Background

Background

The World of Progress

Although the World of Progress is vast, spanning thousands of planets, the players will spend the majority of their time on the SLA capitol of Mort, in the planet's capitol city by the same name. The galaxy at large is a wide and varied place though that influences life even on the back streets of Mort City. Space travel is achieved by Ebon navigated Foldships or Ion-driven capitol ships, both of which are not restricted to SLA industries - Soft Companies and pirates also operate spacecraft and will occasionally attack SLA shipping if the opportunity arises.

Mort

The planet Mort is the flawed jewel in SLA's crown. The giant planet consists mostly of desolate wastelands and dead oceans, scoured by industry and pollution. Giant atmospheric processors keep the planet habitable, and weather control systems keep the cities safe from the worst of Mort's environment. Even so, rain falls on the cities of Mort constantly.

New Paris

The fashion capitol of the World of Progress. New Paris is a popular tourist attraction due to its beautiful natural areas and magnificent urban vistas. New Paris City combines every type of architecture in the world of progress, and indeed every culture. The influence of SLA is deliberately subtle here and New Paris has a reputation for its tolerant society and laws.

Kn'nth

The Shaktar homeworld has remained largely untouched since the Conflict Wars, with SLA taking a back seat and allowing the Shaktar to continue with their warrior way of life safe in the knowledge that their code of honour binds them to loyalty. Kn'nth is a planet of vast plains where a Shaktar can live under the guidelines of his forefathers. Outside influence is discouraged by SLA in order to retain the characteristics that make the Shaktar unique, although the massive Shaktar Ion-Drive ships that are built there are common in the World of Progress.

Static

The Ebon homeworld is an untouched beauty of magnificent, slender architecture. Unlike other races, Ebon Operatives are generally born on Mort and for them to see Static in their lifetime is a highly emotional and important event that many never experience. As is befitting of Ebons, Static is home to many great libraries and museums in which visitors can be immersed for days, months or even years. It is also said that the great libraries of Static are home to information both arcane and very dangerous.

Polo

Polo is the frozen planet from which the Wraith Raiders originate. Its chilly environment appears hostile to humans, but Wraiths and the planet's flora and fauna are tough and well adapted. Survival is by no means easy on Polo, which is why the Wraith Raiders have evolved into such a hardy species, and much of the wildlife that shares the planet is equally dangerous.

Artery

Industrial worlds are common in the World of Progress, but none are more famous than Artery. It is the biggest Karma production facility in the World of Progress and as a result many of Mort's Stormers are born here. Most of Artery's population work in the Karma factories, in hot, polluted, unpleasant environments. The hard labour and harsh conditions have made a tough breed of the civilians of Artery, who are also often bolstered by biogenetic implants to improve their work capacity. Unrest is common there, and the Shivers have to be of a special calibre to deal with such a strong and tough population. Artery Shivers, like the population they control, are brutal, and are specially equipped with firearms and notable by their black riot-style armour.

War Worlds

Certain planets hold rare phenomenon or resources, or a vital strategic location, and become so heavily fought over by SLA and other companies that war envelops its entirety. Often the thing that was being fought over is destroyed in the process, but more often than not the war rages on regardless. War Worlds such as Dante, Cross and Charlie's Point have been fought over for so long that the average life of a soldier is measured in minutes, and the few who survive their tours are generally tough, dangerous and utterly insane.

Soft Companies

While SLA Industries maintains an iron grip on the world of progress, there are many pretenders to the throne. Rival companies, known by SLA as Soft Companies, work tirelessly to undermine SLA and bring about its downfall. From sprawling subversive organizations, to elite high-tech paramilitaries, to small back-street industries, the enemies of SLA are many and various.

