In the Beginning there was Light, but then followed Darkness..
Facts and Information
Space Travel
Space travel for a long time was no longer possible to the outer worlds, thanks to the loss of so much technology. For a time, the worlds of humanity were separated from each other. It is not exactly known what sort of technology that humanity once had access to, and how they traversed the planets, but it is known that megacorporate attempts to return to space were far slower than that of previous times.
However, an accidental malfunction in an Imperial starship (owned by the Harrison family) on March 24, 2932 AD, resulted in an amazing discovery ... when it disappeared from one point in the solar system near Ganymede and appeared, crippled, in orbit around Venus. The ship which had accomplished this feat was immediately commandeered by its Bauhaus "rescuers", and the incident was studied. Through much research, it was discovered that the complex interaction of machinery -- slightly out of calibration -- had created some sort of little-understood "harmonic" effect that took the ship into another "dimension" (referred to as "the Void"), and then brought it back at another point. While its journey still lasted many days, it was a considerably shorter journey than would have been possible by conventional means.
The corporations rushed to replicate this "accident", and in short order, they were able to reestablish contact with the more farflung outposts of humanity, and greatly reduce travel times across the solar system. The Brotherhood frowned on this as some sort of meddling with the effects of the Dark Symmetry, but it has utilized these methods as well, in order to reach its farflung monasteries in the asteroid belt.
The mechanics of this method of navigating through space are amazingly complex, and they don't allow a starship to hop from one point to just anywhere else. Rather, some effort is required in establishing certain "paths" between "gateway points" in orbit about the various planets. Only within the last century has anyone been bold enough to try to handle the calculations required to establish a "path" to a point beyond the Limit imposed by the Brotherhood (at the asteroid belt) -- and that has been for Imperial to jump to Jupiter, to reclaim the forest moon of Ganymede.
It is hypothesized that the Dark Legion's "Black Arks" (great star ships that are landed on planets to form Citadels) use much the same method to jump from planet to planet, though their more permanent "gateways" between worlds are not understood, and apparently the corporations have yet to find any way to replicate this latter ability.
Please note that travel times between two planets strongly depends on the relative position of both plantes, the journey may take pretty much longer when you start a day later. The cost of a space trip depends on the time the journey takes and the distance. There are no scheduled flights beyond Victoria. Only some very desperate freelancers in need of money will ever cross the asteroids.
For first dass, tripie the cost. This gives you a single or double cabin, all breakfasts, lunches and dinners induded. You'll have access to all the modern conveniences onboard and free drinks till you land. A first dass trip is the vacation of a lifetime for most average citizens, but the only reasonable mode of traveling for businessmen and officials.
The cost in the table is for second dass. This indudes a bed in a two-bed cabin and breakfast onIy (lunch is 50 crowns per day, dinner 100). You'll have access to most conveniences on board-such as stores, cinemas, pool tables, gyms, restaurants, rest rooms, libraries or whatever might be at hand-for a smaller fee. All this depends on the quality of the craft, of course. Freelancing businessmen, soldiers on leave, journalists and guys like yourself are common here. Really, this is the onIy cheap alternative.
In third dass, you'll share your cabin, shower and bathroom with 1d100 other passengers. No meals are induded, and you'd better bring your own food, books and light, because if worse comes to worst, you won't be let out of the cargo bay until you land on your destination. On the other hand, price is onIy 30% ofthe one in the list.
Earning a living
For most of the folk of the megacities, life is a constant struggle to find work and survive. Jobs are hard to come by, and casual labor is all too common. Being an employee is never going to make you rich or even independent. The system doesn't work that way. Here is what you can expect to make in any given job. Obviously not every occupation can be covered. If you want to try another type of work, compare it to the nearest similar type on this list.
Begging: You hit the streets and panhandle. If you're lucky, you'll earn 1d20 crowns per day
Casual Labor: You eke out a precarious living by casuallabor, hanging out around the great street markets and transportterminals and hoping thatyouwill be called on to carry goods or clean up. Alternatively you can work as a taxi-driver or rickshaw puller for one of the agencies. You earn 100 crowns a day if you can find work. There is a 50% chance of that if times are good. Less if they are not.
Domestic: You work as a cleaner or servant in a house, hotel or great public building. You earn about 750 crowns per week.
Skilled Laborer: You work in a factory or garage, performing manual work that demands some prior knowledge. You earn about 1,000 crowns per week.
