T H E P L O T S O F A R
I. Electric City Trot
A series of attacks escalating in their brutality have occurred over the last three months, unified by the fact that the perpetrators of these attacks were artificial life-forms posing as members of the human populace. The men and women of PubSec must find the source of these artificial killers and put a stop to the violence before paranoia and fear consumes the city. Yet things aren't always that easy.
A series of attacks escalating in their brutality have occurred over the last three months, unified by the fact that the perpetrators of these attacks were artificial life-forms posing as members of the human populace. The men and women of PubSec must find the source of these artificial killers and put a stop to the violence before paranoia and fear consumes the city. Yet things aren't always that easy.
D A T A B A S E
General world-building information.
The world has changed from what we know it to be. Unchecked climate change has caused global temperatures to increase by four degrees centigrade. As a result crops that weren't already genetically modified to withstand the increase would begin to fail at rates of up to 40%, forests began to wither and die causing brush fires become more and more prevalent. As the coral reefs and rain forests slowly vanished biodiversity began to decrease at startling rates. Droughts have become more common as the age-old flows of rivers and streams has begun to be effected and water shortages are common in more remote areas. But most importantly the change came with the floods. As the ice caps began to melt and sea levels began to rise, coastal cities began to be washed away one of the most prominent being the eventually entire submergence of the American Eastern Seaboard as well as many islands from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. This has lead to many land reclamation projects and the creation of a plethora of artificial islands and floating cities such as New Jisei.
The city of New Jisei started off as nothing more than a radiation scrubbing island off the coast of Hokkaido. After its initial task was completed, the island became a hub of vagabonds and illicit types. A hub of the black market tech trade as they smuggled the hottest and newest tech out of Japan into nearby Russia and from there the world. It didn't take long for the corporations to notice the small thriving ecosystem and how profitable it could be. Greasing the pockets of the Diet, the Corporation's had New Jisei declared a Free Economic Zone or FEZ for short. Essentially this would mean that the Corporations would benefit from all the protections that the mainland government provided with none of the limiting restrictions. Shorty afterwards the corporations moved in kicking out the riffraff and establishing their capitalist utopia.
As expanding perpetually outward would cost more and more money, New Jisei has instead grown upward. A rising anthill like mass of interconnecting walkways, bridges, and roads that connect the various skyscrapers and other buildings. Wealth and status is easily determined in the city, the poor are filtered to the bottom where the sunlight barely reaches them, while the wealthy live in their castles floating in the sky high above, two separate worlds living within the same tight confines.
On paper the city is a place of unlimited freedom, anyone can start a business if they have the cash to pay for a license and there is little to no regulation of what actually is produced or sold in the city. Essentially though the city is run by a group of five corporations known as the Corporate Council, nothing happens in New Jisei without the Council's approval and most of the wealth in the city has a strange way of making its path back into their hands. These five corporations are: Tsukuda Medical, Sasaki Heavy Industries, Nyo International, Zykov-Azarov Synthetics Group, and Byun Associates. At the moment the de facto "head" of the Council is the ever-present Tsukuda Medical.
Public Security as the name implies is one of the few non-privately owned operations in New Jisei. It came about as a result of a problem between the Corporate Council - what to do about law enforcement. The "real" answer following how New Jisei operates would of been the creation of a privatized police force, but the Council was uncomfortable with giving one of its member complete control of law enforcement. So instead of creating a law enforcement agency that would of heavily favored one group, they specifically set about making an agency that would hinder all of them the least. Still of course serving under the jurisdiction of the Council which provides almost all of their limited funding.
PubSec as an agency is understaffed, underfunded, and more often than not outgunned by the crooks they are trying to bring in. That is of course if they even manage to be able to authorize a warrant to actually arrest somebody of actual importance. (It is kind of hard to fight corruption and crime when the heart of both is in charge of your paychecks.) This has cast the agency in a negative light among the common populace of New Jisei who at best see them as incompetent and worthless idiots, and at worst as useless puppets helping propagate a decaying system.
Because of these established preconceptions recruitment for the agency is rather limited. They don't have people lining up out the door to sign up with them. So they aren't too picky when it comes to people wanting to join up. They basically take all the help that they can scrounge up and if you can't shoot a gun well they can fix that.
