Chicago: Then & Now

This season’s campaign is set in Chicago, a city abandoned and doomed to fail, or fated to rise back from tragedy, depending on who you ask. A little bit of history is probably necessary for most you to really follow what’s going on in the shadows. We’ve barely visited Chicago since the ‘mega-campaign’ 15 years ago, so I’ll recap:

(If you want more information than what’s listed here, that’s great. I’ll loan you some books.)

Bug City:Chicago skyline

On August 23, 2055, an Ares Firewatch team breached the Universal Brotherhood chapterhouse in Downtown Chicago. What began as random emergency calls quickly turned into mass panic when the first swarms of insect spirits attacked. The UCAS government,reacted by the book and focused on containing the threat, leveling entire building complexes around the Downtown core and creating an impassable wall of rubble and debris, effectively trapping about 100,000 citizens inside the perimeter—with the insect spirits. At the same time, a media ban went into effect, stonewalling any reports on, or even originating from within, Chicago. The official cover story claimed a VITAS outbreak was the reason for the establishment of the ‘Chicago Containment Zone.’ .

While the government stuck to their story, and military troops patrolled the wall, the situation worsened for the people trapped inside the zone. The insect spirits now openly attacked the masses at will. In the early morning hours of October 1, 2055, outside civilians and the security personnel guarding the wall witnessed a huge explosion in the Containment Zone. Though official sources refused to comment on the incident, it was widely suspected that the cause was the detonation of a nuclear bomb near the Cermak power plant in the zone’s center.

It took four months for the truth to leak. The reports and notes described a ravaged Chicago where frightened citizens fell prey to swarms of insect spirits and ruthless warlords controlled the few safe havens. Chicago became known by a new name: Bug City. Despite public outcry and protests, the government ignored the plight of the Zoners and stuck to its wait-and-see strategy. In the meantime, the corps and the government led secret recon or research missions into the Zone, focusing their research on the state of the astral and the nature of the insect torpor.

Feral City:post_apocalyptic_city

In late February 2058, Ares unilaterally launched Operation: Extermination, sending troops armed with heavy weaponry, drone support, and the newest strain of the Fluorescing Astral Bacteria—FAB III—into the Zone. This latest variant fed on magical energy, sucking the life out of dual-natured beings such as the bugs.

Contrary to the predicted life span of Strain III, the bacteria did not die out. The clouds certainly killed most of the insect spirits in the Zone, along with the ghouls, the devil rats, and many luckless spirits and magicians, but then they began feeding on the astral background count, roaming astral space and searching for food. Within a year, most of the area’s Awakened population— metahuman magicians, dual-natured critters and spirits—burnt out and died, their powers and auras drained by the bacteria.

In the following years, the gangs and collectives expanded their operations beyond the wall. By 2062, most of Chicago had become a dangerous urban hell, populated by criminals at large, smugglers, the SINless, and other outcasts of society. The total absence of law and order, ongoing turf wars, and rumors of a new generation of insect spirits evading the FAB clouds destroyed any hope for the city’s reconstruction. All rebuilding initiatives came to a sudden halt when the Crash 2.0 hit the globe and flatlined the few areas maintaining a stable communication grid in Chicago.

The Crash 2.0 was the final nail in the coffin for Chicago’s city government, which declared the city bankrupt and resigned en masse—the mayor used a nickel-plated Ares Predator to blow his brains all over his e-mail of resignation. Smelling blood, the corporations assisted the Chicagoland sub-sprawls of Gary, Naperville-Bolingbrook, Joliet, O’Hare, and South Milwaukee to assimilate juicy chunks of Chicago’s former outskirts and begin rebuilding the disparate and vital transport routes around the forsaken city. The O’Hare sub-sprawl became a heavily fortified logistics hub at the heart of the megacorps’ reintegrated international shipping network.

Feral Chicago was abandoned, pissed on by the governement and left to rot;The corporations bought Chicagoland and gobbled up the outer neighborhoods; and the Mafia and the other vultures of the underworld fought over who got to feast on the corpse.

Healing Chicago:

Illinois Governor Anthony Presbitiro won his re-election bid on the campaign of rebuilding Chicago, and he helped newcomer Allan Brown get elected as the new mayor of Chicago on the same platform. The two have initiated an aggressive campaign called Project: Takeback to repair and rebuild the shattered city.

Checkpoint_by_OmeN2501The first part of this is revoking the Adverse Possession ruling of the Chicago Supreme Court that granted ownership of property to anyone who lived on a piece of land continuously for an extended period of time without the rightful owner stepping forward to claim it. As of June 1, 2075, Adverse Possession was thrown out, and the residents of the former Containment Zone and areas of the Corridor no longer have any legal rights to property they may have been living on for as long as twenty years. Needless to say, this has angered many of those living in these areas of the city.

The second part is offering up a one year “reclamation period” where anyone who can prove that they had a legal claim to a piece of land prior to the Containment Zone going up or have since purchased rights to that property will be given ownership immediately. After one year, any remaining property will be auctioned off to any interested parties for immediate ownership.

There are two catches to this, however. The first is that any entities normally exempt from local land taxes due to extraterritoriality will have to pay taxes for the first five years to pay for rebuilding critical infrastructures in the area. The second is that all parties taking ownership of land have until June 1, 2077 to physically take possession, clear the land, rebuild, and start using it, or else the city will declare eminent domain and seize the property back for resale.

Many corporations both new and old are moving in to take advantage of Project: Takeback, and you can bet the residents of the Zone aren’t going to take this lying down. Everyone’s looking to hire runners, whether it’s to destroy evidence left behind before the CZ went up, reclaim lost data and tech, prove ownership of property, stop someone else from claiming the land, or simply throw a monkey wrench in the entire process. Either way, there’s a lot of money to be made, and it’s a good time to be a runner in Chicago!

Just keep in mind that Chicago was termed a Feral City for a reason. Ghouls, bugs, magical voids, toxic zones, gangs organized crime, the government combine to make the Windy City is a mess, and the sprawl made Aethernet’s Five Most Dangerous Cities list the last ten years running for a damned good reason.

Watch your back. Shoot straight. Conserve ammo. And never, ever deal with a dragon.