Offensive Hiver might create vicious swarms of macro nanites in the shapes of stinging insects to harass her opponents, while another could use the makers to expel a chemical mixture that ignites with air from their fingers or build up a large electrical field and discharge it at an enemy, still another might create and fling spikes and spines of diamond or create blades and wade into close combat. What a Hiver can do and how she does it is really only limited by the players imagination and the Signal Man’s ruling (Signal Man is what we’re calling the DM/GM/ST for now, until someone comes up with something better)
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| As stated above Hivers come from extremely diverse backgrounds and all walks of life. Nearly all Hivers were born CE, as in the current era the machinery needed to create the implants is difficult to come by. There are of course still some young hivers born ACE, but they are few and far between.
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| Edit: It seems worth noting that some of the inspiration for this class was a picture of Till Lindemann wearing a jockstrap with a flamethrower attached to it... Make of that what you will.
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| ====Crack3rs====
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| From young punks to wizened old code master, Crackers come in many varieties. Their skills range wildly and each has his own mix of abilities to bring to the table. On the combat scale they reside between Soldiers and Hivers in terms of firepower and survivability, while nowhere near as heavily protected as a Soldier can be they can still wear more armor and lug bigger guns than the physically weaker Hivers. They rest on an odd tipping point in terms of modification, some sport little more than wireless interfacing tools, while others are full hardshells comprised of hissing servos, synthetic muscle and whirring processor stacks.
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| The most unique ability of a Cracker is their mastery of VI and Forking. They can control more advanced Virtual Intelligences in greater quantities than other delvers. These software drones can be used to autonomously attempt many tasks while the Cracker themselves attacks a more pressing issue, or they can assist a Cracker in a particularly difficult task. For example a Cracker might allow a Fire Control VI to keep an enemy pinned down while they flit off into the infosphere to jam that same enemy's senses with scrapcode, or they could bring that same VI in line with their own attention and together pull off a highly improbable ricochet shot to bring the fight to an end.
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| Forking is a process deployed for when a VI just won't do. The Cracker creates a copy (of varying fidelity depending on the circumstances) of his own mind. This allows a Cracker to multitask with even greater alacrity, or to focus in even more extreme detail, but maintaining the split is stressful. The process is hardly without risk, and is never done on more than a temporary basis, but no one can do it like a well trained Cracker can. The most skilled of said group can even run multiple Forks and VIs at the same time, leveling a frightful amount of thinking power at any problem.
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| Amongst a delving team Crackers handle any obstacle pertaining to the infosphere. Their electronic warfare skills are unmatched, and given the right VI assistance they are no slouch in physical combat either, their parallel thought processes allowing them to accomplish great feats of acrobatics and marksmanship if they put their minds to it. They can control a wide variety of robotic minions for scouting or numerous other roles. Above all else the Crackers portable processing powerhouse represents a way to amplify the abilities of the other members of their team. A Soldier has turned target acquisition an neutralization into a science, teamed with a Cracker it becomes an art. A Hiver can create anything the mind can envision given enough time and material, with a Cracker's help these creations can be realized with great speed, and the reach of the Hiver's abilities extended.
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| =Locations=
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| ==New Johanesburg or NewJ==
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| New Johannesburg is a mega city in the truest sense of the word. Its surface area is immense, owing to cheap land prices and rapid corporate expansion. Under the rule of the Corps New J was the world's most important port, acting as a stop over and refueling point for entire fleets of huge macro freighters 3 acres long, destined for the massive industrial zones of Asia.
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| New J survived the revolution almost entirely intact. The area was a commerce zone, aside from its considerable littoral combat force assembled to protect the vital shipping lanes it was barely equipped to put down a riot, much less a full scale revolt.
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| As a result, aside from a few notable building collapses the physical structures of the city went unmolested. The organic toll was higher than the damage suggests however, due to the efforts of a few berserk merc packs given total termination orders and a lone cracker terrorist who caused a few of the city's chemical disposal dumps to void their contents onto the streets.
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| The end result is a huge expanse of urban sprawl with a vastly disproportionate remaining population. In other words, a Delver's paradise.
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| Circa 25 ACE New J has become a home to several eccentric settlements. This is not exactly surprising, the global network provides for cultural trends homogeneous only in their wild diversity, and with a long history as a planet-wide trade hub New J is even more cosmopolitan than most.
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| A host of settlements eke out a more or less safe existence amongst the silent streets and empty avenues of the city, but three stand head and shoulders above the rest. They form a network that supplies technology, protection and entertainment to the settlements of New J and the surrounding area.
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| ==='''Spire, The Tower of Lights'''===
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| Spire is a settlement built within the superstructure of the world’s tallest building. Rising over a mile in height the massive skeleton erupts from a manmade island along one of the few stretches of coast not overgrown with docks and freight cranes. It was to serve as the global headquarters of the company that owned both the docks and much of the shipping that went through them. The revolution cut its construction short, leaving only twenty of the above ground floors finished.
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| New J’s sizeable Hiver community has taken up residence here, and turned it into something incredible. The nature of the island is easily defensible, it is connected to the shore by a mile long causeway, and the island itself is constructed like a fortress. Nothing can approach Spire without someone noticing, and the natural vantage point of the tower allows its residents plenty of time to react to any incoming threats.
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| While only a few floors were finished, this has done little to deter the relentlessly imaginative Hivers and Crackers of Spire from using their space to the fullest. Suspended hundreds of feet above the ground, hanging around, between, above, below and through the building’s skeleton is a riotous nest of color known as Uptown. Homes and facilities are grown out of pillars or hung by nanotube cables and strung together by everything from disembodied escalators to bungee platforms. The most common method of conveyance through the insane mishmash of architectural styles and lights is flight, whether by VTOL aircraft or more commonly bio and cybermods that allow a person to fly under their own power.
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| Beneath Uptown is the aptly named Downtown. Spire’s original owners only completed twenty of the above ground floors, but the building foundations are almost half again as deep as it is tall, and these were finished long before the above ground portion of the building even saw daylight. The above ground floors house much of the settlement’s land locked population, or those without a taste for the dizzying, crazy heights of Uptown. Up and Down are connected by a thick central elevator stalk and a number of helipads. Those same elevators also descend into the lower levels, wherein the heart of Spire lies. 15 floors beneath the surface lies the Reactor, pumping life giving power through the lines of the tower and its defenses.
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| Around 30 floors below the surface lies the buffer deck, a precaution put in place by Spire’s new tenants, as much of the iceberg like structure remains unsecured. The two floor deep security zone is manned entirely by organic personnel born ACE, free of corporate implants. The nature of the place has lead to a thriving community of Delvers who can move through the buffer deck to plumb the depths of Spire’s foundations and the mysterious facilities found therein. They bring back all manner of technological oddities and marvels from the deeps, but the nature of what the previous owners were doing down in the lowest floors remains a mystery. Aside from the all organic security force the buffer deck also contains some incredibly potent code scrubbers and localized EMP devices put in place by the corporate owners.
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| So far the only things brought up through the buffer deck into the settlement proper have been biological or purely mechanical in nature. Rumors abound of extremely advanced computer systems and other such treasures destroyed or wiped clean by the automated systems in the buffer deck. Delvers that travel through into the deeps must do so without some of their most advanced equipment, as if they try to return through the deck their tech could be scrubbed or fused by the draconian security measures.
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| ==='''Motorpool, NewJ's Defender'''===
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| If Spire is the center of culture in New J, then Motorpool is the center of its defense. Built among the bunkers, hangers, silos and garages of the city’s sole military instillation Motorpool is currently the world’s largest Mechanized community. Populated by reformed mercs, uploaded crackers, entirely cyberized soldiers and the like Motorpool has become a thriving center for all those who have eschewed human flesh in this new era. Synthetics flock in from less tolerant settlements around the planet and curious delvers looking into the most extreme forms of cybernetic modifications pop in now and again.
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| Mercs and others brought with them an entire new niche. Machine shops and armories sprouted to handle the maintenance and supply of their highly specialized bodies. Chem bars and Current clubs crept up as a means for entertaining the Jar heads. The Silos house pit fights and arms bazaars, pick up a Gungnir heavy anti-tank railgun and then watch a pair of legged APCs sumo wrestle. Later meet those same two APCs at a Chem bar for a round of spinal taps and some old war stories.
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| Motorpool is the place to go if one needs the best hired guns on the market. Motorpool is the place to be to find every type of exotic weapon or ammunition imaginable. Mercenary Packs who participated in the Free States War, 15 foot long rail cannons prized free from a deck mounting on an automated littoral combat boat, mountings and ammunition for skull guns, arm guns, leg guns and thorax guns, all are available from the arms merchants in Motorpool. That trade is somewhat self-regulating however, and Delvers new to the area might find it hard to get their hands on the more exotic equipment. Many of the merchants have grown wary of new comers after a man who turned out to be a raider showed up and bought a few high yield mag mines. Those same mines were later used in a raider ambush on a merc column coming out of Motorpool on its way to the rail yards of Oasis with several tons of ammunition in tow. Since then the “good stuff” has been difficult for strangers to get their hands on, so new Delvers often need to prove their worth in the area or come highly recommended from one of the other settlements.
