City Of Mists Story Idea: Drowned Past

City Of Mists: Introduction
City Of Mists: The Law
City Of Mists: The Departments
City Of Mists: The Infrastructure
City Of Mists: Characters And Campaigns
City Of Mists: Black Market Deals

Some strange events taking place on the island end investigated by the law enforcement or private investigators... This is one of them:

Drowned Past
Characters: Investigators of any sort are the best for this story, be they public law enforcement officers, private detectives, or corporate troubleshooters.
Moving The Story Elsewhere: Other Caribbean islands could work, as could Florida or a city on the Atlantic shores of Central or South America. The access to reliable criminal investigation lab, and especially the division of tasks between investigators and criminal investigation technicians can change certain aspects of the story significantly, though.

The protagonist are sent by their superiors to investigate a suspicious death. A man was found in his hotel apartment dead. He was a well-off american citizen living on the island named Rick Devon.

The deceased is a well build male in shorts and lose T-shirt revealing a golden coin worn on a strap as a necklace. The first examination suggest that he died of drowning—there is fine white froth at his mouth and nose. While he lays in the middle of the spacious room with no splashes of water around, there are big fish tanks adorning the walls. Was he drowned and pulled out? Was it long enough that the warm air dried the splashed of water?

There is a laptop on a desk that can be accessed easily by anyone with decent computer skills—there is a password but the system itself is a home version and can be bypassed in a few ways. The background image shows a underwater picture of sunk ship. The browser favorites lead to a number of sea maps of the region, historical articles concerning various sunken ships, lost Spanish galleons, forums dedicated to undersea salvage and diving... And the deceased own webpage dedicated to sea cruises and treasure hunting. Apparently he was (or at least claimed to be) a seasoned treasure hunter, though he also organized diving trips for tourist wishing to see sunken ships.

Further search reveals a number of photos of sunken ships, diving tourists, boats, yachts, colorful places all around the world, and various maps showing previous treasure hunts. The files make multiple reference (and bills) to a marina (yacht harbor) called The Yellow Sands, owned by Antonio Piatti. Apparently it was a sort of base of operation for Rick's sea trips. There is also a cleared space among them, as if someone grabbed a bunch of files... Was that the motive? Further search might reveal a small stash of gold coins hidden in the bathroom, probably some sort of emergency reserve.

Checking the e-mails and the phone shows that Mr. Devon recently communicated with someone named Richard Greenwood, Jr. The e-mails show very little actual content, as if they discussed things at length via phone, and only use e-mail for organizing an actual meeting—with Mr. Greenwood staying in different hotel.

The hotel staff asked recalls visit from Mr. Greenwood and his two rather unpleasant associates—big, threateningly-looking tattooed men who were rather rude toward staff members of Latino and African descent. Someone can even recall seeing tattoo motives reminiscent of white supremacist. They left in the afternoon. There was also a visit from a local call girl, working under the alias of Midnight Angel. When did she left? Hard to say, the receptionists who had the evening shift is not here, and does not respond to phone calls...

Who will the investigators seek first? Mr. Greenwood and his cronies? Midnight Angel? The missing receptionist? Go check what the owner of The Yellow Sands can say about Rick and his work? What will they do when the autopsy confirms that Rick drowned? Not in the fresh water of his fish tanks but salt water, though. And yet, there were no signs of violence, except for strange barely visible marks on his lips, nose, and cheeks...

Checking on Mr. Greenwood shows he is a minor but rising politician from United States, politically close to certain fringe white supremacist groups. Much better behaved than his followers, much better looking, with a certain degree of boyish charm, and a sense of style that can lead to successful career despite the unsavory message of his backers. What could summon him to a Caribbean island to seek a treasure seeker?

Had the missing receptionist seen someone she shouldn't see? Had Midnight Angel seen the same person and is in danger too? How was Rick Devon drowned without leaving physical traces?

City Of Mists Story Idea: What The Hell Happened In The Heaven's Bay

City Of Mists: Introduction
City Of Mists: The Law
City Of Mists: The Departments
City Of Mists: The Infrastructure
City Of Mists: Characters And Campaigns
City Of Mists: Black Market Deals

City Of Mists is a place where many strange events take place. Hidden behind the layers of coincidences, ineffective law enforcement, corporate obtrusion, divided health care system... Some of them explainable with corporate intrigues, other, not so much. This is an idea for a scenario around one such strange incident.

