Utopian dreams and civil wars. Corporate tyrants and passionate protesters. The nation of Cascadia has a rich and turbulent history. Read on for a summary of the most important milestones.

Out of the Great Regression rose OmniStat. Inspired by tales of ancient utopias and classless societies where every citizen had equal value and production was owned and shared by all, OmniStat quickly swallowed up the majority of the isolated settlements and surviving cities – sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. Some refused to acknowledge the OmniStat way of life and resisted to the bitter end, causing much strife and paranoia.

Progress was still made though, ancient ideas were rediscovered and new technology developed. Slowly but inexorably civilization began to restore itself after the limbo of the Regression and the OmniStat cities grew fast as people abandoned the smaller settlements and migrated to the urbanized areas. Some of the Greylands that had been blasted in the old wars were recultivated with varying success and the population grew considerably.

The Krugers were one of the ancient families. They had survived the wars and the Regression, retaining their pride, and even some of their gathered knowledge. When OmniStat rose to power they accepted its rule, making sure to secure important positions within the Party as it grew. But they never truly accepted the philosophy OmniStat was founded on, and as the decades passed the Kruger family began plotting drastic change – believing that for civilization to truly move forward a radically different society had to be formed, one based on free enterprise and individual achievement – concepts that were anathema to the Party.

Wary of betrayal the Krugers still managed to gather a few other families to their cause – some were prominent party members, and others important contributors to society overall. The Brysons, Malus, and Wanderborn-Farchilds all rallied behind the Krugers and when the time was right they helped light the flames of rebellion all over OmniStat.

The Kruger Uprising coincided with a widespread famine, which made many citizens more than ready to join the cause – fed up as they were with the secret police, the Party elite and its stifling political teachings. Decades of accumulated hate and frustration helped turn the flames into a conflagration far more devastating than the conspirators had planned and soon enough OmniStat was torn apart in a bitter civil war.

The fighting lasted for years and the Krugers were forced to acknowledge that theirs was not the only vision of an ideal society. There were others who also saw the turbulent times as an opportunity to set up their own assemblies, and when the dust eventually settled three nations formed from the ashes of what was once the most powerful civilization on the planet. The largest part would still be OmniStat and remain under Party rule; second largest was to become "Cascadia" – shaped by the families supporting the initial Kruger Uprising; finally there was Sabaeus, a theocracy founded on a religious text of obscure origins.

The fighting also caused many bitter losses, among them Dieter Kruger – head of the Kruger family and an inspired, altruistic visionary who, had he lived, might have had a profound effect on what was to come.

A fragile and tentative peace was agreed upon and borders drawn up, but the obvious enmity between Cascadia and OmniStat remained a severe threat to the conference, and had it not been for skilful negotiating by Sabaeus clerics the whole initiative would have failed and the war started anew. But in the end everything was settled into the Neridian Concord, and the representatives withdrew to rebuild all that had been lost.

It had been Dieter Kruger's vision to create a nation founded on democratic principles, individuality and personal initiative. But with Dieter's demise Cascadia's founding was off to a flawed start, as the other major families had more selfish intentions. The constitution stipulated voting rights for citizens of a certain standing and free elections of a president and an assembly to govern the nation. But with voting rights curtailed from the outset, the first steps down the road to tyranny had already been taken.

The Cascadian Constitution not only dictated how the country should be governed, it also included the Corporate Charter – allowing anyone to start an enterprise and nurture it to prosperity. The Charter too was flawed from the outset though, since little thought was given to regulatory statutes governing competition and unfair practices. Also, the families leading the uprising made sure to secure the main industries and natural resources early on, giving them a vast head-start.

Everything was closely watched by OmniStat whose ideals were diametrically opposed to Cascadia's, and to no-one's surprise, they made a surprise attack on both Cascadia and Sabaeus only a few years after the birth of the new nations. The Triumvirate War lasted for two years and mainly consisted of an endless string of intense border skirmishes. The conflict was ended only after an uneasy alliance formed between Cascadia and Sabaeus, and since then a cease-fire has been in effect between the three nations though no official peace-agreement has been signed.

A deep fear and hatred of OmniStat and the Party drove a nation-wide initiative to eradicate the old and rebuild anew. All memories of the OmniStat era were to be destroyed and in their place new symbols were to be erected, celebrating freedom, and the original twelve families leading the uprising. Within a decade those same families controlled almost 80% of the "free" market, and their dominance kept growing. The Cascadian Assembly struggled to create laws that would limit corporate influence. But with most assemblymen belonging to one of the families the laws remained toothless.