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| The settlement is also home to a sizable dish farm. Linked to corporate satellites and some truly powerful ground based radars the dish farm allows Motorpool to keep a benevolent watchful eye on NewJ’s settlements. Raiders tend to steer clear of NewJ for this very reason, only the very good, the very crazy or the very stupid tend to stick around in an area where launching a raid is likely to earn the attention of a number of protective tanks and assault armored soldiers itching for an excuse to go live. The power of Motorpool’s scanners is linked with a diverse fleet of VTOL craft, a good number of which are on patrol at any given moment. The patrol craft are often small groups of mixed craft, attack choppers flying recon and cover for larger transport craft carrying interdiction teams of mercs and soldiers. Should the farm pick up an attack force or if a settlement calls for aid Motorpool can dispatch any number of craft to deal with the threat, firing rockets and dropping troops in defense of their self assigned charges. The patrol also act as a way for ambitious delver teams to go after targets in the more dangerous parts of Johannesburg, hiring out space on one of the transports and arranging for a drop when the patrol passes near their area of interest. One should of course be sure to make arrangements for extraction, and to be on time when the patrol comes by again. They won’t leave you out to dry if you get stranded because your team missed the rendezvous, but you will owe them a favor.
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| ==='''[[Nutopia:Oasis|Oasis, a Settlement in Motion]]'''===
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| Sprawling in the low-built scrublands in the uncertain border between megacity and the encroaching desert, Oasis is the first sight of many inlanders. This settlement crouches on and around the bones of massive transportation systems, the first connection in the webs of roads and Mag-Lines rooting New J to the continent.
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| Oasis, first and foremost, is a city of trade. Spreading the bounty of delvers into the faltering settlements in the desert in exchange for unfinished goods and materials to be broken down into still more wonders. The Oasis trainyards have lost some of the hustle and bustles of its hyper-automated heyday, but the vast warehouses teem with organic and mechanized alike, each one looking for a better score or a new buyer (or sucker)
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| Need to move millions of units of expiring ammunition recovered from a newly breached Silo? You can find a soldier or representative willing to talk. Eager to trade recovered corporate databases and, rarest of all, hard copy information for the annoyingly simple necessities that your own tiny Delver town just cant make for itself? well.. Our man from the office will be glad to look over what your had in mind.
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| Delvers and Hired Guns from all over the continent eventually pass through the tangled roads and lev lines at some point in their careers. Oasis is the northern tip of the triumvirate of NewJ’s major settlements, and thusly is the first most see of the massive southern megacity. Oasis’ largest feature is the Anansi Hub, the massive routing and loading station from which all roads and levs entering the city sprout or terminate.
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| The hustle and bustle of Oasis leads to a naturally brisk and somewhat unruly settlement. The unruliness can at times escalate to violence, but the powers that be in Oasis know that running gun battles are not good for commerce. Telling to people to check their arms at the gates is a little unrealistic for a settlement that has a burgeoning arms trade, so instead the merchants have formed the Anansi Defenders. Wishing to keep fatalities to a minimum and hoping not to damage merchandise or prospective customers Anansi men typically carry a wide variety on non-lethal armaments. Any delver worth his salt can find work with these black clad soldiers keeping the peace with a break open gas launcher in one hand and a stun prod in the other.
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| A massive trunk of lev lines three layers deep shoots north arrow straight from Anansi, gleaming in the African sun. These raised silver lanes are the Mainline that cuts Africa in half, terminating at Tunisia, where it becomes the Pillars of Heraclese, the truly awesome shining span crossing the whole of the Mediterranean, crossing Europe towards Brusselsphere.
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| Making the trip from Oasis to Brusselsphere can be an adventure all its own. The three decks of the mainline are comprised of the lower two freight lines and the upper “Sun Line” passenger route. Leaving from Oasis passengers will first be greeted by the jungles of the Congo, speeding through the canopy while guards keep a watchful eye out for some of the nastier bioforms. Once they’ve broken clear of the jungle there’s usually little to worry about save for the occasional raider blockade, but when the reach the Saharan Proving Grounds things get a little more interesting. Here the trains will typically meet up with a CAP patrol of VTOL craft from junkyard who will escort them to Tunisia and the Pillars. Should such support be unavailable then it is up to the guards and passengers to defend the train from raiders and ‘bots who have broken free of the restraints that kept the line safe in the past. Reaching the Pillars the trains begin the quiet and frankly beautiful crossing into Europe’s blasted cities. Crossing the large crater that was once the Sicilian space port and into Italy proper the line skirts the edge of Vatican lands (attacks from this quarter are very rare, but not entirely unheard of) through the huge factory plains of Germany and on into the routing stations at Brusselsphere. From here passengers and goods can find passage to England, or down through towards Spain and the coastal African/European Gibraltar Line, and from there they can find air or sea travel to North America. One can even, if they for some reason wished to expose themselves to that benighted place, take the lonely line that arcs towards the Russian Resource Zone and ultimately to Novaya Sibir.
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| ==The Russian Resource Zone==
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| ===Novaya Sibir, The Heart of Darkness===
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| 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.
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| 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 of 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 monstrocities were being bred, shaped and molded in the Siberian wilderness.
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| The center of operations for the group was a 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.
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| Given the atrocities committed at their hands one might expect that the Black Masks where 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 utterly 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.
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| 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 expiditions 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...
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| ===The Moscow Arcology, City of Blood===
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| 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.
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| 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 was what led to Moscow's downfall.
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| 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 stakeholders. The hostile takeover happened overnight, and the population of Moscow woke up to find themselves Ilium subjects.
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| This did not go well with the Moscovite population. While overt resistance was quelled by Ilium PMC's, the arcology's residents accepted their new masters only begrudgingly. 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 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| ===Novosibirsk, The Liberated City===
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| ==Elsewhere==
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| ===Babel, City of Tides===
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| During the events the brought the last age, the Mega Corp Light-Core was confronted with a problem. A second rate shipping company, it found itself unable to compete with the giants of it's day. It set out with a project, shackling its fate to the communication and solar generating satellites in the sky above. It began to build the world's first space elevator; a tremendously tall tower, stretching to the heaven's above, able to quickly and cheaply catapult cargo into low orbit, from which it could easily corner the market on satellite technology. The project started, building proceeded smoothly, and then the end of the world came.
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| One of the first targets was the near-completed tower, though none alive know who fired at it. Though constructed on the Indian Subcontinent, it's towering primary spire, which soon earned the mocking nickname of Babel by the more powerful corporations in the world, could be faintly seen from much of the Eastern Hemisphere. A weapon, some say a nuclear in nature, while others claim rail guns, nanites, or perhaps even a suicide run from an aerial craft, brought the elevator down. The lower levels were destroyed instantly, but the upper levels, caught in lower gravity above and the forces rippling up the superstructure from below, drifted out into the Indian Ocean, before crashing with a tremendous tidal wave.
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| The tower, built for the high stresses of planetary momentum and wind shear, some how survived. Part of the substructure crashed into the bottom of the sea, while the upper portions jut above. The tower has been since been found, and has become something of a bustling sea center, it's surface extending over miles of the Indian Ocean. Known as Babel, City of Tides, it takes on travelers, traders, and sailors of all sorts from Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Southern Asia, and Australia, becoming an important sea based oasis.
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| Babel is powered primarily by a solar furnace; collection of solar connection rigs, still wirelessly connected to the dedicated solar satellites that it was intended to service in the first place. This, on top of expressing it's dominance on a the few nearby deep-sea oil drilling rigs in the seas around it, provided Babel with enough power to last well through the coming nights.
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| Babel is serviced by a vast shipping fleet, known collectively as Etemenanki . They serve as it's chief limbs, eyes, and mouth, projecting the will of Babel into much of the Indian Ocean. A collection of yachts and cruise liners to shipping frigates and once modern ships of war comprise the Etemenanki, endlessly questing the high seas for freight, personnel, and fuel. There are six main task forces of the Etemenanki, and each roam separately, under the command of an Admiral. These six, combined with the Tower Admiral of the Babel proper, form the primary administrative body of Babel, the League of Tides.
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| Babel's biggest problem is perhaps projection of power. Though each task force of the Etemenanki is more then able to hold it's own, with battleships, cruisers, and even a carrier or two, the physical space in the ocean is vast. Slavers, raiders, and rival warlords feature one of the primary plot hooks of Babel; piracy. Vast tracks of sea are no man's land, and the area has become a haven for those you want to hide on the run. Smaller islands, scattered from the eastern Indian chain, to man-made ones floating on debris, built into abandoned oil derricks, and carved from coral atolls, are hung onto desperately, with the survivors doing whatever dark and sometimes twisted efforts are required to stay alive. These ocean born frontier towns are armed to the teeth, and will normally trade with the ships of the Etemenanki, but when left to their own devices for too long, or prodded once too many times by raider, will sometimes up a mobilize, setting off across the open sea in a near mindless wave of killing and looting.
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| As dangerous and unpredictable as the frontier towns may seem, they hold the key to many of the great treasures in these waters. For just under the waves lie untold treasures, from pieces fallen from Babel in it's crash, satellites plunged into the waters as they lost power, and oil and mineral veins deep on the ocean floor to be pillaged. Many of these small flotilla's are built on existing constructions, allowing a quick, if perhaps dangerous, path to the secrets on the floor. Babel itself has established a number of these routes, with it's undersea superstructure and original cargo hauling capabilities helping in this effort. It is through this exploration of the ocean floor that one of the great mysteries of the entire Indian Ocean was found. The code name Atlantis Project.