"What The Hell Happened In The Heaven's Bay"
Characters: Anyone, though some degree of overall physical fitness is recommended. Medical training of some sort is highly recommended.
Moving The Story Elsewhere: Not a big problem as long as the law enforcement can be expected to be ineffective.

The protagonists wake up... In a hospital. They are hurting, bruised, and very very hungry. Their recollection of recent events is dim at best. What the hell has happened?! Quick examination shows they are bandaged up, like if they suffered serious injuries. Their medical cards show they were shot. The nurse coming in to check on them is genuinely surprised they are already awake and up. She calls a doctor after noting down the hour of their awakening. He is surprised to see them up already, too. They should stay in beds for weeks at best. He can tell them they were assaulted while visiting "The Heaven's Bay"—a tourist yacht harbor combined with a bar and number of bungalows for lease. There was some sort of gathering for rich tourists yesterday and a robbery attempt, thwarted by the characters. They can recall vaguely the party, but throwing themselves at armed thugs?! Short-term memory loss can be caused by shock but how did they managed to regain strength so quickly? Why their wounds look almost healed? The doctor is as baffled as they are. It will take some time for the law enforcement to show up, probably the carabiniers, unless someone among the guests has ties to another department. One of the bandits died at the protagonists' hands, there were a few lightly injured guests, the characters were judged the the worst cases and taken to nearby obscure village hospital.

They slowly start to remember the early part of the party—a show off by a renowned lecturer, self-help and coaching guru, and a satanist... Named John Milton, no really, that's the name listed in his American passport, check for yourself if you meet him.

Will they stay waiting for law enforcement or will they search on their own? Regardless of their choice they need to sate their immense hunger now. Crappy hospital they woke up in is not a great place for that and the doctor warns them to avoid its canteen...

Asking at the Heaven's Bay itself brings only more questions... They start to recall They start to recall the evening but not the attack itself. Why did they acted so much against common sense attacking the bandits? Why did the experienced mercenary stood in the thugs way taking the bullets instead of firing from available cover, as dictated by his combat training? Why did a sneaky survivor and a former actress threw as living shields? The attackers. Some of them were robbing the guests out of jewelry, phones, and cash, but their leader did not appear to be here for money. He went toward the stage where Milton stood and was stopped by the characters.

Will the camera recording made by Milton's assistant that night reveal more? Will it trigger the memories or will it confuse it more?

There is a body of one of the thugs in a morgue in one of the hospitals in the city. Getting the autopsy report is just a matter of bribing the right person. This is the City Of Mists after all. A small time crook, member of a tiny gang. More like a bunch of kiddos wanting to be a gang. Cruzeros is the name. They have big flaming cross tattoo split across their arms. Gossip says their leader, Ernesto, is a kind of religious nut. Hearing angels, occasionally seeing demon here and there. It might be all the LUX he is doing, though folks say he was like that before LUX hit the streets.

There is a wounded gang member somewhere in the city in hands of some back-alley trauma surgeon and others around their turf near the harbor. With a right incentive they can be questioned, as long as no law enforcement is involved. It was all Ernesto's idea! They only were in to get hands on some spare cash! Ernesto took them there to go after "The Antichrist", though... Was his target Milton? Or someone else? Ernesto is probably praying in an old decrepit church in the harbor.

Oh, and the doctor who treated them can mention if contacted (or if he has a way of contacting them) that multiple people, some looking to be corporate dupes, came to him and gave him bigger than needed money for copies of the protagonists medical documentation from their short stay there. Really, a windfall for a few pages of photocopies...

It still does not explain what happened, why the characters acted like they acted and why they don't remember it, why their wounds are almost healed?

Will Milton have more answers? Ernesto?

City Of Mists: Black Market Deals

City Of Mists: Introduction
City Of Mists: The Law
City Of Mists: The Departments
City Of Mists: The Infrastructure
City Of Mists: Characters And Campaigns

Black Market is, pardon the pun, a shady matter in City Of Mists. Lose regulations leave a lot of wriggle room for those who enforce them and lawyers of those who wish to circumvent them. A real black market, dealing in completely forbidden things and services is really-really small, as there are few outright restrictions. Majority of black market deals in the City Of Mists is more of a grey area—focusing on understatements and interpretations, avoiding taxes and custom fees, and concealing traces of transactions instead. Still, there are a few forbidden goods and activities.

