World

 

Edgeworld is a brutally provocative setting where fame, fortune or death wait just around the next corner. The briefly presented history of the world that follows is unknown to the majority of mankind, both Edger, Lancer and Corpse alike. What little is known is represented only by vague bits and pieces and doesn’t truly reflect the grandeur of the recently lost past or the horror of the intervening years between the present and the catalyst which caused most of it to be lost.

A new force had awoken in mankind and in its wake the governments and varied nations of the world had united partially from an altruistic desire to do so and largely because the realization had set in; that it was a necessary to avoid the near cataclysmic repercussions looming on the horizon if it did not do so. Extremes largely disappeared, with respect to the rich and poor. United as they were, the various nation states arose in a concerted effort and saw victory after victory in answering the calls of a troubled world. Armies were wholly eliminated for lack of need, while each city, state, region or country kept on hand only those forces required to maintain security for their respective peoples.

Over the course of the following years, a call for a world wide government swept the globe and by near unanimous decision of the people of the earth a formal World House of Justice was established. The hold outs, those reluctant to give up their formerly tyrannical grip over the regions and peoples who surrounded them, were primarily the largest Corporations, composed of the most petty despotic and tyrannical men and women of the world. Before the sweeping reforms the resistant Corporations and power brokers were forced through a combination of the new world governing seat and the people to adhere to the changes and requirements required of them.

During this time, such advances were made in the sciences, arts and simple human evolution as to defy description or expectation. A veritable utopia existed for a time however brief, until that blackest of days when all was turned on its head as the world was plunged into isolated darkness. After more than two generations of simple prosperity and world-wide peace, the sudden loss of interlinked communication and knowledge via the matrix as well as all but the most basic of devices and services, had seen man’s unprecedented evolution not only come to a swift and gut-wrenching halt, but retrograde with disturbing ease and swiftness.

The various powers that had been, quickly fell beneath the panic stricken, bestirred masses, driven gradually through persuasion, atrocity and simple fear to destroy almost all that remained of the prosperous Golden Age of Humanity. Arisen from the ashes of the former order, the lurking Corporations quickly used their own dwindling influence and holdings to form a serviceable mode of communication between each other. In the years that followed the world slid backward on the scale precariously, and more than once bombs and missiles long thought to have been destroyed rained down upon the former seat of the world government.

A time like the feudalism period enveloped the earth as Darwinian Law; survival of the fittest, became the only true law that applied anymore. Warlords and tyrants arose in various locales around the world, some rising to great power only to be cast down at the height of their glory as the Corporations, now newly mobilized and equipped with technologies that the relatively uneducated and forlorn masses couldn’t hope to challenge crushed them underfoot.

Easily 150 years or more past in this vein, before a semblance of something more than nomadic subcultures would come into being. With the loss of everything other than a sense of individual and some degree of tribal identity, and faced with a world that rapaciously destroyed the helpless or weak, man slipped even further down the evolutionary cycle. Now, in what is tentatively believed to be the year 2312 the world is one of lofty skyscrapers and extravagance in all things, when it comes to the upper echelon world of the Corpse.

Those who had served on one side or the other in the intervening 200 or so years, towards the gradual resurrection of the Corporate Machine and vicariously society as well, had settled down near those selfsame Corporations and as a result; provided them with an abundant,  steady supply of cheap labor and basic resources. Some became mercenaries by trade and belief, choosing to do or believe those things that would be realistically of use to them. Others untrusting; and not without reason, of the vast Corporate Enclaves; became the flotsam and jetsam of the streets. Living to provide a means of recreation for those whose station was higher than their own despite their protests.

But as has so often proved the case, the lowest tier of men and women were not content with this arrangement, however much the Corporate entities would assure them that it was merely a temporary transitional state. Gradually even these half-hearted attempts to placate the ignorant masses stopped, and wholesale slaughter and massacres took place as the Corporations annihilated those who stood against them as an abject lesson to others. For the most part it had the desired affect. For the most part...