Office Worker: You a work as a secretary or a clerk in an office. Your job requires at least basic literacy and numeracy and possibly the ability to type. You can expect to earn about 1,200 crowns per week.
Manager: You are one of the lucky few who are employed in a large business to oversee a group of underlings. Your salary is paid monthly, and at a low level, you can expect to be paid 8,000 crowns per month. If you work for a large company, you can expect to earn a lot more eventually. If you work for a megacorporation, the sky's the limit. Lawyers and accountants who work for somebody else can expect to earn about twice this.
Cop: As an ordinary beat cop for a Freelance out fit, you can expect to make about 1,200 crowns per week. This rises by about 500 crowns per week with every rank gained. Officers can expect to earn twice this and are paid monthly. lf you are corrupt, you can earn many times this, but getting caught will be nasty. Pay is on a similar scale in the military, except that your earnings are quadrupled if you are at war. If you work for a megacorporation, your pay will be about 20% higher.
Private Detective: You work for 2,500 crowns per investigator on the case per day, plus expenses. It sounds good, but first of all you've got to find clients willing to pay. The relatively few days you work have got to cover all the days you don't. Of course if you make the bigtime and go far up market, you can charge what the market will bear. If you are looking forwork in the shadowy world of streetcrime, you can expect to earn about as much as muscle or an assassin. Remember nobody gets rich, working for someone else.
Muscles: You do casual enforcement work, collecting debts, hanging around with some mid-Ievel mobster and looking tough. You collect 200 crowns a day for just being there, maybe double that if you have to get involved in some rough stuff. In debt collection, you get a small percentage of what you recover.
Assasin: You charge what the market will bear. This depends on the relative status and protection of the target. This might run to about 1,000 crowns for some lowlife punk with no friends to well over 100,000 for someone difficult and dangerous to kill.
Accomodation
You can live in a plush luxury hotel, or you can live in a fearidden dive. They are both going to cost you money. Accommodation comes in many shapes and forms.
Hotels: These can range from palaces where your every whirn is catered for by a legion of staff to tlea-infested dives where the night clerk doubles up as a point man for the local muggers. Needless to say, security gets better the more you pay.
Luxury Hotel: These are places like the Capitol Eagle or the Imperial Grand. Here is where the super-rich elite stay when they are away frorn their apartments. These hotels usually have regiments of staff ready to pamper their guests, and a whole host of discrete personal services are available for the discerning guest. Security is usually top-notch but very understated. A roorn costs 2,000 crowns a night, minimum, rising to about 20,000 for the best. Suites cost frorn 5,000 crowns to 50,000 (for the Luna City Capitol Eagle presidential penthouse suite), and these are the last word in luxury and service.
Good Hotel: These are good, often great, hotels without the cachet or the reputation of the Luxury Hotels. They are extrernely cornfortable places. Costs range from 4-800 crowns per night.
Ordinary Hotel: These are places used by business travelers and people seeking comfortable secure Iodging. They are usually medium-sized establishments. A room costs 200 crowns per night.
Cheap Hotel: These are little better than flophouses for the indigent. Residents sleep in huge, shared dormitories. Petty theft and brawling is common. A bed costs 20-50 crowns per night.
Apartments: For folk who are not constantly in transit, it makes more sense to rent an apartment. Usually these are rented by the month, and a landlord may ask for between 1 and 4 months rent as a deposit. Most rented apartments come with furniture and fittings.
Luxurious Apartment: You will find these in the best districts of the city, usually overlooking the spots where the rich and powerful work and gather. In some cities, they may be located in mansions. In Luna, they are in skyscrapers. The higher you go, the better your view and the higher the rent. These apartments are luxurious, with marble baths and thick carpets. Private security firms watch over the buildings. The costs start at 10,000 crowns per month and rise steeply. If you start adventuring with Social standing 9 or 10, you live here.
Good Apartment: These are to be found in the better neighborhoods. They will be nicely furnished and relatively spacious. Security most likely consists of a doorman or concierge keeping an eye on visitors. Neighbors keep an eye out for each other. It costs about 5,000 crowns per month for a 2 room apartment. Add about 500 crowns per additional room. If you live here, your neighbours will probably have a Social standing of 7 or 8.
Average Apartment: Average apartments can be found anywhere. They are where most peopie with reasonably paying work live. It costs about 2,000 crowns for a 2 room apartment. Add about 300 per extra room. Equals Social standing 4, 5 and 6.
