About Earth 16
At the decline of the Steampunk Age, a nuclear war broke out. Entire aetherships laden with radioactive armaments went on bombing runs against the enemy, or were themselves destroyed with their deadly cargo. Now, civilization consists of small defensive knots scattered across the survivable land, generally at war with at least half their neighbors for control of precious resources. A culture equivalent to a small town can rise or die based on its skill at defense, its ability to raid strangers, and its fragile network of alliances.
Additionally: most conductive metal was used in the Great Aether War, and is now too radioactively contaminated for use. Cleaning them requires … well, more conductive metal. Great strides have been made in ceramics and plastics, but it's just not the same.
THIS world has a few stargates. Specifically, Mr. Sinister has one of the Stargates under his current control; he is using it to raid his enemies' alternates in other realities and deprive them of copper. One of his major nemeses is Dr. Mobeus Arcane, leader of Wyldstorm.
Needless to say: in this reality, all strangers are regarded with extreme suspicion. You know your neighbors, you know they rely on you as much as you rely on them. You never know who's out to take from you, as far as new faces go.
Of course, various persons each believe s/he ought to be in charge of All Available Space, for Reasons.
World War II never happened; there was only the Great Aether War. As mentioned above, it came at the end of the Steampunk Age and it devastated the world. Nothing is forever, though, and some places took more damage than others. Europe was in pretty bad shape. The Ottoman Empire did a little bit better but not much. Any then-modern navy was devastated by the contaminated metal problem, along with most civilian fleets. Other places suffered the initial upheaval, and contracted the metal contagion - but it spread more slowly in places like New York, Tokyo, and Sydney. Those places recovered sooner, even started to advance again.
Then, sometime in the 1950s, people from the more devastated areas began periodically raiding the more stable areas. The cyclic attacks spawned the rise of metahumans, warlords and criminals and vigilantes and heroes, who used their powers (and their wits!) to shape the world however seemed better. Some of these civilization leaders, once firmly established, sought to annex desirable nearby territories.
This led to a period of 20 very intense years where the world changed yet again, some cities being destroyed, some communities completely wiped out. Others reorganized into stronger configurations.
The Bat Family run NYC (which is also called Gotham in this universe) and most of Jersey. They've gotten rid of Arkham entirely. They gave Central Park to Poison Ivy and told her within those confines she can do anything she wants, so long as 1) it does not slop over onto the city streets and citizens; and 2) she leaves the other parks and greenspaces alone. In return, they consult her and listen to what she has to say about removing pollution from areas they are reclaiming in New Jersey. Harley Quinn lives with Ivy, and Harley "owns" the Central Park Zoo. She traded off some of the critters (cats to Catwoman, for example) in return for things she wanted, like all the dog- and cat-chow her contacts could loot for her. Now she's running the biggest Pet Rescue operation imaginable. Picture puppy-hoarding, that kind of thing! No birds, though, all pet birds and zoo birds went to Atlantic City (see below).
Anyone who can still invent high tech stuff in this world of almost no metal, they have a guaranteed position of luxury in Gotham. Batman has a solid policy of giving the inventors anything they can possibly need to eliminate distractions from the invention process. Why be a criminal or villainous inventor when people will jump to provide you with materials and lunch?
Individual buildings within NYC may be domains of non-Bat persons. For now. Batman plans to eventually get rid of all the criminal element. Some (like Ivy) have been converted to his purpose, others (like Joker) have been put out of the city entirely to fend for themselves, and the remainder {were/are/will be} rehabilitated by dedicated professionals as opportunity permits.
Gotham's border is made of large granite slabs, possibly harvested from some of the old buildings, several stories high. It is patrolled by the city's athletes. Travellers (and malcontents) find it very easy to get out of Gotham but very difficult to get back in.
Vihtori Friis, often misnamed "Mister Freeze", is the master of Shawmut -- a coastal city once called "Boston". It is now officially called "Shawmut", after the name of the peninsula on which the original city was settled. Less formally, the same citizens and outsiders who mispronounce a Finnish name as "Victor Freeze" also tend to call this glittering metropolis "New Boston".
Although some parts of Old Boston continue to decay, this small semi-independent nation contains all of the original ten thousand square miles of a sprawling city. Its most impressive walls overlap in valleys and hills, creating concentric arcs that prevent any would-be invader from gaining much momentum as they aim for the heart of the population. The domain extends westward into the more rural areas of former Massachusets, where much of its food is grown to supplement the seafood market of its harbor.
Friis has a cordial relationship with several other city-state leaders, such as the Batman.
