"There's a rumour going around that there used to be these things called 'countries', where people spoke 'different languages' and had 'distinct cultures'. That's kind'a weird, right?" - Chloe Garnier, local pirate
The New World is divided into two distinct continents, known as All-Gobi and New Mojave, named after the once-encroaching deserts that consumed the rest of the Old World. The nations of the past are concepts of myth, instead territories are divided by self-reliant Holdings Companies, and subdivided by larger corporations under the umbrella of those Holdings Companies. In lieu of national borders, Holdings Companies have territories, encapsulating both their urban hubs of megacities and outlying rural regions, dedicated to mining and manufacturing raw materials, agricultural projects, and providing pit stops for solar powered merchant caravans and freight ships. Public transport is exceedingly rare, as most denizens of a Holdings Company territory are born as employees, assigned jobs at birth based on the station of their parents and their current location, and given just enough education from corporate boarding schools to get to work, meaning there's little incentive to let civilians travel between territories.
While every territory is self sufficient, and the vast majority of wealth of a given territory is kept in-house, certain corporations have unique geographical advantages, allowing them to manufacture an excess of desirable exports such as food, alcohol or technology. These are sold from one Holdings Company to another directly, who then charge a premium on those items, especially if they provide locally sourced alternatives. As such, every territory competes for an increased market share through exports, increased child birth, or the sabotage of other territories.
Below is a quick run down of every major Holdings Company of the New World.
Cardinal Holdings - Known for its bizarre Holy Roman Empire-style arrangement of comparatively tiny city-states, each with their own CEO, led by an imperial council of the most profitable corporations of the region, Cardinal Holdings claims the title for the most vicious in-fighting of corporate entities in the New World. Subterfuge, espionage and assassination are all part and parcel for business in the region. This constant corporate in-fighting has unwittingly created a huge undercity society, with vast smuggling networks, sizable Wukong conclaves and an expansive Gobbo population drunkenly sunbathing on the streets and landing pads of the megacities. The ever-growing undercity society coupled with the bickering corporate population makes Cardinal Holdings the home city for a huge majority of adventurers.
Notable CEOs of Cardinal Holdings include Madeleine "Mama" Rie, CEO of Estrostem, Langston Wither, CEO of Occasionally Accurate Ammunition, and Bernadette Cruph, CEO of Actual Meat Products.
Euphori-Tank Online Data Farms - [Unfinished] An underground bunker dedicated to playtesting Sense-Tanks and the virtual worlds inside. The ODF houses a population of about 100,000 people, perpetually floating in Sense-Tanks for game and app designers to collect data from, kept in a separate digital plane from the Corpo-Net and Dark Web. Though, much like the Dark Web, ODF test subjects usually end up playing video games and fucking each other.
Schwebenwagen Hover Industries - 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.
Czarina Tropical Agriculture - [Unfinished] Once a barren, snow-soiled tundra, Czarina Tropical Agriculture is now home to the largest banana, mango, coconut, sugar, watermelon and pineapple fields in the New World, along with the innumerable distilleries that make up the majority of the world's favourite beverages. Considered somewhat of a paradise for those tired of the megacities, Czarina is endless automated fields and orchards bookmarked by the occasional marketplace, hotel or farm store. Considered exceedingly boring by most adventurers, Czarina is occasionally embroiled in the small-town mysteries and whodunnits only tight knit rural communities can provide. A single maglev train runs across Czarina, from Schwebenwagen Hover Industries to Saraswati Virtue, while all roads lead to coastal ports to deliver fruit and drinks to the rest of the New World.
Calico Redistribution Company - Situated on a pair of strangely shaped islands with innumerable floating outposts and charging stations, Calico Redistribution is the largest conglomerate of pirate crews in the New World. Having made a business from buccaneering, Calico are often contracted by rival Holdings Companies to interrupt trade and hijack naval convoys. At the head of these uncountable pirate gangs is the immortal Pirate Queen "Mad" Maggie McMillan, infused with such a vast quantity of nanobots that any wounds she suffers knit together immediately, going so far as to reattach limbs.
