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San Diego Area:
San Diego's blasted ruins are center of interest in SoCal, the
nation-state carved from southern fragments of pre-war California.
New Carthage gleams in this shattered landscape,
a rectilinear jewel of intersecting streets hemmed in by retaining walls and security
buffers. Its reconstructed sprawl is the center of commerce and society in the region,
and a new hope for humanity's rebirth from the verge of extinction.
Regional geography has changed greatly since the coming of the millenium. The automated strikes and counterstrikes of Zero Day sent several nuclear warheads towards San Diego before horrified Chinese and Russian operators could enter override codes. Antiquated systems and poor maintenance caused most to go awry, falling short in the Pacific Ocean. One warhead, targeting naval installations, detonated in an airburst over Imperial Beach, south of San Diego proper. The resulting shockwave pummeled Coronado, the Silver Strand, and miles of beachfront into radioactive dust before the angry waters of the Pacific, foaming in superheated steam, rushed in to fill the crater. Another warhead landed inland, glassing over San Diego's East County into a broad, curving plain of smooth-cooled rock. Rising sea levels, over the ensuing years, flooded much of San Diego's river valleys to create an inland sea that stretches miles from the coast.
The Eastern Wastes:
This area is a vast stretch of urban ruins and broken radioactive terrain. Entire ranges
of hills and small mountains that once characterized the region have been swept clean from
one of Zero Day's errant warheads. What remains is slowly being reclaimed by nature, either
as tangled mutant forests or vast tracts of blowing sand and ash. The Eastern Wastes have
no well defined eastern or southern boundaries-- the terrain fades into a featureless expanse
that characterizes North America's lifeless interior.
The Zones:
The Zones are a confused mix of semi-ruined buildings, burnt out shells, and vast rubble
fields. Some of the old San Diego street grid remains, and desparate squatters still live
in the shattered tenements atop Kyu-Do Hill. Sometimes, when the tide is low, a forlorn
arch of the Coronado Bay Bridge is visible, awash in currents of styrofoam refuse and
dead seabirds. The rest of Coronado and the bridge's onramps are completely submerged.
Nirvana:
On the northern fringes of New Carthage sprawls Nirvana,
a dark den of smugglers and crime. The drugs that supply New Carthage's desperate
masses, that allow them to escape from their pathetic dreary lives, are grown and
processed in the murky underground tunnels of Nirvana.
Surplus of Dreamweed is exported through the docks,
funding the black markets independent from the noose of the megacorps.
Lurking in the undercurrents of Nirvana lie many dangerous and mysterious groups,
from the Crosspatchers to the Massikim.
Shadowy deals are made, flesh and technology auctioned off by the shiphold.
Old City:
Below the southern walls of New Carthage is the battered Old City,
unrepaired since Zero Day. The twisted remains of humanity and life exist on a day to
day basis here. Ruthless downtown gangs make this area their hunting ground, culling the weak
this hell of almost-survival.
Mutants from the atomic war hide underneath Old City, finding its warrens of
abandoned sewers and buried city sections a haven from the vigilante groups and
mutant control squads.