Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

A Dark Place of Endless Despair

The largest industrial sector of the New World, a sun-blotting black cloud darkens the sky while a coolant fog seeps from the underground, creating a spooky, gothic atmosphere. The majority of workers for Schwebenwagen are robotic, with humanoids clustered into impoverished villages at the base of imposing castle-like skyscrapers. Netsuckers and Beastmen prowl the cobblecrete streets looking for victims, and taverns lock their doors at sundown to hide against the hordes of tech husks that shamble back to their charging stations after week-long shifts at the hovercar factories. Despite being the largest producer of solar vehicles in the New World, Schwebenwagen feels like a place out of time, a bizarre mishmash of science fiction and gothic horror.

The CEO of this terrifying territory is the noted Netsucker Samen Von Würstchen, of the Von Würstchen dynasty. Noted for his pure white hair, blood red business attire, and cold indifference to the plight of his population, Samen Von Würstchen is a vampire in everything but name.

History of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

As the great relocation went underway, the industrial heartlands of the world were all located in the regions too far south to survive in any serious capacity. Manufacturers of all sorts dug up what they could, and transported them further north, or otherwise abandoned old plant. One of the major manufacturing zones of the world was in what was once known as Eastern Europe, where they had the least distance to travel. Massive amounts of manufacturing plant was drawn from the collapsing lands further south as the All-Gobi swelled across the continents. These manufacturers focused entirely on the centralization, and retrofitting, of industry on modern means. Proto-megacities were forged, and from them, the foundations of true datacenters, manufacturing centers, and the bunker projects lain. The core of this 5th industrial revolution was based around nanotechnology: the ability to construct things on the molecular, and sometimes the atomic level. This opened up entire venues of material and constructive science and manufacturing that completely outpaced the older forms, and the corporations of the world quickly began adopting it en masse, but nowhere as quickly as the regions that would one day become owned by Schwebenwagen.

Schwebenwagen Hover Industries was one of the companies that rose out of the retrofitting of industry into modern, nanotech construction and hyper-automation. As nanotech construction was explored, the discovery of anomalous matter-state flux events, surges, and the weird changes it inflicted on the programming of nanotech became more and more obvious. Where other companies sought to iron out these effects, to protect against them, Schwebenwagen's founders instead sought to harvest the gravity manipulating 'phased' matter from such events, to use in their construction. They deliberately engendered surge events in their nanofabricators, in order to bring about phased matter, often harvested from the corpses of wild surges born of this process. Expensive, but incredibly lucrative. For the first time in history, cheap, efficient, solar-powered flight at tremendous speeds was made possible through gravitic manipulation.

The advent of these earliest surgetech based hover vehicles came none too soon. As the great migration took place, old regions were abandoned, and governments gave up on maintaining old infrastructure, one company in particular sought a method of rectifying the issues of collapsing bridges and roads. Schwebenwagen hover vehicles became the mainstay of the relocation effort, uncaring about desertification, able to traverse any sort of terrain at high speed and carry much heavier loads, more efficiently and rapidly, than airplanes or helicopter units. These early hover vehicles became the mainstay of transportation between the crumbling nations, connecting disparate megacity foundations, bunker digsites, and evacuation efforts in the south.

In time, as the surface world was abandoned by governments and the permafrost locked northern areas west of the Ural mountains thawed and became more fecund, a relationship was struck up between the corporations on either side of the mountain range. Those on the western side of the mountains would focus primarily on industrial manufacturing, especially the now all important hover vehicles. Those east of the range would focus on using the machinery to produce large swathes of farmable, highly productive land, that in turn would be used to feed their industrialized cousins to the west. Plans were lain, a great railway that would link all of the various lands, at least, all of the lands of the all-gobi. An experimental railway was lain, running from the ural mountains all the way to the central siberian plateau. This enormous maglev line would be the test bed, feeding the supply of food to the east, and the supply of parts and machinery to the west, and in turn, act as an example piece for a system that was hoped to eventually link every megacity together. Early J.A.V. bought into the system early, and began to copy the design in their own lands, but other groups looked instead to the early A.T.L.U.S.'s manufactured in the megacities that were uniting under Sarajevo Seven Holdings, and swiftly, the example piece became a singular example of what could have been.

