About 30 years prior to the beginning of our
story, there used to be a form of enforcement that you would know as the Police.
Since then, that form of enforcement was disbanded and was replaced with the
military. The reason why the police force was removed was because of the incredible
crime rate that was escalating after The Bio-War and there were just
not enough policemen to handle the situation. After about a decade, the military
managed to get the crime rate down to a halfway decent level and then only sent
in troops and soldiers for terrorist, bombing, politic affairs or other matters
of "more serious nature". This, unfortunately, doesn't help the public enough
with crime problems that are considered minor and happens frequently.
The Bio-War was the war involving the use of biochemical weapons
that were considered to be some of the most deadly ever to be made. It was also
known as "The War of Nightmares" or "Hell War" because of the results of the
battles. It took place in March 18, 2089 and lasted until Jan. 25 2092. Most
of the war took place overseas, with the Middle East, the Former Soviet Union
and Austria hit the hardest. But there wasn't a country that hadn't been effected
by the war's bioweapons. Every other country, America included, has had some
parts of it hit by these chemical toxin. Millions of people died and many mutations
occurred that were at times, too, horrific to even conceive, some were even
thought to simply be rumors or exaggerations of a phobic mind. The majority
of the time, the mutations were so bad that mercy killings had to be done. People
and towns have been quarantined for long periods of time. A lot of the documentations
were never released to the public as to the nature of these weapons or their
results, except for certain symptoms. Anyone having such symptoms were to report
to the military's civilian emergency line or get to a "shelter". Some aren't
even sure as to why or who started the war, which resulted in a lot of controversies
among the public. Needless to say, many soldiers that did come back home usually
suffered some strange illnesses or became mentally unstable. There's been reports
that many of them disappeared after a year or two after the war's end. No one
has seen them ever since. But since that time, there has been much better treatments
and even some cures for the effects of most of these toxins that had caused
deaths and illnesses to thousands of people. Now case problems from that war
are very rare. When the war finally ended, a global peace treaty was signed
to ban the use of biochemical and nuclear weapons, and even now, there's still
negotiations going on between countries. We are, at present, at peace time (at
least globally).
Transportations
Transportation consist mostly of some form of hovercraft vehicle. There's still
the usual transportation that you may be familiar with, but thanks to the Ozone
Protection and Restoration Act of 2058, it is a requirement for such vehicles
to have either a hepafilter installed or be constructed to run on water, electricity
or a specially made vegetable oil. Sadly, this caused the price of water to
go up and it's not uncommon for people to store their water incase there's a
drought. As you may figure, this also decreased the speeding problems we used
to have. Some vehicles registered with the military and any form of law enforcement
has been issued a power core that will enable the officer to drive at high speeds
with the capability of going as fast as 300mph in 8.09 seconds. Of course, only
those with good eyes sight and coordination are allowed to operate such vehicles.
Civilian owned or operation of such vehicles are illegal.
Unfortunately one will occasionally find that these power cores are sold on
the Black Market, usually to wealthy drug-dealers or crime lords. This makes
it especially difficult and dangerous to deal with. The majority of the time,
we have people who are driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and they
wind up killing themselves others, if not cause serious injury.
Weather
T echnology has advanced enough to where we have the capability to influence
weather patterns. Nature still has it's moments, though. So one can't totally
control weather factors, but can encourage rain to fall for agricultural provinces
suffering drought or temper down some serious storms and hurricanes if we catch
it on time. The majority of the time this technology is used only if it's necessary,
so it's not like we have a set of weather schedules through the year.
Currency
The form of currency used are credits. A sort of back wash from the earlier
days of credit cards, it's not really money and it's not something you can carry
around in itself, but they do have a form that gives access to them. They appear
as small, thin metal cards in varied colors and patterns. The patterns work
like a circuit. When slid into a scanner, it reads the registry of that card
and the amount it's worth. 1 credit = 1 dollar. There are no change equivalents.
There are two types of these cards; permanent and temporary credit. This is
the way it works.
The permanent credits work very much like a credit card, but it's more
difficult to forge it or use it if you're not the owner. And like the credit
card, it's your access to your account, which isn't of money but credits, making
it more or less truer to it's name. It's difficult to forge because every card
has it's own pattern and is documented in system files. It cannot be tampered
with, because it will lose it's value or ability to access the credit. Only
owners of these cards can use them and there are no cards made for shared use,
unless you count the temporary credit. Getting one of these cards isn't hard,
but you can only get no more than 5 of them in your lifetime, incase something
happens. So people are usually very careful about not losing them. As to how
it's possible for only the owner to use... when the card is scanned there are
two types of security to the card that allows the true owner access to their
credit. There's the retina and body chemistry tests. The retina is scanned for
it's unique pattern and the same with body chemistry. Of course, body chemistry
does change often, but there's a base chemistry that is unique to each of us
and that is what the card will read. The body chemistry test, though, is still
on a few occasions not quite secure. Two reasons. Sometimes the change in body
chemistry can interfere with the card's reading and occasionally when a card
is stolen, a chemist hacker can sometimes get the original owner's chemical
trace and produce something to mimic it. Presently, there's a new kind of security
in the works for reading the owner's DNA.
