Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Dexton Reach (Campaign Setting for Mutants and Masterminds)

Dexton Reach is the second largest of the burroughs of Port Fontaine (Franklin is the only one that’s larger, both by population and real estate). Comprising the financial capital of the city, Dexton Reach is an area of incredible affluence and wealth. Dozens of corporations, banking institutions and other financial service providers fill the burrough from the edge of North Yarborrough Street all the way to Ulton in the north. It abuts New Hyperia on its eastern edge, with the splitting of the Dallock River around the island that holds City Center. Corsair Point forms of its northwestern edge, with the intersection of Ulton and Corsair forming the boundary between Dexton Reach, Corsair Point, and Franklin.



Commerce and Financial Heart


Dexton Reach has the second largest financial market on the eastern seaboard (New York’s is slightly bigger, in terms of trading). Capital flows through its markets at staggering rates, and fortunes have been made and lost in a day trading on the floor of its exchanges. It’s capital and resources flow internationally, and can be a very complicated web of financial interactions to track.


A Culture of its Own


Dexton Reach’s wealth and affluence attracts artists, architects, fashion designers and unique attractions from all over the world. It’s a different kind of culture from Callow’s Field, sanitized and elevated to a presentable format for the alleged taste makers and trendsetters of the Reach. The Reach moves at a fast clip, with last week’s trends abandoned for the hot new thing. Finding that new thing ahead of the curve is its own service industry.


The Reach also has the largest concentration of galleries, museums, and historical societies in the city. Coupled with the western campus (the much larger campus) of the Port Fontaine University, the Reach is a center of education that draws 90,000 students to the university, and another 50,000 to small colleges and other schools in the burrough.


The Reach also has a half dozen hospital complexes that take up multiple city blocks. The Dexton Reach Community Metro General Hospital (The Metro) has one of the largest metahuman research programs in the world. Since the first appearance of Metahumans in the 1990s, the Metro has made studying and understanding their genetic diversity a priority.


The Skyline


The Reach has a distinctive skyline with dozens of hundred storey towers clustered around the Illic tower complex in the heart of the district. The Illic Towers (four of them, arranged around the intersection at Jordian and 63rd) were the first skyscrapers to go up in the city, and are a glittering complex of shining glass and steel. The rest of the skyline clustered along 63rd running north and south cuts an impressive vision from the rest of the city, and the only building taller is the Dragon’s Den in Greenlight.

An interesting phenomenon of the skyline is the multiple skywalks that connect the buildings. Most of these buildings have at least one or two floors devoted to living space for company executives, and the interconnectedness of the skyline means that these people rarely have to leave the comfort of their buildings to get to work or to meetings at other towers. One of these buildings, the Greypeak tower, has actually turned four of its upper floors into a lounge/restaurant/night club that caters exclusively to the corporate bigwigs who don’t want to go down to street level.



The Metahuman Phenomenon


On April 3rd, 1993, NASA reported that the sun was struck by a fragment of some unknown material. This caused a flux in the sun’s core and threatened to destabilize it completely. The disaster was averted by quick action from the Society for the Advancement of Sentient Ideals (usually just referred to as the Society), but exotic radiation bathed the planet during the crisis. This exotic radiation stimulated a previously unidentified genome in human genetics and triggered the spontaneous development of super powers in a small portion of the population.


Humans had gotten used to the idea of super powered people (the Mutants arriving in the 1940s for example) but the Metahuman awakening just struck all at once and left humans reeling about the sudden changes. Unlike the Mutant genetic variance, Metahumans derive their powers from a completely different source, and in most cases, there aren’t physical indicators of possessing an active meta-gene. There are specific scans that will reveal it, but Metahumans are capable of blending in with the rest of humankind unless they reveal their powers.


As stated above, The research department of the Metro is the leading center of Metahuman studies in the US (and some speculate the world). They have a gifted staff including a few metahumans whose abilities are capable of understanding the metahuman abilities of others. As a result, newly empowered metahumans often find their way to the Metro to figure out just what their powers are and where to go from there.


Life in the Burrough


Life in the Reach moves fast. The rapid pace of the financial markets drives the rest of the burrough at a breakneck speed. The predominantly white collar workers work hard and play hard. There are dozens of popup restaurants and nightclubs that open and close around the burrough as the trends are chased.


The student population fills a very interesting niche in the ecosystem of the Reach. Interns, part timers, and students looking to make a little extra cash fill in delivery, wait staff, messenger and entry level positions around the corporate landscape. While no one wants to admit it, without the students, they’d have to find other persons to fill those jobs and no one is quite sure who/where they’d find said persons. The students have their own economy, with late night eateries open for those getting off of study binges, late shifts at other places and a host of other long jobs.


Points of Interest


Illic Towers


Named after Hiram Illic, a massively successful financier, the Illic Towers complex holds offices for nearly a thousand different corporations. The North Tower itself is the home to Illic’s own Veritas Venture Capital. Hiram’s grand daughter, Yulie, runs Veritas and helps steer the company in the direction her grandfather envisioned. Unlike most of the other Towers, Illic maintains no living quarters in the towers themselves, but serve as a skywalk nexus for the surrounding buildings.



West Campus


The Western Campus of Port Fontaine University is a sprawling affair set on a series of hills. With the previously mentioned student population, PFU is a major impact on the local economy and its students contribute a lot. With a nationally ranked collegiate basketball program for both genders, the PFU Corsairs are always in contention for the NCAA tournament.




The High Court




Running along 63rd street from Gallic to Yancy, The High Court is the name given to the entertainment district off of the Illic Towers complex. Nestled into the heart of the Reach, The High Court features a dozen different restaurants, just as many night clubs, and a host of other rotating hot spots. While the rest of the neighborhood chases trends, the High Court is a consistent measure of quality and affluence that others chase. Spots in the High Court are coveted, and the opening or closing of a spot in the area are watched closely by the rest of the denizens.



New Complication:



Metahuman



Granted extraordinary powers by the burst of solar radiation, Metahumanity is a recent addition. Powered by a different genetic expression than Mutants, Metahumans can have similar powers, but they function differently. The Metro is the leading think tank researching metahumanity in the known world. There are specific powers and pieces of equipment that can interact with the genetic variation that gives Metahumans their powers.

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