Bay City

Bay City, or just "The Bay", is a megalopolis built on top of the ruins of old San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and extending as far east as Sacramento.

IDENT Chips
Anyone in the city is required to keep their IDENT on them at all times. This is a small plastic card, granted by the Bay Authority, which specifies the status of the person's residency (resident, visitor, worker, etc.), where they're from, as well as their biometric data. By scanning your facial topography, retinas, fingerprints, and DNA, the Authority is able to keep track of people's movements in and out of the city. Some say there are more counterfeit IDENT chips on the streets than real ones.

Notable Locations
The Bay is divided into several key sectors, which are further sub-divided into districts.

The Interchange
A vast slum centered under a complex intersection of elevated super-highways.

Haven
A shanty-town in the hills just outside of the south edge of the city. Many of its inhabitants are, for various reasons, trying to avoid the Bay Authority. Despite crippling poverty, Haven is known for its intolerance of organized crime, making it, by slum-standards, a relatively pleasant place to live. It even has its own volunteer police force as well as a slightly outdated hospital-grade medical fabricator capable of printing many varieties of medicine as well as human tissue.

Blacklight District
The glittering neon undercity near the city's center. Packed with brothels, dance clubs, casinos, arcades, and drug-dens. This is where the elites of the upper city come to make shady deals with the scum of the streets and where stacks of dirty money are free to anyone willing to steal, fuck, or kill for it. Run by the Syndicate, though the Prizrak (a.k.a. "The Ghost") have all but declared open war on the Syndicate over portions of the district.

The Devil's Hand
The Devil's Hand Gang is one of the largest Gangs of the Bay City slums. They came to existence in 2237, when their current leader, "The Devil's Hand" Jake Crocket killed the Leaders of the Blood Iris Gang, Omi Alliance and the Breccia, joining their forces together into the Devil's Hand Gang. They are composed of raiders, arsonists, murderers, kidnappers, rapists and other scum. Unlike groups like the Street Thunder Gang, the Devil's Hand Gang does not respect the unwritten rules of the slums, extorting and robbing even the lowest beggar, breaking cease-fires with other gangs and displaying general disregard for life.

The Prizrak (Ghost)
Started out as a group of Russian thugs who broke off from the Bratva in Central. They called themselves the Ghost Boys, noteworthy for their brutality but otherwise small-time. However, since the untimely death of two of their three founders, the gang has changed their name to simply "The Ghost" and coalesced around their last remaining leader and under him they have developed into a powerful and sophisticated operation rivaling that of the Syndicate.

They have their hands in many pots, from illegal drugs, gun trafficking, prostitution, and money-lending, but they're most well-known for trading in information. A small army of data-thieves and couriers are on their payroll.

The Prizrak realize that as long as the Syndicate control the Blacklight District they'll be the biggest fish in the swamp, so the Prizrak have been buying up businesses and trying to establish themselves in Blacklight, much to the dismay of the Syndicate. Anyone can see that a war is brewing, it's just a question of who will strike first, and whether Blacklight will survive.

Street Thunder
The Street Thunder Gang is a relatively small gang in the Bay City Slums.

The Syndicate (Black Lotus)
Originally based in Shanghai, now based in the Bay, the Syndicate (officially: the Hei Lianhua or "Black Lotus") is a criminal organization so large and so feared that they almost qualify as a corporation.

The Syndicate is the most poewrful and well-organized of the city's gangs. Members are required to adhere to a strict code of conduct, as well as a formal dress code.

They currently enjoy good relations with their on-again, off-again enemies, the Yakuza, who control much of the criminal underbelly of Tokyo, but have only a small presence in the Bay.

At war with the Prizrak.