Poor Apartment: Poor apartments can be found in run down and dangerous areas. They are usually one room with a bed and kitchen in the same space. They cost from 1,000 crowns a month to rent. If you start adventuring with Social standing 2 or 3, this is your home.
Commercial: You can assume that office space and retail stores go for roughIy double the cost of a comparable apartment.
Cost of living
Eating out: As with everything else in the world you get what you pay for. If you want to eat haute cuisine off antique porcelain plates, then you will pay though the nose for it. The cost give here are for a meal for one.
High Class Restaurants: 1,000 crowns or even more
Good Restaurant: 250-500 crowns
Chain Restaurant: 100-200 crowns
Local Diner: 50-80 crowns
Fast Food Place: 30-40 crowns
Street Vendor: 10-20 crowns
Drinks: You can, of course pay monstrous sums for ancient vintages of wine. Most people who drink do it to get drunk. This is a relatively cheap pleasure for the common person.
Beer: 10-20 crowns per pint
Hard Liquor: 10-30 Crown per shot
Wine: 60 crowns or more per bottle
Coffe and Soft Drinks: 5-10 crowns
Buying from a store you will pay less:
Whiskey: 100 crowns or more per bottle
Rotgut: 25 crowns per bottle
Wine: 25 crowns or more per bottle
Entertainment: For Entertainment, people go to the cinema or the theater or the dance hall. They pay the price of admission, and they have their fun. The costs given here are minimum prices. Good seats t a show can cost much more. Films tend to be very escapist in nature. The theater is the place where society's more intellectual members take their leisure. Dance halls and nightclubs are where you go to meet members of the opposite sex.
Cinema Ticket: 30 crowns and up
Theater Ticket: 100 crowns and up
Opera Ticket: 150 crowns and up
Sport Event: 50 crowns and up
Dance Hall Admission: 20 crowns and up
Nightclub Admission: 100 crowns and up
Exclusive Nightclub Admission: 250 crowns and up
Consumer Goods:
TV: 10,000 to 30,000 crowns
Radio: 1,000 to 5,000 crowns
Clothing: In the world of Mutant Chronicles clothes make the man. The way you dress is a powerful personal statement about who you are and waht you do. The better you dress, the better you will be treated. People assume that if you dress successfully, you re successful. Your clothes go a long way toward creating your image. Most Freelancers will be interested in business suits. Pants, vest, jackets, hats, shirt and ties.
Tailor made: These designer clothes are worn only by the richest and the most successful. They are beautifully made and hand tailored for each customer in the appropriate style. You would pay at least 5,000 crowns for a suit and consider it a bargain. 10,000 crowns would be more usul. Bauhaus and Imperial in particular specialize in the production of such stuff. Trenchcoats cost between 2,500 and 5,000 crowns. Shoes are about the same. Hats cost around 500 crowns. If you start adventuring with Social standing 9 or 10, you own at least 25 complete tailormade costumes
Good Clothing: This the best of mass-produced tailoring. It is good-looking, durable and well-made. You can buy it off the rack in department sores. 2,000 crowns is a realistic price for a suit. Trenchcoats cost around 1,000 crowns. Shoes are about 500 crowns, Hats are about 250 crowns. This quality is normally worn by citizens with Social standing 7 and 8.
Average Clothing: This is the area dominated by Capitol's Universal Garments division. Such a suit costs about 800 crowns. Trenchcoats cost about 300 crowns. Shoes are about 200 crowns. Hats are about 150 crowns. Social standing 4-6.
Cheap Clothing: Paper thin fabric, shoddy stiching and a bad fit are all you can expect in this price range. Still, everybody needs to dressm and when you're spending only 200 crowns, you can't complain. Trenchcoats cost about 100 crowns. Hats or caps are about 50 crowns. Social standing below 3.
Taxes: Yes, indeed , nothing is sure except death and taxes. There are local income taxes to provide policing, street lighting and road maintenance. The come to about 5% of monthly income. In addition, most people pay the Brotherhood a tithe of 10%. This is voluntary, but non-payment is bad for the sol and may bring you to the attention of the Inquisition.
Expenses: To simplify things, sy that, on average, utilities such as electricity, gas, water and heat cost about 10% of an apartment's or office's rent per month. Phones cost about 1,000 crowns to be connected and 500 crowns per quarter to keep in service. To this, you can add the cost of any phone calls.