Human Trafficking

Dealing in people for purpose of forced labor, sexual exploitation, and extraction of organs via use of force, coercion, or deception is strictly forbidden under the threat of harsh penalties, nominally including capital punishment (though in reality it would apply only to extraction of organs that caused death of multiple people). Actual detection of such activities is low, though, as most of them can be easily covered by "fully voluntary" contracts with the victims. Only the most blatant violations are pursued with full force of law, though from time to time law enforcement officer do happen to discover such activities while investigating other crimes.

Prostitution

Prostitution is mostly unregulated, though there are precedents for law enforcement arresting prostitutes for infecting their customers with STDs (no court verdicts were issued, in all cases prostitutes were simply expelled from island as undesired foreigners). Pimping is formally illegal but brothels can operate as long as they function as cooperatives of self-employed prostitutes, and nothing prevents building-owners from getting hefty fees...

Drugs

Various recreation drugs are illegal since the nineties, though the enforcement of this law is very lax. Possession of small amounts is not subject to punishment, larger amounts are subject to forfeiture and possibly a summary fine. Only a really large amounts that are "obviously" intended for sale warrant arrest. The distinction between small, large, and for-sale amount of drug is at sole discretion of the law enforcement officer involved.

The list of illegal drugs is rather short and rarely updated: cannabis (though law enforcement practically ignores their use and home growing), opium, amphetamine, and LSD plus their derivatives and related substances (including methamphetamine and esctasy). There is a vague stipulation allowing law enforcement officers to confiscate and possibly prosecute production, possession, and use of "dangerous chemical substances" though it happens very rarely. Breach of public order is invoked more often when dealing with drug-users.

Some strange drugs appear from time to time in the city, often sparking fads and gossip of corporation and gangs live-testing new substances.

LUX: This white milky liquid is a potent hallucinogen giving overwhelming sense of surrounding presence, often described in religious terms. Auditory delusions of ominous chanting are common and a few users mentioned seeing divine beings or magnificent beings made of bright light. It is often mixed into alcoholic drinks.

cUre: A powerful pain-killer and a mild relaxant, cUre appeared recently. This green gel is rumored to stop bleeding, disinfect wounds, and even accelerate healing of injuries when applied directly to the wound, though its side effects involve intense hunger, exhaustion, and loss of memories. When applied to skin it minimizes further pain while distorting but not preventing tactile sensations.

Animal Importation

Restrictions on importing animals from outside the island is surprisingly strongly enforced. While the penalties are not particularly harsh, involving fines plus covering the cost of getting rid of the animal, the custom offices pay much more attention to it than to human trafficking. It does not seem to be dictated by animal rights—animals on their way to another destination can be held in harbor warehouses as long as they are well secured, and there are no restrictions on trading in locally bred cats, dogs, chickens, and goats, nor restrictions on importing tropical fishes for fishtanks.

Underground Medicine

There is no public health care but all medical services—private hospitals and individual medical practitioners need to obtain proper licenses from the Department Of Health. In case of physicians wishing to open a private practice it involves presenting a diploma of a foreign medical school (there are no medical schools on the island), passing a test before a committee organized by the Department of Health (often from local practitioners or doctors hired from local hospitals), show reference of a medical institution where they worked in the past (though it's rarely checked) and pay the requisite fee. Note that hospitals are not required to hire licensed physicians—it's a legal assumption that each hospital screens its employees according to its needs, though in case of malpractice suit, being able to prove that hospital failed at taking basic precautions against hiring a hack greatly increases chances of winning the case.

Hospitals and private practices are required to notify law enforcement about suspicious deaths and suspicious injuries under the threat of license being revoked, though individual doctor's discretion is primary factor here. In the past a doctor was deemed to be not in violation of that regulation when he took a gunshot victim's explanation that it was "a cleaning accident"—the court ruled that as medical doctor does not have to be able to discern between accidental and deliberate discharge of weapon he took the victim's explanation in a good faith.

Practicing medicine without the license ends with expulsion from the island and forfeiture of property related to the practice. It's uncertain what kind of penalty would a citizen suffer for such infraction, though.

