The Pacific Northwest has always had a unique history when compared to other regions of North America. It's colonization period of the early 1830s was wracked with hazardous journeys and administrative confusion. In the late 1800s, the former territory known as Cascadia became parts of Oregon and Washington, parts of Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North California, Utah, Wyoming, Yukon and Alaska. A bioregion separated by two national borders and nearly a dozen state lines.
In the 1900s, three major cities formed around the Salish Sea: Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria. These cities would continue growing until the 2020s, when the Night City Holocaust caused a boom in traffic into and out of the region, seen as a safer alternative to night city by many smaller corporations not wholly deadset on planting their capitalist flags in the California city. In the 2030s and 40s the three cities slowly but surely ended up becoming a single megalopolis, rivaling even Night City, a reconstructed LA, or New York. While the individual cities are still known by their names, Cascadia is usually referred to when speaking of the greater area of those three cities. Yet it's become the administrative nightmare it once was in the 1800s.
The city became a special economic administrative zone, not wholly controlled by either the NUSA or Canada, but with a national border still running through it, nothing more than signs and a neon blue line denoting it; and a single mayor and city council. The city remains a popular destination for corporations despite the reconstruction of Night City, primarily due to the Canada half having positive relations with the European Economic Community, and thus less legally stifling trade and patent paperwork, and the NUSA half having the more lax laws and regulations allowing the corporations to do what they need to in the name of profit. This all preventing a collapse that left the rust belt in ruins. Yet the city is not without flaws.
The year is 2078, Cascadia is a rainy, depressing, and undecorated urban sprawl rivaling those in China. Neon eyesores and advertisements decorate nearly every square foot of outside space, and the same mayor has been re-elected for the last 7 elections with a 75% majority in every single one. It's corrupt, it's a discount of a much more legendary city, and it's about twice as polluted (although that last one has efforts to fix it). Though the region is still a hive for those who want to make a name for themselves without competing with the notoriety of legends of Night City.
For those who want to simply make a fortune, luck has it that the International Electronic Corporation has lost a biometrically locked container thanks to the efforts of a few now dead chooms. The container, filled with anything from Nazi gold to the secret to immortality is still at large, and a lot of people are looking for it. Whatever it is, it'll fetch a pretty penny.
Welcome to Cascadia.