PubSec as an agency is understaffed, underfunded, and more often than not outgunned by the crooks they are trying to bring in. That is of course if they even manage to be able to authorize a warrant to actually arrest somebody of actual importance. (It is kind of hard to fight corruption and crime when the heart of both is in charge of your paychecks.) This has cast the agency in a negative light among the common populace of New Jisei who at best see them as incompetent and worthless idiots, and at worst as useless puppets helping propagate a decaying system.
Because of these established preconceptions recruitment for the agency is rather limited. They don't have people lining up out the door to sign up with them. So they aren't too picky when it comes to people wanting to join up. They basically take all the help that they can scrounge up and if you can't shoot a gun well they can fix that.
Technology is omnipresent. Without tech you get left behind in the dust, you yourself became outdated. Technology is everywhere from the self driving cars, virtual reality programs, rail guns and the rich being able to make genetically perfect babies through modifications and gene splicing prior to birth. But the most prominent of the new technologies are of course cybernetic augmentations. These augmentations were supplement by the boom in the robotics and biomedical fields in the late 2010s and early 2020s. As robots became more lifelike and able to perform more complex tasks so did our own cyber limbs. But most people aren't big old walking destruction machines. The man of today is stylish and sleek. Cybernetics are designed to be streamlined for that high mover lifestyle. Whither it is a simple chip to make you better at judging stocks or cataloging files, or hydraulic piston in your legs so that you can crush a man's chest with one kick. The world is defined by high tech living.
The capstone of this of course is Cyberware and augmentations. They are the hot style of the day. For those that can afford it you will probably have at least a couple of enchantments to give you that edge. Maybe your eyes are the new EYE-SEEU model with the digital display and colored irises (neon blue is in this year). Everybody's got something because if you got nothing than you don't got any edge over the other guy. Some keep em internal with chips and devices built into the body hidden beneath flesh, but some go all out and start chopping limbs to get the newest arm model. It's addicting, it's exciting and it's all the rage
The capstone of this of course is Cyberware and augmentations. They are the hot style of the day. For those that can afford it you will probably have at least a couple of enchantments to give you that edge. Maybe your eyes are the new EYE-SEEU model with the digital display and colored irises (neon blue is in this year). Everybody's got something because if you got nothing than you don't got any edge over the other guy. Some keep em internal with chips and devices built into the body hidden beneath flesh, but some go all out and start chopping limbs to get the newest arm model. It's addicting, it's exciting and it's all the rage
Build a new you today.tm
A melding of flesh and steel, cybernetics are the style of the day. At the current all cybernetics are directly controlled by the brain to decrease latency issues, as a result levels of augmentation are dependent on how much of the brain itself has been replaced/integrated with circuitry. In essence the more a brain undergoes cyberisation, the more augmentations that a body can handle with Limited rigs being able to support basic implants and upgrades such as cybernetic eye implants and Extreme classifications being able to support entire new artificial bodies.
Limited:
This is the most common and the least intrusive of opreations. The Cerebrum and Corpus Callosum remain essentially unchanged, while micro-machine bio-neural electronics are interfaced with the Cerebellum. Utimately, the micromachine matrix integrates with a larger-scale microcircuitry interface. This in turn outputs to interfaces, which are installed immediately below the cerebellum of the user. Typically inclusion are wideband wireless connections in order to access the internet. Physically, the brain differs from the natural brain with the addition of a thin metal shell. These shells are a common feature, and may further contain additional shielding, such as lead and glass for workers in environments contaminated with radioactive material. The sell is customized for each user, and will have apertures (in cases of minimal cyberisation) for the ocular nerves, and the olfactory bulb.
Enhanced:
This form of cyberisation now sees users have increasingly more of their brains replaced and/or enhanced with highly advanced and specific-application neurocircuitry. In most cases, the minimum of brain tissue retained throughout the cortex is approximately 30%, In addition, subjects of advanced cyberisation gain many advanced technological abilities, such as the ability to address more than one cyborg body simultaneously, rapid learning capabilities, and the incorporation of computational elements not found in most normal human beings.