The families became known as the Corporate Houses, their dominance grew and eventually they became the true rulers of Cascadia in all but name, having banded together to form a joint Conglomerate. However, wise from the OmniStat era they were careful to seem inclusive to the general populace, and stories abounded about regular citizens climbing the corporate ladder to achieve the same level of affluence as the corporate house members.

The growing affluence of the increasingly complacent midCaste was completely dependent on the loCaste, whose access to health-care, schooling and other services was severely limited, bordering on non-existent. Many were forced to live in the Greylands where the corporations ran their enormous factories, foodDomes and mines and life there was short and hard. Work-place accidents were common, as were cancers and other sicknesses caused by the toxic Greyland conditions.

Tensions grew and movements formed and fell apart – until one of them, based on pacifistic ideals, took root and grew steadily. It found its strongest support in Glass where it had also been founded by Martin Connors, a charismatic and popular musician.

Things were brought to a head on a chilly November day when the largest demonstration to date was held. Thousands marched to the Zephyr Transit Hub where they gathered to listen to speeches and political songs. But something went terribly wrong, shots were fired, and within moments the peaceful gathering had turned into a rioting stampede. Hundreds were killed and thousands wounded. For three days the riots raged unabated and Glass burned. Martin and Erika Connors and their daughter Caitlin were among those killed.

Among the general populace, and especially the midCaste, there was an outrage at the protesters and the damage and deaths they had caused. The Conglomerate made sure to also point to the weak Assembly and their ineptness in handling the volatile situation. Laws were passed forbidding large gatherings and protests, further strengthening the Conglomerate.

The measures taken by the Assembly proved to be too little, too late though, and when the Conglomerate declared the Assembly unfit to rule the nation, only a vocal minority opposed it. Those who did soon disappeared and so the Conglomerate came to rule Cascadia. Glass was chosen to become a symbol of Conglomerate greatness. The refurbishing was accelerated and immense resources spent on making Glass a pristine bastion of Conglomerate power, trumped only by Cascadia Prime, the Capital, where the Conglomerate Board resides.

Relations between OmniStat and Cascadia are truly hostile and bellicose. Both sides consider themselves threatened by the other and opposed ideologies serve to fuel the ongoing conflict. Learn about how the two regions relate to each other.

OmniStat spends enormous resources annually on infiltrating and analyzing Cascadian culture and politics – both to subvert and survey. OmniStat also remembers the refugee flood preceding the Triumvirate War, when almost one fifth of OmniStat's population fled to Cascadia and Sabaeus before OmniStat managed to close the borders, and border patrols have since been mandated to use lethal force to stop anyone from crossing.

Refugees still trickle across, but Cascadia is much less prone to accept them these days, and they are all suspected of being provocateurs. Most end up as loCaste and the irony is not lost on them as they toil out the remainder of their days in a situation very similar to the one they left behind.

Cascadia maintains a standing army in the form of KrugerDef, but they rely on technology rather than numbers, and the Great OmniStat Army outnumber them at least three to one. Random border skirmishes still occur, but they are rarely relayed to the general public who remains ignorant of the true magnitude of the OmniStat threat. Only occasionally is OmniStat used as a scapegoat to create acceptance for a new security measure or privacy-invasive policy change.

Sabaeus remains a nation apart, and though it neighbors both OmniStat and Cascadia few knows what goes on beyond its hermetically sealed borders. No refugees have come out of Sabaeus in the last thirty years, and out of the many agents sent there by Cascadia only one has returned – a full convert to the Sabaeus religion and thus useless.

The Conglomerate therefore has a hard time deciding whether Sabaeus is a threat or not. At the same time there is almost no awareness of how much Sabaeus knows of Cascadia, and the few Sabean missionaries that are discovered in Cascadia are all rounded up and dealt with before they're able to create many converts. Only once did Conglomerate vigilance fail miserably – when an entire foodDomes close to Neridia Nova suddenly shut down, as the loCaste working there left en masse and went across the border to Sabaeus. None of them were ever heard from again, and Neridia Nova suffered a period of famine before food production could be restored.