Calico Redistribution launches most of their naval raids from New Tortuga, a technically non-affiliated neutral ground that is home to the most cutthroat mercenaries, drunken sops, and buxom wenches of the New World. An island of pure lawlessness, held together only by the promise of creds and rum, New Tortuga is often the port of call for fresh-faced adventurers looking to get their heads kicked in.
The Freemen Commune - [Minor Edits Required] A haven for those that could afford to get away from both the bustle of the megacities and the quiet desperation of corporate rule, without resorting to the dangers and uncertainty of the undercities The Freemen Commune is the largest community of middle-class, suburban households in the New World. On the surface, it's a postcard of detached two story houses with white picket fences, 2.4 children and mowed lawns, but under the veneer is a population rife with petty murder, grand treachery, and indisidious techno-cults; all a product of the excruciating boredom of being away from the sleaze of the undercities.
In Lieu of CEOs, The Freemen Commune has the Homeowner's Association, a council of the most petty-minded and anally-retentive bastards that put even the tyranny of Samen Von Würstchen to shame. The self-proclaimed leaders of this council are Stuart and Karen Terwilliger, their names striking fear into the hearts of garden gnome enthusiasts everywhere.
The Jam Gardens - [Minor Edits Required] An island dedicated to the art of basketball -the only surviving sport of the Old World- The Jam Gardens is endless rows of asphalt basketball courts pockmarked with the occasional shower and locker room, vending machine parade, or laundromat. There's little fame or fortune to be found in the Jam Gardens, besides that earned on the blacktop, but it's a great place to work up a sweat and perhaps find some new friends and allies.
Saraswati Virtue - [Minor Edits Required] The primary exporter of bionic limbs, medical technology and pharmaceuticals, residents of Saraswati Virtue are noted for having extra arms mounted under their shoulder blades, with higher level employees given glowing neon halos attached at the temples, allowing for instant communication from management. This gives employees an almost religious appearance, especially when coupled with their gold inlaid augments and hand-crafted clothing. Their advances in medical technology have led even the lowliest citizen to live well over 100 years old, though a measured restraint in nanobot infusion keeps executives from living forever, preferring to focus on building respectable dynasties through calculated marriages and genetic therapy planned generations in advance.
This tightly-organised structure has led the undercities of Saraswati Virtue to be wildly hedonistic places of drugs, sex and violence, moreso than most undercities. Medical tech has cheapened the value of life, pharmaceutical exports have been reverse engineered and tampered for hallucinogenic effects, and the arranged marriages of the upper levels has led to orgiastic abandon of the traditional family unit, preferring a communal approach to child-rearing.
Few are more notable in the undercities than "Enormous" Eddie Electric, a gigantic hedonistic man with twelve spider-like augmented arms bristling from his back, who's under-palace is a marble and golden public bath, filled to bursting with scantily-clad handmaidens, nubile manservants, and headquarters of a worldwide network of pill and powder distributors.
Soon-Bok Heavy Ordnance - An automated military powerhouse, Soon-Bok suffers from having too many guns and not enough people, and thus exports their high-tech firearms and augments to other territories for hefty profits. Prior attempts at conquering other territories through force had always gained initial success, but stock market manipulation had brought Soon-Bok's forceful advances to a grinding halt before any real progress could be made, and the mass-manufacture of automatons for the purpose of warfare often left Soon-Bok in the red after every attempt.
For the organic residents of Soon-Bok, life is quite comfortable compared to other megacities. Habi-cubes are built with families and recreational space in mind, an attempt to bolster their military forces with cheap, expendable humanoids. But the incredible affordability of guns and hardware has made the lower levels of Soon-Bok a constant gang war for imported Saraswati drugs, Czarina drinks, and the territory to sell them on. Of these gang factions, two stand out among the rest; The Integral Ducks and The Truthful Jewels, headed up by Mal-Chin the Persistent and Mi-Cha the Beautiful, respectively. Due to the territory being deep within the realms of the All-Gobi desert, massive terraforming efforts have taken place to keep Soon-Bok habitable, including a gigantic wall made of megacities intent on keeping the desert beyond it, and heavy desalination projects lining its many coastlines.
