THE UNION OF PROSPERITY

• NextGen Tech

Considered by many to be the true jewel of the Union, NextGen Tech specializes in genetic engineering and advanced biotechnology. The best and brightest minds are selected to live in the specialized compounds, tasked with the noble mission of improving upon humanity itself.

These compounds serve the dual function of being a scientific research lab alongside a sprawling suburban space for families to reside in. The most famous of these compounds is christened ArkLabs, credited for the most significant bioengineering breakthroughs in modern history.

While the gifted are safe behind the gated domes of the compounds, the rest of the population toils away in the Outlands. These are impoverished, dense urban areas that struggle with disease and violence. Often the only ones who can rise above the Outlands are those academically gifted enough to be scouted for compound scientist work.

For everyone else the compounds remain visible, but unreachable. A distant star against a polluted sky.

• Agricore Organics 

Due to Agricore’s close collaboration with NextGen Tech, rows upon rows of identical, uniform crops endlessly dominate the Midwestern landscape. In this district animal cultivation has also become a perfect science; no longer does one have to consider the suffering of caged hens and swine. Bioengineering has seen to it that the swaths of livestock do not possess pain receptors, alongside other non-essential functions for large scale meat production. 

To facilitate the maximum food yield Agricore produces for the nation, the vast majority of its citizens are farmhands, resigned to live in the sprawling shanty towns constructed on the edge of the farmlands. Body scanners ensure nothing of substance is smuggled out from the fields, and towering electric fences ensure no one with idle hands can get in. 

The most common items confiscated are not technology or weapons, but simple food products: bread, eggs, and milk.

• TexxGas

More an ever-running machine than a district, TexxGas has centered itself as the primary energy producer for the nation. Where once there had been sandy coastlines, now floating refineries and drilling rigs block out the fading blue of the ocean. In the daytime the sky is tinged a sickening orange and gray, at night gas flares burn so brightly it looks as though the sun never set. 

While TexxGas citizens are prone to respiratory illness and cancers, their executives have escaped such ailments by living in secluded, climate controlled bunkers. Their workers are resigned to stacked barrack style housing or months on the rig itself. 

For workers, performance incentives dangle above their heads: incremental break increases, marginal privileges, and the occasional upgrade in protective equipment. Anything to filter out the poison.

• BlackForge Industries

It’s said that the rust belt had been painted over with a shiny coat of paint to make way for BlackForge. As a fulfilled promise to its citizens to bring back manufacturing, factories stretch for miles as though they were one great grey beast. The ground hums underfoot as wave upon wave of consumer products flow forth off the conveyor belts; bright beautiful plastic at the mere cost of the lakes and rivers glowing an irradiated warm hue. 

BlackForge offers a degree of upward mobility in the way of engineering and operational skills providing a route towards management; the vast majority of workers are relegated to repetitive, physically demanding tasks. 

Without any windows the shifts on the warehouse floor feel endless, only interrupted by the occasional sickening crunch; a well worn reminder why BlackForge is the nation’s leading producer of prosthetic devices. 

• BlissPlus Entertainment

While the majority of districts were allocated towards production, the SouthEast turned to pleasure. BlissPlus contains a vast manufactured paradise for all middle, high and even low class citizens to enjoy — provided they take on enough debt to afford it. Under its neon glow one can find artificial beaches, themed fantasy world, and enough additional vices to last a lifetime.

Civilians float by in a daydream, eyes glued to the screens and minds flooded with dopamine. The only thing to break this trance is the cries for help of the occasional gambler down on their luck. Many supposed visitors are thrust into a lifetime selling their minds or bodies to pay it all back.

BlissPlus markets itself as an escape from reality; for many, it becomes a permanent one.

• CrownLine

Composed of the USA’s former financial capitals, CrownLine sets the economic standard for the nation. It was here amongst the staggering skyscrapers that traditional paper money was deemed dead in favor of dynamic credit. A single retinal scan of a Union of Prosperity citizen can access their credit value, which fluctuates based on a range of factors including health metrics, consumption patterns, and predictive behavioral modeling.

Of all the districts CrownLine possesses the fewest visible low level workers; those who perform any traditional service tasks are expected to stay out of sight and out of mind. A spotless glass floor in an executive’s office appears as if by magic, nevermind the countless people huddled in the basement for warmth in the winter months. 

At street level the district is frictionless and pristine, its underlying mechanisms left unseen.

• NextGen Tech

What once was the jewel of the Union now serves as a hollow reminder of its vision of “progress.” The compound domes lay dormant around the ruined city, their once pristine shells obscured underneath decades of grime and creeping vegetation. Some claim they were abandoned in the first weeks of the outbreak, others that civilians have been trapped inside decades since. The truth is unreachable. The compound defense systems still function, keeping scavengers and survivors alike from discovering what's become of the people within.

Beyond the domes, the Outlands has become one of the most dangerous regions in the former Union. Hollows still wander the streets in enormous, ravenous hordes, drawn by any movement that might suggest human prey. Packs of genetically modified animals stalk behind them, descendants of the creatures poked, prodded, and cut open inside the closed off laboratories. They cohabitate peacefully, hunting in an urban jungle that is slowly disappearing beneath a new layer of green.

Though former cities remain a hotbed for Hollow activity, the most resilient of humanity has established strongholds in the old stadiums, government buildings, and hospitals. Many are committed to eradicating the dead within city walls, others are simply surviving. Their greatest fear is not always the Hollows however. Travelers tell stories of figures slipping through the ruins after sunset, disappearing into the grounds of ArkLabs.

