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Description
Based on a brief scenario by "Ray Speer" over at the old [link] -if google group, which in turn draws from old Burroughs...

The discovery of the Inner World by Innes and Perry in 1914 led to the great post-war Scramble For The Core, in which vast areas of the inner world were claimed, first by nations with better access to the N. Polar entry (the UK, Germany, the USSR, the US) and later by the other Great Powers. Millions moved to the New Lands, a process accelerated by the Great Depression, as people sought their fortunes as soldiers, dinosaur ranchers, miners, dream-lotus farmers, etc.

It is generally believed the "relief valve" created by the New Lands helped avoid another Great War, but in 1964 tensions between the German-Chinese alliance and the Soviet Union, Japan, and the UK led to the outbreak of the Short War, into which the US was drawn. After the collapse of civilization through atomic weapons and artificial plagues, governments were relocated to the Inner World, along with vast numbers of refugees. The local German Gauletier tried to continue the war, but was squashed quickly and most German territory divided up between the other powers. (The Chinese governor quickly changed sides and declared the New Empire).

Today, 50 years later, the magnetic flying disks of the inner world governments crisscross the skies of the outer world, as they attempt to repopulate their damaged homelands (the French, who remained neutral in the War and just had horrible, horrible fallout and plagues, are furthest along in this).

The struggle continues against the atomic mutants, which have become the dominant form of humanity in vast areas of the upper world, and who feel that either God or biology has chosen them to replace a screwed-up humanity on the outer world. In areas where normal humans (well, at least _visibly_ so) predominant, mutant-human relations are often troubled: the Japanese have created a sort of reservation for theirs along the border with the Japanese Dead Zone.

There are also, in the wake of the disaster, a number of theocratic groups and ideologies ruling large areas, from the US Mormons to the Brazilian Technocrats to the cannibal cultists which established themselves in the ruins of NW Russia and have as yet not entirely been supressed by the Soviet government.

The most worrisome development,however, has been reports of Mahars seen in the territory of the Anarchist Mutant Horde. As far as any knows, the reptilian Mahars are confined nowadays to a small chunk of land in the Inner World, after they managed to copy enough human science - and develop further their own - to make any effort at a final extermination highly expensive. Is it even conceivable that the Mahars have been able to develop a mechanical mole of their own?

Inside the Earth, humanity is spread thin over a world which actually has more land surface than the Outer world. Vast areas of desert and jungle in the deep interior have only been very superficially explored, and odd new races and creatures are discovered frequently. The Chinese are worrying about a mysterious cluster of black volcanic peaks which so far has swallowed every expedition that has ventured into them - radio mysteriously not functioning with their confines - while the British and the US are currently planning a joint expedition to the mysterious moon that floats suspended between the Inner World and the Inner Sun...

First, the Inner World.

Description
Based on a brief scenario by "Ray Speer" over at the old [link] -if google group, which in turn draws from old Burroughs...

The discovery of the Inner World by Innes and Perry in 1914 led to the great post-war Scramble For The Core, in which vast areas of the inner world were claimed, first by nations with better access to the N. Polar entry (the UK, Germany, the USSR, the US) and later by the other Great Powers. Millions moved to the New Lands, a process accelerated by the Great Depression, as people sought their fortunes as soldiers, dinosaur ranchers, miners, dream-lotus farmers, etc.

It is generally believed the "relief valve" created by the New Lands helped avoid another Great War, but in 1964 tensions between the German-Chinese alliance and the Soviet Union, Japan, and the UK led to the outbreak of the Short War, into which the US was drawn. After the collapse of civilization through atomic weapons and artificial plagues, governments were relocated to the Inner World, along with vast numbers of refugees. The local German Gauletier tried to continue the war, but was squashed quickly and most German territory divided up between the other powers. (The Chinese governor quickly changed sides and declared the New Empire).

Today, 50 years later, the magnetic flying disks of the inner world governments crisscross the skies of the outer world, as they attempt to repopulate their damaged homelands (the French, who remained neutral in the War and just had horrible, horrible fallout and plagues, are furthest along in this).

The struggle continues against the atomic mutants, which have become the dominant form of humanity in vast areas of the upper world, and who feel that either God or biology has chosen them to replace a screwed-up humanity on the outer world. In areas where normal humans (well, at least _visibly_ so) predominant, mutant-human relations are often troubled: the Japanese have created a sort of reservation for theirs along the border with the Japanese Dead Zone.

There are also, in the wake of the disaster, a number of theocratic groups and ideologies ruling large areas, from the US Mormons to the Brazilian Technocrats to the cannibal cultists which established themselves in the ruins of NW Russia and have as yet not entirely been supressed by the Soviet government.

The most worrisome development,however, has been reports of Mahars seen in the territory of the Anarchist Mutant Horde. As far as any knows, the reptilian Mahars are confined nowadays to a small chunk of land in the Inner World, after they managed to copy enough human science - and develop further their own - to make any effort at a final extermination highly expensive. Is it even conceivable that the Mahars have been able to develop a mechanical mole of their own?

Inside the Earth, humanity is spread thin over a world which actually has more land surface than the Outer world. Vast areas of desert and jungle in the deep interior have only been very superficially explored, and odd new races and creatures are discovered frequently. The Chinese are worrying about a mysterious cluster of black volcanic peaks which so far has swallowed every expedition that has ventured into them - radio mysteriously not functioning with their confines - while the British and the US are currently planning a joint expedition to the mysterious moon that floats suspended between the Inner World and the Inner Sun...

First, the Inner World.