Tarantulina Peninsula - [Unfinished] Known as "Where the Spiders Went", Tarantulina Peninsula is blighted by toxic runoff, nuclear waste, smouldering pollution, and innumerable mutants and monsters. The last surviving monument of the Old World, adventurers prowl these lands searching for valuable relics of the past, though most don't make it out again, and those that do are irrevocably changed by the horrors they have witnessed.
Slyth & Jabber - [Unfinished] A small holdings company built on the foundations of a successful law firm, S&J quickly became a bulwark against the mutants and monsters of Tarantulina Peninsula, trading the protection of the New World for quarterly imports of food, guns and pharmaceuticals from other territories for their safety. S&J houses no megacities, but an intricate web of solar charging stations turned into fortified villages and towns, bristling with gun batteries, mortars and artillery. The ever present dangers of mutant invasions has turned residents of S&J into hardy, capable individuals, and many desert their posts to offer their impressive combat skills to higher bidders.
As is so often the case, the CEO of S&J, Major Habanero Fiesta, has realised that his territory's income relies on the existence of Tarantulina Peninsula and its influx of mutants, and has done everything in his power to avoid a full scale eradication of the threat.
The Ronin Expedition - A research harbour dedicated to mapping the waters of the Old World, the Ronin Expedition swiftly became a smuggler's paradise, filled with the drinks and fruit of Czarina, the drugs of Saraswati, the entertainment of J.A.V and the weapons of Soon-Bok. Many adventurers make The Ronin Expedition their home away from home, among the drunken pirates and mischievous Wukong conclaves that litter the peninsula.
The Duty Free Ports of House 'Bacco - [Major Edits Required] A collection of islands sandwiched between the hypercapitalist Nazzdack and the drunken lawlessness of Ur-Um Wines and Spirits Company; House 'Bacco styles themselves as the eccentric middle ground. Favoring a mix of pomp and circumstance (complete with a knightly code of honor) and casual surfer culture, House 'Bacco and the Lesser Houses under its remit are an unusual jumble of medieval and modern. House paladins possess elaborately decorated surfboards and dune buggies, bikini-clad beach babes behave with all the proper poise and training of a courtly lady and will gladly correct the uncouth etiquette of oglers; while coconuts engraved with coat-of-arms of the many Houses serve as drinking vessels. Feasts with tropical delights and cannabis fill the nights but with strict, regimented, and etiquette-driven rules, Gobbos and Wukong tend to steer clear of their preferred version of wild fun and free love.
Instead of megacities, the island is dotted with ever-feuding baronies with large towns and port villages built around charging stations. Adventurers often find themselves embroiled in the politics of the minor Houses, and are contracted to perform subtle balance-tipping acts of espionage and infiltration away from the prying eyes of Lord 'Bacco.
Lord Atticus Jeremiah Hadric Rutherford Tobacco XVIII is the current Lord Regent for The Duty Free Ports of House 'Bacco, his long dead ancestor Atticus Tobacco the First still considered King of the Islands.
J.A.V Digital Entertainment - [Minor Edits Required] Founded on the premise that pornography is easy money, J.A.V is an entire territory to the art and science of the recorded orgasm. Aphrodisiac infused phallic vegetables, tentacles born from potted plants, cheap and affordable cosmetic surgery, dopamine stimulants and performance enhancing drugs, and mountains of pornographic datachips are just some of the endless train of exports that run from J.A.V. In fact, one out of every three cargo ships seized by Calico Redistribution is full of nothing but vibrators, much to their (momentary) chagrin. The traditional family unit has completely broken down in this territory, as corporate boarding schools are hundreds of miles away from the depravity of the urban culture. The megacities are a cacophony of moaning, slapping and squirting, empty halls lined with orange juice vending machines and bored hot dog vendors.
The CEO of J.A.V is an incredibly sweaty man known as Silas "Yum Yum" Bubblegum, far too busy with his ever-expanding harem to bother with the insidious power plays and backstabbing of the corporate world.
