A thread for text copied from the Core books, to provide background and color relevant to your adventures.

Message #02:  Neighborhood/Region:  South Shore
Message #03:  Business: MarsTech Inc
Message #04:  Business: Kesskorp Inc
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:34, Sun 12 July 2020.

Southern Shore
The aptly named Southern Shore area covers the land below the Albian River, running westward along its lower bank from Downtown. This stretch of suburban flat-land (known simply as “the Shore,” to city residents) is one of upper middle class family houses, surrounded by the schools, strip-malls, shops, and service conveniences that cater to their wants and needs.

Residents of the Shore are typically college-educated professionals, many of them working their first real job while raising their firstborn in their very first house. Every day, they send their kids off to a progressive-curriculum school, catch a bus or a car-pool to work, grab a quick Thai lunch between filing reports, then return home to begin the cycle anew.

While Shore residents represent an almost bewildering array of racial, ethnic, and religious demographics, they largely subscribe to the same covenant of suburban conventions. Hybrid vehicles, solar panels, and recycling bins are commonplace, as are designer dogs and youth soccer leagues. It is an area where more problems are dealt with by homeowner’s associations than the police department, and the head of the parent-teacher-student organization wields more practical power than the mayor.

The relatively affluent and highly populated Shore houses the workforce that forms the backbone of such important local concerns as MarsTech, Inc., Nolan Aircraft, and KessKorp. As such, it receives more than its share of attention from the local government and media. The seemingly constant parade of city politicians, patrol cars, and Action News Team vans ensure the Shore’s crime rates stay low, and any other municipal difficulties are swiftly brought to the public’s attention before being swiftly dealt with by the powers that be.


In the midst of all the Shore’s contented sameness lies a true city landmark, the Van Sant Drive-In, a still-operating ozoner founded in 1950 and now on the National Register of Historic Places. During the warmer months, families flock there to enjoy old-fashioned double-features, the playground, and the snack bar’s famed “Chihuahua” sandwich—a diet-destroying combination of corn tortillas, pimento cheese spread, onions, cabbage, chili, and jalapeno peppers

MarsTech
Emerald City went through a long economic slump in the eighties as the local paper and forestry industries cut back on their operations and closed mills, while at the same time the fishing industry declined.

Emerald City’s white knight appeared in the form of Maximilian Mars, the founder and CEO of MarsTech, which set up shop on the outskirts of Emerald City, where office and industrial space was relatively cheap.

Mars turned a “garage industry” of personal computers, software, and peripheral devices into a multi-billion dollar corporation and one of Emerald City’s largest employers. The success of MarsTech attracted other hightech businesses to the area and they, in turn, brought in businesses to serve the needs of their growing number of employees: highly educated, skilled, and typically well paid.

Ever since the success of MarsTech, Max Mars has been a fixture of Emerald City civic life, supporting local causes and giving generously to charity. His company has provided resources for schools, libraries, and civic centers, and everyone says Mars would be a sure bet for mayor, if he ever decided to give up that much power and prestige.

Like the rest of the country, the tech-sector in Emerald City saw tremendous growth in the last part of the 20th century with the boom in Internet-related businesses and startups, followed by the bursting of the Internet bubble and the collapse of a great many of those same startups. MarsTech endured, too large to fall victim to such shifts in the market, and well positioned to buy up some of those failing companies to expand its portfolio.

In more recent years, with the growth of mobile computing technology, tech is on the rise in Emerald City once more, and MarsTech is blazing the way
This message was last edited by the player at 02:28, Sun 12 July 2020.

KessKorp
Kessler Industrial Technology (K.I.T.), which does business as, and is more commonly known as, KessKorp, is one of the anchors of Emerald City’s “Silicon Circle” of tech companies.

It was founded in the late 1990s by Dr. Arwin Kessler, a former AEGIS R&D section chief who left the agency a step ahead of charges for numerous ethics violations.

Since its founding, the company has swiftly grown into a powerful multinational, with facilities in over three dozen countries and cutting-edge interests ranging from computerized microelectronics and exotic metallurgy to pharmacology and biochemical engineering.

KessKorp is one of MarsTech’s largest rivals and was recently outed by a team of investigative journalists as the shadowy backer for a failed buy-out attempt targeting ASTRO Labs.

KessKorp is also Emerald City’s biggest polluter (a rap more culpable, more covert companies are happy to see KessKorp take). The public relations fallout has been intense, so much so that protesting KessKorp is practically a required course at ECU (Emerald City University).