Water

Most of the ground water basins were dried out or polluted in the period leading up to the Regression and for decades, clean water was a rare luxury. People drank what they could find and diseases and cancers ran rampant.

One of the main strengths of OmniStat stemmed from the fact that it early on gained control of most of the few clean ground water basins. This was used as an effective lure to sway struggling Greyland settlements to the OmniStat ideal.

As OmniStat grew past the mountains and across the Greylands more water was needed, and once they reached the coast they built several massive desalination plants which added greatly to the fresh water supply. But then OmniStat fell into decline, some of the plants stopped working due to mismanagement and those living far from the main ground water basin were forced to rely on less and less water.

It is not often spoken of today, but one of the main issues of the Kruger Uprising was access to water – OmniStat was using it as a means of control and in the end it suffered for it. After the Civil War Cascadia broke off and since it occupied the majority of the coast it also gained control of the desalination plants, which quickly caused severe water shortages within the remains of OmniStat. Whole towns dried out and their citizens perished as the Party was forced to prioritize.

The Triumvirate Wars too were mainly a war fought for water, as OmniStat tried and failed to regain control of the desalination plants. Since then, OmniStat has found other ways of preserving water but it still lusts for more – looking with greedy eyes at Cascadia who has reached its capacity as well. The desalination plants are barely able to cover the needs of the ever growing number of employs high and low.

Most employs are unaware of the tenuous water situation and the Conglomerate does what it can to ensure that it remains a secret. LoCaste assigned to the desalination plants are never allowed to leave, and the few midCaste supervisors serving there are sworn to silence under the threat of contract termination for them and their extended families.

But in order for Cascadia and the Conglomerate to survive as a nation they must secure access to more fresh water. They plan to address this by building three more massive desalination plants but these will require vast amounts of energy.

Energy

Energy, or the lack thereof is fast becoming a growing concern to the Conglomerate. The cycle of consumption necessary to maintain their stratified society is raising the demand for energy to untenable levels. The fission plants are operating at max output and though some of the need has been mitigated by renewable sources it's not enough to fully replace nuclear power.

Everdyne Energy did research alternate energy technologies once, back when they were one of several energy corporations competing for customers. But as they grew and swallowed their competitors, the research departments were downsized, halved and all but shut down. They severely underestimated the rising needs of the future and it was believed that the available uranium would be enough to fuel Cascadia for centuries to come.

That was before two of the largest deposits unexpectedly ran dry, and all attempts at finding new sites were met with failure. Everdyne has since stepped up its research efforts, but it's a case of too little too late and they lack the know-how to make any significant progress.

Almost five decades have passed since Cascadia was founded and whole generations of employs have been brought up knowing only Conglomerate policy. OmniStat remains an ever prevalent threat, but few below eXec level believe hostilities will resume. There are signs of dissent in some cities and random acts of terror remind everyone that safety is a luxury dependent on the vigilance of KrugerSec and Conglomerate authority.

Covering a vast expanse of blasted desert, mountains and a few stunted forests, Cascadia is completely structured around the eight major cities. All the factories, foodDomes and strip mines exist to serve these sprawling clusters of spires and hiRises where the urbanite employs consume resources at an alarming pace. There are small villages and hamlets in the Greylands, but they have no entry in the official database, and the outCaste living there matter little to the Conglomerate except as target practice on occasional KrugerSec outings or as test subjects for different corporate projects.

The Capital of Cascadia and home of the Conglomerate Board. The corporate houses have their main headquarters here, and most employs in the city are hiCaste or eXecs, working in administration and finance. Glass might stand as a symbol of Conglomerate beauty, but the true seat of power is Cascadia Prime.

Employs in Aurora are constantly reminded of the OmniStat threat. The city consists of one half of a once greater sprawl which sits across the polluted river forming part of the border between Cascadia and OmniStat. The other half now lies within OmniStat, and out of the one hundred bridges once connecting the two only one remain. It's heavily guarded, as is the whole border, by an abundance of automated defence systems and KrugerDef sentries.

Hale was once a small mining-town but little remains of those bygone days and it's now a city of millions. Located far up in the mountains, Hale gets to experience the most severe weather changes in all of Cascadia. The architecture reflects the austere conditions and Hale employs take pride in their hardiness. Surrounded by mineral mines, Hale is one of the two major resource hubs of Cascadia and it's completely dominated by Kruger Holding.

