Ch 1: Paw City History

The blistered landscape crackled under the mid-day sun. In the twenty short years since the Big Crash back in 2079, Earth had become a wasteland. Small tribes scoured the bleak horizons looking for food, shelter, and safety. This is the new reality except in Paw City. There life thrives, buildings are built, running water is the norm, climate control is widely available, and scarcity is a word not spoken.

In five short years, robots built the framework of the city, and citizens, known as Cat Punks due to their feline grace and odd-shaped eyes, began inhabiting the apartments and homes. Rumors blazed across the arid grim-scapes that the citizens, far from being lucky survivors, were clones.

The walls of the city were designed to prevent closer inspection, so the dwellers outside were left to guesses, both educated and paranoid. Often a hodge-podge of both.

Outside the walls, death and despair skip happily together, knowing they’ll never want. For the tribes, this depressing knowledge is part and parcel of everyday life.

Inside the walls, prosperity reigns. The noises on the streets are joyous ones, and the visages of the citizens are happy ones. Everywhere cleanliness and stalwartness prevail. Paw City is the ultimate example of quality planning and proof that having clear standards for citizenship is a strength.

Still, even amongst all this prosperity, there is strife. Some of the disaffected have formed gangs. First were the All-Nighters, who own most of the nightclubs on the east side of Paw City. The Kabutowari brutally handled the drug trade on the south side of Paw City. Then there’s the Broken Chip. Their members dominate the northern side of the city. Finally, there’s the Katana gang. They control the west side of Paw City with their extraordinary firepower.

Furthermore, a cyber-virus had torn through the populace, forcing them to separate into classes. Around fifty-five percent identify as Punks. Mostly lower, working-class citizens. Another thirty percent are Weapon-Wielders. An elite class of killers and professional security, sometimes both, they answer only to the ten percent of the city known as City-Runners who handle all the day-to-day business of Paw City.

Lastly are the five percent who are identified as the Awakened. Like all Cat Punks, they, too, were infected by the cyber-virus. But, unlike everyone else, they gained memory fragments proving that the citizens were clones. One such citizen developed a chip that allowed its user to have free will and the ability to parse the memory fragments easily. The number of chips made was strictly limited.

There are four primary gangs in Paw City. The All-Nighters run money laundering and prostitution rings in a series of nightclubs on the east side of the city. The Kabutowari run the drug trade in the city from their base on the south side. The Broken Chip gang run extortion rings, some prostitution rings, and are generally liked by the populace. They are the most low key of the gangs, Finally, there are the Katana. As their name implies, they are wedded to ancient, often brutal, philosophies. By request of the City-Runners they no longer perform public executions, but that hasn’t eased the minds of the west side residents.