Adventurers find little reason to come here beside the intrinsic entertainment factor. Crime is limited to minor smuggling operations and a handful of psychedelics dealers. This is probably because everyone is too busy fucking each other.
Hentai Island - [Major Edits Required] A garden of pheromonal fungi, aphrodisiac spewing flora and tentacle laden fauna, Hentai Island is a paradise for the perverted. Isolated cults worshipping the genetic experiments as "the future of humanity" add a modicum of danger to exploring the island, though their members are usually preoccupied.
The Ur-Um Wines and Spirits Company - [Major Edits Required] Home to huge synthetic distilleries and mountainous hydroponic skyscrapers, Ur-Um provides the New World with wines, whiskies, almost natural beef, saloons and gunslingers in vast quantities. Styling itself on the Old West, the majority of Ur-Um territory is considered sunbathing pasture for its photosynthetic livestock, with the rustlers and cowboys that such valuable creatures entail. Saloons, general stores and barbershops turned augment mechanics are clustered around the distantly spaced solar charging stations, creating pockets of civilization dotted around the endless desert. Adventurers drawn here solve local problems; roving gangs, rustlers, lone dark horsemen and caravan hijackings, and those born here make for excellent gunmen and self-styled sheriffs and bringers of justice.
The lone megacity of Ur-Um, Whaddyacallit, is built around a shipping port north of J.A.V, and often forms huge naval caravans with the competing territory in order to protect each other from pirates, despite their cultural differences. The megacity itself is particularly old-fashioned compared to its contemporaries; a series of smaller interlinked skyscrapers no taller than 50 stories that each serve a singular purpose, be it residential, office space, shopping or food growing. Crime here is almost exclusively the result of personal feuds and gunfights over drunken nonsense, quickly punished by Whaddyacallit's sheriff, "Double Barrel Darrell '' and his trigger happy deputies.
Protein Adjacent Bars 'n' Shakes - The last stop for Ur-Um's cowboys and their photosynthetic cattle, Protein Adjacent is part slaughterhouse, part candy store for bodybuilders and mass cultivators. The residents of Protein Adjacent are - without fail - absolutely jacked, but the auras of supreme self confidence surrounding these people means that crime is lower here than anywhere else in the New World. Most people are too busy on quests of self-improvement to try anything funny.
Nazzdack Incorporated - The cream of the crop for corporate tyranny, oppressive private policing and criminal enterprise, Nazzdack houses sprawling megacities, vicious executives, corrupt cops and villainous gangland bosses, coated in constant tropical rainstorms and permanent darkness. Having collected several hundred smaller companies during the Great Relocation, Nazzdack is a perpetual implosion of espionage, backstabbing and assassination, its CEOs and Directors hotswapping positions daily and conducting generations long plans to get to the top. Meanwhile, an unchecked corporate police force causes more terror and violence than it stops, deliberately creating problems that only a bigger budget next year can presumably solve. Underneath all this, a spiderweb of criminal networks led by fixers and smuggling groups proves, ironically, the closest thing to a sense of stability for Nazzdack's denizens. Gunshots and sirens ring out 24 hours a day, floating hardlight advertising peers into habi-cube windows at night. Adventurers romanticise Nazzdack as somewhere one can make a name for themselves, though few can actually name any of the supposed legends that came from here.
Notable fixers of Nazzdack include:
- Appropriate Transaction; the Artificiate go-between for gangland negotiations and assassination contracts, who enjoys exaggerating her robotic nature to throw off newbie gangers and veterans alike.
-Slick Dick Johnson; human ex-private detective and corpo-cop with unchecked access to the police databanks, as well as their patrol routes and average response times.
- Mahogany Flavour; a Nayaling with eyes in every stripclub and brothel in the megacities, constantly looking for runners for his blackmailing operations.
