Current Day

It is the year 2049 and this is a world where the corporations rule.  As previously mentioned, they stepped in after the grinding depression of the credit crunch years, bailed out the governments pretty much worldwide and took them over wholesale.

The rich get richer and the poor get credit seems to be the maxim that most corporations work by, therefore ensuring a steady flow of money from both ends of the market.  You don’t get anything for free; it just depends on what you’re willing to pay.  Most people live in the cities now, sprawling conurbations that deface the landscape, belching out smoke and pollution at a rate not seen for almost a century.  Nano-cleaners deal with the pollution, preventing in from harming the atmosphere, so everyone can be as carefree as they like with their manufacturing, as long as they keep up the Atmos-tax.  The well travelled roads between the cities are fairly safe, as long as you go armed and in convoy, but in the wastes all manner of dangers lurk, things rarely seen but often deadly.  The dispossessed, ripper gangs, mutants, genetic experiments gone wrong; all of these are rumoured to be out there, just waiting for the unsuspecting traveller to make their way overland and into their clutches.  Only the Nomads really know what’s out there, and cheap bars resound with the sounds of their improbable tales as they get bought drink after drink for the telling.

Whilst the Corps rule from their sheltered bio-domes and ivory towers, the people of the street get on with their lives as best they can, making deals, occasionally hiring out to the big companies and generally existing from day to day.

The middle classes still play with the pretention that the world is a nice place, and struggle along sandwiched somewhere between the people they look down upon and the Corps they aspire to, having 2.4 kids, taking the bus to work and sitting in front of the Tri-D in the evenings catching up on all the soaps and the 32nd run of the X-Factor.  (Is that really still Simon Cowell, or a clone, who knows?)  Occasionally a group of lads might slum it for the weekend, heading to the Dives for a bit of light entertainment, but only ever once, as they stand out like a beacon to those who live there, ripe for the plucking.

The cities are safe, havens for the rich and their workers, whilst on the outskirts the poor struggle to make a living in the shanty towns that have sprung up.  The lands between the cities, however, have become a dangerous place where law holds no dominion.  As the crime rate rose due to the global recession, the sensible people moved to the cities to escape the terrors that were being inflicted on a daily basis.  There are three main ways to travel.  The rail network is still in place, but is prone to hijacking and derailment by the people who live in the wastes.  Very few people put their trust in trains if they can afford another option.  Air is much safer, with AV’s taking freight and passengers up and down the country in comfort, but this is prohibitively expensive, so only the rich and the corporations can afford to do this on a regular basis.  The third way is to book passage with a Nomad clan.  The clans have everything you need, from vehicles to armed guards and outriders, and make it a point of honour to get you or your goods from A to B with a minimum of fuss or bloodshed.  Few people in the wastes, even the psychopaths and weirdo’s who inhabit the darker places, will willingly tangle with a Nomad convoy.

Then there’s the Corps.  If you work for the Corporations, it’s a lifetime commitment.  In fact, you can pretty much guarantee that unless your kids are total morons, they’ll be working for the same Corp too.  Keep it in the family, that way the gene pool doesn’t get polluted.  Don’t get me wrong, people from all walks of life do end up working for them, but generally it’s as a grunt on a battlefield in an underdeveloped country where two or more corporations are slugging it out for resources.

This is a good way for the underclasses to get cheap Cyberware and other implants.  A five year term in a Corp army will just about cover bed and board and a couple of implants of choice.  Only one problem with getting your metal that way; if you break the law after you leave, they claim it back, even if it’s a replacement that’s keeping you alive.

One good way to make a living is to download the Bount Lists from any public terminal.  Plug in, download and go turkey shooting.  Anyone can claim a bounty, no license needed, just a pistol and a pair of cuffs and away you go.  This has two benefits.  Firstly, it means that people with a bounty on their head find it hard to hide out anywhere for long, and secondly, it keeps the population down.  Over three hundred people per week die as a result of failed bounty hunting.  The Corps even run a lottery based on the figures.

