From SCross

NOTE: This is updated information, the old information is over here.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Theme 2.1 Corporations 2.1.1 GoGoCorp 2.1.2 Top Star 2.1.3 Herculean Arms 2.1.4 Daravon Ltd. 2.1.5 Interactions of Corporations 2.2 Military 2.3 Race and Species 2.4 Technology 2.4.1 Materia 2.4.2 View on Implants 2.5 Law 2.6 Religion 2.7 Living Arrangements 2.8 Space 2.9 Death 3 Game Mechanics

Overview

Blood and Iron is Southern Cross, set far into the future. Technology has advanced, as have the people of Gaia. Magic has flowed into and through technology, creating a society that paints little difference between the two concepts. Gaia itself, fueled for many years through its connection to the Nexus(AKA The Dungeon), is vibrant and aware, guiding her children through mortal priests and seers.

The world is not as idyllic as it may seem at first brush. Military juntas rule the various nations and orbit, while towering corporations vie for resources on the ground and reaching out into the reaches of the cosmos itself. Though faintly restricted by Gaia's edicts, they skirt the edge dangerously, and maneuver constantly against one another. The common man finds himself with much seeming freedom, but it is all at the mercy of the megacorporations and military, who own all true rights.

While the wealthy sections of the city gleam, clean and well policed, the underbelly festers in a matter never seen before. Men, women and children are harvested for magical essence and body parts. Obscure and enigmatic cults draw the hopeless in with whispers and promises, a trade of the soul for comfort? Monsters lurk just outside the walls, Gaia's rule against man's encroachment. The city is his, the rest is Mother's.

Theme

Corporations

There are two strata of corporations: Corporations, and Megacorporations. Megacorps are multinational, monolithic, overpowering, and awe inspiring in scope. Their reach expands outwards even to the heavens as they squabble for consolidated power down on the ground. Regular corporations are usually much more limited, offering only a single product or kind of product, and having only one or a handful of offices. While a corporation is a mighty force to contend with, a megacorporation is like a god incarnate.

Fortunately, there are only four megacorporations.

GoGoCorp

GoGocorp, whose icon is a flamboyantly red masked man, specializes in 'personal enhancement'. Cybernetics, biological engineering, and cloning are all offered. Be the man, or woman, you always wanted to be.

Top Star

Top Star, whose corporate icon is an eight point star over a mountain range, is a firmly entrenched force for shipping, security, and international banking. All the city's money terminals are Top Star, and most of the cops are of the same employ.

Herculean Arms

Herculean Arms, sporting an icon of a massive barbell, beginning to bend in the middle, with a blazing sun in the background, is most known for weapons design, advanced energy sources, and armor/armored clothing.

Daravon Ltd.

Daravon Ltd., The fourth, and arguably lesser, of the controlling corps. Their icon is of a very idealized scholar, stooped over an ancient scroll, however on the scroll is a depiction of the online world. The best computers and integrated systems come from Daravon.

Interactions of Corporations

Corporations have no love for one another. Everyone dreams of being on top, and the other corporations (and the military) are stopping them from realising this dream. While lower level corps may form alliances and cooperative deals commonly, due to lack of global resources, megacorps are very rare to ever enter projects with others, especially not megacorps, though they are known to buy smaller corporations wholesale when it would prove effecient to do so.

When not working together, corporations work against one another. This is rarely done overtly. Herculean Arms doesn't show up in a corporate-logo van outside your office one day and launch a rocket at you. This isn't good business, creates bad public relations, opens yourself to legal issues, and is messy. Corporations run subtle ad campaigns, try to outbid one another, and when push comes to shove, as it often does, it moves covertly against its enemies.

Why detonate an opponents offices when you can have an unaffiliated third party plant rats and asbestos to have it closed down for a few weeks at the wrong time? Don't mug a technician for the latest files, hire a hacker to break in and steal the information from their computer systems. No need to train your truckers how to be mercenaries when mercenaries are eager and willing to work for the money. Corporations, big and small, make heavy use of people willing to do dirty work for cash.

It is important to remember that most of this work is very illegal. If caught, the hiring corporation will almost certainly claim no knowledge of the mercenary's activities, nor take any move to protect you. On the street, such people are called Slicers, though cutting things is rarely on their duties. Slicers are said to walk a fine line between the haves and have nots, often becoming very well to do, or dead, while remaining outside the corporations. Rarely, corporate citizens may take up the life of slicing, but must practice extra caution, as their information is even more easily available, and making getting caught all the more forboding.

