The world is divided, not so much along national lines as along genetic lines. The traditional Homo sapiens huddle in their enclaves, fearful of the neogenetic people around them..The Immunities have become not just medical solutions but cultures in themselves. The syntronics, recompiled and voices cross the boundaries of humanity without looking back. The world scene is dominated by the new cultural consensuses: Immunities and other cultures with different visions of humanity and the world. The old national states, megacorps, networks and virtual tribes still remain, but are no longer the key players.

The global economy is dominated by the aftershocks of the nanotech revolution. While biotech revolutionized the 30's and neogenetics the 40's, nanotech made the 50's uncertain. Now things are slowing down a bit as the new infrastructure is emerging. The financial disaster of the middle 40's led to the establishment of lunar orbit as the new financial center of humanity although most people still live on Earth and most money is made there.

The Major Groupings

OTA - Orbital Transport Alliance

The OTA was established in 2045 to help organize the increasingly complex traffic in the Earth-Moon system. It is a UN-like organisation that is run by a board where the major space powers are represented: Phoenix, Nekonospace, AusSpace, Japan and others. Officially it just deals with traffic control, orbital laser propulsion and control of potentially dangerous equipment such as Orion drives, laser launchers and space debris. In practice it is a political organisation representing the space powers and their interests that has enromous clout in orbit. Given that it has total orbital superiority it also is an important factor on Earth, but at the same time it is a bit isolated from the terrestrial political games.

Culturally it is the direct descendant of the traditional internationalist culture. It is libertarian, expansionist, pro-trade, pro-diversity and tolerant. The habitats and structues under its aegis house different cultures: from the nationalist Japanese on the Moon and the conservative Brothers of the Land orbiting it, over the internationalist-Indonesian-American mainstream of enhanceds to radical posthumanists and syntronists aligned with the Nekono cluster.

L'Immunité

Immunity covering most of western Europe, western Africa and some regions in North America. The first immunity to emerge, and still strongly tied to French interests.

A German version, das Immunität, was developed. In practice it is identical.

Central African Immunity

Immunity dominating central, eastern and southern Africa. Its origins remain mysterious, and it is commonly believed to be just as much a work of a Primary as its South American counterpart.

It is linked to a revival of traditional religious practices, updated to the neogenetic era.

The Immunity of the Three Saviours

The Pan-Arab Immunity

Although France beat them to it, an immunity was also developed in the 40's by researchers in Saudi Arabia. Unlike the French version which was rushed into use with few precautions, the Arab Immunity was carefully developed and deployed.

While viewed purely as a medical matter, it has come to represent culturally the original Arab-Islamic heritage. It dominates in the Arab world, parts of East Africa (where it competes fiercely with the Central African Immunity and its missionaries), and central Asia. Some enclaves exist in the former Indonesian Union, but most of the region is firmly controlled by the Dragons.

The Chinese Immunities

A number of smaller immunities were developed/invented in China during the late 40's and early 50's. Some were extremely dangerous and led to host epidemics such as the Shanghai disaster 2051, but many worked well. China is a patchwork of smaller immunities, some of which have been exported to the US and elsewhere.

While the Chinese states were poor, chaotic outsiders in the 30's and largely ignored in the 40's, now they are making a significant comeback. They are becoming an increasingly relevant and diverse part of the world.

The Normalist Block

The Normalists are the descendants of the nationalists and conservatives that refused to join the internationalized neogenetic world. They are now largely isolationist communities seeking to retain the traditional values in face of the "chaos" outside.

Voice of the Dragons

The direct link between humans and Dragons. They are somewhere in between a new species, a hive mind and mere appendages to the Dragons, although it is hard to tell. Widely feared and despised, they are quietly spreading across the Dragon Zones.

Companies

Atlas Lifting

Phoenix Space Development

Artemis - themselves as goal

Macrotech

AusSpace

Nekono Cluster

Organizations

UN

NERD

Brothers of the Land

Black lotus

Earth

The US

Canada

Europa

Central Asia

Pacifica

Australia

Japan Below

China

Unicorn antarctica

South America

Africa

Space

Japan Above

Japan was the only nation to undertake a complete spacelift and still retain their old structure, now on the South hemisphere of the moon. Although the lift started more as pork barrel politics it turned into a huge unifying project that impressed all of humanity, even when its final utility came into question.