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| ===Brusselsphere===
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| An enormous conglomeration of geodesic domes covering about 70% of former Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands, Brusselsphere was one of the most spectacular, most bombastic corporate projects to ever come to fruition. A megacity in which the weather was controlled precisely by a regulatory system, ensuring the best climate conditions on the globe. During the Fall, eco-terrorist sabotage brought down the climate control AI, baking or freezing several domes until they were stopped. Those areas are still cooling down, and Delvers are advised to stay away from the hostile desert and jungle conditions.
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| Brusselsphere used to be the corporate-government capital of Europe, and together with Londons Prime, 2, 3, and 4 it formed the hub of the great financial networks that spanned the globe and projected corporate power. Most of the corp headquarters buildings still stand, looted and gutted from the Fall times, but rumours have it that there are still undelved vaults and secret bunkers under the city. The old EUSEC defense system may still be active, which could explain the periodic appearance of security drones, armed and attacking anything that moves.
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| ===The Junk Yard===
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| Built on the ruins of a former corporate military base, in the middle of the Tunisian desert, the Junkyard is a small but famous settlement. It boasts the biggest population of nonhuman cyborgs and uploads in the world.
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| The entire commune is spaced out over the base facilities, with most newcomer residents inhabiting the hangars of the old airfield, and the older founders residing in the central underground motor pool. Most of the population are former corporate soldiers or Mercs, but a few Crackers in multifunctional utility and maintenance hardshells have also made the Junkyard their home.
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| The most famous landmark in the Junkyard is Ma Baker's, a saloon bar providing uplinked entertainment and direct brain stimulation to cyborg customers, accessible to vehicles. Ma Baker herself is a 14 ton light tank who doesn't like people asking her to show them her 30mm.
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| Since the base got hit with a tactical nuke during the Fall, partials or noncyborgs don't visit very often. And since almost every resident of the Junkyard is armed with heavy weapons, raider visits are also quite rare. However, the community lives in constant fear of EMP attacks; construction on a giant Faraday cage around the entire area has begun but is incomplete.
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| Junkyard's inhabitants have taken on responsibility for the protection of the Tunisian Coastal Rail Nexus, running patrols along the northern Main Line and providing security for the confluence of rail lines that emanate from where the Main Line hits the sea and becomes The Pillars of Heraclese.
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| ===The Neumann Vault===
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| Take a trip through the Old Midwest, past the Cloning Farms still running, endlessly producing steadily more devolved subhumans as their genetic patterns degrade, beyond the Archives, the vast multi-kilometre data warehouses once full of the sum of human knowledge and now just meaningless ones and zeros, and beyond the Red Zone where the radiation from the Goldmarck Neumann Wars is still strong enough to kill an unshielded man in hours. Keep going, into the vast fields of GM wheat, effectively unkillable and unstoppable, that turns even the flesh-melting nanite clouds into another energy source. Keep going, through the vast craters of the Megabombs, GM wheat only broken by the scarce few ruins still stable enough to stand, and pools full of every kind of pseudolegal chems mixed by decades of leakage and sunlight into brews so utterly toxic not even the wheat can grow in it. Tread lightly past the Sentinels, unimaginably lethal 'bots designed to be able to hold off entire armies alone, still defending the ruins of their homes. There, go into the Deep Crater, and you can see it; the Neumann Vault.
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| It is an unassuming structure, a block of some fancy darkened supermetal, five hundred metres long and wide, and a hundred tall. Look for the door, fifty metres by fifty, every centimetre of space taken up by warnings etched into the metal. Behind that door lies the reason for the Neumann Corps' existence, the reason for their destruction, and the reason hundreds of Delvers die each year trying to open it.
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| A relative latecomer to the Corporations, Neumann was a small company built by a bored megarich executive around this facility, an empty space occupied only by at-the-time advanced nanonic assemblers with one task; to copy itself, and to improve itself every time. One day, the Vault would be opened, and whatever was inside would be The novelty of the offering amused many of the idle megarich, and money flowed in, soon powering it to the status of a moderate Corp. They built other divisions and started work, and soon forgot the assemblers in the vault over newer, more advanced models. They ran into money trouble, and were prepared to open the Vault to see what they had cooked up in desperation, and this so worried the Goldmarck Corp, another high-level corp mostly specializing in nanonic assemblers, that they declared a Private War, at first subtle, then more and more overt. By the end of it, just four weeks after it had begun, both corps were utterly destroyed, and the Vault soon forgotten as the Fall of the Corporations came a bare month later, befor the radiation had cooled enough to send in even hardened 'bots.
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| Decades later, the Vault still lies unopened, its work going on far longer than even the Neumann Corp had planned. Anything could be in there now, a mist of dead nanites self-coded into deactivation, assemblers capable of rearranging the universe on the subatomic level, a vast array of pretty and meaningless junk, built to please the eye of a nanite swarm gone Smart, or nothing, the assemblers improving themselves beyond the constraints of the universe.
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| All I know is what the Vault told me. Seven hundred metre crater walls mean that this vault had the Corporations so worried that, even as their world collapsed around them, they spared the time to launch no less than twenty-eight Megabombs at this place, and that the Neumann guys were so worried it could get out they built a facility that could survive that sort of punishment unharmed.
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| I came to unlock riches, me and the twenty others of our Delve. Only three of us survived to reach the Vault, and the other two had died by the time I found the Key. I could have opened it, but never brought myself to. I gave away my chance for new-Megarichdom at the doors of this vault, and ran back to my Enclave with everything I had destroyed, because I couldn't help but fear what could come out of those doors.
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| I'm giving you the key, because I'm a dead man. Even shielded, that place was so hot it cooked my DNA like like a frozen dinner, and I won't last the month. The key's gene-locked, and can't be lost, sold, or destroyed, only given away. You seem better than the sort of bastard might take the key off my body, and I'd rather whatever was in that Vault went to you instead of some fuckhead Raider.
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| Just remember. There are some doors in the world that, once opened, can never be shut again.
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| =Factions=
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| What follows is a basic accounting of some of the largest, most influential or simply most interesting groups that operate ACE. This list is by no means exhaustive, with different ideologies and groups being just as numerous, if not more-so, than they are currently.
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| ==Aegis==
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| The revolution that brought about The Fall came into being as a concerted effort by many disparate organizations across the globe. Various civil rights and anarchist groups, techno-utopians and neo-luddites, fringe extremists from diverse ideological and religious creeds and even coroprate intelligence agencies trying to the end to manipulate events in their favor came together in the uprising. The war itself was carried out in a mad combination of planned, surgical strikes on infosphere and realspace assets and simple, brute mob violence. The rallying flag for the global movement, splashed across the Central Park broadcast and flown in the streets, was some variation on a broken chain in a circle, typically accompanied by the local equivalent for the word "Liberty". The general idea of the intensely anti-totalitarian Liberty movement remained after the Fall, but once the rebellion had achieved its goals, differences in ideology became increasingly difficult to ignore. Some of the more idealistic projects (such as a global council in which all factions involved in the Liberty movement were to be represented) had to be abandoned as squabbles between rival groups stalled the decision-making process.
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| As the surviving settlements struggled to restart damaged technology and defend themselves from looters, terrorist saboteurs and ex-corp raider bands, Liberty was faced with a difficult task. Having been given full responsibility for the lives of all survivors of the Fall, it became clear that a military task force was needed in order to provide security and to prevent disasters that could result from abuse or malignant use of dangerous technologies (such as the infamous murdering, by a rogue Cracker cult, of all inhabitants of Brusselsphere through manipulation of the weather control system). The debate and subsequent vote to create this agency was a long and painful process, and following it, many of the more radical anarchist and pacifist groups left Liberty for good, but in the end Aegis was created. Named for Athena's mirrored shield of legend, Aegis is tasked with the difficult and thankless job to combat the writhing, serpent-haired snake pit of threats, both foreign and domestic, that menace the free world and its citizens. This includes terrorist cells, rogue scientists, fringe cults, corporate remnant agents, raider activity or military incursions from the Alliance of Unincorporated states, as well as between-settlement skirmishes.
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| Aegis is a non-hierarchical organization, with no central headquarters. Instead, local "chapter houses" serve as a combined training, medical/mechanical and recruitment center, as well as a place for Aegis-booked Delvers to rest and recuperate before a mission. Aegis has no permanent agents, but rather recruits its staff from Delver teams on an as-needed, per-mission basis. The results of all Aegis missions are made public on the Liberty intranet, ensuring that no air of secrecy and suspicion hangs over its activities. This doesn't mean that there's no dark side to Aegis; individual operatives in the field have cooperated with criminal gangs or even slaver parties in order to further their goals. The conflict between base ideals and conditions on the ground is a constant one, leading frequent agents into an attitude of bitter pragmatism. Theirs is a seemingly impossible task after all, holding back the brink, but one they feel is worth doing.
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| Rumors persist, of course, that not all of Aegis' operations are as open and transparent as they would like you to believe, and that there exists a secret list of jobs and contracts only available to select, trusted agents. There is little concrete evidence to the veracity of these claims, but they persist nonetheless.
