"It's easier out here. See a monster? Shoot 'em. See a mutant? Shoot 'em. See a raider? Shoot 'em. See a bath house? Stop for a drink, get a massage, get a happy ending, shoot 'em." -Bandit, local bandit
Away from the hustle and bustle of the megacities, the corporate in-fighting, rampant gene-altering of the populace, gangland turf wars and endless neon-lit franchises, life takes on a simpler, more rugged quality. Tiny, one-lizard towns replace vast, towering megacities, featuring little more than a general store, a cyberdoc barbers, a saloon and a gun store, usually huddled around a solar charging station for merchant caravans or a hot spring turned bath house for weary travelers. Occasionally one might come across a larger town, manifested around an auto-mining yard or a gene-splicing facility, dedicated to the manufacture of raw materials and housing workers in ramshackle dwellings, with the occasional inn to provide a night's rest to traveling adventurers.
Photosynthetic cattle provide the world the lion's share of its protein, as well as its terraforming efforts, and ranchers take their stock out to lounge under the blazing sun and keep watch for any hungry wildlife skulking about their ultraviolet pasture.
In certain areas, such as Czarina and Ur-Um, vast agricultural projects span the horizon, growing fruits and vegetables as well as cheaper synthetic variants, piping desalinated water from the coast to a vast network of sprinklers, providing a hint of greenery to the endless orange deserts. These areas are cultivated and harvested by automated machinery, allowing what few residents exist in these territories a relaxing and sleepy existence.
That's not to say life is any less dangerous for the rural folk of corporate territory. Bandits and raiders prowl caravan routes looking for unguarded traders, herds of mutants wander the plains looking for biomass to consume, and rampant kaiju provide an ever-present danger to the wood-built towns and villages scattered across the landscape.
These dangers have made those on the fringes of civilization a tough, no-nonsense people. Without the same level of genetic tomfoolery or cybernetic chicanery that those in the megacities have access to, rural dwellers are often scarred, freckled or outright disfigured by combat. While most towns have a cyberdoc barber or a stem-vat clinic somewhere along their promenade, supplies from their local megacities are often interrupted or stolen by roving raider clans, and many have to learn to live without, or cobble together cybernetics and genetics on their own, creating scrappier replacement limbs and augments, and less thematically universal Splicers.
Combination weapons are much more prevalent away from the megacities and their high-end cybernetic implants; shotguns with extra long stocks and axe blades attached are a staple among those inclined for close-quarters combat, while hunting rifles turned longswords are popular for ranchers and cattle rustlers alike.
Some executives like to retire to personal mansions, plantations and compounds away from the tightly-packed megacities. These mansions naturally form small villages at the foot of the hills they reside on, employing small armies of workers, gardeners and servants to maintain their corporate lifestyles away from their home spires. Those relocating from megacities often bring their personal staff with them to the countryside, creating little pockets of gentrification among the wild plains of the world.
While the All-Gobi and New Mojave deserts have distinct aesthetics that separate the two continents, both are home to the above mainstays. Bandit clans, merchant caravans, mutant hordes, onsen and hot springs villages, mining and manufacturing towns, scrappy cyberdocs, cattleherds and ranchers are fixtures across the world. Here are a handful of the uncountable number of towns and villages dotted across the New World.
Burlesque - A Red Light town on the outskirts of Sarajevo Seven territory. Its primary form of income is sex tourism, though it also boasts an impressive bar and club scene to match its brothels and strip clubs. A handful of hyper-muscular bouncers prowl the streets ready to toss anyone too rowdy out of town, usually over a building, but sex workers with personalities clashing the inviting glitz and glamour of Burlesque are also exiled. A great pitstop for adventurers, as people from all over the New Mojave stop in to see the sights and share road gossip.
Whopper - A resting place for ranchers during the enormous cattle drives through Ur-Um to Protein Adjacent. Little more than a collection of food trucks parked around a solitary inn, Whopper is known to serve the freshest steaks, burgers, spaghetti, and other red meat foods in the New World. Whopper also acts as one of the few places one can hunker down during tropical storms, though tensions often rise dramatically when dozens of men and women are stuck sharing a single building to eat and sleep in for days, if not weeks, on end.
Mansylvania - A fairly large town on the edge of Schwebenwagen territory, built around an early generation genetic manipulation clinic. Mansylvania is home to some of the most muscular and burly humans on the All-Gobi continent, who dedicate their time to drinking, fighting, wrestling feral beastmen with their bare hands, and generally having a good time. A popular stop before entering Schwebenwagen proper, many Mansylvanians offer their handsomest men as tour guides and bodyguards for those looking to explore the gothic interior of the frightening territory.
