FORMA FARMACÉUTICA

The United States of America began the 21st century in an envi-able position as the most powerful nation on earth. However, as the years unfolded, the nation suffered setback after setback, largely due to the poor choices of its leaders rather than mere circumstance. These developments ultimately led to the nation’s fragmentation into a number of smaller, mostly insignificant countries. Where the entire globe once trembled at America’s might, the fallen nation is now regarded as little more than a collection of third-world powers, backwater kingdoms that desperately cling to the tattered memories of greatness.

Present-day historians generally agree that the oil crisis of the early 21st century proved to be the impetus sparking the steady decline of the old US into its current dilapidated shape. That said, the true hammer blow for the old US came with the eruption of the Second American Civil War. For four years the nation tore itself apart, the bloody conflict draining its meager resources to such an extent that, when the Great Quake of 2066 devastated California, the fractured nation went bankrupt. As each nation-state slowly ran out of resources (and couldn’t borrow money from foreign powers, many of whom took great pleasure in seeing the U.S die a slow death), fighting inexorably slowed over the next two years and finally ground to a halt in 2068, ending in armistice with the Treaty of Tokyo.

The next few years would also see Canada and Mexico break up into their own nations (albeit more through referenda than military strife).

Today, North America is broken up into nine countries; Atlantica, Quebec, the Great Lakes Union (GLU), The Republic of Cascadia, The CEL (Caribbean Economic League) The NAC (North American Coalition), The Republic of Texas, Baja Mexico, and Southern Mexico. These nations adhere to a wide range of political and economic doctrines. From the pragmatic collectivists of the Great Lakes Union to the dogmatic Christian capitalists of the NAC, the continent offers a society for virtually any taste.

In addition, North America also hosts a number of free cities that preserve their status through shrewd politics and criti-cally needed corporate muscle. Since overtly attempting to conquer a free city would inevitably lead to a rapidly escalat-ing “hot” war, these cities constantly simmer with plots and schemes as the balkanized successor states wage a cold war against each other.

Though somewhat fluid and prone to sudden change in its quicksilver politics, North America currently contains the fol-lowing free cities: Chicago megasprawl, Las Vegas, St. Louis, Toronto, Orlando, Salt Lake City, Toledo (the site of an ongoing NAC-supported insurgency against the GLU), and Vancouver (formerly Vancouver, BC).

The NAC spends a great deal of time and energy trying to gain influence over the free cities, whether for their own benefit or simply to frustrate a rival nation. Furthermore, many of the greater world powers also involve themselves with the free cities, though they officially refuse to acknowledge the fact.

China and Brazil in particular use the nine nation states and the free cities of North America as proxies in their global games of power. This constant interference ensures that the continent always stands just half a step away from conflict.

As the saying goes, “Americans think they can eat pride.” Many citizens of the broken states of North America spend too much time brooding on better days rather than trying to improve their present day conditions. The humiliations suffered since their fall from power tends to make this gloomy impulse even stronger. A large number of North America’s treasures (including its monuments and public buildings) now only exist as virtual replicas. Some were sold to other countries, while many more were destroyed in the civil war.

Despite their poverty, the NAC is a leader in the fields of sur-veillance and development of new weapons technologies, primarily robotics and power armor suits. No other nation on earth devotes more energy and resources to monitoring its own population. Even the democracies regard privacy as a rather quaint notion, seeing little reason not to interfere in the personal lives of its citizens. By their reckoning, intentions matter far more than methods.

Weapons development is a field in which Americans have always excelled. In 2088, this is no different. The NAC seeks to rebuild its military, spending billions of taxpayer dollars each year to achieve this goal. Many new power armor suits now common in nations across the world were developed in manufacturing facilities in Georgia and West Virginia. The other North American nations, fearing that the NAC military buildup is a prelude to another war, are scrambling to procure their own weapons.

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The hottest tourist spot in North America, the free city of Las Vegas is commonly known as “Little Dubai.” Sin City is the crime capital of the world, openly run by Sabina Valentini, the first female Don of Vegas. Sabrina took power after her husband Anlondo “the Wolf” was killed in the Valentini-Osannowa Mafia-Yakuza War (2081–85). On the surface, Sabrina appears to be a puppet of family friend Antonio Gulio. Gulio plays the part of “the Don behind the Don.” In truth, Valentini is the true power. Politically (and some would say tactically), Vegas is an important dot on the newly-remade map of America.

