The earth, seemingly all at once, overpopulated and saturated with disease, famine and warfare, cleansed herself from the virus of humanity with a fever. As billions upon billions died in the decade of unprecedented heatwaves, many found refuge in a small sliver of earth; a final fortress of retreat still untouched by the full force of the mother's fury. It was here, while humanity waited helplessly for their island of hope to be flooded by fire and death, that they sent a cry for help to a colony of scientists and researchers living on Mars.
Just two decades earlier, a company called PlanetForge made a huge breakthrough in terraforming technology and had successfully created an livable pocket of atmosphere on the red planet. The hope was for humans to become interplanetary, mitigating the disastrous effects of overpopulation.
While the technology was still new and there was certainly much more to learn and develop, the lead engineer at PlanetForge, Stavros Ozymandius, heard the cry of humanity and agreed that bringing the technology back to earth was the only hope of human survival.
PlanetForge discovered that with the help of an existing atmosphere, terraforming was much quicker, taking only several years rather than decades. This meant they had the ability to create vast pockets of livable atmospheres, with unique biomes and environments in which humans could thrive, before the last of humanity perished. Meridian, the first of these environments, became the cradle of rebirth.
The Seven Cities of earth are home to 845 million people, the largest of which is the City of Meridian with its 215 million citizens. It has a dense jungle-like climate near the west coast, overgrown with tropical plants and humid rainforests. The farther east you go in the city, the biome begins to taper into a semi-arid tropical desert. Leeching off the Meridian atmosphere is the town of Meridian Fault, which lies just outside the city limits to the east. A hot and dry desert, most residents of Meridian Fault live within the twisting canyon where they have shade and water from Meridian overflow. Meridian had one simple rule to achieve citizenship: each resident must be chipped with a cybernetic implant called X-Link. This cybernetic implant is what allowed the PlanetForge team to dream up and create their innovative terraforming technology and agreed that in order for humanity to thrive, everyone must be endowed with the cybernetic technology. Together, they would build a better world, faster and more efficiently. Over the next century however, more and more people were left behind as X-Link was privatized and prices skyrocketed. Not everyone could afford the technology needed to live in the city limits. They were left with the option to brave the treacherous real earth environment and travel to the neighboring Horizon City, or simply build a life for themselves just outside city limits, which is how Meridian Fault was born.
Now the people of Meridian are getting richer and smarter while those in the Faultlands are left in the dust, literally and figuratively. The city of Meridian offers resources and work programs to help Faultlanders get their X-Link but most are too proud and have too much to lose by joining these programs, as they often involve protecting the borders and arresting residents of Meridian Fault.
The City of Meridian is not without it's own seedy underbelly and blackmarket dealings though, as you will discover. There is much to learn about this massive megacity and this is only the beginning.
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