[TC Anima + Aeon] Cascade City

[wyrdhamster]

Shining jewel of Federate States of America. 'New Eden' for 'new and better republic'. Cascade City is described in Anima as greatest new project of FSA.

I just have topic starting question - WHERE is Cascade located? I think I read somewhere it's build on ashes of previous Canada big city - Toronto or Ontario - but I cannot remember exactly if it's true. And most important - WHY it's build on previous city? ( If it's true, of course. )

[Amethyst]

Cascade is somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. It is probably built on the ruins of Spokane, Washington, which was ravaged and mostly destroyed by the Aberrant known as the Repairman.

[Aeonstorm]

Is cascade still around in aeon? Plus I'm curious about the Shanghai accords what are they about I know part of it was banning glass but what else is in them and what brought about the need for the accords?

[Shepherdboi]

Is cascade still around in aeon? Plus I'm curious about the Shanghai accords what are they about I know part of it was banning glass but what else is in them and what brought about the need for the accords?

Cascade gets abandoned after the Shanghai Accords unless the PCs do something to limit the damage. The Shanghai Accords ban technology that accesses human thoughts/memory, and puts massive restrictions on using artificial intelligence.

[IanWatson]

I just have topic starting question - WHERE is Cascade located?

Manuscript Preview 1, on page 28, has a sidebar literally called "Where is Cascade?"

The tl;dr is that it's the Pacific Northwest, aka the Cascadia region.

I think I read somewhere it's build on ashes of previous Canada big city - Toronto or Ontario

Ontario is a province, not a city. Toronto is the capital of Ontario. Neither is in the Pacific Northwest.

[FallenEco]

I think Eddie Web said in an interview (or a podcast) that it was basically Vancouver, (immediately "followed" by laughter).
That is no means definitive. He did explicitly say that Cascade is wherever you need it, though it was the northeast North American continent.
IanWatson also has a lot more authority and knowledge than I do on the subject. So read his post which is directly above this one.

[Bunyip]

While things may change before publication, Cascade’s description in the KS manuscript explicitly names various Vancouver landmarks and features.

[Waldi]

Maybe, this is a bit too meta, but I would think, the exact location of Cascade is not much of an important point. It may be built on the ruins of Vancouver, some miles beside Vancouver or somewhere else in the Northwest entirely. Interesting things in Anima will happen IN Cascade and not outside of it. Therefore, the "outside world" is not that important and neither is Cascades exact location. In my view, Cascade works a little bit like Gotham City or Basin City in that regard (despite looking completely different )

By the way - I would really love to see some further information about how Cascade looks in AEON. Sure, after Anima, Cascade is nothing more than one of a few failed FSA-projects. But as far as I would understand it, it is a matter of interpretation, whether in 2123, Cascade is completely empty or just mostly empty. The latter would open some quite interresting possibilities.
Cascade could quite easily still exist and could fill the niché of, what I would call "urban post apocalypse".

This version could, for example, look like this:
Cascade still exists in 2123, but since large parts of the population left it and the FSA cut fundings back by an astronomicaly large margin, Cascade is full of urban decay and became a haven of criminals, dissidents, illegal immigrants and other people, who the FSA consideres to be "undesirable". The majority of Cascades population still consists of decent people, but the overall situation could be described as "horrible". The FSA dropped Cascade like a hot potato. Because of this, the Cascade Police Department is understaffed and underfunded. Whole areas of the city are under gang-control. Gang warfare happens on a daily base. Weird Cults took hold of entire skyscrapers. What is left of the economy, are especially cutthroat companies, that operate sweatshops and laboratories, that would be illegal elsewhere. Furthermore, the great Assassin-Societies of the 22. Century use Cascade as their Battleground for their anual "Great Tournament". In the 2080s, Cascade was famous for cutting edge tech. In 2123, it is famous for beeing North-Americas Drug Den. What little tourism there is, is almost exclusively sex-tourism. Mayor inspirations for this version of AEON-Cascade are:

- Delta-City from Robo Cop
- Manhattan in "Escape from New York"
- Basin City from "Sin City"
- Wood Oak City from "Streets of Rage"
- London as depicted in "Split Second"
- Los Angeles as depicted in"Assault on Precinct 13"
- and if you add some Aberrant-shenannigans, you could even add a dash of "Demon City Shinjuku".

