Kenega City
Kenega
Flocks of seagulls mobbed the beaches, looking for food abandoned by the tanned and sunburned throngs cavorting in the waves, or lounging on deck chairs and towels. Seaside cafes had more foreigners and upper crust Kenegans packing the verandas. Some were back in their homes, villas, and hotel rooms napping, storing up their energy. They would get ready to head to dinner, the casinos, and clubs later to expend that energy.
Some of them had never left the clubs from many hours before. There was no law that stated the clubs of the capital had to close at any time, and yet most did at least for an hour, in order to clean and reset. Most, but not all. Hash and cannabis dens also saw round the clock visitors. While harder narcotics were against the law, many deals were being had every day that eventually trickled down to the individual users. There were always going to be visitors and regular denizens of the City who needed their own way to get to an altered state that wasn’t necessarily regulated by the Commonwealth.
So, of course, the Kenegan organized crime syndicates and smuggling gangs were also flourishing, as they had for some time. There was only so much that the Investigative Division of the Gendarmerie and the KC Metro police could or would do to make a dent in the trade. For the most part, there was an understanding. Unless things became too overt and dangerous, even for the hedonistic tourists seeking all kinds of dark thrills, then the outfits could continue to ply their trade at the drug dens and casinos with little interference from the local authorities.
Amadoga Saunders, one of the top kingpins of the Kenegan underworld, was determined to keep that status quo. Ready to slam the hammer down on any syndicate bosses who got out of line, and equally ready to go to battle with the local PD and gendarme detectives who stepped out of line. Not necessarily battling on the streets with the cops, but hitting them where it really hurt - in court, and in the public courts of social media. Saunders, as well as a lot of the Kenegan mob bosses, had extensive blackmail files on the Kenega City elite, Commonwealth parliamentarians, and other officials that called the large metropolitan capital home. All they had to do was threaten to release records, and those top dogs would come down hard on the wayward cops.
Then there was the banking industry. Kenegan banks were legendary to many surrounding regions. Over time, nations with liberal banking laws began to evolve towards more legitimate practices and regulations. Neu Engollon’s banks for instance, were once like Kenega’s, but many of the protections afforded banking customers had been revoked, with info on the worst offenders passed along to Teremaran law enforcement and intelligence agencies much too often for the liking of the Underworld and politically corrupt or radical. Much of that shady banking business shifted south to Kenega. The volume of currency that electronically flowed through Kenega’s banks in the current day was what was most astounding. It was enough to run many small countries.
People from all over, but especially Teremara, had flocked to the beaches of Southern Kenega for decades. Even at the height of the Hutanjian War, just a few hundred kilometers to the south, didn’t deter them. Bodies in fatigues washing up in the middle of resort shores, or worse…civilian bodies and children. At the height of the war as Falkasian, Edomite, Cardwithian and Hutanjian forces clashed in epic battles the likes of which Wishtonia had never seen, it was almost to over a dozen bodies a day recovered from the beaches.
Ourapeka
Northern Territories
Kenega
That was a long time ago. Six years, to be exact. Now, it was bodies from Jaragupta that were washing up on their shores. JRA Soldiers, HDLF rebels, communist troops from the ISVC, and pilots from all sides. However, it wasn’t on the touristy southern beaches, but rather the northern shores of the Northern wildlife preserves that the currents carried these bodies.
Ourapeka was where the safaris started from that would take the few, barely maintained roads into the interior, into the bogs and swamps to see the crocs, the cranes, raptors, gazelles, monkeys, panthers, and all other manner of wildlife.
As far as authority went, there was the Sheriff of Ourapeka and the surrounding county, but he was paid by the smuggling gangs to go from home, straight to the office, then back home; every day. Ourapeka Sheriff’s Deputies were mostly around to make traffic stops, and rarely even those.
That left Abigail Emerson, Brigadier of the Royal Park Ranger Service, as the highest authority in Ourapeka and the surrounding preserves who would actually do anything to keep order in the North. With a sturdy force of squads of Royal Park Rangers, she was not afraid of the smugglers and their mob controllers, but she certainly would never risk her people in open confrontation with them.
Emerson still reported to Ewan MacTavish, Commander of the Royal Services of the Commonwealth, but Ewan hardly ever made the trip North, and it was tough enough to even raise him on a video screen. It wasn’t that he didn’t care to do his job, it was that Kenega City and Faronham consumed almost all of his time…And he implicitly trusted Abby to have the North of the Island under control.