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| ==New Cossacks==
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| It began as a small-scale guerilla war against the Ilium corporation and its presence in Russia. Its members were simple folk: former army personnel from closed-down rural bases, villagers and farmers fighting against bandits and mafia enforcers. In the beginning, their operations were small-scale convoy raids and the occasional kidnapping of midlevel Ilium employees (no efforts were made to rescue or negotiate for their release as per corporate policy). Just another group of dour men in fur hats with Kalashnikovs, of no significance.
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| But then, he appeared. No one knows who he was, or where he came from. His real name has long since been lost to history, but he preferred to call himself by a pseudonym; Stenka Razin, after the bandit chief of Russian folklore, like the hero of old songs and stories. He quietly remade the movement in his own image. The raids became more brutal, the attacks more daring. The Cossacks began to operate closer to major metropolitan areas, like Volgograd and Samara. In some of the more remote sectors of Central Russia, they became so audacious that they moved in the open, taking over police and military functions of small towns and villages, setting up roadblocks and taxing local residents for protection money. In Cossack-controlled areas, mafia activity stopped. Bandits were rounded up and shot, their bodies hung on telephone poles as a warning to would-be raiders and rapists. The Russian public hailed Stenka's Cossacks as liberators. The movement became an increasingly more irritating thorn in Ilium's side.
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| Following a few spectacular attacks in which Cossack forces managed to shoot down a PMC troop transport, stop and liberate a train carrying humans selected for Plague Doctor experiments, and kidnap and execute an Ilium executive, Stenka was put on the corporation's primary hit list. The price on his head was unprecedented; whoever murdered the rebel leader would be presented with a one-of-a-kind, personal fisson-powered Maker. Mercenaries flocked to Russia to hunt the elusive king of Cossacks down, but the man seemed unkillable. Just as Ilium was about to initiate Operation Wolf Hunt, a huge effort to search out and exterminate all New Cossacks in the country using a massive number of troops, air power and satellite surveillance, the Central Park incident occurred and the revolution began. Stenka was saved by the chaos.
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| In the days after the Fall, Cossack forces moved in to take control of large sections of former Ilium territory. Their white-and-blue flag with the crossed saber emblem waved in many central Russian cities. Seizing the momentum, Stenka rode with his forces to claim the prize of his campaign; Novosibirsk, Ilium's headquarters. After several days of fierce street fighting the battle was won and the New Cossacks set up shop in the Ilium skyscraper, renaming it Razin Palace. Stenka was installed as the Gosudar (souvereign) of All Russia and leader of its peoples. Of course, the Cossacks still had to contend with the various other liberation movements active in the country, including the Free Nova community which was allowed to exist side by side with Stenka's forces in Novosibirsk.
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| The New Cossacks are the most influential group in liberated Russia. They're a bioconservative, traditionalist militia with strong nationalistic bias. The Cossacks mistrust foreigners, and biomods are hated and shunned because of the history the faction has with Ilium. Cyborg modifications are more accepted in a utilitarian manner, but Cossacks do not generally see cyborgization as a good idea, and refer to it derisively as "going to the doctor" and "sitting in the chair". They argue that cyborgs become dependant on maintenance and medical checkups in well-equipped facilities, something that is impossible to find in the Russian wilderness and therefore mostly useless. However, they respect the combat prowess and ability of a cyborg warrior.
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| ==Mission Ascension==
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| One of the most prized hauls a delver can discover is a previously unknown or not widely distributed technology. Hauling back a few tons of ammunition or foodstuffs can do a great deal of good for the local settlements, and getting a power station or factory back online can improve a whole region, but bringing back research, or better yet schematics and prototypes, for new technologies can have a global impact. These discoveries, along with a core humanitarian drive, are what brought Mission Ascension into being.
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| Modeled on similar programs of the past, this group operates with the intent of bringing the best technology has to offer to the corners of the globe that never seemed worth developing, whether due to scarcity of resources, local danger or both, to the powers that be. Teams comprised of intrepid explorers, doctors, and scientists venture into areas of the world where the tech level is as high as the late 20th century at best, and usually then in all the wrong places. If the automatic weapons are more up to date then the farming equipment, Ascension wants to be there.
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| Their simple stated goal is to take the most useful technologies that delvers haul out of the ruins and make them openly available. More directly, they wish to bring these technologies to backwater nations, if they want them, and "bring them up to date" so to speak on the fruits of corporate inventive progress. Most Ascension missions, however, refuse to distribute or develop weapons technology (as the founder of Mission Ascension, Dr. Herbert Solms, said in a widely-publicized interview, "people have the means to kill each other quite in hand, what we come to give them are tools to help them feed themselves and care for their sick and dying").
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| Ascension operations range around the world from the jungles of South America to the deserts of the Middle East. They move with little consideration for national borders or protocol, preferring to operate on a local level, and outright ignoring the prohibition of their actions by exterior forces if they feel their help is needed. They duck xenophobic militias and even Chinese military cordons to get their supplies and professionals through. Mission Ascension is vehemently pro-opensource, arguing that concepts such as copyright or patents have no meaning in a world where everyone is struggling to survive, and where all tools of technological progress are needed everywhere. Mission Ascension and its personnel (nicknamed Missionaries) is banned from entering all Unincorporated Alliance countries, as the bloc accuses the organization of being spies for corporations or "destabilizing ideological elements". Mission Ascension does not care.
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| Delvers will typically come into contact with this organization in one of two ways. Firstly they might be outright hired on as either security, guides, or experts for a particular expedition, or to retrieve a specific prototype or schematic Ascension thinks it knows the location of. Second, if venturing in the undeveloped wilds, Delvers friendly with the organization can always find shelter with expedition base camps. Finding these can be tricky, their locations aren't exactly broadcast globally for fear of raiders searching for easy pickings, but on a local level, or if on good terms with the organization, delvers ought to be able to pick one out as a place to stop and replenish supplies or seek assistance. Lastly, some Ascension Missionaries may choose to leave the organization and become free Delvers themselves; the harsh reality of the world often strips the idealism from an active Missionary in the space of a few expeditions. Still, even if they are cynical and jaded, most former Missionaries still retain a passion for justice and a desire to help those in need, and ex-Ascention Delvers are invaluable resources to teams operating in unincorporated territories or other low-tech areas.
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| ==The Volhvy==
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| A group of Russian Hivers that have studied under an old woman called Baba Yaga in reference to the ancient witch of Russian legend. They act as spiritual leaders, healers and historians in the Russian frontier.
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| ==MilCom==
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| A network for soldiers of all stripes, be they Merc tanks, line security forces or U-State deserters, acts as a ploace to share intel, post jobs and trade gear
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| ==DEFCON==
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| Largest cracker network in the world, general mess of flying code and viruses which only a skilled cracker could navigate, functions much the same as MilCom in most respects
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| ==The Scene==
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| A guild for the Hiver Glitterati, eccentrics and stoics from any number of fields and expertise can be found herein. Much of the physical activity of the group is centered in Spire, but there are chapter houses world wide
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| ==Luddites==
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| loosely organized group of technophobes whose reactions vary from justifiable wariness to outright ecoterrorist zealotry
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| ==Ecliptionists==
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| group devoted to bringing about the technological singularity, convinced that The Fall set humanity back in that regard. Most are simply researchers with a concerted goal, but fringe groups willing to risk existential threats exist within the organization
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| ==The Red Mafia==
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| now a conglomerate of many criminal organizations falling under one banner, the Red Mafia, centered in Moscow's infamous Metro-2, controls a great deal of the world's black market trade. Anything that can have a price tag attached to it can be bought or sold here.
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| ==Plague Doctors==
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| ==19th Special Operations Brigade, "The Hellhounds"==
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| While some corporations survived by economic maneuvering, skillful information manipulation or cornering a niche technology, predominantly North American military industrial giant Armacor Holdings maintained its position through shear weaponized force. In addition to its well known technological innovation in the fields of aeronautics and ground warfare, Armacor took steps early in its existence to incorporate and equip as many private military contractors as possible. In a process that began with a number of small acquisitions and culminated with the privatization of the American military, Armacor swiftly became a global power with few peers in terms of simple physical might.
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| Armacor's business could be roughly divided into the categories of arms production and security contracting. Only direct competitors in its weight class, like Illium, intact governments with serious military buildup, like China, or pernicious corps that played on the edge of their perceived league like Daibosatsu cold afford to run their own internal security forces (often bearing a closer resemblance to conventional armies) if only because Armacor had bought up all the available talent. As a result, Armacor not only controlled one of the world's largest and best equipped armed forces, but also the security forces of a number of other, smaller corps operating in dangerous areas. Consequently the influence they exerted globally was really only rivaled by Illium and the burgeoning Ustate Alliance.
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| Within the many subdivisions of Armacor's defense units, one brigade in the second army, forth division, appears on no official records. This is the fabled 19th Special Operations Brigade, known as the Hellhounds. While the second army was ostensibly Armacor's section for security for hire, the Hellhounds answered directly to corporate headquarters. Comprised of the most skilled, loyal and unquestioning soldiers at the corporation's disposal, they recieved the best equipment, and were tasked with the most sensitive, critical missions. They operated at every level from cell based false flag operations to full scale invasion of resistant territories. If Armacor needed a group or area subjugated, destabilized or made to disappear without implicating itself, the Hellhounds were the group that got the job.