Extreme:
As noted above, advanced cyberisation generally does not exceed 70% of the brain's volume in the process of optimization, for safety reasons. But in some very rare cases, far more of the brain may be replaced, and in almost all cases, this will be as the result of disease and medical treatment, as opposed to personal preference. The ratio of replacement can approach up to 95.2% of the brain with neurocircuitry. People with this form of cyberisation show a strong tendency to drift away from normal humanity in terms of their skills in interfacing with technology, and yet perversely display heightened emotions, as with the very high level of cyberisation, the brain is less responsive to physiological dampening of emotion. As a result many subjects that have undergone such processes are prone to psychotic breakdowns and generally the pressure upon the remaining parts of the brain more often than not leads to brain failure and eventual death with the longest ever suriving patient lasting no more than three years post operation.
A melding of flesh and steel, cybernetics are the style of the day. At the current all cybernetics are directly controlled by the brain to decrease latency issues, as a result levels of augmentation are dependent on how much of the brain itself has been replaced/integrated with circuitry. In essence the more a brain undergoes cyberisation, the more augmentations that a body can handle with Limited rigs being able to support basic implants and upgrades such as cybernetic eye implants and Extreme classifications being able to support entire new artificial bodies.
Limited:
This is the most common and the least intrusive of opreations. The Cerebrum and Corpus Callosum remain essentially unchanged, while micro-machine bio-neural electronics are interfaced with the Cerebellum. Utimately, the micromachine matrix integrates with a larger-scale microcircuitry interface. This in turn outputs to interfaces, which are installed immediately below the cerebellum of the user. Typically inclusion are wideband wireless connections in order to access the internet. Physically, the brain differs from the natural brain with the addition of a thin metal shell. These shells are a common feature, and may further contain additional shielding, such as lead and glass for workers in environments contaminated with radioactive material. The sell is customized for each user, and will have apertures (in cases of minimal cyberisation) for the ocular nerves, and the olfactory bulb.
Enhanced:
This form of cyberisation now sees users have increasingly more of their brains replaced and/or enhanced with highly advanced and specific-application neurocircuitry. In most cases, the minimum of brain tissue retained throughout the cortex is approximately 30%, In addition, subjects of advanced cyberisation gain many advanced technological abilities, such as the ability to address more than one cyborg body simultaneously, rapid learning capabilities, and the incorporation of computational elements not found in most normal human beings.
Extreme:
As noted above, advanced cyberisation generally does not exceed 70% of the brain's volume in the process of optimization, for safety reasons. But in some very rare cases, far more of the brain may be replaced, and in almost all cases, this will be as the result of disease and medical treatment, as opposed to personal preference. The ratio of replacement can approach up to 95.2% of the brain with neurocircuitry. People with this form of cyberisation show a strong tendency to drift away from normal humanity in terms of their skills in interfacing with technology, and yet perversely display heightened emotions, as with the very high level of cyberisation, the brain is less responsive to physiological dampening of emotion. As a result many subjects that have undergone such processes are prone to psychotic breakdowns and generally the pressure upon the remaining parts of the brain more often than not leads to brain failure and eventual death with the longest ever suriving patient lasting no more than three years post operation.
You got uppers, downers, screamers of every variety under the rainbow. The biggest and newest craze hitting the world comes from Virtual Stimulation. Originally designed for rehabilitation and therapy purposes it wasn't long until some smart idiots at some university saw potential for something else. Using VS they record user experience everything from getting shot, running a marathon, to getting the best head of your life, hell even death if your into that shit and allow a user to experience all the sensations that the record user was able to. According to users it beats out any drug on the market. As a result the VS market is booming from every sector rich to low.
On the surface weapon use is highly regulated by the Corporations. With most firearms, combat augmentations and advanced bladed weaponry being unable to be bought without the proper license. In reality it's as easy as going to the corner store and asking for the special stock. A good hacker can get the ID locks on most weapons broken in minuets for the right price of course. Most people carry at least something to defend themselves as the world isn't generally that nice of a place. And to those that can't afford the price of admission. Well a good old fashion pipe or bat never really goes out of style.
General Rules
╬ Don't be a dick.
╬ If in doubt please refer back to the above stated rule.
╬ If you have any questions please ask. I don't bite only throw sarcastic quips.
╬ I'm aiming for at least one IC post a week as a guideline for levels of activity.
╬ Have fun.