Weapon Trade

A lot of international weapon trade comes through the city and the department of defense takes fees for licenses and permissions involved. Trading small arms is often overlooked but attempts to deal in military equipment or in bulk are discouraged. Working within the system is safer and easier anyway, as the department of defense fees are small—they are making enough thanks to enormous quantity of weapons moved through the city.

Still, there is a thriving market for unrecorded weapon transactions, with occasional appearance of experimental toys produced by local corporations, including a few competitive models of experimental caseless firearms and firearms using polymer-cased ammunition.

City Of Mists: Characters And Campaigns

City Of Mists: Introduction
City Of Mists: The Law
City Of Mists: The Departments
City Of Mists: The Infrastructure

There are many stories that can be told in the City Of Mists—episodic series, with each session being its own story with independent plot, extended story arcs, or mix of those, individual episodes with elements of greater metaplot interwoven with unrelated events.

Criminal Investigators

City Of Mists as a state has a terrible weakness, it lacks local institutions of higher education and law enforcement academy, having to rely on foreigners and immigrants for the much needed professional knowledge. While uniform services can rely on on-job training and former military experience, investigation and forensics are much less forgiving trades. This makes Department of Justice hire cast-offs of law enforcement agencies from all over the world, often overlooking flaws, vices, violent past, and darker secrets... The loose nature of the local law and procedures leaves them a lot of room to accommodate... Or descent deeper into corruption. Failed medical practitioners and forensics technicians are highly valued too, even if they lost their licenses elsewhere.

In some aspects criminal investigations here are quite anachronistic, mixing style and methods of law enforcement of American fifties, sixties, seventies, with a sprinkling of 21st century technology. Often on lease from a helpful friendly corporation with no strings attached. At other times they need to rely on help from other departments, which is always costly. On the other hand, all departments are always happy to divert extra work to someone else—each department tries to get for themselves cases that might bring prestige and gratitude of corporations and pass the responsibility for less glamorous ones to a different department. Thankfully, criminal investigations are rarely profitable enough for other departments to interfere... Unless they involve their acquaintances or corporations they are indebted to...

Troubleshooters

Another group suitable as protagonist of the stories in the City Of Mists are troubleshooters solving problems for corporations (or gangs). Dozens of big corporations create a tangle of interests, intrigues, and outright conflicts. Critical events might need a push or pull here and there to make the business running, with legitimate and less legitimate methods used alike. Business espionage is big here, with Departments rarely involved as arbiters... But occasionally acting as their own side.

For corporate troubleshooters the City's departments and their representatives can act as allies, enemies, resources to be used, obstacles... Often all of that combined. Unlike the agents of law, the troubleshooters have much better resources and means, even if lacking in direct legal standing. And even the later can be circumvented with friends in right places and a few calls from high ranking corporate managers to commissar of the right department.

Private Investigators And Consultants

In the social and economic cauldron which the City is, lots of people might need help which weak and ineffectual law enforcement cannot or will not provide. While the loyal corporate employees can usually count on their employers aid, the people lacking such patrons are often lacking in options, having to rely on hired private entrepreneurs.

PIs and consultants have the least firm backing, but they still can benefit from the right friends greatly. Of course, in their case tugging on the strands of gratitude and debt is the most delicate for they rarely can make their acquaintances' involvement worthwhile...

Law enforcement, other departments, and corporations are enemy or at least obstacle more often than not, only very rarely becoming a tenuous allies. PIs more often have to rely on criminals and ne'er-do-wells...

Occult Scholars

With the amount of traffic of all sort going through the City, it's no wonder that a lot of "unconventional" things happening here as well. Strange tomes, items of powers, secret knowledge, all of it can pass through the City on its way elsewhere or in the hands of people living on the island. Many of the powerful people living in the corporate towers desire influences extending beyond the mundane world and are willing to pay high price for artifacts and lore, sometimes in cash, sometimes in blood...

City Of Mists: The Infrastructure

City Of Mists: Introduction
City Of Mists: The Law
City Of Mists: The Departments

City Of Mists proper is located on a northern side of its island, around a natural deep harbor, partly covered from the east side by a chain of smaller islands which really are tops of undersea mountains. The crescent shaped port constitutes the Old Town. It contains numerous piers, wet and dry docks, and an impressive array of warehouses, sprinkled with dozens of cheap hotels, bars, and bordellos for sailors. It also contains numerous custom offices and bureaus allowing for quick dealing with bureaucratic paperwork, as long as one does not irritate custom officers at least.