Military

The military junta that control the world politically are the only check and balance to the power the megacorps. While in appearance, each country has it's own military, it has been a de facto hegemony for well over one hundred fifty years, with the alliances having consolidated power into an intentionally nebulous network of generals promoted to power through meritocracy.

The balance with the megacorps and the Military is a stable one; the Military has exclusively control of orbital space weaponry, and have proven in the past willing to rain Ion Cannon-esque fire from space down on megacorp headquarters if their abuses got way out of hand. The military, with it's superperior firepower, and policy of maintaining it's technology six generations ahead of the megacorps, is untouchable to any single megacorp. It's estimated by most military planners that the military on its own in actual wartime conditions would be the military match for approximately 2.5 of any of the megacorps on Gaia.

But the balance of power is maintained for good reason; the military relies on the tax revenue of of the megacorps, and while minor instances of tax evasion are looked over, major attempts to deny the military its tax revenue is the surest way to find one's headquarters stormed by troops, and every major executive taken out into a show tribunal and shot for vague charges of treason.

However, the money flows both ways; every corp and megacorp salivates at the chance to earn a lucrative military contract, out of which they typically enjoy three or four times higher profit margins than civilian organizations. Besides the money, it also often leads to opporunity technologically; as the military develops ever-more-advanced techs, it trickles the (six generations old!) technology down to the corporations and masses, and it's often the providers of such unclassified military contracts that find themselves with the exclusive licenses to recently declassified technologies.

For the typical civilian, the Military is often the only way a Streetie can find their way in the world in a wholly legitimate fashion; and while the day-to-day troops and grunts are probably enjoying the occasional bite of graft or sip of cream, the military treats any instances of corruption that affect military security and operations as treason punishable by death. Humans and animal-bloods are both welcomed within the military at all security levels. Instances of major technological release are rare, and inevitably all those found responsible are shot. Heaven help the megacorp whose excuse for possession of military technology doesn't hold enough water.

As for both the typical civilian and corper, on average, their only experience with the military is either martial law (declared whenever Top Star has a riot that's too out of hand for them, or a threat that they're not confident in bringing down), or else taxation collection at the corporate level. Military responses to riots and civilian threats is universally lethal; terrorist acts are inevitably met with ultraviolent and comprehensive retribution. Taxation occurs within the networks primarily, with taxation officers visiting when they wish to audit a company due to excessive "paper money" transactions (or other untraceable currencies/materials).

Finally, in space, with the exception of scientific, commercial, or residential colonies on the moon, the Military has an almost exclusive monopoly on space weaponry. What very few weapons are permitted in space are not allowed to be of a calibre that could threaten their hegemony. While this does not truly prevent high-tech weaponry being used in space, it requires the corporations to think very carefully about what risk level they want to toe the line at.

Race and Species

Of 'humanity', pure humans are the majority, taking up approximately 50% of the sentient population of Gaia. Divided amongst the other half are the multitudes of varying species that were spawned by Holy, two millenia ago. Though they are human at root, these other species are quite different in physical build. In a hate filled world, racism and speciesism does take its toll, though country of birth or corporate affiliation is always considered before such things, as a rule, with economic status trumping in many cases. That guy may be a filthy rodent, but he owns a couple of city blocks, which makes him better than the street trash, human, dog, or otherwise.

With advances in biotechnology and magics, it is quite possible for a person to be a different species than what they were born as. It is also possible for the varied races to interbreed, though mixed breed offspring always take on the appearance of the mother, barring technomagical intervention. Some rare folk take great pleasure in crafting themselves or others into exotic half breeds.

While such procedures are entirely legal, failure to register one's altered appearance on their identifications and with their host corporation is always illegal and can be met with harsh fines when noticed. Heaven help the soul that is caught comitting a crime while in an unregistered appearance.

Technology

If you're in the corporate world, your desk probably has a middle-grade computer with limited Matrix access for retrieving files, as well as a video-enabled phone as well. You probably came to work on the electro-bus or, if you're wealthy enough, in your own hovercar. Breakfast was rehydrated and roasted in a fusion oven for a clean, even taste. Your clothes are dropped in a communal apartment chute, and then spit back up the next day clean, pressed, and with a faint and pleasant lemony scent from the sterilizer washers in the basement. Your hair is cut by vending machines on the street with a wide catalogue of different styles, Omni-V with it's nearly-interactive 3D realism is the largest creature comfort, and any time you want it, you can take a 'vacation' to the mountains with a VR headset.