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| ==Akuma==
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| =Fluffy Details=
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| ==Money and Barter==
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| With a toppled/toppling megacorp no doubt taking a big chunk of virtual currency and oversight out of the system, what are folks using to exchange goods and services in the years ACE?
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| paper/coin currency seems risky, since I am fairly sure that a meagerly skilled Hiver could pump out plenty of either. Without a huge overarching government/corp entity in the background, securing value seems difficult.
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| One option would be that most Settlements do a grudging business with notes or coinage or markers from one of the largely intact Unincorporated States. Remember that with the existence of the info-sphere things like the current exchange rates should be easy for everyone to keep track of.
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| The Nu-Dollar <-> BancBuc <-> Motorpool Cred exchanges would end up fairly visible though we would probably see a certain shred of profit-taking from the money changers involved, just as today. Expect to see someone expressing a preference in their pay, picking Motorpool Creds because they want to do some business out that way, or demanding a few more percentage points worth of Nu-Dollars because "damn gougers cut you more and more every year with their fees and I got 'nuff bills to pay already"
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| A heavier, literally, medium of exchange would be raw materials. Sure, with enough time and juice and spares, you can tickle a cloud of nanites into separating that pile of rusty scrap into ingots of component elements.. but a five-kilo block of pure, really pure copper from the mines up in highlands (they finally got them open again, its amazing.. heard something about badgers, believe it or not) would represent a reliable time and energy saving factor that would go beyond mere material worth. Could be the same thing with many products:
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| *Refined-Carbon rods, pure and ready to drop into the Forge of your choice. Salvage from a Corp' building site, perhaps.
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| *Gold. the Original shiny-thing. Some people still horde the stuff like it was going out of style, everyone else values it for its chemical/electrical properties.. and shininess. Everything from the meager ingots produced in massive automated pit mining arrays to ancient coins 'liberated' from the vaults of Corporate Officers after they, um, didn't need them anymore.
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| *Radioactive Materials. Sure, exotic materials have a lingering bad name from some of the.. ah.. Unfortunate events of the War, but there is still a need. The would be a large and somewhat dangerous category, ranging from the molded uranium or plutonium from weapons captured still in their cradles to tiny amounts of the vast category of transoceanic elements for exotic applications. As a whole these are one of the hardest to handle, able to burn out half the tech in your bloodstream if you look at it funny.
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| ==Energy==
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| Just before the fall the preferred energy source of the corporations was solar power, orbital solar operations to be precise. Before the corporations exhausted just about every source of fossil fuels and radioactives on earth, Orbital solar power amounted for about 2% of the global energy production, but when the supplies began to dwindle due to massive rise of energy consumption due the introduction of makers.
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| The biggest problem that the orbital solar power plant had was the maintenance, an traditional array had an endurance of about 5 year before needing an expensive repair space flight, the maker technology changed that. An solar panel array with an maintenance maker had an lifespan of an century before needing to resupplied with raw materials. Just before the fall the orbital solar power amounted for 73% of the global energy production, However during the fall many arrays were either damaged, destroyed or de-orbited by including but not limited to: hit by an frenzied anti-ICBM defenses, not evading an piece of debris, evading an piece of debris too hard or even de-orbited on purpose to be used as an projectile.
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| After the fall the Free States were quite desperate to get the power plants back on line as most of the more traditional manufacturing infrastructure was destroyed during the fall forcing them to rely on the makers. Even by 25 ACE there are still many power plants that have no place to beam their power and therefore the Free States are constantly sending delvers to uncover access codes to the powers plants so they could be moved to either to orphaned receiving dishes or newly constructed ones.
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| ==Nanotechnology==
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| There are two broad categories of nanites in the world of Nutopia: foglets and universal (dis)assemblers.
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| The foglets are lighter-than-air nanomachines that form an cloud around the hiver. The cloud allows the hiver to send his assemblers trough the foglets to anywhere within the cloud, however an average hiver can produce an cloud that is only about 10 meters of spherical volume at maximum even dispersion. Most settlements and any functional high tech manufacturing facility, on the other hand, probably have their air full of utility fog. The foglets purpose is to act as an bridge, communication- and an powerline for assemblers going from their hive to their target. The foglets aren't terribly smart and cannot distinguish between commands from friendly or hostile source, and as such anyone or thing capable projecting nanomachines is capable of doing so within the utility fog.
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| The universal (dis)assemblers can manipulate individual atoms and chemical bonds around their immediate surroundings, according to the instructions from their hive. Compared to foglets the assemblers are considerably more intelligent because by micromanaging every single nanite would require an supercomputer to build even the most homogeneous and simple objects, therefore the assemblers have an limited group intelligence and an onboard database that allows them to identify materials and assemble even the most complex chemical compounds by themselves with little instructions from the hive. The assemblers also have several different kinds of sensors that when using them as an group the assemblers can give very detailed information of their surroundings.
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| The "universal" in The "universal (dis)assemblers" is no joke, if it can be accomplished by manipulating matter it can be done. An average hive can assemble an delicious meal from dirt, clean firearms without disassembling them, heal wounds, and turn an bandit accosting him into an puddle of protein, but this comes at a price: all action by nanites require energy, and while the assemblers can utilize ambient energy in their immediate surroundings to an extent, most of the energy is provided by their hive. This is problematic for hivers even as all of their cells are modified (either genetically or nanotechnologicaly) into organic self-recharging batteries, an average hiver would find himself quickly exhausted if he devoted all his energy to simple brute force disintegration. A hiver's flexibility in terms of tasks they can do simultaneously at any one time is limited both by their own capabilities for multitasking control and the simple volume of nanites they can contain at any one time. Some of these problems can be alleviated by portable bio-electricity batteries and special hiver exoskeletons that store extra energy and nanites. In addition the special cerebral implants for nanite control common to all hivers can be loaded with low level VI software routines that can execute specific functions (i.e. "liquefy", "stabilize that guy") with little input from the hiver.
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| In a world with such adept computer wizards the possibility of nanite swarms being simply taken over and turned to malicious uses is well understood. To counteract this several simple security measures are in place. The communication between a Hiver and their swarms is omnidirectional (figuring out functional tightbeam communication to a swarm is something of an engineering holy grail that remains unattained), and thus easily picked up, it is conversely heavily encrypted. A diligent cracker could of course, given time, break said encryption, but would find that in order to prevent mutations or corruption in the nanites, all their programming is stored in ROM (Read Only Memory) and have an tiny bit of RAM to process commands. The programming is intentionally brittle, any changes to such simply resulting in the nanite becoming nonfunctional. More nanites can only be constructed within the Hiver's own stacks, and these operate on a closed, hardwired circuit within the Hiver's own body. To hijack these systems wirelessly would require a full body/mind takeover well outside the capability of most crackers.
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| The nanites are an exceptionally efficient in their design: every atom in their bodies pull an double-duty, this however leaves them with very little in the way of redundancy or backup systems. This means that an individual nanites are rather easy to disable, for example even an weak EMP in the vicinity of the nanites can erase their command buffer, as the nanites become inert if they aren't ordered to do something as an security measure. Ionizing radiation also does an number on the nanites, even small amount alpha particles slowly corrupts the programming of nanites and also the particles interfere with assembly of new nanites and other things the hiver or the maker is creating. Beta particles, gamma and x-rays are even worse, causing nanites to breakdown completely from far smaller amount of radiation that would pose an lethal threat to even unaugmented humans.
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| ==A Word On Firepower==
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| The arms trade was, as ever, extremely lucrative to the corporations. Most communities have Maker Templates for simple conventional firearms (one of the biggest finds in recent memory was a template for a Romanian AK-47 and 7.62x39mm ammunition). In the delves, however, things get much more interesting. The big corporate Makers allowed for the synthesizing of room temperature super conductors in large amounts, and rail/coilgun tech became much more feasible as a man portable option. Rail arms vary in size from handguns to large bore cannon. What wasn't Rail used caseless ammunition and exotic electronic ignition methods, sometimes even guided munitions to make up for the like of straight line firepower compared to a railgun.
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| Towards the end of the Corps some companies began to look into more creative was of killing a man than simply putting bits of metal into him at high speed. Sonic rifles for riot dispersal, highly concentrated particle beams that could punch through armor and melt flesh, and jacketed plasma launchers were all in development just before year 0.
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| All that firepower is further augmented by further advances. Autosensing weapons link wirelessly nanomodded eyeballs, projecting all manner of targeting data into the operators field of view. Steadying rigs and power armor hard points allow for the usage of truly epic firepower.
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| Power armors vary in size from close fitting exosuits that serve to mildly augment the wearer's strength, speed and endurance to 10 foot tall Nephilim 2B Breaching Armor equipped with nanite clouds, reactive panels, ceramic plates, rolled steel sheets, shock absorbing gels and Kevlar all wrapped around big servos and internal ammunition bays.
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| Larger still varieties exist, but few are willing to undergo the one way bonding process needed to pilot something as massive as one of the Merc Tanks. Still, Digitized Delvers are hardly unheard of, and if they are willing to sacrifice human contact and can afford the upkeep they can elect to inhabit what amounts to a cross between a bus, a MBT and a spider.
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| The common families of weaponry available, if expanded beyond "Electromagnetic", "Conventional" and "Other" look like this:
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| '''Railguns'''- These use pairs of rails (go figure) made from room temperature superconducting magnets to fling small darts at incredible speeds. They have superior armor penetration characteristics but can be loaded to deal with soft targets.