Communication: For the sake of convenience, say that local calls are free and long distance calls cost a flat 100 crowns per minute. Interplanetary calls are EXTREMLY expansive and fraught with technical difficulties, not at least being that you have to wait minutes to get areply to your questions because the distances are so vast. As an example, the average time delay in a call between Luna and Mars is 8 minutes. Rather than complicate matters with arcane calculations, simply assume that all interplanetary calls cost a flat 10,000 crowns. As such, these calls are usually the prerogative of corparate executives.
It is cheaper to send a telegram. These cost 50 crowns per sentence, although you will have to deal with the fat that the teleraph clerk may punctuate your message as he sees fit. It will be sent within three hours, but hs to be picked up by the reciever a his local telegraph store (alternatively dilivered to his home address within 24 hours; 250 crowns extra).
Mail: Ordinary packages and letters are very slow and likely to go astray. The cost is 1% of the cost given for Interplanetary travel per kilo. The time taken to deliver it should be multiplied by 1d6. The chance of your package going missing and not arriving at all is a hefty 10%.
Dispatches of courier mail between world are quick and relieable, but very expansive. Calculate that a package takes 10% of he prices for interplanetary travel per kilo of weight. This will be delivered on the time scale given with only a 1% chance of your package failing to arrive.
Advertising: You can pay 100 crowns per day, to get a small classified advert in the business section of your local edition of the Chronicle. You can pay about 30 crowns per day in other papers. Alternativley, you might want to pay ten time as much for a much larger ad. Business cards cost about 30 crowns per hunred. No Freelancer can afford to be without some.
Transportation: Getting around will eat into your budget. In the worlds of Mutant Chronicles, there are many different ways of moving about. The cheapest is probably the Underground, there are many other ways.
In Luna, when your're traveling on the Underground, roll 1d6 to see how many changes your journey will nedd. When traveling by any other means of transport, roll 1d100 to check for distance miles. Don't worry. It will all average out in the end.
The costs given below are for standard class on any means of transport. Luxury class will cost about double. Third class will cost about half. There is no third class on zeppelins.
Taxis: These can be either automobiles or human-propelled rickshaws. Either way, cost will set you back about 5 crowns per mile on top of a 10 crown flat fee.
Ships: Where there is water, there will be ships. Travel costs are about the same as on the trains.
Buses and Trams: The cover many surface areas of the megacities. Cost usually work out at about 3 crowns per mile on local routes.
Underground: Most people on Luna commute on the various Underground or Monorail lines. This usually cost a flat 10 crowns per line used. If you switch lines it cost another 10 crowns.
Trains: The huge steam trains are the commonest way of traveling long distance in the worlds of Mutant Chronicles. Expect to pay about 10 crowns per 50 miles of a journey. A sleeper bunk will cost you about 200 crowns on top of that.
Zeppelins: These giant passenger airships speed between the megacities. They are expensive but comfortable. You will pay about 1 crown per mile of a journey and travel at an average speed of 50 mph.
Bribes
Bribes are a useful adjunct to any Freelancer's life. They are a tool as much as a gun or a camera. Just remember, if you've got to bribe somebody, do it cautiously. Don't just hand them a wad of money and say "This is a bribe" (This does not apply if it happens to be your monthly stack of protection money.) The trick with bribes is never to insult the other man's dignity or integrity. (Even if that is what you're doing.) Always let people save face. The best bribes are the subtlest and don't even involve cash changing hands. They are a favor for a favor-you-scratch-my-back-1'1l scratch.yours.
The basic rule is that if you are going to bribe someone, make it worth their while to take it. A bribe has to be big enough to be tempting, yet not so big you can't pay it. Obviously, circumstance and the relative illegality of what you're asking will influence cost. You can pay a cop an "on-the-spot" fine to ignore your parking violation. Do it discreetly, and I'm sure it'll work. Remember-not all private cops are weIl paid. Corporate police are, though, and they have higher standards of professional ethics drummed into them. It may not be worth their while accepting your "on-the-spot fine" if their large salaries and private health care plans are at risk. Be cautious with them. Getting away with murder is more difficult. Even the poorest paid private cop is going to think twice about not arresting you. Ask yourself how much would this be worth to you to not report it. A year's salary? Two years? Remember you're asking someone to risk the work gang or the death chair for you. If you can afford it, go the whole way. Other forms of bribes are routine in our society. Corporations regularly bribe contractors and vice-versa. Deals are often struck that are not in the best interests of anybody except the two parties negotiating. This form of bribery is big business. Best leave it to the lawyers.
Earning a living