The secretive heart of Nazzdack, the place of the richest of the rich retreat too, is a heavily fortified gated community turned rocket launch pad. The Walled Street is home to the obscenely wealthy shareholders that control the fates of the New World corporations. Waiting for their turn to join the luxurious space stations orbiting the world, these shareholders keep far away from the dangers of modern life; even a single step outside the Walled Street could mean the paying of a king's ransom to see a shareholder home safely. Rumors of what absurd opulence lies inside the Walled Street are entirely unfounded, as no one has successfully made their way inside in three hundred years. Denizens of Nazzdack often congregate to watch the annual rocket leave the atmosphere, shuttling trillionaires to their new homes among the stars. Celebrations last for weeks whenever one of them explodes.
Sarajevo Seven Holdings - [Unfinished] Rivalling Cardinal Holdings for its bizarre corporate hierarchy, Sarajevo Seven is a series of toll-booth city-states overseen by a Board of Directors known as the S7 Council. Each member of the S7 Council is answered to by a handful of corporations that govern their tiny territories, creating a strange, quasi-democratic empire, in theory at least. In practice, each director of the S7 is constantly vying for more power and territory through deception and boardroom espionage, buying, selling, trading and overthrowing territories. Each territory houses an individual megacity and a handful of surrounding charging station outposts, their residents constantly waking up to new rulers and new rules. Due to the indecipherable top-down management, most megacities act on autopilot, creating generalised goods, brands and services with little export value, even to other Sarajevo Seven territories.
Crime in the undercities is therefore equally humdrum, when compared to other corporations. Minor smuggling and drugs trafficking, as well as disputes to control selling territory, makes Sarajevo Seven a great place for adventurers to cut their teeth in a rather typical, small-time environment. A great many adventuring parties start in Sarajevo Seven, but quickly outgrow the undercity gangs and corporate bickering to make their fortunes in greener pastures. But the constantly shifting ownership of megacities and high turnover rate for gangs means anyone who returns to Sarajevo Seven does so as a stranger.
Mi Genna - [Unfinished] A relatively small island dedicated almost entirely to the production of Stonesmoke plants, a genetically perfected version of cannabis created to soothe and placate the populace of the New World through a fruity haze of relaxing, creamy smoke. Some corporations slip Stonesmoke oil into the food and drink they produce, while others simply pump smoke through habi-cube blocks of an evening, encouraging their employees to relax, order a pizza and watch some TV until the next shift.
Stonesmoke is popular even among those that have left their birth-appointed jobs to become adventurers, especially as a soothing rub for aches and sores, an entertaining mild psychedelic, and a very fun aphrodisiac.
The All-Gobi Desert - Bearing a distinctly ancient Eastern feel with a hodgepodge of old Eurasian cultures, the All-Gobi Desert is home to lone wandering swordsman, lizard-mounted Cossack raiders, pirate ports along the shore-line, quiet solitary bath houses and tea rooms, and roving herds of mutants. Straw hats, floral kimonos, saris and rusalki are common throughout the region, though the global stance on shorts and bikinis is still most prevalent, especially in urban environments and territories such as Cardinal and Calico, and the Western vibe of New Mojave has bled into coastal regions like Cardinal, The Freemen Commune and The Jam Gardens. Towns built around solar charging stations are still often wood-built and frontier-like in nature, but often have the architectural flavour of East Asia. Beastman packs and mutant herds have a much more pronounced presence in the All-Gobi region, though Kaiju are suspiciously rare.
The New Mojave Desert - Dotted across the plains of the New Mojave are frontier towns with a Wild West aesthetic. Saloons, brothels, cyberdoc barbers, general stores and gunsmiths huddle around charging stations providing services to weary travellers and cattleherds, and mining towns for raw metals and natural gas are more pronounced than on All-Gobi. Black-clad gunslingers, trappers and pelt-seekers, cattle rustlers, bandit clans and bunker prospectors make up some of the more troublesome populace, while sheriffs and their deputies travel around their territory's jurisdiction in a somewhat futile attempt to corral them. The All-Gobi culture has established a beachhead most prevalently in J.A.V, Hentai Island and The Ronin Expedition, while the chivalric sensibilities of the 'Bacco Houses have taken on a surfer dude vibe in recent centuries. Bandit gangs and Kaiju are more common in the New Mojave, but mutants and Beastmen have taken a back seat.