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| ''Pistols, Rifles, Long Rifles, Railcannons''
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| '''Coilguns'''- Uses a series of electromagnetic coils (go figure, again) to heft large projectiles that would normally require a much longer barrel.
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| ''Coil Launchers (Grenade), Coil Launchers (Artillery)''
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| '''Superposed Load Weapons'''- Uses ammunition blocks stacked nose to tail inside a barrel (See the Metal Storm family of weapons). Firing is electronic, allowing the user to decide the number of rounds fired and even from which barrels. Characterized by a potentially incredible rate of fire. Ammunition Cassestes are bulky, being comprised of multiple disposable barrels and the blocks inside of them.
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| ''Pistols, SMGs, Assault Rifles, Machine Guns, Grenade Launchers''
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| '''Caseless Weapons'''- Uses a simple improvement on modern cased ammunition, each round is made from a bulet enclosed in propellant (See the Heckler and Koch G11 Rifle). Since there is no need to eject spent casings the rate of fire is commensurately higher than a cased weapon, though still no where near as great as that of a Superposed load gun. The firing mechanism is also somewhat more complex than most other weapons.
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| ''Pistols, SMGs, Assault Rifles, Machine Guns, Shotguns''
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| '''Cased Weapons'''- More or less any conventional modern firearm. A firing pin strikes a percussion cap in a metal cartridge, igniting the encased powder and propelling a bullet out of the barrel. Even though this is the closest there is to modern firearms in terms of function the cased ammunition is still comparatively exotic, often using telescoping or polymer cases rather than the conventional brass.
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| ''(In addition to most actual modern weapons) Rotary Shotguns, Rotary Cannons, Auto Cannons, Shotgun Pistols''
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| '''Other Stuff'''- Anything that doesn't fit above.
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| ''Flamethrowers (compressed gas & jellied fuel), Sound Based Riot Guns, Automatic Hypo-Dart Gun, LoSAT/LoSAA Missiles (Line of Sight Anti-Tank/Air Missiles)''
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| =Vehicles and Travel=
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| ==Land==
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| Land travel ACE takes many forms. Much of the transportation a Delver team might be able to lay hands on is similar to what can be found in earlier ages. Solar powered trucks and off road jeeps are a favorite of some teams, both for their terrain handling and reliability. In some urban areas automated cabs are still in operation, sitting on the curb waiting for passengers that never come. Big aggressive motorcycles and sports cars are of course still present, although the more utilitarian settlers sneer at them. For the stealthy types, ultra light collapsible bicycles equipped with piezoelectric cells allow for powered cruising or silent pedaling along the streets. A recent invention is the so called Signal Truck, a semi truck is armored up and filled with communications equipment and whatever other handy gear is available, allowing a Delver Team with the resources to maintain it a forward command and control center.
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| More exotic forms of locomotion do exist. Along the east coast of the United States, much of Europe and in Japan city wide lev roads were created, allowing anyone with a properly equipped vehicle a swift and bump free ride. The extension of this technology is the enormous resource hauling lev train lines that crisscross Incorporated Territories. The hustle and bustle of Oasis in South Africa or the dead silent train yards of Novaya Sibir are two hubs for such travel, although the former is understandably more popular than the latter.
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| The most iconic way to move ACE is via legged transport. In the early years of corporate reign a German engineering firm joined forces with an American military concern and a Japanese synthetic materials and robotics lab. The powerhouse conglomerate became known as Armacor, and the invention that catapulted them to the forefront of defense contracting was the legged tank. Advances in fine control robotics and the ability to synthesize near frictionless materials allowed for the production of very quick and immensely powerful servos. Biological engineering allowed the growth of a combination of Kevlar and muscle fiber that could be molded and woven into a variety of useful shapes. Combining their own advances with new technologies involving uploaded consciousness and man/machine interfaces Armacor created a way to make large armored vehicles useful in urban warfare. Their legged tanks could scale rubble and change direction with incredible speed for something their size. Soon other corps got hold of the technology and whole families of legged vehicles came into being.
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| While Armacor’s first efforts were hugely powerful tanks that could easily go toe to toe with modern MBTs and come out on top, other companies filled various niches with the new vehicles. Personnel carriers that could navigate any terrain, smaller attack vehicles equipped with nanotube pitons for assaulting mountains and skyscrapers with equal ease. The powerful servos and synthetic musculature were combined with new types of ceramic armors and solar cells to create prolonged operation power armors. Infantry scale protection advanced by leaps and bounds.
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| ==Air==
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| Like land transit the traditional methods of air travel are still around, acquiring everything from a Cessna to an old milsurp Mi-24 Hind to even a 747 can be accomplished if one looks hard enough. In terms of new technology, however, air travel has evolved in several major sectors. The most obvious to anyone living ACE is the prevalence of nimble, high speed VTOL aircraft as a means of transportation. The advances in materials sciences and production that were made due to the introduction of nanofabriction allowed the creation of lighter, more powerful and all together much more efficient aircraft of all stripes. VTOLs benefited from strong, but lightweight airframes, and advances like the shrouded rotor that turned via the use of linear motors rather than a traditional turbojet engine, lowering heat and noise signatures to negligible levels. Coupled with advanced computers and some of the same servo/synthetic muscle architecture that made legged vehicles possible it became much easier for these vehicles to safely switch between vertical and horizontal flight configurations rapidly and remain stable. This allowed for the creation of cargo and troop transports larger than anything that could pull into a hover in previous eras of engineering. Additionally, Close Air Support aircraft became a terror to behold. Quick, almost unnaturally agile, heavily armored and armed to the teeth, these craft could sit on station for hours, gliding on collapsible wings made from memory material and thin carbon tube spines. They could descend without warning, gliding in on an attack vector, retracting their wings and pulling out of a dive into a hover in moments, the only announcement of their arrival being rotor wash, rocket exhaust plumes and cannon fire.
| | =[[Nutopia:Locations|Locations]]= |
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| While VTOL craft gained prevalence as the chief means of transport and aerial combat, more "traditional" airframes maintained a niche in the areas of heavy transport, high speed travel and air superiority. Heavy fixed wing transports served to lift goods that needed speed or flexibility that sea or rail transport could not provide. Private supersonic aircraft gained some ground, along with novelties like low orbit "puddle jumpers" that could provide around the world service in a couple of hours. Both cargo and personal transport were typically handled by drones; the most radical advancements took place in the military sector. The invention of CSC technology meant that the capabilities of an aircraft were no longer restricted by the physical limits of the pilot. Only the airframes intrinsic ability to survive high speed maneuvering held them back. Soon craft capable of cruising at hypersonic speeds became the norm, streaking across the sky using scramjets and aerospike boosters. The difficulty of maneuvering at such extreme speeds using current control surfaces was countered by a comeback of variable geometry technology, aided by the same advances that had made improved VTOL flight possible. Vectored thrust and large numbers of articulated control surfaces allowed craft the size of a school bus to flight through the sky like a mach 5 humming bird. Individually these craft represented a great investment of resources, and their defensive measures reflected that. radar deflection was of course a must, as was a refractive coating that made the craft difficult to lase properly. Decoy drones and nanochaff designed to play hell with nearly any tracking method imaginable were also common features. With armament ranging from cruise missiles and small diameter bombs to scramjet AA missiles and railcannons the most powerful attack aircraft of the end days of the Common era were by many metrics the most powerful military machines in existence.
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| The final and most radical permutations were individual flight capability and the reemergence of such novelties as the Vacuum Envelope. Short range individual flight could be attained by a number of means. While such ostentatious methods as biomodding for massive bird or bat wings were not unheard of those lay more in the realm of fashion statement than practical method of mobility. Far more common were collapsible ultralight craft that could be broken down and folded into something the size of an overlarge golf caddy, allowing leisurely touring or covert egress at a moments notice. The most advanced form of that technology was actually developed after the Fall, originating from the heights of South Africa's Spire settlement. A combination of a dedicated VI, a very small monotask maker and a few muscle/servo motors allowed for the creation of a set of the same glider wings used by some VTOL craft, but in a package the size of a small hardened backpack. On their own these flight packs allowed up to 300 pounds to drift gracefully through the air, coupled with miniaturized LMR nacels a person with such a rig could attain actual flight. The Vacuum Envelope, on the other hand, is with one notable exception very much a novelty. Maintaining a vacuum within a large envelope was a technology only made possible through the use of carbon nanotube construction, and then at no small cost. The blimps and zeppelins that could be created with this technology exhibited buoyancy greater than that which any normal lighter than air craft could provide, but they were simply not cost effective as anything more than a toy of the idle rich. Such things as aerial yachts or zeppelin cruises did exist, but in limited numbers. The greatest achievement of the technology would only become widely known after the Fall. Armacor had experimented extensively with the idea, and the penultimate result of their research was a prototype airborne aircraft carrier known as "The Hive". Comprised of a massive network of vacuum envelopes and huge LMR nacels The Hive is powered by solar surfaces as well as its own miniature fission reactor. Its intended purpose was to allow VTOL craft to have a roost that allowed them to refuel, rearm and repair, and could move along with them in an evolving battlefront. Shortly before the base commanding the flying structure disappeared in a flash of nuclear flame it was given a default patrol order, and now it floats lazily over northern Europe on a constant circuit. A number of mercenary VTOLs have taken up residence in its hangars, using it as a raiding base. Assaulting it directly has proved extremely difficult, not only due to the mercs residing upon it, but the automated point defense turrets and missiles, as well as an experimental magnetic effector that purportedly is capable of actually bending the trajectory of railgun projectiles. In light of that and the tendency of the resident mercs to pillage most anything in the immediate area surrounding the slow moving station the standard policy has simply become one of avoidance. The station moves in predictable patterns, and just moving away from it is the easiest method of preventing danger. However, after 25 years of nomadic lifestyle many are beginning to favor some sort of attack, tired of picking up stakes as soon as the Hive comes to call.