DarkNight

DarkNight are by far the largest of the Soft Companies, and the biggest thorn in SLA's side. They fight SLA in open ground on the War Worlds, battling on planetary scales with huge armies. They own their own spacecraft with which to harass SLA shipping. They produce vast amounts of hardware and their planets home billions of people. Even so, they are small in comparison to SLA and survive mainly by stealth and concealment. To the average SLA citizen, DarkNight are a terrorist organization. They live in the cities, spying and subverting. They supply the illegal weapons and drugs and control the black markets. Rarely will DarkNight operate in the open on Mort, preferring guerrilla tactics and media subversion. SLA Operatives will encounter DarkNight Operatives and agents most often of the Soft Companies, but often the first they know of the encounter is from the impact of a sniper's bullet.

Thresher

Smaller in number than DarkNight, but more direct. The Thresher have powerful weapons and armour that make them difficult to stop, even by SLA's troops. Operatives stand little chance faced with their giant armoured suits and chainguns. Luckily they are rarely seen on Mort, and when they are they prefer hit-and-fade tactics.

Tek Trex

Tek Trex are a Soft Company that specialize in robotics. While robotics and cybernetics died off after the Chrome Age, Tek trex have continued to make security and attack robots for sale on the black market. These robots are often thought of as comical - at less than a meter tall and with a sort of round body and waddling gait they often appear so. They also sport light SMGs though, and are usually deployed in large numbers.

SLA Industries

Mort City

The capitol city of SLA Industries takes the name of the planet it dwells on, visible from space like a great black scar. Covering 76,000 square kilometers of the surface and stretching deep into the earth and high into the atmosphere, Mort is the largest city in the World of Progress.

Central

SLA Headquarters sits directly in the middle of Mort in the Central sector, a great glass pyramid with its upper floors masked by cloud. Around it, open to the sky and the as yet untainted rain, are the shining tower blocks of SLA's bureaucratic heart. It rises from ground level, or thereabouts, from around Central for kilometers into the sky, its skyline made up of every type of architecture from the World of Progress. Central is possibly the most secure public area in the World of Progress, constantly patrolled by Shivers and Dark Finders and surrounded by a patrolled wall with a strict entrance policy.

Uptown

Uptown is the district of Mort that is home to the elite, the rich and the powerful. Secure, disturbingly clean (especially to Ops who have grown up in downtown) and consisting almost entirely of square, grey tower blocks. Most Ops tend to live in Uptown, more often than not in specially designed apartment blocks with armed guards to deter assassins and hardened secure cabinets in the apartments for weapons and equipment. Having Ops segregated also benefits the other residents of Uptown, keeping them safe from both the enemies that Ops attract and the often violent and unstable Ops themselves. Most uptown residents know the locations of nearby Brain Waster blocks or Frother clan buildings and avoid them.

Slayer's Crib

Slayer's Crib is the biggest BPN Hall in Mort. Thousands of Operatives pass through its grimy, smokey corridors every day. Getting a BPN in any hall usually takes hours, but in Slayer's Crib waits of five or six hours are common. The discomfort suffered in the crowded confines are offset by the convenience of having the building close to where many Ops live, and by its reputation for having the best BPNs pass through it.

The Pit

The Pit is the largest nightclub on Mort, with a capacity of around a million people. Loking like a concrete bunker on the outside, the inside of the club delves nine floors into the ground in an inverted cone shape, each level overlooking the last. Each floor is dedicated to a certain race or passtime - live music, video games, even motor racing are available. Drinks are standardised at 1c each on every floor, and thousands of staff are employed on the vast bars that stretch around the club's walls, ensuring that nobody has to wait too long for a drink. Glyph pillars are placed around the floors, and one great glyph pillar stretches through the middle of the club. These are to prevent any fight that break out from getting out of hand, and with all weapons handed in at the door (and armour considered 'jobsworth') it prevents Brain Wasters being able to do too much damage.