Liberta is the second of the two main resource hubs in Cascadia, focusing on consumer goods rather than the material used to produce them. It sits, like Cascadia Prime, in the middle of the Greylands and it's the second largest city after Cascadia Prime, both Pirandello and Anansi Groups have a heavy presence here.

Located close to the border of Sabaeus, Neridia Nova prides itself on being the site of the Neridian Concord, which ended the civil war fifty years ago. Kruger Holding has a formidable presence here and one of their largest KrugerDef compounds is located not far from the city. Its many midCaste employs are used to maintaining a constant vigilance against Sabaeus missionaries who now and then sneak across the border to propagate their beliefs until caught and put away.

Glass stands as a pristine symbol of Conglomerate greatness – the very antithesis of the featureless OmniStat architecture. Silvine maintains a strong presence in this city where the hiCaste almost outnumber the midCaste, and as the ultimate achievement of Conglomerate architectural ingenuity Sky City stretches to the clear skies – a tangible reminder of the rewards to be reaped for those willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

Val is the opposite of Glass – the last city in Cascadia to be refurbished in accordance with Conglomerate ideals it still sports many buildings from the OmniStat era and this is also ironically where KrugerSec is working the hardest to root out OmniStat support. Most employs here are loCaste and general conditions are only marginally better than in the Greylands hamlets or massCondos of the foodDomes.

Cascadian society is divided along three major lines. The first division is between the employs and non-employs or outCaste. An employ has some rights and benefits depending on their caste, an outCaste has none. The second line of division is drawn between the urbanites and Greylanders – the latter often being synonymous with loCaste or outCaste. And the third one divides the different Castes who have vastly different incomes and living conditions.

The Corporate Houses are dynasties often several generations old, most of them dating back to at least the OmniStat era, and some even further. The Houses are sometimes also referred to as the Original Twelve, meaning the twelve families who supported the Kruger Uprising against OmniStat. To those twelve, one more has been added in the shape of House Riken (owners of Anansi), bringing the current total to thirteen.

To be able to trace your lineage to an Original Twelve ancestor brings enormous prestige, and though the Corporate Houses have grown considerably in the last few decades through adoptions and marriage, genealogists still maintain careful records of who is true blood and who is not.

Members of the Corporate Houses live in unfathomable luxury, far removed from the realities of the low and even midCaste whom they rarely fraternize with, if at all. They are the ones leading the Corporations and thereby Cascadia, and their lives are dedicated to politics and the constantly ongoing power play.

The eXecs are those directors and executives who have yet to be adopted into the Corporate Houses but still wield considerable power and influence. They too live lives of extraordinary abundance, but while a Corporate House member is always protected by the House, an eXec is still "only" an employ and can still be made an outCaste, and so their vigilance and dedication must be absolute.

The most affluent of the ordinary castes and often found in senior positions across the nation, many of the hiCaste live together with the eXecs and House members in reserved areas of the cities – prominently represented by The View District, and Sky City in Glass and though they always stand the risk of being downcast they enjoy lives of considerable affluence.

The midCaste make up the majority of the urbanite employs and they are the ones staffing the offices and service centres, the research facilities and civic compounds. The midCaste know only work and they dedicate all their waking hours to striving upwards because there will always be someone ready to take their place should they relax, in which case they will be downcast and even made outCaste and thus lose their hard-earned rights and benefits.

Though there is a large urban loCaste population in all cities most are Greylanders and they live in the massCondos connected to the foodDomes, factories and mines. A loCaste's life is often hard and fraught with work-related danger and they have few rights and benefit – considered too expendable to be given any more. But all loCaste do (in theory) have a shot at changing their situation through hard work and every month a select few are elevated to midCaste status and offered positions in the cities. Of course, this often means that they are replacing midCaste who for different reasons were downcast.

At the bottom we find the outCaste, those whose contracts have been permanently terminated – usually as a result of breaking Policy. Many serve forced labor sentences in the mines or most dangerous factories, but some simply leave society behind, to go live on their own or with fellow outCaste in the struggling Greyland villages. A few even remain in the cities, staying out of reach of KrugerSec while scraping by at the bottom, their gridLink long since taken from them and with it any hope of ever returning the Conglomerate fold.