While closely allied with the OTA, it is pursuing its own cultural program.

New Hong Kong

Pacifica

Pacifica has grown to become the major transfer point between

Heaven

The old headquarters of Phoenix, these days a tiny resort for old money and old tech.

Heaven II

Brought to Earth during the Orion Crisis, later moved to L5.

Innana

Phoenix headquarters, moon orbit. The financial center of cis-lunar space, equipped with massive bandwidth and surrounded by an archipelago of suburb habitats.

Juno

Kore

L5

The main location of habitats.

The Omega Archipelago

Archipelago of research and development habitats run by the Nekono group in LEO. Advanced nanotech, biotech, AI and space engineering.

Medusa (L4)

Comet core

Asteroid Mines

Automated Nekonospace automated station jupiter

Net

Dragon Zones

Indian Ocean Zone

The oldest and most developed Dragon zone. Home to many of the Voices. Currently it is colonizing the remnants of India, turning the interior into a bizarre anatomical djungle sometimes referred to as the Brain of Kali

The Zone is communicative and expansive, maintaining various links to the Net and apparently absorbing enormous amounts of information. Its transmissions are far more garbled, but do relate to the current world in a way that suggests that very alien intellignce(s) are at the other end.

Amazonia Zone

The Amazonian Zone appears to embrace wild evolution and experimentation, recreating and recombining all kinds of species into a kind of dragon jungle which has inspired the new India. It is literally at war with the Three Saviours.

Pacific Zone

A large but disconnected region. It consists of isolated gigantic dragon castles on islands and guoyts, sometimes forming networks around an atoll. It appears to be very much introvert.

Caribbean Zone

Dense, expanding floating forests that form a single super-organism that extends into the Atlantic.

Champagne Zone

The Champagne Zone is apparently under French control, or rather cooperates with L’Immunité (although persistent rumours claim that it is the reverse - the Zone is by now running France and through it the entire Immunity). It mainly consists of subterranean rhizomes and nodes, infiltrating the landscape rather than reshaping it.

Mediterranean Zone

Parts of the mediterranean is immune, but major dragon castles dot the region. An uneasy ecological balance has developed, and some fishermen have started to exploit the large scale ecological changes brought by the dragons for ocean farming. The Zone constantly attempts new tricks to spread.

The Environment

After the last decades of turmoil, the concept of nature has largely been abandoned. The realization that life was a creation by the dragons, the enormous chaos wrought by them, the humans and the climate and now the deliberate redefinition of life has turned the environment into something very different.

The glaciation is still going strong, and climatological models suggest that the Earth is going to cool further. Adding to this is the massive drain of carbon dioxide and methane from the atmosphere by the Dragons, and the increase in stratospheric dust due to spaceflight. The ozone layer is unraweling at a frightening rate, although the consequences are only felt in the few regions with entirely unchanged ecologiy. Several of the Immunities and virtual think tanks are studying methods of climate improvement, but so far there has been no concerted effort.The Immunities appear eminently able to effect vast climatic changes by their biological infrastructure, and there are ideas floating around to try to convince the Dragons to help.

Approximately 70% of the Earth's surface has been affected by neogenetic change in some form. The most obvious regions are the Dragon Zones, now covering most of the tropical and subtropical oceans and some land areas. In these regions all life is part of the Dragon ecology and only exist to further the interests of the Dragons.

Many other regions have been immunized and are now dominated by ecology with simple neogenetic immune systems. This has led to significant ecological problems as many species also grow stronger or adapt in unexpected ways - invasions of biblical locust swarms in Egypt, the spread of immunized rats and the problem with "enhanced" parasite diseases have caused much concern. The immunized zones also sometimes co-exist with patches of dragon infected land, although the authorites are doing what they can to keep such patches small enough to contain.

Other regions are an uneasy mixture of normal ecology and various modified forms, such as the infamous "Grass Curtain" in southern Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan that produces botulinium toxin and Judas life buffers against the dragons in some regions.

Regions without immunizations are highly vulnerable to the Blight, which causes the extinction of practically all life. Traditional "normal" ecology currently only thrives when protected under domes, which are increasingly covering the few unaffected areas (mostly at high altitudes and latitudes) as well as many cities. Here and there experiments with recompiled ecosystems have been undertaken, but they seldom work when in contact with the more genetically diverse world around them.