Editing Paradise City:Urban Geography (section)

==Dead Neighboorhoods aka Deadlands.==


===Eastside Deadlands:  “The Wonderlands”.===

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The Wonderlands are famous as the zone with the highest per capita drug use in all of Paradise.  It is the place where people go to try to create their own private reality.  Newcomers to theWonderlands very rarely survive for long – the zone is for the mad and the mad are often dangerous.  The buildings are ruins, but local artists are highly prolific and the Wonderlands look more like demented dreamwords than parts of a modern city.  The area has a very low population.  There are a few relatively orderly areas, usually belonging to cults of various kinds.  These cults may or may not endorse drug use, or may have very specific rules about which drugs are to be endorsed and which are to be condemned.  The police rarely venture into the Wonderlands and only move in force.  Weapons control is virtually non-existent – the police are absent and the relatively few gangs don’t particularly care.  However, even in the Wonderlands, it is difficult to obtain squad-support weapons, or other such items of LR 0 or below.

===Southside Deadlands: “The Arenas”.===

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If people go to the Wonderlands to lose themselves in drugs, they go the Arenas to lose themselves in pure violence.  In most parts of the Arenas, simply being there is an invitation to be attacked by whatever strangers happen to be nearby.  Life tends to be short here, to say the least.  Naturally, the area is in ruins and has an extremely low population.  There are a few relatively orderly areas, usually devoted to particularly extreme variations on the idea of combat sport.
The police hate to enter the Arenas, as they are regarded as being particularly interesting opponents.  Weapons control is virtually non-existent.  However, even in the Arenas, it is difficult to obtain squad-support weapons, or other such items of LR 0 or below.

===Westside Deadlands: “The Westside Nation”===

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The Westside Nation is a confederation of urban survivalists, in which gangers are the warrior-aristocracy.  The area is mostly composed of neighborhoods that were flattened twenty years ago by police with emergency powers in a “war” between the Westside and the cops.  Most of the Westside concedes that the police won the war, but in the Nation, it is accepted that Nation won, on the grounds that the police eventually went away and the Westside Nation inherited the turf.  The war gave the locals a hatred for the police, and a loyalty to the Westside.  Wartime alliances had given the locals a sense of community, and a tradition of standing together against outside incursion.  In the aftermath, the locals managed to cooperate sufficiently to do some rebuilding.  The various old communities largely survived, even if conditions became harder and authority shifted from the police to the gangers.  The Westside Nation produces its own power and its own hydroponic food.  The population is not large, but is larger than any other area in the warzone.
Each gang has independent rule over its own territory, but each gang also sends representatives to a central ruling body – the “War Council”.  The War Council is vaguely democratic, although the weight of each representative’s vote is determined by a Byzantine and patchwork set of rules.  The strongest gangs ultimately rule – the council makes decisions about what should be done, but has no power to enforce its decisions.  If the gangers enforce the rule, it sticks – otherwise, it doesn’t.  Gang feuds are common and inevitably, hostilities sometimes break out.  The War Council has no authority to take an official side in these disputes, although they can praise and condemn particular acts. Despite the limitations on its authority, the War Council remains a very powerful body – gangers gain face for having the council on their side.

Weapons:  Weapons of LR 1 or above may be worn openly.  Weapons of LR 0 or below are forbidden to everyone except gangers with turf in the Nation.