The temporary credit works an awful lot like a gift certificate. There's
no real security for these types of credits and can get stolen and used, but
they can be added to a credit account or taken out from a credit account. They
are made of a different material than the permanent counterpart. This material
allows it to be recycled, because like the permanent credit, it too has a sort
of pattern "stamped" into it. For every one that is made, it has it's own temporary
registry. This is the only form of security for these cards and are only documented
for as long as they aren't in use within the owner's account. These cards aren't
checked unless there's a suspicion of it being stolen or if lost or stolen,
the owner can put out a report and when scanned, it'll alert the cashier and
the enforcement. These cards are more easily forged. Our Legislation has been
considering the discontinued use of these cards.
Weapons
As mentioned, the technology for weapondry has advanced far, but because of
the issues involving them it is considered illegal for civilians to carry such
weapons. As such, it also includes any lethal projectile type weapons. Blade
and blunt weapons must be registered to own or sell. This was to lower the statistics
of weapons being out in the streets. This, of course, is no guarantee, as there
are blackmarkets that sell such weapons. Nonlethal weapons are issued out to
anyone who wants them and they are also registered as well. The only people
allowed to legally carry lethal weapons are military officials, members of the
Phoenix Corp. or other security agencies.
As mentioned in history, the crime rate has been at a halfway decent minimum for awhile, but it has slowly risen again, only this time on a different level. Most criminals become more discreet and careful in their activities making it difficult to pin them, especially with the technologies that are probably sold on the black markets. There's been rumor of human slave trading going on in certain sectors and we have found some to be accurate, but as for the rest, we still don't have much to go on. We have small parts of the city that holds secret societies for criminal activities lead by drug-dealers and crime lords. Everyday there's always some kind of new drug or weapon on the street that we have to clean up. Let's just say it definitely isn't an easy job. We also have many kind of hackers, from tech to science related. In turn, our forces have the tech division which includes those who are also hackers themselves.
Originally known as "The Phoenix Research Lab Facilities",
it was founded in Dec. 20, 2070 by a group of men and women, who provided new
technological defense weapons and worked on cures and antitoxins during the
war. They've also worked on vaccines and immunizations against the results of
chemical warfare. It was originally part of the military's science division
until after the war ended. It has lost it's use to the military and was left
abandoned for a couple of years. Later, it was bought by a businessman from
a company called " " as a place to experiment and create new products,
particulary security issues. It was then rebuilt and renamed the "Rising Phoenix
Corporation" in Feb. 28, 2095.
Within that year, the police force was disbanded and the minor crime rate had
gone up at an alarming rate, despite military intervention. The Corp. has set
out to provide the public some means of defense by issuing nonfatal, registered
weapons to the everyday citizen. Many of the employees have formerly work within
the facilities during the war, helped to create these weapons based on some
of the technology they used for the military. This began one of the many things
the company has done to ..um.. rub the military the wrong way.
The K.N.I.G.H.T.S. is a division of the R.P. Corp. that provided the public a defense service, which are base both on police standards and "code of chivalry". This was the first and oldest agency dealing with civilian security matters. Though there are many other smaller branches of similar divisions within other companies, our's is the major producer of security services. One of the Founders was a former police officer named Enoch Casimer, whom is also the division's Head Chief Administrator. The initials represent higher qualities within humanity: Knowledge, Necessity, Intrepidity, Genteel, Honor, Triumph, Salvation, but after awhile, were simply referred as the Phoenix Knights, PKs or just Knights. The division was created one year after the Corporation was founded on September 15th and has many stations across the country. Click here for more information.
During the war when the casualties were very high, the government issued the use of droids. It was these droids that helped end the war because, not only were they stronger and faster, they were immune to most of the chemicals that would instantly kill a human. There were some chemicals, though, that did do damage them, but it was considered better the machine than the man. Because of their usefulness, the droids were used for most of the military defenses, even now. Thus leads to the division that we nicknamed "The Drones", mainly because they have monotone voices and personalities. Most of these droids have humanoid or even human appearances. This is the division that occasionally deals with the public, but mostly they deal with the usual serious or military and government related stuff, both the KNIGHTS and droid divisions tend to clash on occasions, because of certain cases both had taken interest in. Needless to say, they don't get along with each other very well. click here for a bit more info.