The Valentini crime family controls the Hoover Dam—the largest source of hydro-electric power in the entire Southwest. They used this vital resource to manipulate both Baja Mexico and the NAC into signing lucrative trade agreements in exchange for much needed electricity. Baja Mexico pays higher prices for power. In exchange, Mexican Narcotraffickers are allowed to use Las Vegas as a jumping-off point for distribution into the greater NAC, the GLU and Atlantica. The NAC, on the other hand, pays much higher rates than Baja Mexico. In return, elected officials are free to appease their constituents by mak-ing inflammatory statements about the moral bankruptcy of Las Vegas and those who run it without fear of reprisals. This

arrangement allows the NAC government to “save face” in the eyes of the religious majority who tend to view the free city of Las Vegas as a boil on the face of North America. Indeed, many pundits have been calling for annexation of the free city in order to cleanse it of sin.

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The free city of St. Louis straddles the Mississippi river on the border between NAC-held Missouri and GLU-held Illinois. St.

Louis’s position on the great river makes it the focal point for NAC and GLU efforts to control vital shipping lanes into the heartland of old America. Reminiscent of Berlin at the height of the 20th century cold war, the walled city of St. Louis is divided into three major sectors: East St. Louis, West St. Louis, and the Central Demilitarized Zone. NAC forces occupy West St. Louis, with the GLU controlling the Eastern portion of the city. NATO peacekeeping forces populate the Central DMZ to prevent the resurgence of aggression between the two nations. Ironically, the NATO peacekeeping forces in St. Louis are comprised of military units from Poland, Kolkata, Ethiopia, and Algiers, all countries once relied heavily on US intervention in the latter part of the 20th century.

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In 2066, a mammoth 9.5 earthquake rocked the entire state of California up and down the San Andreas fault line. The event lasted nearly five minutes, killed approximately 680,000 people and leveled much of the So-Cal mega sprawl. San Francisco was reduced to rubble and the greater part of Los Angeles broke off the shelf, drifting a staggering quarter mile from the mainland. In the weeks that followed, nearly every major insurance company in the nation (already on the precipice of bankruptcy from the ongoing civil war) defaulted under the weight of trillions of dollars in insurance claims. With the wholesale destruction of Hollywood, the ravaged entertainment industry packed up and moved to India, further precipitating the collapse of Civil War America’s already strained economy.

The nation went bankrupt.

Almost overnight, tens of millions of people found them-selves without a home. Many moved north into Oregon and Washington, or to the free city of Chicago. Others (primarily Spanish-speaking families with ties south of the border) chose to head into Baja Mexico. Surprisingly, a large number of people chose to stay and try to survive in the ruins of places they once lived. California (otherwise known as the California Dead Zone) is a lawless, more or less unclaimed wasteland riddled with squatter camps and small towns.

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The Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, the Virgin Islands, and other small Caribbean nations and territories

(belonging mostly to the old US and United Kingdom) became tax havens for many corpo-rations that eventually broke with their home governments, forming a powerful economic block whose income came primarily from tour-ism and multinational corporate kickbacks. This affiliation eventually came to be known as the Caribbean Economic League, or CEL for short.

For a time the League became a part of the US, but as the cost of doing business rose in the wake of the Second Civil War, it cut its national ties and now operates as an independent power on the world stage once more. The CEL cor-pocracy still controls much of what goes on in North America through its economic ties to the

nine nation-states that emerged. In fact, one would be right to say that it is the companies that make up the CEL that keeps the various balkanized nations from finding real economic stability by encouraging factious behavior between them.

The CEL’s actions are not done out of any sense of malicious intent, but only because to do otherwise would adversely affect their bottom line.

With the possible exception of the NAC, the CEL is the premier naval power in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, where it owns controlling interest in the few remaining oil rigs in the region.

Additionally, the CEL is one of the world’s largest exporters of high tech weaponry, most of it flowing into the other nation states of North America.

The CEL corpocracy is managed by a board of the five best performing portfolios among the nation’s registered multi-nationals, many of which have been on the Fortune 50 list for the better part of the half century. The archipelago nation is geographically much smaller than in previous eras as global warming has reduced the number of cays and habitable islets by half (or roughly 1,000 cays and over 300 islands). Many of the surviving islands have been built up with stilt-like build-ings that sit upon frames that support their occupied levels several meters above the island’s surface. Some of the islands have sunk, leaving only the tallest structures above sea-level.

Nassau is the de facto capital of the CEL, home to the most intense cutthroat capitalism and back door business found anywhere in the world.