Overview
An unidentified year in the future. The skies are dark with the fallout of human industry and the earth is grey and dead. The rich live above the clouds in the Sky, a web connecting the skyscrapers that have grown like forests over the face of the Earth. The poor live in the shadows and ruins on the ground, huddling like snakes and rats in concrete dens. Surviving, but never living. Life left the Earth when the last tree was felled. Everybody knows this, even if nobody knows how, or why. The rich took all Books and Knowledge with them to their sequestered paradise. Once upon a time, some think, everybody had Books and Knowledge, but not anymore, and nobody has time for useless things like that anyway.
They do know that the monsters appeared before the End. In fact, the cities were built to protect against the monsters, and the strategy worked, for a while, until either the monsters became too strong or the cities overtaxed themselves.
Monsters inside, monsters outside, and worst of all these children being born. These little vampires that died faster than their parents could name them, or killed their mothers first. The last thing the rich did before disappearing was name them: Life Deficient the doctor's ticket would say -- but everybody calls them Vamps.
Life-deficient, (Scavengers or Vamps): Those who must take Life from outside sources in order to survive. Symptoms of deficiency mimic those of low blood sugar (mild) or drug withdrawal (severe), and usually include weakness, fainting spells and anger.
Life-sufficient people: those who resemble ancient humans. Like blood donors, they can offer a little here, a little there, for the production of Life good and services. The lack of sunlight affects them, but no more than a serious lack of Vitamin D
Life-efficient people, aka Givers: those with excess life. Generally shorter-lived but very happy, optimistic, sometimes over-emotional people.
And this is how humans live, as always adjusting with unbelievable rapidity to the new world order.
Notes:
Superstitious? Old folk beliefs (Pagan, Viking, Native American) resurrected because Nature is worshipped. Do we want to create a centralized religion?
Ground level society resembles Prohibition x South Chicago + Harlem x Mass Effect. So we've got inner-city diversity and dirt, speakeasy sci-fi neon nightclubs, crime on crime on crime, black market racketeering of Life goods, Life prostitution. But also schoolhouses and janky electricity and cool music cultures
Sky-level society is like a slowly rotting hotel and an endless Gatsby party all at the same time.
An unidentified year in the future. The skies are dark with the fallout of human industry and the earth is grey and dead. The rich live above the clouds in the Sky, a web connecting the skyscrapers that have grown like forests over the face of the Earth. The poor live in the shadows and ruins on the ground, huddling like snakes and rats in concrete dens. Surviving, but never living. Life left the Earth when the last tree was felled. Everybody knows this, even if nobody knows how, or why. The rich took all Books and Knowledge with them to their sequestered paradise. Once upon a time, some think, everybody had Books and Knowledge, but not anymore, and nobody has time for useless things like that anyway.
They do know that the monsters appeared before the End. In fact, the cities were built to protect against the monsters, and the strategy worked, for a while, until either the monsters became too strong or the cities overtaxed themselves.
Monsters inside, monsters outside, and worst of all these children being born. These little vampires that died faster than their parents could name them, or killed their mothers first. The last thing the rich did before disappearing was name them: Life Deficient the doctor's ticket would say -- but everybody calls them Vamps.
And this is how humans live, as always adjusting with unbelievable rapidity to the new world order.
Notes: