New Barcelona

New Barcelona[edit]

The year is 2083, fifty years into the volcanic winter caused by The Yellowstone Eruption (TYE). Temperatures have not risen above zero since the catastrophe. Ash fills the sky and blots out the sun. It collects in drifts, salt and peppering the snow that never melts.

Our global population has fallen into intense despair, many bordering on abject nihilism. Birth rates have declined and not only has the population shrunk due to the disaster, but now there are fewer people entering the work force to replace the aging population. I am particularly interested in the declining birth rates; after all, this is a theme that is beginning to show up in the modern day and I think it will be fun to explore at its most extreme.

Mega-corps, of course, would deploy every unethical and disgusting practice at their disposal to combat this issue. A corporation needs bodies to keep the machines of industry running! And who would buy the mass produced cheap garbage if there were no people? No, a declining birth rate is unacceptable. The shareholders profits are at risk - think of the shareholders!

In this setting "people farms" exist - taking advantage of legislation and technology allowing people who are in a vegetative state to be used to combat the declining birthrates; not to mention, the totally normal people being drugged and suppressed and illegally being used in the birthing operations.

Districts[edit]

District List

District 1: Neon Abyss
Impending Doom/Urban Maze

District 2:
Corp Stronghold/Restive Locals

District 3:
Sweatshop Labor/Secessionists

District 4:
Organleggers/Depths Below

District 5:
Sweatshop Labor/Organleggers

A number of very influential organlegging rings operate out of the district, buying cyber and flesh from gangs throughout the city. Those who desperately need certain implants or surplus organs that can’t be obtained legitimately can be found dealing with ring representatives here, as well as medical organizations who aren’t picky about their sourcing.

Factory work is rarely safe and offers slave wages. Here, it’s nominally worse than slave labor, because slaves expect to be fed. Some massive factory or other economic enterprise is eating up poor laborers, wringing what work they can from them before leaving them broken and discarded. Most hold out hopes of decent pay and advancement, making good on it only often enough to keep the dream alive.

ConsumerCorp employs children from the children farms in conditions no better than slave labor, destroying their minds and bodies before discarding them to the streets when they can no longer meet strict and abusive work standards. Organleggers prey on the homeless and destitute, harvesting flesh and cyber to sell in other markets.

District 6:
Restricted Access/Lasting Scar
Create/Chaos
A bioweapon weapon was released that infects people and forces them to grow extraneous limbs until they become gibbering creatures formed entirely of limbs that swarm after warm bodies. The entire district is permanently sealed off and has heavy guarding outside of it.

District 7:
Grand Structure/Border Dispute

Badlands

Here is what I've got so far for districts - most of them are still just the flavor provided by the systems roll tables. District 5 is the most fleshed out by far, but I am currently running another group here and would prefer to run a different district.

District 1 is where I am running a little solo game to test some of the systems.

District 6 would be closer to the wastelands as far as access to the fruits of the city. It's completely cut off due to a horrible bioweapon leak, and would be a pretty bleak area to live. Extremely dangerous and access to resources is poor.

I could totally see rich corpers from other cities medivacing to New Barcelona for medical treatment. The Belearics, nearby rich Islands, are places of extreme luxury and wealth that only the uber rich can afford to attend. Maybe this is where many of the organs are being shipped off to...

Thoughts from Psyche[edit]

Brainstorming a bit, hope that's OK. It seems strange that there is such a heavy presence of both sweatshops and organlegging, so I feel like that cries out for an explanation. I'm thinking the organlegging must not be entirely local: what if NuevoBarca is a hub for medical and implant tourism, a target of inbound human trafficking and body "disposal" for the rest of the world. The sweatshops are producing cheap knock-off cybernetics and bioware in volume, with the workers struggling to stay ahead of the threat of being worth more as parts than as labor.

District 2 could be the regional headquarters of a Kamagawa / Maxim joint venture medical center focused in life extension cybernetics, with the nursing staff on the verge of revolt and strikes over the extreme hours and the imperious top-down cultures of those two companies.

District 4 might be literally spread across the city, occupying an expansion of the Barca Metro system, which was built to provide both expanded public transport, but also cooling systems for body storage (and maybe even cryogenic preservation of wounded or severely ill patients until further medical options become available). People from all over the world pay to be shipped to Barca on their deathbeds, in hopes of eventual revival. If some of the local body banks have turned to organlegging, well, all these frozen guys look pretty similar to one another, and they are pretty quiet about any objections.

The District 6 virus is pretty bizarre, but it sounds to me like what might happen if a technology intended for clonal replacement organs got out of hand.

As for the grand structure in District 7, megacities like this always strain a little credulity when it comes to feeding themselves, and Barcelona is coastal. How about a gigantic fishery along the coast, run by SLAG, where the border dispute is between internal management. SLAG is used to managing land-based agriculture, so it has given the managers geographic regions of authority within the mega-fishery. Problem is, the fish can move (or be chased) from one managers territory to another, leading to all sorts of dirty dealing to keep the numbers up at the expense of the neighboring divisions.

Thoughts from Faluffh[edit]

Would like to add my thoughts on District 1: Neon Abys/Impending Doom/Urban Maze, for your consideration! Gargantuan housing complexes have organically grown in all dimensions (think Kowloon but on a massive scale) to form these deep canyongs of neon, where life takes place on multiple levels, connected by makeshifts bridges and stairs. Social standing corresponds to level. Targeted holo and AR ads bombard and track you constantly to almost dizzying effect. Impending Doom: An autofactory admin AI has gone rogue, sealed off the factory and cut all connections to the outside. Fate of the wage slaves within unkown.

Corporations and Groups[edit]

Delta Industries - Consumer Goods
Summit-Lyers Ag Corp (SLAG Co) - agriculture
Smith & Smith Services - Data Brokering
Godvision Entertainment LLC - Media/Entertainment
Kamigawa Neurotechnics - Medical and high end head cyber (think mind citadels, etc)
QuikGov Services - Government
Foc Maxim - weapons/military