Suburbia

While not as safe as Uptown, Suburbia is still by far one of the better places to live in Mort. Most SLA employees live here and life there is generally clean and safe. To keep the streets of the better areas of Mort free from scum and crime, there is a wall surrounding the area that prevents undesirables entering. The wall in theory extends under the district to prevent access from the area of Downtown that resides beneath it, although it is more of a metaphorical wall here, consisting of security doors, thick grilles and vents, and sealed alleyways. It is through the belly of Suburbia that the criminals, subversives and serial killers infiltrate into the heart of SLA industries, as the security is grossly under-funded. Suburbia's stretched security services and sprawling population of employees has created many problems, from abundant serial killers to bored gangs of juveniles.

Upper Downtown

Upper Downtown is where the majority of Mort's population live, and where most of an Operative's BPNs will take them. Most residents of Downtown are unemployed, existing on benefits, free TV, and whatever money they can scrape together. There is little loyalty to SLA in Downtown, but this is more due to apathy than any real hatred. Still, Ops in downtown shouldn't expect much co-operation without offering some kind of incentive. There are plenty of threats for an Operative in Upper Downtown. Shivers aren't as common here as they are inside the wall, and many of them are corrupt. Gangs reign in much of Upper Downtown, and they do not take kindly to being pushed by cocky Slops (gang member slang derived from SLA Op). The larger gangs - the Kiestas, the Johannas and the Krosstown Traffic - can push an Op back pretty hard with black market weaponry and thousands of members, and even the smaller gangs can make life very difficult if they take a squad's interview techniques personally. More dangerous than the gangs are the Soft Companies. A thriving black market and limited SLA presence makes for an environment where small companies producing cheap drugs or weapons can flourish, and it is usually squads of Operatives who have to put them down. DarkNight also has well embedded presence in Upper Downtown, recruiting and subverting. Many Operatives have their careers ended prematurely after failing to realise the strength of a DarkNight presence in a sector and falling to an ambush or sniper. Aside from human dangers, the nearer to the Cannibal Sector walls you get the more creatures from there filter into the city. Carrien raids and roaming pigs are common in these areas, and hundreds of Blue BPNs are issued every day to try and stem the tide of things coming under the wall that separates Downtown from the Cannibal Sectors.

Lower Downtown

Lower Downtown merges into Upper downtown so that the line between them is blurry, but the further down through the levels you go, the more you can be sure you're there. Lower Downtown is the foundations of the city, the crumbling buildings, alleyways, factories and tunnels uopn which the rest of the city above sits. It stretches deep into the earth for hundreds of levels, descending into the darkness where SLA doesn't venture. The first 20 levels or so of Lower Downtown resemble a more run down version of Upper Downtown, but by level 40 it is difficult to believe that it is part of the same city. Shivers never venture below about level 5, and Ops rarely venture below about level 20. Anarchy rules in Lower Downtown, and the pale, emaciated residents stick together to protect themselves from the horrors that also dwell there. The further down through the levels a traveller goes, the less human the residents look and the more common the creatures are. Reports from Ops who have returned from these areas tell of huge mutated creatures whose origins were impossible to tell. Ebons have reported of wierd sensations in the Ebb like nothing they've felt before - evil and presences with animal savagery. Most squads who venture that far never return, but even so there is a standing Green BPN to explore and report on the lower levels. Information is still vague though, as even Station Analysis cannot penetrate this far. In Lower Downtown an Operative is truly alone.