However, if you're down on the streets, life is likely similar to the 1950's. You cook your food, if you've got any that week, on a gas or electric oven. Your washing is done by old laundromats that're often equipped with malfunctioning or downright broken dryers. Omni-V is affordable, if you take one of the lesser sets which offers a scratchy and distorted image unless you kick it -just- right. But, for relief, you can head down to your local watering hole for a glass of synthahol and a burger-tasting lump of tofu shaped into a patty with painted-on grill marks.

If you're in the military, your day-to-day life is probably not much different from a low-level corporate drone, but the classified levels of military technology would be terrifyingly advanced; designed by military AI, most classified military products will be nearly unrecognizably advanced to all but the most bleeding-edge corporate researcher. Posession of military equipment is punishable by imprisonment, fines, confiscation, and for classified (and many high-risk but nonclassified) materials, death.

Technology, for those who can afford it, can do marvelous things. For those who can't, however, they're stuck with yesteryear's model as the cast offs from above.

Magic has been woven into most devices, enhancing their function and ease of use. Hover cars glimmer along the bottom with air magics while ovens quietly roar with the captured essence of fire. It is not unusual to see towering glyphs on the side of corporate buildings for unknown but grand magical purpose. Materia-based memory systems capture dreams and memories and computer data; lifestream cools and fuels supercomputers.

Materia

See Materia.

View on Implants

The opinion on cybernetics and very visual bioengineering is often an individual thing. However, very obvious and 'dangerous' looking modifications will probably get you turned away at the finer restaurants, and security will get suspicious if you come too close to the doors. Bulging muscles or the tell-tale twitch of an Articulate are the warnings signs. More discrete cybernetic or bioengineered additions, or just those used for nonviolent and legal purposes, may be viewed with a nod of admiration if the grafting job is particularly well done.

Cyber is an essential part of life for many people in a variety of different fields. Whether it's the Cyber Cowboy's skull jack or an engineer's tool tips, very few people or places discriminate against legitimate metal.

Law

In this day and age, local municipal government is barely more than a puppet for the various mega corporations, (and many are, in fact, wholly owned incorporations of some megacorp or another). Local government does very little, instead paying corporations to provide infrastructure repairs, security for civil matters as well as for investigation. In return, the corporations pass the debt on to the citizenry. If your VCR is stolen, you inform the nearest corp representative, they find it, and they return it to you with a deduction from your next paycheck.

Most corporations only enforce the laws for themselves, as well as for their employees. For those who still live on the streets, the 'police' showing up is only likely for the violent crimes, and only then if there is a corporate representative nearby in the area to notify security to the crime. Violent crimes include: Attempted murder, rape, assault on property, rioting, mugging, and so on. Severe riots or very large-scale violent crimes may even call down military reprisal, which will be typically wanton and bloody.

As for what is legal, and what is not, many things are considered illegal but rarely enforced. Gun ownership without a license is only enforced if the security need something to arrest you for and nothing else is feasible. Furthermore, cyberware and bioengineering require certification, but the worse result is either a hefty fine, or a large bribe for the security officer.

Murder is an arrestable offense, but many times is not investigated when the murdered party was a Streetie without any real sway. If caught with the proverbial smoking gun, murderers are arrested promptly. Corporate citizens enjoy a wide variety of security representation, similar to modern policing, with an invasive touch in that there are no Miranda rights, unlawful entry, or unreasonable searches. Still, security officers tread carefully around most Corporates when investigating, since they could one day be fired by that person. Assault or murder of a Federal agent (Military) is punishable by death, and usually is meted out wherever the suspect is found.

Proposition is considered illegal, and Our Father ltd. routinely sends their security (The Avenging Angels) to roust those working the streets. For the bored Corporate, many different escort services are available, free of sin. Additionally, there are no -real- child laws, except for vigilante committees. Security patrols can be a laugh compared to lynch mobs made up of citizens that require a real disturbance to get past the jaded exterior.

Religion

Not so much a full church as a comfort zone that costs much less than a licensed therapist, Our Father ltd. supplies 24-hour call-any-time hotlines for those seeking spiritual advice or freshers on their tract, 'Grace of Our Father.' The tract, which can be found for free in just about any hotel room around the world and is often passed out door-to-door by lay ministers, gives a price list for various services as well as the basics of Our Father's world view.