All the port infrastructure is owned by the City Of Mists and administrated (mostly) by the Department of Harbor. Warehouses are usually leased to corporations and private individuals, sometimes for short time but often for years or even decades.

All of the City is connected to a power grid, owned by the city and maintained and administered by the Department Of Infrastructure, which formally holds monopoly over providing electric power anywhere on the island but sometimes sells licenses for use of emergency power generators and small scale solar panels. Interestingly, the department keeps the location and exact type of power plant or plants powering the grid secret—gossip states that the power is generated in rather old nuclear plant or two build in the late sixties as a part of secret deal with American government.

The Department Of Infrastructure is also maintaining majority of the plumbing in the city, providing fresh water from the mountain springs. Its primary uniformed force, the carabiniers are acting as public security force and traffic enforces, and keep units trained in firefighting. Many corporations keep their own firefighting or rescue teams, though. Carabiniers' stations are spread through city, combining role of police precinct, firefighting stations, and minor courts, equipped with jail cells and retaining magistrates empowered to judge minor offenses.

Higher judiciary functions are held in the building complex of the Department of Justice, focusing primarily on legal arbitration between corporations, and to lesser extent with criminal justice. There is a large amount of overlap in law enforcement functions between departments, with investigation branches of departments vying to get their hands on criminal cases that can increase their reputation, gain influential corporate allies, or have high chance of including assets forfeiture, and at the same time try to avoid cases that have low chance of successful prosecution and political, social, or financial gains.

Lack of higher public education negatively influences the local pool of candidates for investigative branches of the departments. In fact, the various department offices often hire foreigners with law enforcement, military or investigative backgrounds, often overlooking troubled past of their candidates such as criminal convictions or disgraceful conduct.

There is no public health care on the island—there are numerous private hospitals, which are legally obliged to provide a basic ER care, but anything beyond that requires having proper health insurance. Some corporations keep their own medical facilities restricted to their employees and shareholders. Outside of the city, in the southern and western parts of the island lie two charity hospitals, formally private but sustaining themselves from voluntary gifts.

There is no public education on the island, either, with a small number of private schools in the city. Many corporations offer their employees some sort of high class tuition for their children, with small classes often providing education in a way favoring the corporate interests. Again, outside of the city the islanders have a few village schools maintained with local funding.

The city has very well developed cellular network with multiple companies competing over private and corporate customers with cheap phone services and high speed internet. All the departments are offered free phones and near-free services, a condition for communication company to operate on the island.

City Of Mists: The Departments

City of Mists: Introduction
City of Mists: The Law

Since the forced removal of president and suppression of legislative assembly, the Departments are the controlling force behind the City Of Mists with the council composed of the departments' commissars being the real ruler of the island. The council is composed of heads of five major departments, and eight minor departments. The division between major and minor departments is fluid to a degree, based on their influence and relative power, with Departments Of Finances, Department Of Harbor, and Department Of Defense having their dominant positions unchallenged since the coup.

Department Of Finances oversees taxes, customs, and bank regulations giving it leverage over banks and other corporations operating in the city. It's main source of political power is balancing city budget and assigning funds to other departments. While other major departments and some of the minor ones are usually capable of finding alternate sources of revenue to finance their operations, all the commissars prefer to remain in the Department Of Finances' good graces. They have their own investigation branch in the form of the financial inspectors, with the right of investigating any transgression that involve money or loss of public profits, and include armed arrest and seizure unit.

Department Of Harbor controls the port, the warehouse infrastructure, and the customs. having great deal of influence over corporations that trade in physical commodities. They are the most financially independent of the departments, receiving port and warehouse fees, and control tariffs flowing into the city budget. Like financial inspectors, custom inspectors have very wide array of investigative powers, armed arrest and seizure unit (trained in infiltrating and capturing ships), and the harbor watch uniformed units. They also keep a number of military-grade gunboats and two helicopters.