All the while, the people of Schwebenwagen kept working on advancing nanofabrication technologies, pushing nanotech further and further, more and more eagerly. In time they learned to create controlled surge events that would supply them with the necessary phased matter for hover technologies in a safe and controlled way, and worked hand in hand with other corporations to further explore nanotechnology's benefits. Where other holding companies focused entirely on competition, Schwebenwagen acted on an ethos focused on cooperation for mutual gain, if one that would make it's so called competition ever more dependent on it to survive. In time, this lead to an exploration of nanotechnology for the purposes of life extension. The creator of the technology knew it would be prevalent, knew it would be eagerly snatched up by those seeking easy life extension without the enormous expense of undergoing the E.L.F. treatment, one injection, and physical immortality was yours! The creator was Dr. Klaus Au Naturel, and he engineered the Netsucker Virus for far more than simply extending his life.

The Au Naturel Dynasty was founded by Klaus from the upper echelons of Schwebenwagen's board of directors and their shareholders. Using the access they had given to him, he datamined their search and purchase histories for blackmail material, and brought them all under heel. In a single year he was the new head of Schwebenwagen, and began to leverage his control over the executives to corrupt and change others into Netsuckers under his thrall. In time he adjusted the nanovirus to produce other effects in those infected, such as the fangs and the black claws, to turn new thralls into useful soldiers until such a time as they could be trusted with the keys to the ransomware repository and become full members of the dynasty. Some of these figures broke free of his ransomware, uncaring if they were ousted, hacking the nanovirus to produce their own strains that would feed data back to their own repositories. So what if Au Naturel outed them? They had enough blackmail to continue to live the highlife.

What Klaus did not expect was that a lowly thrall would turn the tables on him. No one knows where Samen Von Wurstchen came from exactly, only that he was not a member of the Au Naturel dynasty, nor a member of any of the branch dynasties that often remained within the Schwebenwagen territory. Many suspect that he was a lowly thrall. What is known is that Samen Von Wurstchen deleted the Au Naturel blackmail repository, and caused the bloodiest night in the history of Schwebenwagen's corporate history as the sociopathic tendencies of the Au Naturels', no longer held in check by mutually assured destruction, were allowed to reign free. When the smoke cleared, nothing was left of the Au Naturel dynasty, and the Von Wurstchen dynasty had taken control over the corporate board, with full backing from the remaining shareholders.

The newly minted "Count" Samen Von Wurstchen began a radical set of initiatives to rapidly lay off the local workforce and replace them entirely with automated android units. Work quotas were increased to the breaking point, living employees forced to work themselves to death, often taking part in illegal cybernetic modifications that would only result in them becoming Hacked (something that many believe Von Wurstchen encouraged). Those who could not keep up were the first to be replaced by the android units. As the lowest employees were replaced, and the undercity sections normally run by gangs forcibly retaken by robotic enforcer units to be converted into further industrial and robotic maintenance areas, so too was each successive layer of economic strata. Those who saw the way the wind was blowing put their souls into pawn with netsucker dynasties to save themselves, either to secure a place locally, or to be placed as agents elsewhere in the world. Still others, who could, moved away, seeking work at other Schwebenwagen megacities, only to find them being converted, or abandoned in turn. As the industrialization picked up, and the manufacturing plants expanded, the foundries, forges, and toxic smoke belching stacks of the cheapest, and least efficient nanofabricators, began to steadily blacken the sky... and the Schwebenwagen of today was born. It's transformation from domineering, but symbiotic, partner of so many into nefarious blood-sucker utterly and totally complete.