The religion is, simply, very easy going if you can pay the right prices. The number of infractions, however, is numerous. Everything from murder, theft, and prostitution right down to not scooping after your dog does it's business, to sneezing over the salad bar, and leaving the toilet seat up.

It can be argued that Gaia seers are religious, but they would wildly refute the fact. Gaia is not a faith, she is underneath, and speaks very clearly, or so they argue. Their words are law, technically, though the megacorporations are fond of bending, distorting, and rarely simply ignoring these laws in favor of their own power.

Other than this, smaller cult religions spring up like wildfire every week or so. The different practices and dogma vary wildly, with some neo-tribal groups seeking a Luddite philosophy, to technocrats gone mad over the Machine God Autocthonia.

Living Arrangements

For the corporate employee, housing is usually provided for in your employment contract. Many different apartment buildings and condominium complexes are available for their valued employees, with each person or couple being allotted at least a two-bedroom apartment. The walls are bonded to neutral colors, with steel and plastic finish to the various features, so that the apartment will be ready and spotless for the next inevitable tenant. They feature a full kitchen, two moderately sized bedrooms with ample closet space, a living room, and a bathroom with shower cubicle. Those with larger promotions often get upgraded to more spacious accommodations, with most Managers having part of the floor to themselves - indoor swimming pools, racquetball courts, or otherwise can be done with a managerial living space.

When it's time to hit the streets, however, most of the unwashed masses find their homes in apartments much less grand and spacious than those afforded to low level Corporates. Tenements are full of one-room apartments with enough space for a bed and a stove near the corner, with a few of the 'ritzy' accommodations including a separate bedroom and kitchen area. Bathrooms are usually one-per-floor and shared by those living there, with those with extra cash to pay may be able to find an apartment with their own private shower. Some of those on the Street live in dilapidated houses, either ones that have been condemned, or built for themselves out of scrap material in one of the vacant lots. These ramshackle houses are kept far away from business centers, often by security forces, and disappear in a high breeze. Still, they're better than nothing, and industrious squatters can sometimes make a comfortable nest.

However, for the Streetie with a permanent attachment, old, outdated housing can be found for a high price. These houses are very rarely more than two stories tall, and most are duplexes to cover the rent costs. A laughable patch of dirt for the front yard and a fenced-in back are the main lures. And for the Streetie who's just passing through, hotels are available for cheap daily rates. If you're staying longer, you can have that one room with bed and sink for a higher weekly rate, or a monthly one if you're planning to stay but don't want to bother with apartment contracts.

Military staff almost always live on-base, in either barracks or family housing, comparable to low-to-middle class corporates.

Space

The reaches of space have long been a fascination of mankind. Skilled geomancers have pondered the air above them while meditating on the earth below, while others constructed chariots to the stars. It was discovered in 1906 AH that, beyond a mile or so above the surface, the universe was startlingly bare of magic. Without this energy, which has been given the scientific name of 'Aurora Quintessence', or life force by the masses, people showed many signs of illness. Systems were designed that could store and then slowly emanate this energy, creating a safe bubble within the craft for the passengers. In the event of a system failure, the passengers had approximately two hours to return to Gaia's atmosphere or they would suffer a horrific fate as their magical bodies rebelled and they died of intense cancerous disease.

The first men in space were a duo. Peter Egelson and Cid Highwind, of the former line of emperors, some say. Launched from the space port in Thrain, they successfully circled the moon before returning safely. Peter, a Mtzeko, went on to become a successful politician for his people, while Cid returned to the imperial lands of his birth and furthers the fields of space exploration.

The moon was colonized recently in 1994. It was found that, perhaps due to its long stay near Gaia, the moon had a weak life force field of its own, allowing the colonists to make do with only minimal precautions. The clothing of the colonists are refilled with life force while they sleep, and emanate it passively while worn during their work hours. The effect is subtle, effective, and foolproof for the great majority. The moon colony has become a valuable source of advanced computing technologies, and is now the home of Daravon's headquarters, a logical fit for the computer focused megacorporation.

There has been some highly secret, but occasionally leaked attempts by both military and megacorps units to use the Nexus for space travel, theorizing it may open into other worlds and dimensions. However, thus far all attempts to travel to other worlds via the Nexus have failed disasterously, often without any trace of the original group or vehicle being found. Those that have been found are never discussed.

Death

See the separate page about Death here.

Game Mechanics

See the page on Game Mechanics.