Department Of Defense is the military force of the island. While the army (called the militia to present itself as the citizens' force) itself is predictably small, with few thousand soldiers, its four (not very modern) tanks, four APCs, two jets, two combat helicopters, and three transport helicopters are unmatched force on the island. The department own revenue is limited to fees on weapon trade coming through the city, selling obsolete equipment, but they have big influence of companies that manufacture, test, and trade weapons, and the commissar is experienced in reminding the Department Of Finances who removed the president and gave power to the departments in the first place. While the regular troops are rather poorly trained, the small troop of gendarmes has better training, better equipment, and the widest array of legal enforcement powers.

Department Of Justice oversees criminal investigations and judiciary proceedings. It is composed of a number of judges and procurators who keep their own retinues of detectives that examine facts and gather evidence of serious crimes and are de facto plain-clothes police. Department of Justice has the lowest amount of independent revenue of the major departments, and maintains its status mainly because of the need for civil courts in the city full of corporations. It keeps a small number of uniformed guards who provide security to the department buildings, the judges, and the prison in the middle of the island.

Department Of Infrastructure is responsible for regulating new constructions, maintenance of streets, power grid, and sewerage, and retains monopoly for providing electricity and fresh water. It is the only major department that does not field investigator agents but it keeps a large force of uniformed carabiniers, second only to military, for the purpose of maintaining public peace, enforcing traffic laws, fighting fire, and fulfilling the role of uniformed police.

Minor departments include Department Of Communication And Science (mostly assigning radio frequencies to corporations), Department Of Culture And Education (a sinecure, whose sole activity is occasional extortion of money and favors from the thriving porn and sex industry via veiled threats of issuing unfavorable regulations), Department Of Fishing (which is actually a department of the territorial sea and all its resources), Department Of Health (does a little regulation, all the local health care is private), and Department Of The Island (which oversees the farming and environmental regulations, and deals with most issues on the island outside of the city).

City Of Mists: The Law

City Of Mists: Introduction

Modern City Of Mists is a bureaucratic oligarchy with a tangle of vague and arbitrary laws.

Formally, all the laws should be issues by a legislative assembly—a body composed of "respected citizens", elected by and from the population of the island's citizens. The last legislative assembly gathered during the Presidential Crisis Of The 1958, when the military officers forced the president to convene the assembly using the restrictive criteria favoring the military and their allies as delegates, and resign. The puppet assembly "temporarily" reformed the ministries into Departments headed by newly instituted Commissars, and gave them an array of special prerogatives, including the right to issue executive orders that had the binding legal power of laws issues by the assembly itself, until reviewed by the assembly, canceled by the Commissar, or vetoed by two other Commissars. The commissars are restricted to issuing executive orders concerning only their own department's scope of activity but there are certain overlaps between various departments...

The legal mess could be cleaned by legislative assembly... But it has to be convened by the president, a function currently vacant. In theory any commissar could issue an executive order initiating the presidential election but of course any two commissars could veto it.

Many of the laws, including both the old official legislation and later commissioners' orders are deliberately open and relying on the judgment call of a magistrates or officers of the state involved in application of the law—including the option of not prosecuting a criminal action. The decisions of not prosecuting a crime does not shield a offender from being persecuted by another magistrate or officer of the state of the same or higher rank and right competences.

Citizenship

Majority of the residents are foreign nationals. There is also a very large number of stateless people here. Local citizenship is hard to receive, allowing for purchase of land on the island, voting in presidential and legislative assembly elections, and being elected for either. Citizens can't be arrested without warrant or by officer of the state witnessing them committing a crime. Non-citizens can be arrested without warrant and kept in jail for seven days, but they have the right to contact their legal representative immediately and inform a single person of their arrest after they are processed through the system. Employees of major corporations having their bureaus in the city can count on the leniency of the local law in most cases, going away with anything less than murder, bodily assault against officer of the state, or a crime against their own or another of the local corporations or their employees.

Punishments

There is a single prison on the island but it is used sparsely. The current laws favor high fines and expulsion of non-citizens guilty of serious crimes. Expelled individuals can't return for one or more years, depending upon specific sentence. Death penalty is formally legal, but currently only mass murder could warrant such sentence. This does not prevent law enforcement from being "less than careful" when apprehending criminals they would deem worthy of execution.

