Alpha State
This game system, and the setting in which it takes place, are both in active development. Everything on this site is subject to change. Please hard refresh pages when you visit to ensure you're viewing the latest versions.3.2 - Shelby
One of the oldest exterior districts on SB65, one of the most legendary free zones in the cyberstar wastes, Shelby is a place of contrasts. Here is one of the places where you're free to be yourself, but you might be more vulnerable to power because of it. Technically anyone here can earn their way to a better life, but most die in the process. It's glittering darkness; one of the last places you can find some kind of freedom, and it'll probably eat you alive.
There isn't really much knowledge of history in the cyberstar wastes, nor much of a historical record to even study; it's bad for business. In Shelby there's some who try to fight that, building a historical record of the present day and piecing together what can be found of the past, but it's not easy to do. So many people packed into one small area the whole place tends to churn itself like a meat grinder, and it's hard to keep a stable business let alone a lasting record of the past. Some folks still try, though.
Shelby Style
Why does everyone dress like it's the 1930s? Why do all the buildings look like the 1930s, right down to the decor? There's no one easy answer, but if there was one easy answer it would be: Shelby. As one of the oldest free zones, and certainly one of the longest lasting, Shelby has always been a trendsetter and that holds double for style. It's not wholly ubiquitous, you can find plenty of hardcore punks, space suit chic, lots of different cultural fashions, but by far the most common and most prominent is what's called Shelby Style.
So where did it come from? Hard to say, really. Most likely it was an emergent cultural event. When free zones started popping up, and especially when the norm became using and selling things outside corporate control, everyone became a criminal overnight. Someone, or multiple someones, recognized that it was a lot like the broad-spectrum everyday criminal behavior of the Prohibition Era of the old United States. Somehow that ended up being a public conversation, and little by little people leaned into the idea.
Folks started calling bars "speakeasies," and then the term was extended to mean any place that sells anything illegal. Gangs were already taking control of most business activity in the free zones, so a lot of them adopted the look and attitude associated with 1930s gangsters. Musicians were also early adopters, and started developing new sounds based on old jazz and swing. Once the idea began to kick into drive zone-wide, popular fashion quickly began to involve flapper dresses, pinstripe suits, and anything else that looked or felt like the 1930s. None of it is completely accurate, nobody's worried about exact detail, it's more based on the vibes and memory of Prohibition Era.
As capitalism tends to do, corporations fought back by adopting and adapting. Cars suddenly started to look like what the people of the 1930s thought the future would be. Architects even got in on the style, and so did interior decorators, and mostly anyone who makes things started to give it all a feel of the 1920s and 30s. The best weapon capitalism has is to assimilate any resistance to it, and they employed the strategy as widely as possible.
Surprisingly, corporate adoption of what's become known as Shelby Style hasn't dulled its popularity. Rather the people of Shelby, and their allies in other free zones, take it as proof the corporate types are scared of people power. So, they leaned into it. Shelby Style came to include attitude, as well as fashion. True Shelby Style is accomplished with illegal things—hand sewn clothes, gin distilled from home-printed grain, illegal music with no record label. The people of Shelby can always spot a corpo fraud, and in a way the attempt proves they have a chance if they can just keep at it.
Shelby is easily one of the largest free zones ever, and it's got plenty of different places between its borders. Most of them are fairly standard for any free zone, but like any other Shelby also has famous places that stand out. Places where famous or infamous things happened, places built by people that everyone knows, places that built their own reputation one cycle at a time. Almost anybody who lives in Shelby knows about these places.
The Bridge
Balanced over the 18-meter span of Thomas Street, the Bridge was originally a passenger ship that crashed into SB65. After decades of repairs and re-purposing it’s seen a number of changes. The top is now a series of large windows designed to give unobstructed views of Shelby and the streets below. There are rows of fairy lights decorating the entire structure from end to end. Along each side there are special balcony areas, each large enough to fit one table with about six chairs, which afford breathtaking views of the drop below and the starbase above.
Since its crash, as Shelby grew ever upward, the passenger ship has been incorporated into local construction. People tied, glued, nailed, welded, and even laid down ferrocrete where they could. Some began to move onto the ship and reinforce its structure as well, so much that by now the whole thing was surprisingly stable. At first the wreckage was just a squat for people who needed somewhere to live. When it became more stable though, some enterprising individual saw the potential of location, location, location. Since then it’s been a strip club, a cybernetics shop, and a string of different restaurants.
Eight years ago, Tanya gained control of the structure when she bought out several competitors, and her only major rival ended up taking a walk off the starbase. She quickly turned it into one of Shelby’s hottest bars, and established it as the most neutral of neutral ground that ever neutralled a neutral. Technically, these days, its official name is "Tanya's On The Bridge," but it's just been "The Bridge" for so long that no other name ever takes.
Along the top of the structure’s transparent nanosteel is a functional footbridge. Tanya has even gone so far as to provide stairs and other access to the bridge on either end, as well as some moderately secure handrails. There is constant heavy traffic back and forth, and people walking across can see the bar patrons below, who are often looking back up at them.
Within the structure, its original passenger floor is now the main bar. Remnants of carpet cling to corners and little inaccessible nooks, but most of the floor is worn down to the steel. There are two primary bar structures, one at either end of the bridge, and the central area is dominated by tables where guests can sit and enjoy the view above. While it’s still technically possible to use the Bridge as an actual bridge just to get from one building to another, it takes so long to get past Tanya’s guards and weave through all the tables and crowd that it’s faster to use the roof.