Then there the even fewer outCaste who rather consider themselves offGrids – rare individuals who for different reasons have decided to remove themselves completely from the Conglomerate while still living in the cities. Most have no official listing in the employ database. Many make a living as criminals and over the years they have made their services an integrated part of the Conglomerate black market economy and the ongoing Corporate House rivalry. The Runners in Glass belong to this category.

Other offGrids have joined different resistance movements where they do all they can to overthrow the Conglomerate using terror as their foremost weapon. They are constantly hunted by KrugerSec and considered a primary threat to Conglomerate security. Black November is among them.

Managed by Allcom, The Grid is the main data network and primary form of communication and entertainment in Cascadia. It's predominantly accessed wirelessly but there are Commercial/Industrial hardwired connections as well.

The Grid is managed and generated by large gridNode structures found in all city districts. These contain massive traffic routers, data backup servers, and powerful wireless transceivers that co-ordinate the Grid into a single entity.

All traffic on The Grid is observed and tracked by the Conglomerate.

Used by Faith and the runners, The Beat is a software that "piggybacks" onto The Grid. Users interact with The Beat using integrated hardware like earpieces and glasses or in Faith's case, her glove and cutting edge contact lens. It provides navigational aids as well as encrypted communication channels and job databases which the Conglomerate has yet to gain access to.

Few now can tell for certain what calamity caused the Greylands before the Regression. Most believe it was a combination of pollution, climate change and devastating wars which killed off most of the vegetation and mutated the rest into pitiful remnants of trees and bushes together with an anemic species of grass. These live haphazardly in the vast grey desert where things only grow when intensely cultivated and irrigated. A ruptured ozone-layer makes the sun into a threat to be avoided, and among the Greylanders melanoma is ten times as common as in the cities. Also, the constant shortage of clean freshwater causes far more sickness and deformities in the Greyland dwellers than in the urbanites.

The millions of urbanite employs in the cities require enormous amounts of food. Almost all food in Cascadia is produced by loCaste working in the gargantuan foodDomes dotting the Greylands between the cities. These are leftovers from the OmniStat era, and though they have been somewhat improved through scientific and technological advances they are still very resource demanding in terms of manpower, water and energy. Protected from excessive UV by the specially treated glass of the gigantic domes, the crops below thrive and grow – fertilized by waste from the cities and the massCondos of loCaste employs working the fields. In here can be found all the green one would expect of a healthy landscape, and some loCaste are more happy here than in the barren cities, even though life in the domes is infinitely harder.

The vast factory complexes produce the myriad of consumer products available to the urban employs. Everything from cars to electronics, and the many components needed to create them are assembled, refined and transformed here. Staffed by hundreds of thousands of loCaste working shifts side by side with automated robotic systems, these city-sized sprawls are of prime importance to the Conglomerate, as the authorities rely completely on their output to keep the rest of its employs in a state of duped satisfaction.

Of the main Greyland worksites the mines are the worst by far. Here toil those loCaste who are either serving a sentence of forced labor or were unlucky enough to be born to parents doing the same thing. They dig deep into the crust to extract all the resources needed to keep the factories running and the cities thriving, but after centuries of digging it's getting increasingly harder to keep the supply going. Automatons augment the work force and perform the most dangerous tasks below, but the mining operations still demand plenty of manpower, and it's no coincidence that Kruger Holding, who owns KrugerSec, also own and run the mines where so many former urban employs have been sentenced to work after having broken policy.

Everdyne Energy supplies Cascadia with the energy it needs to keep the cities lit, the water desalinated, and the factories, mines and food domes running. Though they make much of their environmental responsibilities and the renewable energy technologies they employ in the cities, the truth is that these provide only about fifteen percent of the total energy need in the nation. Desalination requires the most energy, closely followed by food production and the factories, and to cover it all Everdyne has kept several old OmniStat fission plants running. They are all based on decades old technology and though some work has been done to upgrade them, security and efficiency is still sorely lacking.

In addition to the mines, factories, foodDomes, and energy plants the Conglomerate also operates other compounds in the Greylands. Two large military bases are operated by KrugerDef where they maintain a small standing army and perform advanced weapons research. Spread out along the coast lie three massive desalination plants, and together they provide about 80% of the freshwater needed, the rest coming from gathered rainwater and the few clean groundwater basins left. Rumors say there are prisons and classified research-facilities hidden away in the Greylands as well, where the Conglomerate is free to do what it wants with the outCaste, deviants and criminals rounded up by KrugerSec and never seen again but this has never been verified.