Vices

Most vices are not prohibited in the City Of The Mists: prostitution, gambling, alcohol, brutal sports. Narcotics were legal in the past, until USA pressed the local government in early nineties to ban them, partly because of number of USA citizens visiting the island to acquire drugs, and partly because of the drug trade passing through the city. The legislation banning the narcotics was mostly nominal, though—possession of narcotics is subject to forfeiture of the illegal substance, subject to destruction by apprehending law enforcement officer, and possibly fine if, in the officer's sole judgment, the narcotics were intended for sale. The new legislation did little to reduce amount of drugs flowing through the city, except for filling pockets of low and medium rank law enforcement and custom officers.

There is no statutory age of consent. The law makes it up to the court to estimate emotional maturity of the minor and circumstances of sexual contact with one in case of complaint, but due to international pressure, sexual contacts of adults with minors less than thirteen years old are always prosecuted.

Gun Control

Any non-military grade weapons can be owned and kept at homes. Carrying a concealed handgun around the city requires a permit issued by one of the departments—a quick formality involving a yearly fee (citizens are exempt from the fee). Open carry is frowned upon as a breach of public peace and might end with fine or forfeiture of the offending weapon if the owner of the weapon is unable or unwilling to conceal the weapon. Rifles and shotguns formally can't be carried around the city, but there is an exception for carrying them between home, firing range, and weapon shops, unloaded. Corporate security forces can bear long arms on corporate premises according to individual deals between their corporations and the council.

Using a gun while committing a crime is a sure way of attracting heavily armed response from officers of the state, including military gendarmes, and corporate security forces.

City Of Mists: Introduction

City Of Mists is a strange place. A huge city on a small Caribbean island. While the rest of the island enjoys tropical sun, the city itself is usually veiled in mists rising from its port—a silent testament to the cold current from a depth to the north struggling with the warm sea around the island.

At first the island was settled by French colonists. There are no records of indigenous population, though they might be simply forgotten. The bulk of the island's "indigenous" denizens are descendants of black slaves brought here by French. They are a minority on their own island now, however, a mere few tens of thousands as opposed to three-four million population of the city itself. Most of them are fishers and farmers on the gentle western and southern slopes of Mont Charniere, the mountain dividing warm and sunny part of the island, from the much cooler and misty bay. The bay, despite its mists is the center of the City's existence, a natural deep harbor that was harnessed in the XVIII century by slavers and pirates, and later in late XIX and early XX century by whalers. The City itself arouse in the Roaring Twenties from the earlier makeshift port. Its vague legal status and unorganized administration made it a useful port of call for many criminals smuggling rum into newly (and shortly) dry United States in bulk. Flow of cash from the smugglers led to development of warehouses, repair docks, hotels, and entertainment avenues that in return attracted first wave of legitimate businessmen, tourists, and vagabonds from all around the world. In the Thirties, the development slowed but not stopped, as the smuggling became marginalized by short lived companies dealing in stock and speculation, trying to make living in the times of Great Depression. Many of the newcomers of that time were fleeing poverty, outstanding debts, and bankruptcies. The second World War brought a number of refuges, spies, and war profiteers trying to take advantage of the island's neutrality. End of the war did not stimulate the economy and a slow decline pushed the second president toward the mild socialist reforms in the middle of the fifties. This lead to a military coup, sponsored by major businesses and companies of that time, that forced the presidential resignation and oversaw forming of a new national legislature that abolished presidency, reformed existing ministries into Departments, and established the rule of Council Of Departments—a collegiate body composed of the Departments' Commissioners. The highest ranking officers became the first Commissioners of the new governing body. This did not helped the declining economy. In the sixties, after the Cuban Crisis, the ruling junta managed to acquire financial aid from the United States (in the form of favorable loans and bogus military contracts) to fight socialist and communist influences. The military rule and economy alike declined in the seventies and eighties, with some stimulation from drug cartels and international weapon traders. End of the Cold War stopped the meager financial aid from United States and de facto finished the military oligarchy. Communication and computerization progress in the nineties, combined with lax laws led to development of financial sector and turned the City into a huge hub of brokerage later further stimulated by a number of big and small corporations moving from Hong Kong just before its return to China.

Since the turn of the century, the City Of Mists development is steady and fast acting, with wide array of corporations and organizations benefiting from lax financial, work, and custom laws, governing departments' institutionalized corruption, and tangle of law and security enforcement branches of various Departments undermining each other, more interested in competition over financing from the Council than prosecuting wrongdoers.