Below the main floor, where once was stored passenger baggage during their travels, the entire structure has been reinforced and expanded. The floor has been extended to allow easier headroom for walking, but it’s still a little low in places. Down here are two different kitchens left over from the restaurants that used to operate here, and Tanya keeps them both operating at full capacity. Her office and security center are also down there.
Most of the Bridge’s storage space is technically off site, found in the buildings on either end of it. Tanya has to pay premium fees to rent this space from the actual owners.
Private Balconies
Unique as it may be, the real draw of Tanya's new iteration of the Bridge is its balconies. Constructed along the side of the ship's original structure are a series of balconies accessible from the main bar. They're simultaneously very public, which means anyone who wants to develop a reputation wants to eat there, but they're separated enough from the bar and traffic that they grant considerable privacy. Matched with appropriate privacy software, these balconies are ideal for holding meetings when you want everybody to know they're happening, but don't want anyone to know precisely what's being said.
Armitage Canyon
Near the outer edge of Shelby, there's an empty space of three missing habhexes. Fifteen years ago the space was just another part of Shelby, just as densely packed and teeming with life, until a systems analyst named Trevor Armitage saw an anomoly on his morning datasheet. He recognized a power fluctuation caused by locals tapping into the grid. So Trevor, per his job description, purged the malfunctioning habhex so it could be replaced. When he saw the malfunction was affecting two adjacent habhexes, he purged them too.
Inside all three habhexes, airlocks slammed shut and anchors unlatched. The entire structure groaned. Shelby being Shelby, the interconnected latticework of civilian construction up top held for a little while as people ran screaming for safety, but it only held for so long. Within minutes, centrifugal force of SB65's rotation ripped the flimsy construction apart as the habhexes were pulled down and out. They slid free of their moorings and out into space, still mostly full of people, including the civilian construction still on top of them.
That was the start of the Armitage Riots.
At first people wondered if something had gone wrong, but when they found out it was just some low-level exec's morning data check before he'd even had his coffee, they snapped. Most of the district was on fire by the end of the day, and the riots spread into surrounding corporate districts. SBPI initially tried to contain the rage, but then gave up and let it burn itself out for a while, until they came rolling back in full force to put the crowds down. In the meantime, some enterprising cyberpunks had found Trevor Armitage, brought him to the site, and tossed him down into the canyon after his victims.
The riots lasted weeks, even once they were contained to Shelby. Cyberpunks and gangsters fought cops openly in the streets, Shelby shrank in some areas and expanded in others. When it was all said and done, almost thirty-two percent of Shelby's residents had died. Think about that next time you look at its population numbers. Since then Shelby has steadfastly refused to allow any corp to replace those three habhexes. The canyon is a scar that reminds people of their place in the galaxy, and what corpofucks really think of their 'citizen consumers' when it comes down to brass tacks.
There are a few bridges across the canyon, built by locals. Mostly they exist because it's a pain in the ass to walk all the way around, but many of the bridges also include some type of memorial to the people lost that day and in the riots afterward. Along the edges of the canyon, personal construction is starting to lean out over the edges of that endless drop, but otherwise the canyon remains a giant empty space where people once lived.
Club Commodore
One of the most famous speakeasies on SB65, Club Commodore is often the first icon people think of when anyone mentions Shelby. Older even than the free zone that sprang up around it, the Commodore is a massive frame of steel and glass shaped like a burning fire. It was built by Devon Strate, who at the time was a member of the NeuroCorp Board of Directors. Devon built himself a glittering bright office, which he intended to outshine everyone and everything in the galaxy. The entire structure is built to reflect and magnify the lights inside, turning it into a massive glowing sun in the midst of a dark city. Devon made it as bright as physically possible.
Unfortunately for Devon, he was also an unrepentant prick. If his gaudy eyesore of an office wasn't problem enough for the people around him, his board authority that guided NeuroCorp to ever-worse atrocities just pushed things beyond any tolerable level. Devon, along with half the other members of the board, ended strung up by his feet, dangling high above the deck plates of Thomas Street. The Shelby Riots were short, but once they ended everything had changed. Medjine Fabre, one of the most prominent leaders of the people who declared Shelby a free zone, claimed Devon's gaudy office for herself.
In Medjine's hands, Devon's office became a speakeasy. She called it Club Commodore, for reasons she never articulated, and she turned it into a center of the district. Here, no conflict was allowed; Shelby's first neutral territory where gangs could meet in relative peace. That doesn't mean they don't get gunned down outside the club, but that's a different problem. Medjine also turned the lights down a bit so, although the club is still bright, it's not such an eyesore to those around it. She also rebuilt the interior, structuring it as concentric circles of tables and booths around a central stage where musicians perform.
When her son Gaspar inherited the place, he continued Medjine's tradition of protecting the Commodore's neutrality. He also updated the structure, lowering the central rings and raising the outer rings, while raising the performance stage a bit, putting it at the center of all attention. This also had the convenient effect of making Gaspar's personal boothe, right at the base of the stage, the most private public place in Shelby.
These days, the Commodore is where everyone wants to go. Gangsters hold meetings here, celebrities make public appearances, even corporate execs enjoy having illicit evenings at the most public speakeasy in the galaxy. Up-and-comers know that if they can just get into the Commodore, they'll have it made. The place has gotten to be so popular that getting in can be difficult; the line outside the door is always ridiculous. The real dream, though, is to be one of those people who get to walk right past the line, through the doors, into the glittering space that is Club Commodore.