Streets of Hope

- wars are now extremely short, extremely violent, but tech has allowed for minimization of casualties to a certain degree - information is now a prominent weapon. US Army has its Cyber-Warfare Corps consisting of weapons-trained and traditionally drilled soldiers with backgrounds in hacking, progra...

- space travel is fairly common. Each major population center has its own spaceport - Paradise is currently the major destination, usually referred to as "Gilese 581 C". "Paradise" is more of a colloquial designation - Karthian + Drifter prospectors are setting ground work for of...

- medical science hasn't developed a cure-all yet. Probably never will. Microbial life adapts too quickly to any solution for them to be permanent - outright eradication has never worked before. There's always someone keeping a stock of supposedly wiped-out epidemic-causing diseases around. Largely ...

- Karthian and Drifter influences are pushing for a multi-sensory Internet, an immersive experience - local efforts to adapt aren't as fantastical as you'd think. No brain-ports to the Web yet or classic "Cyberspace Cowboys"... Regular People - still the same old Web pages we're used to, o...

- government/municipal offices + small businesses tend not to have enough funds to afford cutting-edge material - high-tech or more vital industries have more money to spare. A police precinct still looks the way it did back in 2013, hospitals or research centers are usually cutting-edge Usual Offic...

- Generally speaking, not a lot's changed. Architectural trends are still recognizable, in the 'burbs - "Green" energies are becoming affordable. Flat-top cottages and bungalows are popular again, because of the potential space for solar panels - Few people have an entirely eco-friendly an...

- earliest single moment in history has to be Creation itself. Emergence of Space and Time - triggers physics as we know them and pushes back areas that *don't* obey physics into theoretical spaces no known species is able to tap into. Not even with the most cutting-edge scientific expertise - Quant...

- in genetic parlance, a chimera is an organism made of two disparate racial DNA strands. - ex: heterodichromia in animals. Doesn't happen, but a cat or dog can absorb its twin while in the womb. Twin *can* survive on the genetic level. Cats with different eyes and a neatly bisected face. One side b...

- dryads aren't exactly animates. Their physical material is technically alive (plant life) and their seed is an elemental spirit - they've always been around, all around Nature. Usually very small, however. Very weak. Sidhe took dragon expertise and took it in new direction - involves giving an ini...

This one's kind of a doozy. The more I wrote and researched, the more it seemed like Hope has a fairly intimate relationship with the Clank industry as a whole. Reflecting this is the fact that the section on golems is blessedly short, while the one on automatons definitely warrants the Wall of Text...