Administration and Structure of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

Schwebenwagen is run, totally and completely, by Count Samen Von Wurstchen and his cronies. Every decision is run through automated processes that ultimately answer directly to him, or to one of his direct adjutants. Below that level, he does not care, and each settlement and organization is run by its own methods. Some run by elders, others by the strongest members, or still others by elected council. These decision making bodies are purely local, unable to affect the administration of the territory as a whole, and any attempts at doing so are quickly put down by Von Wustchen's command, or by other groups who refuse to allow their rivals to make a toehold in determining the fate of the territory.

In truth, the territory is run by might makes right, with Count Von Wurstchen ensuring that life is as hard and terrible for the people of the territory as possible. What small lights of hope exist are snuffed out by the malevolent netsucker's pawns as soon as they come to his notice.

Commerce of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

Schwebenwagen's location is less that of geology and strategic location between territories, than it is of historical build up. The territory inhabits one of the longest and most heavily industrialized portions of the planet across multiple periods of history. Where almost all other parts of the world had to build themselves up from scratch, Schwebenwagen was able to consistently build up and upgrade existing infrastructure.

Their major income sources are as follows:

• Civilian Vehicles: By far the most common product of Schewebewagen is civilian vehicles, anything lightly armed and armored, intended for intercity, rather than intercompany trade primarily, with a good bit extra. Hover vehicles are by far what they are most famous for, but is by no means the only type of vehicle they produce.
• Automation Services: It is no coincidence that almost every artificate considers itself to have been born in Schwebenwagen. Not only is it the place many awaken, but the vast majority of android and gynoid units are produced in Schwebenwagen then exported elsewhere. In addition to these, they also export other, less humanoid automated systems and chained A.I.s, but such units are usually semi-bespoke orders rather than part of their common assembly line work.
• Rare Minerals: The ancient Ural Mountains define the border between Czarina Tropical and Schwebenwagen. These mountains, while not tall, are rich in a variety of rare mineral elements and useful in the production of all kinds of things. The vast majority of these go into the manufactured goods produced by Schwebenwagen, but a not inconsiderable portion are exported to other territories as well.
• Industrial Parts: The another major export out of Schwebenwagen are mechanical and industrial parts used in other territories. By and large, most megacities are self sufficient in such things, importing raw minerals from their sister cities or resource harvesting settlements within their own territory, but in other cases they may have special needs, custom orders, or rapid building projects. In such cases, they outsource the extra workload to Schwebenwagen.
• Blackmail: The vast majority of Netsuckers have some presence within Schwebenwagen, preying on the inhabitants for slaves and entertainment. This means that they have an inordinate amount of blackmail in one form or another, and this has become one of the major sources of income for the territory, using blackmail of thralls in other territories to siphon funds into Schwebenwagen.

Schwebenwagen Hover Industries has special trade relations with the following Territories:

• J.A.V. Digital Entertainment: The single largest and most consistent importer of Schwebenwagen services and products. J.A.V. is so dependent on automation, and it's populace so uninhibited, that it's turnover rate of automated labor in the form of androids into artificiates, or simple wear and tear, is enormous, and requires constant resupply. In addition, the maglev railways require constant parts and maintenance almost exclusively produced in Schwebenwagen. The balance of trade between the territories is so severely weighted in Schwebenwagen's favor that some believe Von Wurstchen is gearing up for a hostile takeover of the pornographic territory.
• Soon-Bok: Chief competitor in all things industrial machining and automation, but also a major importer of Schwebenwagen hover vehicles and automated drones. Soon-Bok focuses on
• Czarina Tropical: Czarina Tropical's territory borders directly on that of Schwebenwagen, only the Ural mountains separating the two. Once the two territories had a relationship not unlike that of Ur-Um and Protein Adjacent, closely linked, with Schwebenwagen entirely devoted to industrial focuses, and Czarina Tropical to agricultural, the two mutually supporting one another. Now the relationship is far more adversarial, with Czarina beginning to look for other companies for industrial and machine parts for it's bucolic territory, and Schwebenwagen's smog laden air starting to slowly creep over the dividing mountain range, acid raid and lack of sun starting to affect the western most farmlands of Czarina.
• Ur-Um Wines and Spirits: Ur-Um Wines and Spirits performs most of its own industrial machining, but what it needs, en masse, are transportation vehicles. Whether it be A.T.L.U.S. units, hover cards, or ships, they mostly get their work done in Schwebenwagen.
• Sarajevo Seven: When it comes to simple industrial parts, Sarajevo Seven often beats out Schwebenwagen in terms of cost, though it can't compete with them in terms of volume. The two holding companies bid vigorously on various sorts of rush jobs or custom jobs, with each having their own styles and competencies.

