The Neon Jungle is a city region quarantined after a terrible technomancy disaster years ago. It has been enveloped in a morphic, thick smog called The Haze. The Haze has very little research on it, but it is rumored to have metamorphic properties such as slowly turning those who enter into an animal, or making people disappear altogether, or go mad entirely.
Neodite is a rare and precious crystal that mainly grows in The Haze. It is incredibly valuable, with the last known auctioned sample of 3oz selling for 8.3 trillion gigs. It is green and semi-translucent. Neodite glows when touched by organic material and is exceedingly brittle. It has been described as a “hungry” crystal. It craves information, experience, and memory. Once it attaches to a host, it begins to grow inside of it, keeping it alive but taking all of its life experiences. Eventually, those infected with Neodite become entirely made of crystal and act as undead do. It is surmised that this crystal can have information uploaded to it, though the methods are unfounded and dangerous.
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Anyone who is traversing The Haze specifically with the intent of farming Neodite is colloquially known as a Culler. They scour the haze for viable crystals and sell them to less-than-reputable sources. Most Cullers only harvest a handful of times in their lifetime to avoid the strange, transmutative effects of The Haze. Some, make their living there, at the risk of becoming a Neolite. The most notorious Culler is Farmer John, a man who has lived most of his life in The Haze to support his small family in 2nd State on a rural patch of land.
A place of respite and sanctuary for those suffering from the effects of The Haze or lost in the Neon Jungle. Most of the Neon Jungle before the Shoreside Bridge Disaster was a tourism town of nightclubs, bars, and boutiques that lined the beach. The Hive is the only building still functioning. It is a large warehouse that has been renovated to be one never-ending nightclub. It’s run by an enigmatic, powerful woman who people call The Guddha Queen.
Isolated by the Shoreside Bridge Disaster in the 80’s, this community found themselves cut off from technological advancements and magickal revelations. As such, most of the city is a landfill (since the people have nowhere to dispose safely of their waste), and all of the technology is far outdated. Fringe City was once The Farpoint Pier: a diversion in the form of a wharf carnival that attracted beach-going tourists from all over. Hightown residents joke that they can smell Fringe City all the way from their penthouses. Fringe City residents are poor and are often scraping by, but their sense of community is strong. No one is hungrier than anyone else, and all labor is shared based on what each individually can realistically do. Equity is king here.