DESCRIPTION: The city of Arbor Vitopolis is the main habitual setting. Established in 022AE, the metro sports futuristic technology, nine distinct terraformed biomes, and the closest thing to utopia that humanity currently possesses.
🧬 THE DISTANT PAST
In the distant past, there was a terrible series of worldwide natural disasters that almost wiped both man and beast alike from the face of Old Earth. Nothing short of the best and brightest architects created several safehouses for the prime members of society and the animal kingdom, but this was only for the short-term.
Only so much space and resources existed, and unlike plant seeds, only so many animals could reasonably fit. What would happen once the storms were over? There was a solution, but it would change humanity forever.
Project: Splice took the genomes of the many creatures they had gathered and spliced them into their own, creating arks of living information that could be extracted later to genetically clone and recreate life on the planet. It worked, but at a cost, for these people were the next and irreversible step in evolution, and the splice gene was a dominant one.
🧬 THE PRESENT TIME
In the present time, almost everyone on Neo Earth is a splice. The world has been repopulated back to sustainability through a combination of cloning and natural reproduction, and human society is striving for utopia. Monuments and cities of the past no longer exist, making most of the planet a vast wilderness that has yet to be transformed once more.
Since many countries have been wiped clean by an extinction event, once-established territories are up for dispute. People have tried to replicate what the world used to be, and after many discussions and debates, functioning geographic boundaries have been established and named by biome, with some still unclaimed or unexplored.
Technology is continuing to rapidly develop, especially in the fields of genetic engineering and terraforming. The planet still has yet to recover and grow back into the globally-populated complex it once was, but humanity is surely on their way to a bigger world connected to nature.
🧬 GLOBETROTTER, INC.
With so much of the world either left in ruin or reclaimed by the forces of nature, mankind opted to form Globetrotter, Inc. in response. Centered on exploration, those who volunteer are often sent on retrieval missions in the wilderness where they trek through the territories of hostile beasts and natural disasters in the name of reclaiming the past for the future. Anyone can apply, but just like the defenses of the past, only individuals sound of body and mind will be officially accepted, although that has never stopped independent adventurers from creating their own campaigns.
Even though the organization is technically a government agency that provides services that are public and non-rival in consumption, some criticize it for the amount of influence and spending it has achieved over the past few centuries, making it reminiscent of a monopoly. Whether this is for the greater good or a necessary evil remains up for debate.
🧬 RANDOM TRIVIA
Safe zones solely for chimeran forms are designated in every city and town. More often than not, these zones consist of local wilds used for recreational sports. Some zones include hunting and foraging. Other zones may be for exercise or lounging. Due to this, it is always recommended to find out the nature of the district before entering one.
🧬 CRIME ENTERPRISE
Among the worst of recent developments is the criminal enterprise. Laws have been put into place to protect splice rights, and many activities have become illegal to partake in due to the newly transformed nature of mankind. A market exists for everything.
Medicine and the meat industry are normally heavily and humanely regulated, but some are sourced for cheap by shady dealers. Bestial fight clubs take place in secret locales, resulting in increased gambling and the occasional cage fighter. All the while, the underground fur and hide trade of novelty chimeran forms has boomed into one of the biggest illegal industries.
🧬 ACAUDA REBELLION
Not everyone is supportive of the way humanity has evolved, and some view chimerism as a crime against everything a human should naturally be. Radicals may even willingly sever their ties to the animal kingdom by severing their own tails, creating a fringe group born out of disgust and leaving others to wonder how far their movement will go.
Under the surface, these rebels have been the source of much turmoil in the big cities, where they almost exclusively operate. Most range from armed to outright dangerous, but a few cult-like individuals may go beyond necessary evil and sever the tails of unwilling captives.
🧬 ROVING WILDEMEN
On the opposite side of the coin, few people have fully opted into their animal halves, leaving the civilized world in favor of a more archaic way of living. Reclusive and primal, these rovers live off the land in packs and herds, almost never staying in their human form for too long. Both outsiders and insiders alike see them as more animal than man.
Levels of civility vary from tribe to clan. When one thinks of wildings, some daydream of noble herds frolicking in nature, while others conjure frightful images of carnivorous packs roving on the hunt. In reality, traits both positive and negative exist in each group, making this not a case of good versus evil, but simply a matter of survival beyond the city.
🧬 R4GNA-R0K RUIN
Several conspiracies surround the R4GNA-R0K meteorite, ranging from it being the cause of the near-extinction event that took place roughly 500 years prior to simply a sign of misfortune and nothing more than a bad coincidence. Even to this day, no one is quite sure of its whereabouts, or if it even survived the worldwide wipe, but many theorists claim otherwise.
Despite being rather small in diameter, the object supposedly radiated a truly incredible field of energy, the likes of which mankind has never seen or been able to identify. Combine the notion with the events that transpired shortly after its arrival, and many speculate that it must be extraterrestrial in origin, if not a form of alien weaponry gone astray.