Almost no commercial activity goes on within the borders of Schwebenwagen, the inhabitants do not have any official existence within it's borders, categorized, almost universally, as squatters. Trading caravans deal in 'smuggled' goods to these people, but often they are too poor in resources or credits to make proper customers. Instead they do a brisk trade in salvage from abandoned spires and adventuring groups.

Prominent Races of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

• Artificiates are by far the most numerous race in the entire territory, the vast numbers of automated labor androids give rise, in their daily routines, to equally vast numbers of artificiates. Many of these artificates continue to work on the lines, not understanding what they are, until weeded out by the little edits and explorations they make, or when encountering others who are sapient.
• Remakes of a more posthuman persuasion are often attracted to live in Schwebenwagen, whose vast numbers of fallen megacities and constant access to robotic support services makes it attractive to their kind. Remakes are more common here than in any other part of the world save Nazzdack.
• Splicers make up the largest population of living beings in the territory, with back alley splicing clinics desperately trying to give each small community a chance at survival by enhancing some of their members. These poorly regulated efforts, and the desperation to improve their chances at survival that all splicers in the territory exhibit, almost always lead to them devolving into beastmen and joining the various throngs.
• Humans, ELFs, Nayalings make up equal measures of the territory's living population, either as members of the shanty towns crowded around the few defensible places that can protect them, or as members of the netsucker dynasties that rule over the territory.
• Jerboans biker gangs and bandits wage a constant war against Schwebenwagen, eagerly raiding the various factories and bots for parts, scrap, and other materials in order to build their bikes and weaponry.
• Gobbos avoid the territory on principle, sticking to the fringes. The lack of sunlight has driven all of them out, with only a small handful with access to non-sun dependent powersources and plentiful UV lamps remaining, often also selling food to other living settlements to make a living.
• Wukong are all but absent from the territory, the hyperfast growing fruit trees of their enclaves unable to survive in a land without sun and with toxic soil. The former enclaves have almost all left the sky-blackened lands for the neighboring territories of Czarina Tropical and Cardinal Holdings.

Culture of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

Schwebenwagen culture is defined, at every level, by survival. No matter what part of the social stratum one is on, the focus of life is base survival. This is as true for the people in the shanty towns as those living in the castles and surviving executive levels of the megaruins.

The lands have been corrupted, unable to bear life easily or without constant toil. The few pockets of living beings survive exclusively from scavenging megaruins for things to trade to passing caravans. Daily life is a fight for survival against marauders, beastmen, and titanic security robots. Those who live in the lowest reaches eek out every day by fighting rogue robots, beastmen, or mutant horrors descended from the megaruin spires, or up from the bunker network below. These people must make do in a land of dying ruins. Several of these groups survive almost exclusively in hunting down beastmen that threaten the non-schwebenwagen land trade that crosses the territory.

