St. Petersburg
#location #4cw
Once the capital of the Eastern world, St. Petersburg was hit quite hard during the Soviet years and the Neo-Sov has deprioritized it even further, perceiving it as the "crown jewel" of the Tsardom. As such, nearly the entire city has sunk into poverty and an "underworld" market - eurodollars mean nothing, rubles even less.
People trade in favors, debts, goods and services - I look the other way, you look the other way some other time. Such a system is not friendly to outsiders, "tourists".
...those who are lucky become EDGERUNNERS, a new name for enterprising criminals. They work alone or in small groups but refuse to associate with a gang or the Organitskaya, relying on third-party Fixers for jobs. Most EDGERUNNERS in St. Petersburg have only seen Night City on the NET, blended with Rockerboy and anti-corp sentiment. Most EDGERUNNERS see the likes of Jack Entropy and Johnny Silverhand as incredible inspiration and actual edgerunners, so they adopt their values or incorporate them in their own struggles (anti-authoritarian, anarchist, anti-socialist etc.)
Central (Vasilyevsky Island)
...the sprawling brutalist buildings built to serve the people, surrounded by statues of past Soviet leaders with holographic add-ons, speeches to motivate the workers...
all bridges to and from are guarded by automated defenses and checkpoints, with a squadron of SovOil-geared Neo-Sov soldiers arriving in d6 minutes from a nearby garrison.
There is no reason you'd wanna be here.
Industrial
...the walled northern part of "Petrograd", where dreams go to die. Heavy industry, oil tankers, fuel processing and many buses coming in and out. Like Rhine-Ruhr Conurb, but dirtier, less secure.
Very few things here are automated - bus drivers, checkpoint security etc. are all handled by people, older or younger, in order to meet the demand for jobs.
Everyone has a job in St. Petersburg and they have just enough to put on the table. Kibble all the way, unless you know a few guys.
In-between
Historical buildings are now squatter households or repurposed by SovOil subsidiaries into watchtowers, living quarters for their soldiers etc.
...except for Mariinsky Theatre, where SovOil Fixers brush shoulders with GRU veterans and Organitskaya heads.
Most soviet apartment blocks are in disrepair, although there's constantly a decades-old SovOil robot cleaning up the wiring or putting paint in a corner.
People have been compacted into megabuildings after the collapse of the USSR (post 1990s), the "next logical step" after soviet monoliths. While not ghettos in the traditional sense (of "made-up" housing from metal plates), most residential zoning in St. Petersburg is low-cost, rent-free (not counting the "protection" money), dangerous and dirty. Most people are sick, can't afford maintenance for their Rules/CPRED/Cyberware/Cyberware, indulge in Wireheading or Braindance and rely on kibble or stealing to afford anything.
There is a constant smog outside that engulfs everything. You can't quite see 50 meters in front of you and it's hard to breathe even with a mask - and anti-smog masks are expensive and even those that you can get might be counterfeit, courtesy of the Organitskaya's lesser syndicates.
- Players receive a danger die when shooting, an action die when dodging, and a danger die on prolonged exposure to the outside.