Penguin runs Atlantic City. Hey, no bats! He's trying to reestablish reliable cargo shipping, overseas, entirely under his control. He does not put near enough work into permanent borders, instead assigning that territory to whatever gangs/posses/factions have least favorably impressed him. There is almost always some kind of skirmish in progress on the outermost edges of Atlantic City. Penguin does maintain a few home-away-from-home locations in other territories, including one fortified house just outside of the war zone once known as "Metropolis". Every one of his nests is designed with his personal tastes in mind, including well-stocked kitchens, a formal dining table, and a hydroponic greenhouse on the upper stories -- after all, this Penguin wouldnot introduce himself as "Oswald Cobblepot" but instead as "Nero Wolfe".
Joker runs a ... well, let's call it a "motorcycle gang". It's a mobile raider gang. Some of the members have artificial parts. The cyborgs with the metal parts are radioactive, clearly dying, and do not care. Their "bikes" are bizarre slapdash constructions that mostly run on grease; Joker will divert many of his own plans to go assault old fast food joints and doughnut shops, to collect the fuel. At one point he intended to stockpile enough fryer grease to set Gotham on fire - an idea he got from the Idiot King, whom he subsequently killed - but the Joker has long since forgotten all the middle parts of this plan. He's stuck on "stockpile", so that's what he keeps doing. Meanwhile, there are bystanders to murder and cattle to barbecue....
Metropolis is one of the big focal points in the mutant/metahuman conflict.
Northern Metropolis (which includes parts of the city down to the now-bridgeless river and most of the surrounding suburbs and, theoretically, the nearby national forest) is run by (Mobeius) Arcane's Academy for Special Needs Students, an aggressively insular and combat-ready complex. The government is a democracy, but the right to vote only goes to current and former members of the military - known as Wyldstorm - because they're the ones putting their lives between citizens and danger ... and only metahumans have ever been part of Wyldstorm. For a non-metahuman, life here is actually tolerable given it's a metal-poor world full of combat. And if you don't like it, you're free to pack up whatever you can carry on your back and leave. If a metahuman behaves contrary to the good of the society (not doing patrols, or stealing, or whatever) then that metahuman will be exiled; if a non-metahuman behaves contrary to the good of society, their entire family (including any meta members!) will be exiled. Regaining citizenship is the exact same process as gaining one from scratch.
Southern Metropolis, and a very modest chunk of Pennsylvania, are claimed by Mr. Sinister. He'd like to have more; he'd like to have everything, actually, but first he wants undisputed control of the Lackawanna River. He does not have associates, he has serfs and slaves. He is attempting to acquire all of the scattered creations of the Arkangel Brothers. More important is his project to develop a faster cleansing method to remove the radioactive contamination from the Great Aether War. Sinister owns a Stargate, and is working on creating less-unstable gates to any alternate reality where he can steal taint-free copper.
Disney rules Florida and California. Psionicists in large quantities work for the Mouse. Disneyland is, indeed, the Happiest Place On Earth ... and if you're lucky enough to go to either domain for a vacation, you WILL come back with a permanently more Disney view of the world!
If you come back at all!
(Batman is not okay with sending dedicated criminals like Scarecrow to Disney for a mental adjustment out of villainy. He saw what happened when Catwoman got tired of some people's shenanigans and sent Dr. Overmind to Disneyland and Spider Lilly to Disney World: neither came back. And their letters home suggest they've become permanent Cast Members, Overmind is an Imagineer and Dr McIverson helps run the hydroponic garden at EPCOT.)
Sergei Kravenoff's family escaped Russia during the lead-up to The Great War. When he reached his majority, Sergei left his family to travel the world. He visited Africa, saw Wakanda from a distance, slipped through the military patrols around Morocco, and eventually took ship for Disney World. He did not stay more than a day in the Happiest Place on Earth (though some effects still did sink deep into his psyche!) before he struck out across the landscape of once-America.
When his path took him to Chicago, something spoke to him of home. Life here was hunter-oriented. A few people tried valiantly to grow food crops during the relatively short growing season, but no coordinated effort was possible due to political rivalries.
Kraven the Hunter took over the entire area. He established a small nation according to his (Disney-adjusted!) principles. A lot of animal-men from various origins have gravitated to Chicago
.
Like Earth 1, this world has no native Latveria, no native Victor von Doom. As a result of Sinister's raids on alternate realities, a Dr. Doom came investigating late in 2007. This alternate came from Earth 6, where a dying Reed Richards had taken with him every reason Doom had to anchor himself. Unlike the man living on Earth 1, unlike the genuinely heroic man of Earth 15 who has recovered from brain damage and had some therapy and is happily married to the Scarlet Witch, Doom of Earth 6 is a callously calculating overlord in search of a new enemy to crush. The contaminated metal issue is the only chance this world has of defeating him -- right now, it is slowing his efforts down. If the contamination is successfully resolved before it infects Doom's own equipment, he will rule this finally functional again world for at least 20 years before anybody gets dissatisfied enough to mount a serious objection.
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