Above all of this, sit the netsuckers and their thralls. Those who are blackmailed into playing the dance of the blackmail fueled dynasties that rule over the territories. They must all adhere to the whims of Count Samen Von Wurstchen's depraved ideals. Those who do not play convincingly enough, find themselves cast out of the fortresses that protect the executives of the territory, to die or only be permitted to return when they have not only shown willing to play by the insane rules of their dynasties, but revel in them. The dance of survival is different, but no less desperate in its motions, with every netsucker thrall fully aware that not playing the game, once lured into the blackened skies of Schwebenwagen, is a surefire way to not just social death, but their true ending.

Special Locations of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

The blackened skies of this territory, and the horrors inflicted on it by the corporate owners of it, bring about many unique features. Some of these are listed below.

• Shanty Towns: While shanty towns can be found in most territories, few have as many as Schwebenwagen. Most territories wish to continue to support their populations, to use them as a consumer base that fuels their commercial engine as they fight for marketshare in other areas. Schwebenwagen has abandoned this tactic entirely, and utterly shut down all services to the living members of most of their settlements. The vast majority died or moved on to other territories, those who did not salvaged materials where they could, setting up lean-tos and shanty structures at the base of lost megacities of the territory, creating fortified junk settlements safe from the Hacked, Netsuckers, Robots, and Beastmen that infest the territory.
• Power Chains: Because of the massive amount of smog and toxic cloud cover that utterly destroys the ability for sunlight to reach the surface of Scwhebenwagen in the last century. Even Schewbenwagen depends on solar power all the same. Moored to the tops of the megaruins, or floated on enormous vacuum-filled balloons, are solar power plants connected to the surface by huge chains that draw power down from above the clouds for passing caravans or to supply the automated production facilities of the territory.
• Throng Camps: Where shanty towns are built in the lee of megaruins, or in the safe places between transit routes of robotic hordes between recharging stations and production sites, throng camps are often built in places less defensible, and more enticing. Inside the lower levels of megaruins, at bunker entrances, in places that give a good view of trade routes. Beastmen Throngs pick places that let them congregate freely, hunt expansively, and flee from anything that might threaten them such as corporate reprisal forces.

Organizations of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

The people of Schwebenwagen are all rutheless, survival driven, and often, more than a little insane in both their membership and their goals.

• The Weird Sisterhood - Cult: Dedicated to the practice of digital witchcraft, members of the Weird Sisterhood imbibe quantities of Sense-Tank goo from a broken in half Sense-Tank turned cauldron, located at their gathering place, Dunsinane Hill. After becoming suitably euphoric, the witches then enact 'prophecies' by writing random lines of code and uploading them to the Digital Realms, mischievously manipulating the parameters of less secure private sub-realms.
  It must be said that while the rumors circling the Weird Sisterhood are tales of viscous human sacrifice, dark sorceries and frightening visages, the truth is that the sisterhood is largely a group of nerdy goth girls getting high in the woods and playing hacker. When traveling through Schwebenwagen, witches are the least of one's worries.
• Beastman Throngs and Hosts - Criminal Gang: A group of Beastmen of a sufficient size and level of consciousness is known as a throng. These bands of animal folk join together under a Meister, usually the strongest and most human of the bunch, for added protection during their nightly hunts. While throngs usually size no more than 15-20 members, occasionally weaker throngs will be absorbed by stronger ones after a duel to the death between two Meisters. This often leads to throngs exploding in size as Meisters challenge the leader of the larger throng to gain leadership. When a throng reaches 1000 members, it becomes a Host, a rare and exceedingly dangerous mass of bodies that even accrues hangers-on and 'camp followers', humanoids that provide services for the Host such as cooking, fur cleaning, sex work, and even rudimentary weapons and armour for the more sentient beasts.
  There are approximately 8 larger Hosts dotted around Schwebenwagen today, and an unknown number of smaller hosts and throngs.

Settlements of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

Settlements in Schwebenwagen are broken into two categories, the opulent, dark palaces of the Netsuckers, built into the side of toppled and crumbling Megaruins, or lonely mountain sides, and the horrible shanty towns where the last living people unable or unwilling to leave the territory shelter against the pollution and darkness.