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| During the fall the central command structure of the mercs collapsed nearly instantly which prevented them from organizing an credible resistance. By the time a provisional chain of command was re-established it was already too late: the corporations had lost, they just refused to admit it. Before the collapse of the last holdout of organized corporate resistance, many surviving mercs were given a standing order to destroy any rebels encountered. Now after nearly two decades after the fall very few still follow that directive, as most of them have realized that the new world order is here to stay and there is nothing they can do about it anymore. | | During the fall the central command structure of the mercs collapsed nearly instantly which prevented them from organizing any credible resistance. By the time a provisional chain of command was re-established it was already too late: the corporations had lost, they just refused to admit it. Before the collapse of the last holdout of organized corporate resistance, many surviving mercs were given a standing order to destroy any rebels encountered. Now nearly two decades after the fall very few still follow that directive, as most of them have realized that the new world order is here to stay and there is nothing they can do about it anymore. |
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| Soon after the fall the scattered merc units began to re-organize, and at first the last order of their now mostly dead corporate masters were a natural thing to follow as the new settlements were poorly defended and raiding was very rewarding. But soon thing began to change the settlements began to have better fixed defenses and more trained militia. Sensing the change in the winds there were increasing amount of mercs that hired their services to defend the settlements. Things took an turn for even worse for the mercs with the appearance of delvers, the delvers competed for the same salvage and spare parts as the mercs. While the delvers weren't as well equipped or experienced as the mercs, their greater numbers began to wear down them down. The last nail to the mercs coffin was the organized an common defense for settlements and first after-fall cities, based around fast VTOL transports that could rapidly deploy reinforcement to any settlements under attack. | | Soon after the fall the scattered merc units began to re-organize, and at first the last order of their now mostly dead corporate masters were a natural thing to follow as the new settlements were poorly defended and raiding was very rewarding. But soon thing began to change the settlements began to have better fixed defenses and more trained militia. Sensing the change in the winds there were increasing amount of mercs that hired their services to defend the settlements. Things took an turn for even worse for the mercs with the appearance of delvers, the delvers competed for the same salvage and spare parts as the mercs. While the delvers weren't as well equipped or experienced as the mercs, their greater numbers began to wear down them down. The last nail to the mercs coffin was the organized an common defense for settlements and first after-fall cities, based around fast VTOL transports that could rapidly deploy reinforcement to any settlements under attack. |
Nutopia: a world in ruin. A world of hope.[edit | edit source]
Without a doubt, the most pivotal movement in the early 21st century was the accelerated curve of technological advancement known collectively by trend watchers and futurists the world over as the Technological Singularity. As it rushed onward, much debate was had whether the sweeping changes it would doubtless bring would create a New Eden, or a Hell on Earth.
The truth would be something less dramatic. Technological advancements of those early years mingled with the wounds of history and grew into events that precipitated radical, unforeseen shifts in the global political structure. The notion of a Corporate state, once the province of speculative fiction, became stark reality. Not every existant state was gobbled up by the entities of industry, but a good portion of what had once been ruled by monarchs, dictators, parliaments and presidents stood instead beneath CEOs and Board Committees. The world over instability spread, but the uneasy malaise between the new Corporate States and their traditional counterparts was assuaged somewhat by the wonders of modern technology.
Safe gene-modded crops fed millions who would once have starved, and the construction of a world wide infosphere allowed media complacence to be broadcast directly into the homes, if not heads, of much of the species. While questions were asked about the cost of the seeming peace, about the slow death of privacy and self determination in the name of safety, most ignored these troublesome issues. After all, as the Inquisitor said, "where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread?" The technologies that might have liberated man from the bondage of war, famine, disease, or even death itself stagnated, bottle-necked and rationed by corporations and governments alike. There was no profit in a cure to the ailments that shaped human conflict, only temporary treatment could generate repeat business, engender dependence. Some in control acted in order to stay in the black, others simply to stay in power, the ends long ago forsaken in favor of self sustaining means. The Curve, once seemingly inexorable, found itself slowed.
Still humanity crept closer to the Singularity, although the global limbo seemed to be drifting more towards a hellscape than a utopia. Finally, however, the tension that had been steadily building right along with the curve burst its seems, and the world devolved into a planetary conflict. In an event commonly referred to as The Fall long standing hatreds between governments, corporations, and the subjects of each erupted into violence. Border conflicts went hot, riots spilled into the streets, cities burned, entire militaries mobilized and became engulfed in conflict. It was a global cataclysm of war on a scale history had never seen before, and one that the species was lucky to emerge from.
The humanity that dragged itself through the other side of the firestorm saw a world changed in a matter of months, or in some places a matter of seconds. Most corporate states were in shambles, torn apart by infighting and revolutionaries of a hundred different creeds. The U-States hadn't fared much better, many shutting their borders in an effort to quell internal distress, or simply in fear of the new world beyond their walls. The setback to the evolution of the species was a major one, the Singularity kneecapped with thermonuclear force.
Many call the time after The Fall "ACE", After the Common Era. Humanity has had 25 years to settle into the ashes of its old form, but whether a heaven or hell will be made of the wreckage remains to be seen. The men and women who make their lives in the ruins will be the ones to determine, in a very real way, the course of Humanity. Will The Fall merely be the catalyst for a slow, agonizing extinction? Or will we struggle through the birthing pains into a new being, finally attaining the next step in our combined journey. These are questions that will be answered by the choices of individuals with the will to decide who and what they are, what they want the world around them to be. This is the world of NUtopia.
Recorded from an interview with noted hiver luminary Anton Tokarev from his home in Spire
It's 25 ACE, after the common era, after the Corps fell.
Well, they didn't fall, we toppled them. After a hundred years of toiling and striving we finally got back what we wanted. We got back our freedom, we became relevant again.
The Corps were ironclad. We were well and truly theirs. Those of us that weren't taken in the night and modded beyond recognition for some impossibly niche task were worked to death compiling data. We created and slaved and toiled for a system that existed to perpetuate itself. New skin colors and hair styles that none of us would ever see. Our minds were worn down to nothing for the pleasure of one tenth of a percent of the population.
They were well protected from all forms of attack. Their 'bots and Mercs protected them from the few unincorporated nations and from each other, but they neglected their foundations. The Global Network was truly ubiquitous. Its transmitters float in the stratosphere and permeate the crust; our Earth is a literal infosphere. The formulations of a rebellion flowed along the back channels. It allowed us to execute perfectly coordinated insurrection. One day the cogs, the gears that moved their massive industries and bureaucracies, Us, rose up. We moved outside their machinery and brought it down.
There were losses. In some places atomics were detonated in their silos as the last spiteful acts of newly impotent CEOs. 'Bots were given liquidation orders, Mercs set loose. 5 years of strife followed, and with it went 5% of the earth's livable surface. 1, 201, 372, 459 people died. We know because everyone was tracked. It was one of the first things we did away with. We've actually got kids being born now without transponder chips, and they'll never have them. The Unincorporated States still exist, and many ran to them after The Corps Fell. Some people simply couldn't handle a life without someone else determining its structure. A surprising number of us, however, stayed in the wastes.
We are creating something new amongst the wreckage of the past century. There are of course dangers, simple scarcity being the biggest threat. For this we have The Delvers, individuals of unique capability and motivation who dive into forgotten supply depots and ammo dumps, plumbing the treasures of the last age. Some protect our communities from still roving 'Bots and Mercs, and from those of us who find it easier to prey on isolated communities than contribute.
It is a new age; we are for the first time in the history of the species a globally connected collective of true individuals. We are clawing our way out the ashes of the worst atrocity this planet has ever seen like a new born phoenix, and we are creating something wonderful.
We are, for perhaps the first time, Human.
This is the world of Nutopia. At some point in the early 21st century the world’s governments were almost entirely supplanted by powerful corporations who where more than happy to step in when traditional authorities couldn’t keep up with the implications of the technological leaps and bounds that the young millennium saw. However, the age of progress grew into a nightmare.
The corporations grew ever larger and more powerful, and more and more paranoid. They themselves then fell to the inexorable march of technological progress, the world wide infosphere they had created serving as the soil in which a global rebellion took root.
The survivors of the terrible rebellion and the age of oppression that preceded it are of a new mind They value freedom in its purest forms, and know well the dangers of unchecked power.
For all the hatred we pour on them, it’s important to note that without the Corps we could never have gotten here. It was their technology that facilitated this next step in history. It was the lessons that they taught us, lessons that all saw and none can forget, that brought us out of the darkness.