This may sound quite awfull, but it would not take place within the Trinity Continuum, if all hope was lost. By some strange turns of fate, Cascade still draws a lot of Talents - sometimes to the detriment of gangs and mobsters. Also, ironically, the FSAs practice to punitively transfer police officers to Cascade, who somehow draw the ire of their superiors, turned sometimes out to be positive for Cascades citiziens. Not only especially corrupt FSA-cops tend to land in Cascade but also those, who are to upright and not "fascist" enough for the FSA. So, the Cascade Police Department does not fit the ACAB-formula as well as other police departments in the FSA. In Cascade, the Police DOES tend to be on the side of the common people - and in more than a few cases even on the side of Immigrants. Unfortunately, the CPD is so understaffed, underfunded and underequiped, one could almost call it a bad joke. So, more often than not, CPD-Officers tend to resemble the "Lone Sheriffs of old" more than members of a modern law enforcement organisation.

[Shepherdboi]

But as far as I would understand it, it is a matter of interpretation, whether in 2123, Cascade is completely empty or just mostly empty.

People still live in Wycoff's Blight, so I assume that - barring some sort of swiftly fatal NBC hazard - someone is living in whatever is left of Cascade. Given the superior material sciences of the future, a lot of the surviving infrastructure will probably remain in decent shape for decades.

[Amethyst]

Maybe, this is a bit too meta, but I would think, the exact location of Cascade is not much of an important point. It may be built on the ruins of Vancouver, some miles beside Vancouver or somewhere else in the Northwest entirely. Interesting things in Anima will happen IN Cascade and not outside of it. Therefore, the "outside world" is not that important and neither is Cascades exact location. In my view, Cascade works a little bit like Gotham City or Basin City in that regard (despite looking completely different )

By the way - I would really love to see some further information about how Cascade looks in AEON. Sure, after Anima, Cascade is nothing more than one of a few failed FSA-projects. But as far as I would understand it, it is a matter of interpretation, whether in 2123, Cascade is completely empty or just mostly empty. The latter would open some quite interresting possibilities.
Cascade could quite easily still exist and could fill the niché of, what I would call "urban post apocalypse".

This version could, for example, look like this:
Cascade still exists in 2123, but since large parts of the population left it and the FSA cut fundings back by an astronomicaly large margin, Cascade is full of urban decay and became a haven of criminals, dissidents, illegal immigrants and other people, who the FSA consideres to be "undesirable". The majority of Cascades population still consists of decent people, but the overall situation could be described as "horrible". The FSA dropped Cascade like a hot potato. Because of this, the Cascade Police Department is understaffed and underfunded. Whole areas of the city are under gang-control. Gang warfare happens on a daily base. Weird Cults took hold of entire skyscrapers. What is left of the economy, are especially cutthroat companies, that operate sweatshops and laboratories, that would be illegal elsewhere. Furthermore, the great Assassin-Societies of the 22. Century use Cascade as their Battleground for their anual "Great Tournament". In the 2080s, Cascade was famous for cutting edge tech. In 2123, it is famous for beeing North-Americas Drug Den. What little tourism there is, is almost exclusively sex-tourism. Mayor inspirations for this version of AEON-Cascade are:

- Delta-City from Robo Cop
- Manhattan in "Escape from New York"
- Basin City from "Sin City"
- Wood Oak City from "Streets of Rage"
- London as depicted in "Split Second"
- Los Angeles as depicted in"Assault on Precinct 13"
- and if you add some Aberrant-shenannigans, you could even add a dash of "Demon City Shinjuku".

This may sound quite awfull, but it would not take place within the Trinity Continuum, if all hope was lost. By some strange turns of fate, Cascade still draws a lot of Talents - sometimes to the detriment of gangs and mobsters. Also, ironically, the FSAs practice to punitively transfer police officers to Cascade, who somehow draw the ire of their superiors, turned sometimes out to be positive for Cascades citiziens. Not only especially corrupt FSA-cops tend to land in Cascade but also those, who are to upright and not "fascist" enough for the FSA. So, the Cascade Police Department does not fit the ACAB-formula as well as other police departments in the FSA. In Cascade, the Police DOES tend to be on the side of the common people - and in more than a few cases even on the side of Immigrants. Unfortunately, the CPD is so understaffed, underfunded and underequiped, one could almost call it a bad joke. So, more often than not, CPD-Officers tend to resemble the "Lone Sheriffs of old" more than members of a modern law enforcement organisation.

This is a great interpretation of what remains of Cascade in the post-Anima years.