Terlenga
Eastern Kenega
To the east, the biggest spot of civilization, but certainly not the only one in the east, as it was surrounded by more resorts, beaches, and a fair amount of industry, lay the old historic port of Terlenga. A substantial Coast Guard station, Royal Gendarme station, as well as Frankenlischian military garrison could be found there. The early Espicutan traders and merchantmen that had set up port had called it Terelenco, which is what they thought the early Wishtonian tribal people were calling the bay. The name had eventually reverted back to the native pronunciation about a hundred years ago as one of many minor concessions to the Kenegans when they began to push for more autonomy from the Vionna-Frankenlischian empire.
It was also the heart of the fishing industry of Kenega. The massive amount of fishing commercial fleets launched from port every day was astounding. The dock markets were known all over the Island for the best seafood, and canning plants nearby took what was left to export Kenegan fish products.
The city itself had character, having been through Espicutan, then Gaulic, and now finally Frankenlischian hands, but still retaining a strong native Kenegan flavor. Terlengans were a proud bunch. Because they were so removed from the rest of the Island, they had to develop their own little provincial culture. The food was heavily Latin spiced and influenced, the musical soundtrack of the day was loud, and the nights weren’t for all night partying like in Kenega City, as much as slow dancing and enjoying the sound of the waves on a beach, wharf or villa deck.
Faronham Joint Forces Base
Western Kenega
On the opposite side of the Island from Terlenga is Faronham. The town itself is small compared to Terlenga, although a little bigger than Ourapeka. But in no way close to comparable to the mega-capital of Kenega City. Until recent decades, it was a sleepy little port, but with the construction of the Frankenlischian base there, it grew to accommodate military families, and entertain and serve the service personnel, married or single, from both the armed forces of Vionna-Frankenlisch, and the paramilitary forces of the Commonwealth.
The small red light district of Faronham has been called ‘Little KC’, with its bars, casinos, and regulated brothels. While a pale shadow of the real Kenega City, it was close and convenient enough for soldiers, pilots, and sailors on short leave from duty to have a bit of fun and make it back in time for revelry. It has been a point of contention between Vionna-Frankenlisch Imperial government and the Commonwealth, just as how liberal the polices are in the capital has always agitated the more conservative elements of both governments. However, as politicians from both governments are up to their eyeballs in corruption and illicit money, things are not likely to change any time soon in either city.
On this very day, a young Lieutenant James Devering of the Frankenlischian army garrison is to serve out his sentence of execution for involvement with one of the Kenegan criminal syndicates. He had been found guilty of multiple criminal charges. In one of those efforts to keep the corruption at bay from such an esteemed institution as the Frankenlischian Imperial Armed Forces, they have decided to make an example of the young soldier right on the main parade grounds. He is to be brought down by firing squad. By dusk, he will be in a pauper’s grave, even the honor of a military burial stripped from him.
Called the Joint Forces Base because it was home to Frankenlischian air, naval, and army forces, as well as gendarme, gendarme air force, and coast guard units of the Kenegan Commonwealth, it was a fairly large base as far as Wishtonian standards, with maybe only Norritts or Markville in the Cardwiths, Vesselle in Hutanjia, or some of the Gaulic bases in
Dachine to rival it. Joint exercises were often launched from Faronham.
The Interior
Kenega
Heading inward from the cities is not often recommended for visitors to Kenega, unless they have a guide and a firm destination. Most often these are some of the resorts off the beaten path.
While there are rumors of untapped resources in the hills and forests of inner Kenega, it remains mostly untouched.
Closer to the Southeast, the population of the interior of course is much higher. Several villages filled with those who work in Kenega City and the surrounding resorts commute in by bus and carpooling.
Further north, the villages are more remote, and often get by subsisting on their own garden production, fruit gathering, hunting, and trading with other villages for necessities. They have had very little interaction with authorities, other than the occasional passing Park Ranger patrol, for what could be time eternal, back to the Kenegan tribal kings. Their dark complexions certainly spoke to their shunning of the Gaulic and Anglo colonizers. Back in those days, when Kenega City attempted to collect taxes, the tax collectors would disappear, and soon, they refused to go into the interior at all. It was no matter, with the amount of revenue made in the clubs and casinos, they could forego a few forgotten villages.
This is the state of modern Kenega. Much of it has not changed for decades.
Some of it needing desperate change, and some people hoping desperately for that change.