Remember:
(There’s the man, the biz, and the crews.
The crews fight each other, and the biz keeps the peace. The man sits in the middle and gets richer off the victor. If you’re not with a side, you’re screwed from all angles.
The crews run the blue-collar stuff. The biz are the middle class. The man’s the 1%. If one of them stops working, everything suffers. They live in an ever-shifting balance of who can screw over the other two the most without dying on their ass.)
People
The Solid St8 are binary. They are kind, and they are cruel. They take on anyone, and they’ll take on everyone. They are all things, simultaneously, to all people. You’re either a one or a zero, and damned if you know which one you want to be.
Nu-Tsion is love, not the emotionless mediocrity of the Solid St8 or the hot mess the Anarks sell. They’re heat and passion – anger too, when it’s needed. Do right by them and you’ll get peace, you’ll get love, you’ll get free reefer and an invite to grandma’s 90th birthday. Cross them, and they’ll move hell and earth to break you down til you’re nothing.
The Anarks don’t give a shit what you think. You’re just a cog. You’re so much sweat and shit and blood and oil, pumping so the system — the man — keeps going. Them? They’re sand and rust and and they’re better than you. Come spin with them for a while, maybe you won’t get spat out right away.
Places
UCP: The whole dang area. No-one remembers what UCP stands for, just that it’s what the Man named the city. Common guesses are “Untitled Commercial Projects”, “Untapped Consumer Potential”, and “Ugly Crap Precinct”.
Dx9: A cube mile of concrete in the middle of the city. This is where the man lives. The crews never come here unless they got a death wish. The biz comes here sometimes, on the express permission of the man. There’s other Habs, like i3 in the east; and the ruins of null-null, deep south in the Red Zone. Each hab has it’s own Man and forms the core of another little city, like this one.
Rue-de-la-ronde: A circle of cheap coffee parlours, overpriced clothes shops and office blocks that look like air conditioners. The Rue is a moat, to keep the crews floating out and the wealth flying in. It’s bizland through and through, though you’ll also find crews on the up-and-up working here. Mostly the streets are full of spreadsheeters – indie contractors, predators, roving from one coffee shop to the next in search of the next big contract. It’s all smiles on the Rue proper, but behind closed doors, there’s a lot of bloodshed.
Locust Run: If you ask a spreadsheeter what the Locust run is, he’ll smile at you with those pearly whites and say it’s “where the magic happens.” Get him drunk, and he’ll admit he wouldn’t go there if you put a gun to his head. The Run’s where the crews sweat and bleed and fight for the right to make Things. These things are vital to the Biz and the Man, like cars and shoes and miniature poodles and coffee grinders. The crews have killed each other over contracts to make Things for generations. Only the brave or stupid will admit how fucked up this is.
The Red Zone: The fraying edge of the Locust Run is where the Red Zone starts. Red for bad. Anything in the Red Zone is outside city limits, and fair game. The actual borders change all the time, places get abandoned or reclaimed. The Red Zones stretch between the Habs, and that’s it, that’s the planet. (Someone once told me the Red Zones used to be Green Zones, and they were so clean you could just grow stuff, straight outta the ground. Weird, huh?)