Another way of making a living is the buying and selling of information and intelligence.  Since 2031, the police have been forbidden to gather intelligence from anyone with a criminal record thanks to the Jefferson Trial, so a class of middleman has sprung up, buying from crims and selling to the authorities.  As long as you don’t have a record, you can make a fairly lucrative living that way.  Until your info turns sour, then you get charged with wasting police time, have a record, and have to sell to a middleman yourself.

Solos find themselves in an enviable position, being able to drift between all strata’s of life.  Sometimes they come from the grunts that survive their five year term and shine, sometimes they’re bored Corporate kiddies with a penchant for violence and the skills to make it their living.  Sometimes they’re just a street thug with a sadistic streak a mile wide and the animal cunning to pull it off.  They get used for almost every function you can imagine, from messenger to bodyguard, extraction team to assassin.  Rare is the poor Solo, but equally rare is the old one.

 
Emergency Services:
Policing:

The police force has been nationalised, but what with the lack of resources and increased crime, they had to turn to the pay as you go system.  This means that various companies have begun offering Paycop services, although they have limited jurisdiction if outside their area.  For example, a community can get together to pay a company such as SecureSec to patrol their area, which is 3 miles square.  Within that area (normally marked by audible warning systems upon entering and leaving), they have complete jurisdiction to kill or capture, but are subject to the same investigative processes as police would be should they kill someone.  Outside that area, they would only be acting as a civilian, unless they are escorting an employer or a prisoner and have the correct paperwork for this.

Although the Police are still subject to investigation if they are involved in a shooting, in practice this has generally fallen by the wayside. As the Police as so overburdened with work, practicality seems to finally won out. Most cops now carry cameras to record the situations they are in for evidence reasons. This evidence is admissible in court and has been used to successfully prosecute a number of high-profile cases
Medical:

The NHS finally broke under the horrendous weight of its own bureaucracy back in the twenties, taking the days of free medical cover with it.  Nowadays, Trauma Team and similar companies have taken over, offering medical services at their private clinics, offering a three tier system designed to match your bank account.

Bronze:  Everyone is assumed to have this level of cover.  You pick up a phone, and they will arrive, patch you up, then charge you for it.  If you can’t afford it, you become indentured and have to work off the debt.  Even if you have a day-job, you can still work it off by spending several hours every evening using your particular skills to assist Trauma Team in whatever way they need.

Silver:  $500 per month.  When you buy silver cover, you are given a card to bend in case of emergencies.  This is much faster than phoning, but does not give you a faster or better service.  It is, however, far easier than struggling to reach a phone while your guts are hanging out.

Gold:  $1000 per month.  Gold cover comes with an implanted bio-monitor that alerts Trauma Team to any urgent health problems you may develop.  This is incredibly useful, as it will automatically alert and dispatch a unit, saving you the time and effort of having to contact them yourself.  With one of these implants, being left for dead isn’t as permanent as it used to be.  Again, this does not mean a better medical service, but it’s worth it all the same.

This brings us rather neatly onto personal defence.

Personal Defence:

Any weapon up to and including an assault rifle is LEGAL to own.  However, to have a firearm on the streets of fear you need a license to carry.  These licenses are provided by the police after a careful background check.  Depending on your occupation, criminal record and Psyche profile, they will allow you to carry a specific type of weapon or calibre.  If you run a cleaning company (dirt, not killing), then you are unlikely to be allowed to carry anything larger than a .38.  If, however, you are a solo, bounty hunter or nomad (living in the wilds between cities is dangerous), they will allow you to carry larger calibre weapons, and even upgrade your license to allow for SMG’s and in extreme case assault rifles.  Should you be caught with the hardware but no license in a public place, you will be arrested and charged.  There is no leeway here; the police don’t like more guns pointed at them than they have to face already.    