The Cannibal Sectors

600 years ago the Cannibal Sectors were the outskirts of the city, home to millions of workers. The are was undergoing a massive regeneration project centered on a giant building named Salvation Tower. Tragically though, the foundations of the city couldn't support the immense building and Salvation Tower began sinking into the ground. Like a portent of things to come for the area, Salvation Tower fell, killing thousands and destroying a large portion of the sector. The electrical backlash of the collapse left swathes of the city in darkness and anarchy quickly came to the stricken areas. In desperation, SLA erected walls between the worst areas and the rest of the city, hoping to prevent the spread of chaos. Today the walls are still present, strengthened and guarded by an army of Shivers. The remains of Salvation tower can be seen through much of Downtown, towering above the wreckage despite being under half its original height. There are five distinct Cannibla Sectors. CS1 is the largest and home to Salvation Tower. Generally regarded as the most dangerous, it is home to hundreds of thousands of Cannibals, Carriens, and other hostile creatures. CS1's most famous resident, however, is the Manchine Digger. CS2 is home to more Carriens than anywhere else on Mort. The tribes here are large and well organised, and there are rumours of a giant Greater Carriens named Bloodhorn who is not only fierce but also very intelligent. CS3, for reasons best known to themselves, attracts the Ex-War Criminals. Compared to the other Cannibal Sectors it is eerily still, although the quiet is constantly punctuated by explosions and gunfire. This is because the streets are under constant surveillence from the insane soldiers who dwell there, and the slightest movement will often draw a hail of gunfire or well placed grenade. Anything without the heavy armour and firepower of the maniac veterans will have a short lifespan indeed in CS3. CS4 is dominated by Cannibals, second in numbers only to CS1. Operatives venturing into CS4 should be aware that their flesh will be considered a delicacy for the residents and word spreads quickly when fresh meat is seen. Finally, CS5 is dominated by no type of creature in particular, but those who do live there suffer from a higher level of mutation than those of the other sectors. Packs of wild dogs and rats charge through the streets, great in both numbers and size. Mutant Carriens are far more common than elsewhere. The source of this mutation is a giant lake in the centre of the sector, highly polluted and ironically named Clearwater Lake. As well as being the source of the sector's mutations, Clearwater is also said to be home to a gigantic mutated monster. Those who have seen it describe a vast squid-like creature with huge tentacles tipped with razor sharp barbs.

Bureaucracy

Shivers

Shivers are the police force of SLA industries. Badly paid, badly motivated and bitter, most only do the job because it's one step up the ladder and so elevates them ever so slightly above the scum. Corruption is rife, and loyalty to SLA only stretches as far as their pay packet does. Operatives may call upon Shivers for assistance, but nothing is guaranteed and Ops have no authority over them.

Cloak Division

Cloak Division are the internal police of SLA Industries. They look for corruption and disloyalty and ruthlessly root it out. Cloak take many forms, from overt and heavily armoured to suited and corporate. Cloak Division also delegate their responsibility via Grey BPNS, and Ops performing well on Greys are often invited to work for Cloak full time.

Internal Affairs

Internal Affairs are a shadowy organisation who look for treachery and protect SLA from serious threats from within. Cloak Division agents are often mistaken for Internal Affairs, but the reality is that IA agents are rarely seen and even more rarely recognised for what they are. Indeed, if an Internal Affairs agent has revealed himself to you it is probably because you will not live long enough to tell anybody.

Media

The media plays a large part of many Operatives' lives. While it is common for an Ops to make their money and career by serving SLA well and doing their job, it is a far more attractive prospect to become rich and famous through their exploits.

Operative fame

The opportunity for an Operative to appear on TV is there for those who want it. News teams are hungry for combat footage, either filmed themselves or bought from Ops carrying cameras. The footage can bring in more money that the bonus scheme for the BPN ever could, but for Operatives who regularly appear on television there is even more to be made from sponsorships. In the World of Progress Ops are often seen as celebrities, and many Ops work purely for this and the lifestly it brings.

The Contract Circuit

The fighting superstars of the World of Progress are the Contract Killers. These modern gladiators are champions of their company, both SLA and the suppressor powers, fighting in the public arena of television. There are many games played by Contact Killers, some in scheduled events on gameshow sets, some on the streets of Mort when the opportunity presents itself. The games are always violent. Aside from the dangers of the televised fights, high profile Contract Killers also run the risk of attracting rival company assassins, jealous competitors in unauthorised attacks, and random psychopaths looking to make a name and break into the circuit themselves. The life of a Contract Killer is almost always a short one, but the life they do have is as decadent as they could dream of.