• Agricore Organics 

The midwest remains dominated by enormous agricultural fields that once fed the Union, but without the workforce to properly cultivate they’ve fallen into disarray. Vast stretches of land are overgrown with unnaturally uniform rows of crops, every year producing a stranger harvest than the last. Much of it is unsuitable for human consumption, containing enough chemicals leached from the ground to kill a person within hours. 

Beyond the abandoned fields however the land is slowly returning to something resembling wilderness. Weeds and wild grasses have swallowed irrigation channels, forests have begun creeping across former farmland, and wild animals roam where machines once razed the land.

The prior shantytowns have evolved into permanent farming settlements, populated by the surviving descendants of Agricore workers and refugees who fled to the district. Abandoned grain silos serve as watch towers and fortresses, while the remains of electric fences form crude settlement walls. The same tools once used to harvest the Union’s food are now used to cultivate what little can be safely eaten — and to defend it from Hollows. 

Due to the often toxic produce, settlements have grown fiercely protective of what safe land they possess. Old Agricore seeds are traded like currency and farmers guard their best fields more closely than their homes. Everyone knows that a bad harvest can mean the death of dozens. While the Union once believed it perfected agriculture, thirty years later its survivors have learned to farm again, relying on methods their predecessors would have considered obsolete. 

• TexxGas

Even thirty years after the last oil rig dug into the earth, TexxGas remains the most environmentally devastated district of the former Union. Hundreds of facilities were never properly shut down. Storage tanks have leaked out into the sea, refineries have collapsed into fields of twisted metal, and offshore drilling platforms stand as rusting artificial islands along the horizon. A permanent haze hangs over much of the region, and beneath the smog the ocean has taken on an almost black hue.

Oil and chemical contamination have created vast dead zones along the coast. Former industrial cities have turned into gray, poisoned ghost towns, inhabited almost exclusively by Hollows and whatever wildlife has mutated enough to survive the pollution. The few scavengers who enter do so for one reason: fuel. The remains of TexxGas contain enough gas, oil, and industrial chemicals to keep rogue settlements across the nation alive for years, but many who venture into the district do not live long enough to see the benefit of what they’ve taken.

In spite of its abandonment, there are still lights burning by the sea. Gas flares illuminate the horizon at night, and abandoned facilities occasionally roar back to life before falling silent again. To travelers approaching TexxGas from a distance, it can almost look as though the Union never fell at all— a place where the old world refuses to die.

• BlackForge Industries

While those in TexxGas were forced to abandon the smoldering district, BlackForge workers remained hunkered in the sprawling mazes of factories. The enormous industrial complexes turned to fortresses overnight; their reinforced doors and miles of steel kept the Hollows locked outside. Thirty years later the factories have grown into scattered settlements in their own right, possessing the largest and most advanced, yet solitary, societies of survivors since the outbreak. 

Entire communities have formed around assembly lines, machine shops, warehouses and old worker barracks. The factories that once produced goods for a whole nation, now only do so for their residents. Outside the complexes, nature has steadily reclaimed the surrounding industrial landscape. Trees split the old concrete, transportation railways are rusted over with lichen, and the smaller, dilapidated facilities house small critters over humans.

There are children within BlackForge’s interior that have never felt grass beneath their feet nor seen the birds in the sky. Their world is one of a harsh artificial light, unnatural but safe. To outsiders these communities are a labyrinth of darkness and steel. To those born inside they are home.

• BlissPlus Entertainment

BlissPlus used to promise citizens a place to forget the world, now it seems the world has forgotten BlissPlus. The Southeast is littered with abandoned resorts, casinos, and theme parks; a harsh reminder of the frivolities of the people before. Swimming pools have become active ponds, roller coasters rust above overgrown forests, and faded advertisements still promise vacations to places that no longer exist. 

Yet there are groups that still come. The old hotel lobbies and casino halls now serve as prominent trading posts between the disparate southern settlements, places where civility can occasionally outweigh survival. Travelers are expected to leave their weapons at the door and barter for medical supplies, preserved food, and whatever else they’d scrounged up on their journey. This makeshift exchange center is among one of the few places where strangers can still gather in relative peace, if only for a night.

The entertainment districts themselves remain almost entirely abandoned, too dangerous to properly scavenge nor live inside. Hollows wander through the old attractions, sometimes becoming trapped in old rides that lure them with noise and flashing lights. Their moans and groans mingle with the pre-recorded laughter of long dead commercial actors — strangely transfixed by the sound.

• CrownLine

The famed towering skyscrapers of CrownLine remain standing, though just barely. The ones that haven’t fallen rise above the surrounding ruins like enormous gravestones, their glass facades shattered and their upper levels disappearing into the clouds. Thirty years of abandonment have turned the old financial capitals into vertical wastelands, with entire floors left untouched since the outbreak.

At street level the picked apart cities are populated almost entirely by undead, the real survivors live far above the rotting hordes below. Former executives, corporate employees, and their descendants have laid claim to various sections of skyscrapers, barricading stairwells and constructing bridges between neighboring buildings they’ve drawn up peace agreements with. Their settlements are almost invisible from below, only identifiable via the rooftop gardens against the gray skyline.

Beneath the city lies another CrownLine entirely. Subway tunnels, maintenance corridors, and forgotten janitorial levels have become home to a population the topside never wanted to see. The former service workers and their descendants know the underground better than anyone, navigating beneath the city to salvage whatever scraps rain from up above. They dream of the day they may finally be able to claim the spoils denied to them by those above.