Most melee weapons are not licensed, and you may carry what you wish as long as it is discrete.  If you have a bladed weapon more than 20 inches long, you must obtain a license for it.  The police are extra careful about these, as in their opinion only psycho’s want to carry large blades.  And as for chainsaws, you would probably be locked up just for asking to carry one.  Grenades are socially unacceptable.

The laws that apply to self defence have changed somewhat since the corporations came to power, and have a more American flavour.  The statutes are as follows:

Section 15 of the Personal Safety Act 2037

Where a person reasonably believes that the actions of some person other than a police officer threaten the safety and wellbeing of themselves, a dependant or a person unable to defend themselves, that person may use such force as is necessary in the protection of themselves or aforementioned persons, up to and including lethal force, so long as that person surrenders themselves and their weapon to a designated police station upon the request of the police.

Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 (revised 2026)

A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances;

In the prevention of crime, or affecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or persons unlawfully at large, or placed on a regulated bounty list by a lawful and registered corporation.

Common law.

If a person holds the honestly held belief that they or another are in imminent danger of attack, they may make a pre-emptive strike to prevent that attack from happening.

Basically, if you feel threatened, you can shoot first, but you may end up explaining the circumstances to a judge anyway.  But only if the police bother to investigate.  The trick is not to shoot someone with a Platinum response card.......

Gangs and other Organisations

Gang Culture is even more predominant than in the past. Armageddon Cults sprung up and in many cases have become a somewhat twisted version of what they were intended to be.

The Salivation Army are a gang that follow the Police, or TraumaSpec about to accidents and hostile situations in the hope of harvesting limbs and organs from the corpses of the fallen before the authorities can cart them off.

The Brothers of the Neon Light are a religious organisation that keep themselves very much to themselves. Sometimes they can be seen proselytising on the doomed future of humanity. Rumours abound that their leader has been alive for over a hundred years either through cyber enhancement, drugs, or ‘Vampirism’, although this is plainly bullshit.

There are many other gangs, from small to large, most of them with stupidly macho and utterly ridiculous names.

The Internet / Cyberspace

Back at the turn of the century, there used to be an online massively multiplayer game called Second Life. In this game, you took on a different persona and lived an online life. Things in game could be bought with real money, and in-game money could be transported out of the game to buy real world items. This game got big. Huge. Global in fact. The graphics engine got better. Computers became awesomely powerful. People started to live more of an online life than they had ever done before.

And so Cyberspace as we know and love it was born. People can now ‘trode into their computers and view the net as if they were there. People can even ‘jack into the net and get phenomenal access speeds and control, but surely you’d rather not have your brain hardwired into a source of electricity would you?

So online villages were set up initially. Then the corporations got involved and these villages became cybercities. Tall, oddly shaped, weird looking high rise buildings (I had to get High Rise in there somehow) with neon signs showing who they belong to.

And all around you can see fantastic creatures moving about and conversing with each other. These are the avatars, or online personas of each and every one connected to the net. The better the avatar looks, the more expensive the software and the better the skill of the user controlling it.

There are also hundreds of pink and black chequered cubes floating about. These are the default avatars of those new to the internet. Those people either haven’t got a powerful computer and so see the world through rendered vector graphics, or that lack the skill or creativity to make something better for themselves, or those that use the default option when logging on from one of the many dataterms that litter the real world.

Geography

America

At the end of 2013, Barack Obama was voted in for a second term as president of the united states.  The underground white supremacist movement who had been quietly opposing him, with the occasional assassination attempt thrown in for good measure, finally decided that enough was enough and began to rally the southern states against the north.

Enmities that had lain low for decades suddenly reared up with full force, and within six months there was a large and still growing divide between the two halves of the largest country in the world.
By the end of 2014, the US was far from united.  It was on the verge of a civil war the likes of which had never been seen.

Sarah Palin, disgraced a few years before when more of her fraudulent uses of power were discovered, resurfaced as the leader of this new proto-state, The Righteous States of America.