 

 

Unhindered by any form of environmental authority, governmental supervision or public accountability, the Corporations conduct their business with the bottom line in mind. Heedless of the affects their actions have on those beneath them or the world itself. Acid rain, fierce dust storms and tornados flail fitfully in various regions across the world. Even as whole ecosystems falter and die out, the Corporations trudge onward, toward the Holy Grail of a greater profit margin and self aggrandizement for people who already have more than they know what to do with.

The various continents have likewise fractured in the wake of all that has happened in the last 200+ years. The United States quickly splintered into its individual components, forming a loose coalition of Free-States, with the exception of Hawaii and Alaska, which are now largely independent of any non-local form of government. Joined in large part by the various regions of Canada, the whole of the northern portion of that continent is comprised of empty wilderness dotted by towering spires or sprawling domes of ceramics and poly-steel surrounded by squalor.

In Europe, the old-world cities and countries have gradually begun to return from the brink of total toxicity. With the aid of first, Neu-Leben Bionetics and subsequently Genomix Industries, Nippon Worldwide and Lockheed Aerodyne Systems, the various locales from Ireland and Scotland, down to the tip of Italy and further east through the Grecian Isles have seen a resurgence in population as well as economic and ecological growth and recovery.

The various one-time Arabic countries have likewise gradually begun returning from the war-torn ravages of the recent past. Still plundered and exploited for oil and chemical byproducts, most cities throughout the Middle East and the world for that matter, are composed of people of all creeds and backgrounds. China as well as its eastern neighbor, Japan; have grown both more dense and focused as the Corporations ruthlessly usurped control of the regions and their populace and as is elsewhere the case, Corporate dominion reigns with unquestioned authority. The old-world locales play host to the elite amongst Corpse society, as both residences and tourist attraction. Due to the aid gained from the Corporations, what government had existed in these places previously, has become nothing more than a mouth-piece for the Mega-Corps.

In other locales, Russia, Africa, South America, Cuba, Australia and New Zealand to name a few, the general populace is the epitome of contrast. Men and women pomp and means, sit amidst towering buildings adorned with the finest treasures yet to be had from around the world, while those below, languishing in the sprawling shadow of the Mega-Corps, the denizens of the streets, are an abject lesson in squalor, ignorance, poverty and filth. This is primarily the case in South America and Cuba, while Australia plays host to numerous corporations and no few shadowy test facilities. Likewise the former penal colony is frequented by the elite as both seasonal home and elitist vacation spot. New Zealand is wholly owned by corporate interests, the former occupants having been liquidated with extreme prejudice. Known world-wide for its varied landscape and beauty, it is one of the few places that has remained largely unspoiled by the ravages of the passing decades.

Nearly three generations have come and gone since the Great Blackout claimed the last vestiges of the brief, fledgling world society. The present day is a far cry from what the world was before the mysterious disaster. Life is cheap, and the ferocious drive that generations bred and raised as simple nomadic barbarians has taken its toll. The youth of today are more about style than substance, easily identifying with what’s in it for me as opposed to what’s best for all or even what affect their desires or actions might have on anyone other than themselves. It’s the unspoken rule of thumb that motivates the majority of the worlds inhabitants, from the highest, most extravagantly appointed Corporate boardrooms to the seediest back alleys in all the world's varied metropolitan sprawls.

On the streets, life is harsh and cruel; though occasionally... if you’re lucky, a ray of hope will filter through the gloom-ridden skies. In the Corporate world there’s no such animal. Those not wholly involved in the furtherance of themselves or the destruction of potential rivals, are so rich and jaded as to make the degradation and excesses of the past seem like philanthropic exploits by comparison. Whether on the unforgiving streets, within the towering skyscrapers or somewhere in between, the world of 2312 is one of uncertainty and rapaciously vicious circumstance…