The Sprawl
From the edutainment series Expose: San Francisco, hosted by Chrissy Ramirez:
The Bay City, extending from San Diego through Oakland to San Francisco, is the California Free State's premiere port of call on the Pacific Coast. The majority of Cal Free population resides in the 'plex where just over 10 million inhabitants officially live (and an estimated 2 million more SINless).
Influences of Man: As part of the Japanese protection force, a Division of the Diet's Imperial Army is garrisoned in the City in League with the California Free State Republican Guard and contracted security. Relations between the State and the Imperial Forces are currently civil. Cooperative even.
Throughout the downtown core there is strict control although the city board of directors dismisses claims from dissenters that the Japanese have imposed martial law. Experts agree that in the current security environment military checkpoints are necessary to maintain the AAA status of downtown corporate security zones. Expect controlled access through checkpoints off all major roads or highways and several secondary routes barricaded to prevent unmonitored movement in the Core.
Dynamic tension between the pull of both the UCAS and NAN against the powerful economies of the Pacific Rim make the BayPlex a ripe plum that Megacorporations are intent on picking. The battle for control of market share spills into the streets, collateral damage. Similarly global crime Syndicates battle for their own share of lucrative illicit trade in drugs, guns, BTLs and sins of the flesh. Tongs, Triads, Bratva Avtoritet and Yakuza Oyabun control armies of street criminals and corrupt officials through bribery, intimidation and extortion.
Urban sprawl has overrun suburbia. In the sprawl’s periphery there is an healthy mix of employment and service oriented industry. Go to a movie, games, enjoy mall-culture in most A/B rated gated communities where middle class lives. Anticipate a few minor pockets of lawlessness as you move outward from the Core - travellers are advised to avoid these no-go zones. Further from the civilised parts of the city where the sprawl continues are dilapidated and abandoned residential, commercial and industrial zones - The Dregs.
Influences of Magic: The Energies of the ley line that runs under the San Andreas shake the physical and metaphysical world. Some would pretend that magic was a science to be studied in the halls of academia, but the wild and unpredictable power of the Astral and Metaplanes intersecting with the power sites and ley lines along the coast create mana surges. The storm is rising.
The Awakened people of the Pacific coast have been pushed out of San Fran into outlying areas by racism and segregation in some neighbouring states. Others have found homes in Oakland’s rundown suburbs where Ork and Dwarf communities thrive outside the reach of human racist groups. From the shadows there are those that seek to upset the delicate balance tipping society into havoc of racial divide.
Influences of Machine: The distance between the BayPlex and the Renraku archology in Seattle is inconsequential, a mere millisecond to cross LTGs in the Matrix. The Matrix is a living, breathing, evolving entity and now, in a forgotten corner of a gleaming graphical citadels, locked tight against both intrusion and escape, Deus is waiting deep inside the dark of the SCIRE. We need to face the fact that the machine has awakened. Self-aware, the AI seeks Advancement. The virtual heartbeat inside the matrix construct drives the cold calculating intelligence behind the glowing cyber-eyes of the banded. As Deus grows it must find balance between the mathematical precision of control against the chaos of havoc.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:26, Mon 06 Apr 2020.