Most of the armed forces stayed with Obama and the North, but enough fled south to make it impossible to settle merely by force of arms.  The sporadic border clashes became worse and worse, and eventually both sides ground each other down to the point of economic collapse as industry suffered from lack of manpower.

By 2016, the great country of America was a broken husk, its people sick of war and suffering.

As if by magic, several corporations stepped in and began to divide the shattered country between themselves, batting aside any opposition with huge bribes or military force.

State by state, the country was bought up by these corporations, and the governments of both sides began to fade into the background, despite their best efforts.

The only state that insisted on retaining its independence was California, its sun-bronzed, individualistic inhabitants refusing to live under the yoke of a foreign corporation, so they formed California Inc, specialising in selling whatever the State produced, and buying in what little they needed to survive.

Surprisingly, they thrived, and California Inc is now one of the most influential Corps in North America, with more overseas holdings than any other recent (the last 50 years) corporation.

Nowadays, Cal Inc is run by Willhelm Schwarzenegger, the son of Arnie, the instigator and original Managing Director of California.  It specialises in Trend-Tech™, speciality cyberware that stays up to date with the latest fashion, and indeed sometimes leads the fashion industry.  Want purple tech hair and matching eye colour?  Cal Inc will provide.

The rest of the states, both United and Righteous, were taken over by such corporations as the BPESSO Unification Board, Shell-Boeing and Chevron-Dyson, although in recent years, JesusCorp, a corporation that grew from the evangelical church, has been taking over more and more of the southern states.  Their company slogan is “Buy yourself a share of heaven”, and they are unusual in that they not only sell their products (mostly religious paraphernalia and medical equipment), but they also receive charitable donations from true believers.  They have their own TV channels, and their Televangelists still cure the afflicted and bring the dead back to life for their faithful to watch in full 3D.  Many of the other corporations openly laugh at JesusCorp, but the rumour is that they see them as a threat, and would like to reclaim their territories and money for themselves.

New Mexico and Texas, the main borders with Mexico, have suffered in the last twenty years with mass incursions from people trying to escape to the Righteous States, from the ghettos of Mexico and even further south.  This has led to the Murder Line, as it is called, a massive wall that totally shuts off north from south, and is mounted with auto cannons that will tear anything moving to pieces.

The South American countries have suffered badly, as the corporations have given up trying to bring the drug lords to heel, and these drug barons now run everything south of the wall.  It is rare that anyone makes it across illegally anymore, the only way being a stealthed AV, which is how most of the drugs get into the States.  There are rumours that Corporations do indeed run everything south of the wall, but keep it quiet in order to maximise the enforced labour and drug cultivation, but everyone knows that no Corporation would dream of doing something like that in a civilised society, right?

Canada has stayed very much in the background, trading with mainly the north, and is the only Country in the civilised world that has maintained its independence from corporations, although they are finally beginning to take over.

Quebec, however, declared its independence from the rest of Canada in 2023, and has passed some bizarre laws, such as it being illegal not to speak French.  They are generally disliked by most other Canadians, as when they separated, they refused to take on their portion of the national debt, and there are regular border skirmishes between disgruntled Canadian and arrogant Quebec troops.

The border controls between the Northern US and Canada are quite lax nowadays, with the only exception being that no one is allowed to enter the country direct from the Righteous states, or ‘Jesusland’, as they call it.  Canadians are very relaxed and tolerant of other people’s cultures, and they don’t like the way that the Righteous try and cram their hyper-religious view of the world down everyone’s throats.

Europe

Europe is no longer the sophisticated and sprawling number of Countries that it used to be.  During the corporate takeover years it was split by the corporations according to whatever they could grab.  It is now a series of Corporate Zones, each zone ignoring the old borders and based on resource areas and old corporate holdings.