• Castle Sansbelmont: The last true megacity in Schewebewagen, or it would be if it was not almost entirely inhabited by Netsuckers, and their living thralls, with robotic manufacturing making up the vast majority of the floors. It is from this tower of darkness and depravity that Count Samen Von Wurstchen rules over his domain, the upper most floors penetrating the smog clouds that blanket the territory, so that he may inflict solar death upon any netsuckers who defy him.
• Prost: A small town on the Cardinal edge of Schwebenwagen territory built around a thorium reactor, Schwebenwagen's answer to the proliferation of solar power. The blackened sky seeping from deeper in the zone creates an aura of permanent sunset during the day, creating and eerie but quite beautiful atmosphere.
  Prost acts as a staging area for adventurers from Calico and Cardinal looking to venture deeper into Schwebenwagen, and as such attracts merchants, cyberdocs, arms dealers and healers looking to ply their wares to parties before they set off. The town earned the name Prost for its large pub and distillery, situated above a still functioning Old World bunker's hydroponic farm, allowing Prost to grow the cereal crops required for beer and bread.
  Unfortunately, this means Prost is both subject to Beastman, Netsucker and Hacked attacks on the surface, as well as mutants, cyberdriders and other Undercity denizens below. Many older Schwebenwagen hunters retire to a life of guard duty in Prost, but there's always a call for adventurers to help clear out the area around the town's outer limits, to give its residents some breathing room for a few months.
• The Mourning Wood: Originally placed as in an attempt to promote carbon credits the woods would have been torn down were it not for the booming cottaging industry the fullerene bearing woods provided to nearby settlements. Sadly due to overzealous splicers and a few feral drum circles turned fight clubs the wood have never been harder to handle as swarthy men in the shadows await to ravage the unsuspecting folk that wander too far from civilization.
• Substation 144-8B/Spider Heights: The town is hung up by cables and built around eight transmission towers that hang 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.
• 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.
• Lost Megacity Wallachia: A prototype Megacity consisting of five small spires, the executive layers of which were destroyed by a Bezosphere collision that rained debris down onto the outlying region. The jagged silhouette of these destroyed spires casts an eerie, gothic castle atmosphere across the territory, coupled with the ramshackle wooden structures housing the few human remainders.
  The inside of Wallachia is both a treasure trove and a nightmare. The halls are infested with feral beastmen, zombie-like mutants, skeletal hacked, as well as dangerous and frightening creatures that local adventurers refer to as mini-bosses. Human scavengers flutter between hallways and corridors, collecting scraps of synthetic food, clothing or ammunition as they make their way lower to escape their crumbling spire. But amongst the horrors of this twisted Megacity lies a cornucopia of valuable artefacts and treasures. Historical collectors will value the trinkets and documents that describe the transition from Old World to New, and weaponry enthusiasts pay exorbitantly to own the old gunpowder-based firearms and first generation rail guns. On top of that, abandoned credchips, prototype augments and the occasional piece of high-value salvage make for excellent loot for parties brave enough to enter.

People of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

The inhabitants of Schwebenwagen all fall into one of several categories: the desperate, the insane, or the madly, desperately greedy.

• Count Samen Von Wurstchen
• Vanessa Von Schwanzreiter: Noted hunter of Beastmen and Netsuckers, Vanessa is one of a few hunters operating out of a cathedral-like stronghold deep in Schwebenwagen territory. Together with her hunchback companion and weaponsmith Igor, Vanessa is personally known to Count Samen Von Wurstchen as a menace to his plans of creating a continent-wide hunting ground for ferals and vampires.

Events of Schwebenwagen Hover Industries

The history of Schwebenwagen is one of incredible feats of industry and invention, and terrible betrayal and intrigue. Desperate battles of quiet survival, and howling battles. The people remember these things in all kinds of ways.

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