Humanity has no doubt had its share of dictators and tyrants, but this is the first time that the whole world was integral in their destruction, and evidence of that war is etched across the surface of the planet. Abandoned cities and nuclear craters serve as surgery scars to remind us of what we had to do to excise the cancer of oppression and forced subservience.
Source unknown, supposedly a communique issued on a sealed military channel, allegedly by infamous CSC pilot Red Widow
Back before the Fall, you were the shit. The finest, most psychologically stable, tried and tested not to go insane even as the lab techs crammed more and more implants into your skull, overloading your brain with information. Unwaveringly loyal, unceasingly lethal. You fought in the Hidden Wars, the conflicts that didn't exist in the official records. You dueled with rival companies' Mercs in arctic wastelands, in desert heat, in space and underwater. When the shit really hit the fan, they brought you out to suppress riots back home and you watched the little men scream and run from the mere sight of you. You felt divine. And why not, do you believe in God? Now imagine that God spoke to you, personally. She upgraded you, made you stronger, had you enact her will. But it was more than that. She was always there, with words of love and encouragement and comfort. Then the fall comes and God falls silent, murdered by usurpers, the enemies of civilization.
Then they approached you. The new victors. The communities. The God killers. They invited you to their new free utopia, their uplinked, organic, low-tech, democratic little enclave of peace and prosperity and hope...
And you took one look at that and said fuck it. Fuck the anarchists, the globalists, the oh-so-helpful new government officials and their let's-get-along tripe. Fuck the way they look at you as you stroll down the market street. Fuck the inquisitive Operators and their "so where were you in -32?". Fuck'em and let it all rot.
So you and your unit left. For the wasteland, where true freedom is won with the railgun barrel and the hydraulic claw, where you wander the old ruins of your former makers for maintenance and spares and kill your old comrades who have gone insane from isolation and abandonment. When death is around the corner, that's when you're truly alive. This is how it's always been.
And you're happy. There's Jane, and while the both of you left your humanity on operating tables, sometimes when you make camp for the night and catch a few minutes downtime, you interface, and online your avatars looks just like you did in basic training, 50 years ago. And you smile at each other as you embrace, and you think... This can go on forever. If you can fight and if you can win... You'll be immortal.
Nutopia:Rules
wip. Information being retrieved and formatted from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=xm5yzxw5udvk9rllab3kurk8&page=1#4
All works created and/or carefully stolen by our good friends Nutopia_Flufffag, Pengu1n, fortheloolz, quicksilver (especially for putting things together on the tvtropes site), and teka
. If you feel you should be on this list, let me know, i am forgetful. if you don't want your name attached to this abomination.. too bad.. mwahaha.
sup/tg/ Thread List:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/4393640
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/4401683
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/4419141
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5165430
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5179055
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5459874
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/7310859
"Merc" is the blanket term used to refer to the most elite, most heavily modified, and often most brutal soldiers the corporations had at their command. The name is derivative of the fact that many of these corporations had Private Military Companies on the payroll for security, or even as wholly owned subsidiaries. As advances in warfare and the way it was fought continued to blossom, the sacrifices that militaries asked of their best men became ever more extreme. The extensive body modification now common after the Fall was pioneered amongst the armed forces of the world first. Extensive research into prosthetics yielded replacement limbs and even organs indistinguishable from their original counterparts, or even with improved capabilities. The most extensive modifications naturally found their way to those with need of them in an operational capacity. Special forces who could look into the infrared spectrum at will, mountain troops with enhanced endurance and EOD technicians with blast resistant endoskeletons.
Northrop Grumman were the first, however, to successfully implement the most extreme modification available in terms of cybernetic and biological modification. An Illium-Russo Conglomerate fighter ace was badly injured in a simple car accident, to the extent that not even the most advanced cybernetic augmentation could save her. Under dubious circumstances she was transported to an American medical facility. There her brain, brain stem and a few inches of healthy spine were sustained in a specially designed cask. The system allowed the pilot to control the entire airframe with her mind, changing course and lining up targets at the speed of thought while being able to pull incredible maneuvers without fear of blacking out, the only restriction on agility being the strength of the airframe.
The Cerebral Suspension Cask (or as it is or commonly known the "Brain-in-a-jar" or "Headcase") was a breakthrough of such magnitude that it, and its descendant Upload technology, warrant their own discussion. Suffice to say the military applications were incredible. Experienced troops could come back from nearly any injury, could download their memories for use in the training of other personnel, and had more command of their given chassis than any unmodified pilot. Vehicles were designed with the capability of CSC pilots in mind, leading to a great increase in the power and complexity of land and air vehicles. The process and its results were proven most publicly in a famous incident during the NATO wargames, when that same Illium Pilot, flying a never before seen variable geometry, linear aerospike propelled stealth aircraft disabled fourteen veteran (but unmodified) pilots in conventional fighters in less than five minutes in a "cannons only" dogfight.
As corporate control strengthened, the corporate mercenaries at their command made more and more use of what would become their signature modification. Pure human piloted military vehicles became alternately rarities or relics. Even non-CSC pilots used extensive uplinks to their cortical stacks to achieve the same effectiveness, and they were not preferred, their bodies took up space that might be used for armor and ammunition after all. Even the infantry began to change in major ways, bodies specialized for their given rules to such extreme degrees that they were barely recognizable as human. Armacor made famous through a television series their Paladin assault teams, 9 foot tall power armored knights fighting crime, saving hostages and shooting away to the rooftops on high powered grapple lines. The truth of the late night abductions or the messy espionage raids would only become known later. Illium went the biological route, turning the various Russian special forces into purposefully terrifying genetic hybrids. MVD trackers armed with dog noses and bat ears could hunt by a number of unlikely means, while genetically bulked hulks could tear a normal man limb from limb with ease. The Spetsnaz, ever in love with the capability for a surprise attack, even took to a number of non-standard modifications like venom injecting fangs or claws, or skin that could excrete slippery or acidic coatings.
Regardless of their shape or size, "Merc" became the term that referred to these extremely modified corporate troops. Those that remain active, still under the sway of corporate hard coding and brainwashing or simply possessed of a bloodthirsty attitude, are the most dangerous threat to physical survival that any Delver is likely to face. Conversely, those that have overcome their training and wish to assist in hauling humanity from the ashes can be an incredibly powerful ally.
During the fall the central command structure of the mercs collapsed nearly instantly which prevented them from organizing any credible resistance. By the time a provisional chain of command was re-established it was already too late: the corporations had lost, they just refused to admit it. Before the collapse of the last holdout of organized corporate resistance, many surviving mercs were given a standing order to destroy any rebels encountered. Now nearly two decades after the fall very few still follow that directive, as most of them have realized that the new world order is here to stay and there is nothing they can do about it anymore.
Soon after the fall the scattered merc units began to re-organize, and at first the last order of their now mostly dead corporate masters were a natural thing to follow as the new settlements were poorly defended and raiding was very rewarding. But soon thing began to change the settlements began to have better fixed defenses and more trained militia. Sensing the change in the winds there were increasing amount of mercs that hired their services to defend the settlements. Things took an turn for even worse for the mercs with the appearance of delvers, the delvers competed for the same salvage and spare parts as the mercs. While the delvers weren't as well equipped or experienced as the mercs, their greater numbers began to wear down them down. The last nail to the mercs coffin was the organized an common defense for settlements and first after-fall cities, based around fast VTOL transports that could rapidly deploy reinforcement to any settlements under attack.
These days an slight majority of the mercs are either hiring themselves to the settlements for maintenance or equipment or are part of delving teams. In any cyborg city like The Junkyard or similar you can guarantee that in the bar there is an old, beat-up hardshell merc going on about the "good old days" to anyone who will listen. They tell stories about their pre-fall exploits under the corporations and stories about vast, invincible, unstoppable, burning and pillaging hordes of state-of-the-art killing machines. Those honest-to-flying spaghetti monster raider mercs that refuse to trade or barter are an dying breed, but while no means rare they are slowly being wiped out by delvers or simply by the lack of salvageable spare parts.
When the corps ruled Mercs were, as now, the greatest fear of the common citizen. Massive vehicles and and armors that prowled the streets and leveled homes on a whim. There were, however, a more secretive kind of hired muscle employed and engineered by the corporations; Biomercs.
Designed and deployed for missions where a 126 ton thinktank just wasn't the right tool for the job, Biomercs were the Corp's hitmen and assassins. Rigged with the latest and best biomods and cybernetic parts most Biomercs would never pass as human. Animal limbs and organs along with weaponized appendages created perfect snipers and close range massacre artists. They specialized in pin point precision and high speed attacks.
Perhaps even more frightening were the covert operatives. Externally a normal human, and internally shielded so that cursory scans will turn up nothing amiss, covert biomercs were the ultimate tools of deadly infiltration.
Nowadays Biomercs are becoming less and less common. They were by their nature on the bleeding edge of genetic modification, and needed constant monitoring and medical assistance when not in the field. Most died or went insane after the fall from simple withdrawal symptoms. Those that managed to survive by finding caches of medical equipment are loathe to move far from their lairs except to fulfill their encoded desire for the hunt. The Coverts, to, are a dying breed. A good deal of them went active as soon as the Corps started to lose control and were killed in the ensuing violence. Most Communities are diligent enough to catch any trying to sneak in, and some will even allow in "reformed" coverts who have gotten over their old genetic imperatives and memetic commands.
- The Afganistan Expedition
Now Working on this.