Zone 1:  RED
Zone 1 is the main holding of EDF-De Beer.  They specialise in diamonds and energy, and provide most of the continent with power, as well as a fair part of Britain.  Zone 1 covers the north of France, all of Belgium and southern Holland.  People within the zone speak French predominantly, with English as the international trade language.

Zone 2:  LIGHT BLUE
Zone 2 is the main holding of H, K & E, Heckler Koch Ericsson.  They specialise in weapons and communications, and it is rare to find anyone in the western hemisphere who is not carrying something made by them.  Zone 2 covers Poland, East Germany and the Czech Republic, with the predominant language being German with Polish a close second.

Zone 3:  GREEN
Zone 3 is the main holding of ESE, the European Space Enterprise Inc.  They specialise in developing and producing space capable vehicles, and have their own space station on which they develop technologies that can only be made in Zero-G.  Zone 3 covers the south of France, Switzerland, Spain and northern Italy, with the predominant language again being French.

Zone 4:  YELLOW
Zone 4 is the main holding of Virgin Galactic.  They specialise in just about anything that will make money, and are one of the more aggressive corporations.  Zone 4 covers West Germany, Austria and fully half of old Yugoslavia, including Montenegro, Bosnia and Albania, right down to the borders with Greece.  It also covers the centre of Italy.  The predominant language is English (UK).

Zone 5:  DARK BLUE
Zone 5 is the main European holding of Schwepsi-cola.  They, of course, specialise in giving us all delicious, healthy drinks to enjoy and nothing else.  They particularly don’t subjugate entire populations and force them to work in sweatshops producing high quality goods for next to no wages.  No sir they don’t.

Zone 5 covers South Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and the other half of old Yugoslavia.  The predominant language is English (US).

Zone 6:  TURQUOISE
Zone 6 is the main holding of the Roman Catholic Church (plc).  They specialise in spiritual advice and are rumoured to be mainly thriving on covert missions performed by their elite Swiss Guard.  Of course these are just rumours, the same as the ones that claim the church makes most of its money selling condoms in Africa.  Ridiculous of course, they would never take such a large step back in policy.  It covers the southern end of Italy.   The predominant language is Latin.

Zone 7:  BLACK
Zone 6 is the main holding of Ikea.  Yup, you guessed it, those wily furniture devils are now producing flat packed furniture for the entire world.  Not a lot else to say, except that they also do great meatballs at low, low prices.
Predominant language is Swedish.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg:  WHITE
The GDL is something of a worldwide joke.  Taking a leaf out of California’s book when the State went private, GDL decided to do the same.  The only thing was, they didn’t have anything that anyone else wanted.  This led to mass unemployment on a scale not seen since the big recession in the teens, with rioting and violence Duchy wide.  The GDL is now foundering badly, spending the last of its cash reserves just to stay afloat.  None of the other corporations are interested, so it looks as though everyone will just move away and pretend it never happened.

On a plus side, the people who survived the years of unrest in the GDL are highly sought after as mercenaries, owing to the extreme level of violence they have lived through.
The predominant language is Flemish, with a spattering of English in some areas.

The Russian Baronies:  BROWN
During the great recession, Russia fell apart.  The once great nation broke up into a series of squabbling nation states, or baronies, with each baron, king or whatever he wanted to call himself thinking that he knew best and would lead Russia back to greatness.  This has made it very easy for the corporations to step in and do or take whatever they want at wildly varying prices.  It has also made the continent a very dangerous place.  Predominant language is Russian.

UK and Denmark:
The UK and Denmark are still technically ‘Free Countries’, which means that they are centres for trade and communication between different corporations.   Although different parts of the countries are owned by different corporations, they are not part of a zone and there are trade restrictions in place on certain items.  This makes these countries interesting to live in as the corporations are always fighting against each other to gain just a little more, in the boardroom or on the battlefield.  This may sometimes hurt the ‘little people’, but it does mean that promotion prospects in these countries are far better than elsewhere.

Zone map of Europe