The Wu-Tang Clan Dojo - Based around an ancient vinyl record store in Soon-Bok territory, the only surviving music was a fractured and distorted album that alluded to a mysterious clan of warriors that told tales of their martial prowess through the art of classical 20th century music. Considered an Old World relic of incalculable value, this album is heavily guarded by a dojo of brawlers that - rumour has it - ain't nothin' to fuck with.
Xuanzang - The only truly permanent Wukong Conclave, situated in Czarina Tropicana Agriculture. Xuanzang is a sprawling maze of tents, ramshackle huts and sheds, full to the brim of stolen technology, fruit plants, distilleries and sexnasiums, Xuanzang is considered the closest thing to a utopian society in the New World, though it of course comes at the cost of any merchant caravans that wander past their scouts. All Wukong know of Xuanzang, and most conclaves attempt to manipulate its design and structure in hopes of becoming the next Sunny Wukong, the incredibly well-fed and sex-slathered leader of the Xuanzang conclave.
Harpe Diem - An agrarian region on the edges of Ur-Um territory that transformed into a windswept dust bowl after "The Fire of XXX6". In the face of extinction, the children who inherited the dust farms turned their plowshares to work tools, pulled apart the empty, prefabricated grain silos and barns, and built a fleet of sand-ships. From then on, Harpe Diem was known for the scythe-wielding buccaneers who crossed the dunes on the twisting winds and raided the neighboring towns and villages.
Happy Landfill - formerly a Landfill in the middle of Saraswati Virtue. A faction of Wukong and Gobbos built a town inside the landfill and is always growing as more scavenged trash/loot are added to the pile. They're economy is heavily based on trading/repairing just about anything, and they're self powered with series upon series of solar panels which also serve as tanning beds for Gobbos. Though the one rule that is heavily enforced on outsiders is to "never steal from the landfill". A rule that is enforced with extreme prejudice. Some raiders have tried to invade and obtain the landfill. All have failed due to advanced guerrilla warfare Techniques using the intricate tunneling system inside the landfill and their ability to make weapons and vehicles out of scrap materials.
Castle 'Bacco - The capital and largest of the towns in all of the Duty Free Ports, the sprawling citadel sits upon the cliffs of the eastern coast of the Isle of 'Bacco. The massive citadel stands above the the party town strewn through harbor-valley below. Of all the islands of the Duty Free Ports, 'Bacco is considered to be the most unassailable, each port built into it's own highly defensive fjord or valley. While this makes it harder to farm, Castle 'Bacco stands as a testament of ingenuity, carving out deep terrace cups and filling them with cultivated soil to grow it's pride crop. Only carefully monitored lifts exist between each of the terrace farming communities and the coastal party town below, insuring that only employee-serfs who have earned the script and accreditation to slack off from their duties are permitted down into the delights below.
Flotsam - Flotsam is a trading town without a fixed location, made of dozens of derelict wrecks stitched together with mooring lines, rope bridges, and zip-lines. Trade and salvage are their bread and butter, powerful tugboats and hovercrafts will haul the whole town over a juicy wreck or the bones of ancient cites to harvest steel and curiosities. The town has a thriving black market thanks to its mobility, but it doesn't lack for other businesses like prostitutes or arcades. Gotta pass the time somehow when you're out of WiFi range. Given that its too dangerous to have a giant wad of ships with no real ability to steer itself come anywhere near a dock, it stays in deeper waters near the shore and crosses the distance with smaller skiffs and ferries to trade.
Jetsam - A thriving port community on the coast of The Ronin Expedition home to fishing, aquaponics, and legally ambiguous trade. Jetsam is largely built of scrap metal, the stripped husks of vehicles, and other reclaimed materials. Due to how hot this makes it, the entire town is clothing optional and anything worth doing happens at night, leading to a surprisingly active nightlife scene for a working town. Flotsam and Jetsam are sister towns. Jetsam was formerly an extension, but a storm severed its moorings a few years back and they had to make their own way out at sea. Jetsam remains Flotsam's most frequent port of call.
Ol' Hikigaeru - This small fishing village in the middle of the swamps of Hentai Island is known best for the constant croaking as well as the best fresh fish in the world. Past that, the town is too out of the way and too enveloped by the swamp to be of much use to most corps, which is just how the kerokero clan likes it. A group of rebellious ninja, the kerokero follow the way of the frog, hopping from the skyscrapers of the cities unseen to execute missions. Unknown to them, they are led by a monster with the head and torso of a toad, and the backside of an octopus.
Genstem Enhancements - A small production town in the eastern regions of Ur-Um Wines and Spirits dedicated entirely to the processing of raw materials into gene-manipulating supplements. It was seeded as a hopeful competitor to Protien Adjacent Bars 'n' Shakes, but fell flat on it's face when they gave it a name that made it too hard for their target demographic to maintain the illusion that the gains they promised would be natural. While the name stayed the same, the company was privatized and now feed product back into their parent companies so the general workforce can be 'enhanced' instead.
