Locations

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Global warming has really shifted the temperature up a notch. Summers are fraught with heat waves, sometimes dry, sometimes humid, while winters are cold and rainy with a few snowfalls every few years. And then there are the storms and bushfires that sweep the nation with increasing regularity. The storms are bad enough to cause frequent sewerage overflow into the Detroit and Rouge Rivers which increase the risk for waterborne disease outbreaks. To make matters worse, increased pollution have led to acid rain - not enough to burn but certainly rough enough to sting the eyes and bring up a rash. The city is surrounded by the polluted beauty of the Great Lakes where sewerage runoff and increased pollution has led to toxic algal blooms, oxygen-depleted “dead zones”, and fish kills. The Great Lakes, themselves, are also in decline.

Detroit is split into New Detroit that is populated by the wealthy and their minions, many of whom moved from coastal cities inundated by rising floodwaters, and Old Detroit which contains old-fashioned buildings and urban decay.

The Central Business District is full of clean, neat, well lit showcases, free of crime and poverty, controlled by powerful corporations. There are expensive hotels and apartment buildings for the mega-rich as well as Bunkbay hotels (essentially a bed in a cupboard in stacks of three with a keypad to let you in) for commuters stuck working late. They’re serviced by buses and Light Rail Lev Trains that runs in an underground network in the inner city but which goes aboveground in the outer suburbs.

The Housing Trust districts are a series of tall apartment buildings built by the Compassion Foundation where single individuals are given Bunkbays and families are given FlopCubes (6sqm homes with a triple bunk bed on one side and kitchen / storage on the other with a single window in between). Only the unemployed are given such accommodation and waiting lists are long. Their water supplies are direct from the river and the foul-smelling, off-coloured and off-tasting water can cause skin rashes, hair loss and itchy skin.

The slums are decrepit, squalid suburbs and burned out ghettos teeming with booster-gangs, desperate working class families and addicts. Unlike the Housing Trust districts, people here don’t get any support and have to find some extra income to make their way. Drug deals, day labour crime, and scrapping anything worthwhile from buildings are common means people use to support themselves while working their full-time jobs.

The outer surburbs are safe, well-guarded tracts of land where execs raise their families in relative security. Many homes are heavily secured with some standing as compounds in their own right, due to the heavy crime rate and levels of desperation in the nearby slums. Some homes are picketed by the desperate poor, against those who are heavily involved in causing them harm through corporate or government-level decision-making. The water here is heavily treated in suburban stations and then through home filters.

The Mortal World


 * Construction Site
 * The Dream Pub
 * Good as Gold Store
 * Hotel Astoria
 * Sunshine Hotel
 * The Sycamore Clinic