Substation 144-8B/Spider Heights - The town is hung up by cables and built around eight transmission towers that hangs over the collapse ruins of a substation. The substation itself collapsed into a sinkhole several years ago into a large sprawling underground complex. Surprisingly the substation is still functional despite it's collapse and the new sinkhole has opened up a new route down into a large data-center inhabited by various cyberdriders and under-city elves that maintained the machines. After some initial conflict between substation workers and the under-city elves they've reached an uneasy understanding and grudging alliance based on the fact that the under-elves need the power provided by the substation and the maintenance workers need a readily available source of parts and materials to keep the place running, the new sources of snacks and digital content are just extra bonuses for each group respectively.
Upward Heights - Originally a skyscraper built by malfunctioning construction droids, Upward Heights is quite simply a building that doesn't stop. It gets wider as it gets taller, supported by solar powered antigrav units every few floors to keep the whole mess stable. Though one would expect it to be inhabited entirely by the rich elite, its construction is unnerving to all but the very daring. The higher you get, the less sense the construction makes, with rooms becoming wider, hallways more maze-like, and the infrastructure more strangely entwined. There is a penthouse, reaching far above the clouds and just below the edge of the atmosphere, but nobody knows for sure who, or what, dwells there.
The Masked Salient - Officially named Forward Outpost 289, the Masked Salient is so named for the fact of all the forward most outposts in Slyth & Jabber, it is the one that sticks strictly to the tradition of MASKED wrestling that is what defines the Luchador. The inhabitants are no less glory seeking or mad cap in their antics than many of the other S&J front line communities, but hey feel that the loss of the traditional luchador mask by most who claim to be wrestlers to be a terrible loss. Further, they feel that the true reason why the S&J offense has been called off is that without the proud tradition of embodying the MASK not one's own personal glory, the great fighters of S&J have lost their way. Their masks are highly coveted by the rest of the forward line's more sane fighters; as they are not only some of the most finely crafted facial protective gear available, but include built in self regenerating gas filtration, adjusting night vision, FOF mutant scanning, and look fucking RAD.
Rolling Waves - A Party town in the northern coastlines of the Duty Free Ports of House 'Bacco, it's location is largely considered a vast neutral meeting ground for it is the place with the best waves in all the world. Surfers travel from far and wide to ride the perfect swells, and the fractious lesser houses have actively gone to war with shipping companies that have attempted to cut off a few hours or days of passage by cutting through these near sacred waters instead of going around them. Only the life-guards, drawn from disinherited or simply surplus-to requirement sons and daughters of the lesser houses operate sea going vessels in this place.
Teparweed - A minor hold in the Cardinal Holdings, this town is known primarily for the intensely dedicated LARPers, people who pretend to live in a fantasy world and refuse to break character, calling tech 'magic' and brandishing bows rather than guns. Although its looked down on by many others, many also secretly enter the town for some of the wildest nights that can be found, and the Aurusside Tavern is held as the gold standard for brothels and other lewd establishments.
The Hammer Fields - Named for the ancient, rusting hammers that cover the sandy landscape, this place is a holy land to the New Mojave Jerboans. Located in the deep new mojave interior, among ancient, sand blasted, petrified forests and few ruins, lies a towering pile of steel that has been fortified, modified, and protected for four centuries. Hammerhold sits in the center of the Hammerfields, and is the source of all petrol used by the new Mojave Jerboan clans. The true black gold has been running out in time, the other wells, dug into from beneath, their valuable resources channeled through bunkers to the vast wells of the hammerfields, steadily growing harder and harder to find, and so the vast processing facilities find themselves being turned to new tasks, biofuel rendering from grown crops in the cleared bunkers.
The Fringe Weaver - The Fringe Weaver is a mobile city made up of recovered Bezosphere ships. It's all-terrain, and one of the safest places to lay low from anything, as it's a strictly neutral ground for gangs, corps, and all well defended enough to protect from almost anything short of a kaiju. Although it wanders around throughout the new world, it can most reliably be found in the New Mojave.
There are dozens ships over three floors, but the main attractions to Fringe Weaver are found in only three. At the core of the city is 'The Last Stardust', a bar frequented by anyone looking for a gig thanks to the presence of many fixers. The bar is made out of the hollowed out shell of a YT-something or other ship, part old world memorabilia and part dubiously functional starship. In the skylines above the city is the thriving black marketplace known as the Eighth Wet Dream, and below the foundation in a flat saucer is Anne-Marie Milker's ranch and farm. The price of living in the mobile city is high, but it's the dream of many freelancers to retire here one day.