Greylands
Overview
Few now can tell for certain what calamity caused the Greylands before the Regression. Most believe it was a combination of pollution, climate change, and devastating wars which killed off most of the vegetation and mutated the rest into pitiful remnants of trees and bushes together with an anemic species of grass. These live haphazardly in the vast grey desert where things only grow when intensely cultivated and irrigated. A ruptured ozone-layer makes the sun into a threat to be avoided, and among the Greylanders melanoma is ten times as common as in the cities. Also, the constant shortage of clean freshwater causes far more sickness and deformities in the Greyland dwellers than in the urbanites.
The foodDomes
The millions of urbanite employs in the cities require enormous amounts of food. Almost all food in Cascadia is produced by loCaste working in the gargantuan foodDomes dotting the Greylands between the cities. These are leftovers from the OmniStat era, and though they have been somewhat improved through scientific and technological advances they are still very resource demanding in terms of manpower, water and energy.Protected from excessive UV by the specially treated glass of the gigantic domes, the crops below thrive and grow, fertilized by waste from the cities and the massCondos of loCaste employs working the fields. In here can be found all the green one would expect of a healthy landscape, and some loCaste are more happy here than in the barren cities, even though life in the domes is infinitely harder.
The Factories
The vast factory complexes produce the myriad of consumer products available to the urban employs. Everything from cars to electronics, and the many components needed to create them are assembled, refined and transformed here. Staffed by hundreds of thousands of loCaste working shifts side by side with automated robotic systems, these city-sized sprawls are of prime importance to the Conglomerate, as the authorities rely completely on their output to keep the rest of its employs in a state of duped satisfaction.
The Mines
Of the main Greyland worksites the mines are the worst by far. Here toil those loCaste who are either serving a sentence of forced labor or were unlucky enough to be born to parents doing the same thing. They dig deep into the crust to extract all the resources needed to keep the factories running and the cities thriving, but after centuries of digging it's getting increasingly harder to keep the supply going. Automatons augment the work force and perform the most dangerous tasks below, but the mining operations still demand plenty of manpower, and it's no coincidence that Kruger Holding, who owns KrugerSec, also own and run the mines where so many former urban employs have been sentenced to work after having broken policy.
The Energy Plants
Everdyne Energy supplies Cascadia with the energy it needs to keep the cities lit, the water desalinated, and the factories, mines and food domes running. Though they make much of their environmental responsibilities and the renewable energy technologies they employ in the cities, the truth is that these provide only about fifteen percent of the total energy need in the nation. Desalination requires the most energy, closely followed by food production and the factories, and to cover it all Everdyne has kept several old OmniStat fission plants running. They are all based on decades old technology and though some work has been done to upgrade them, security and efficiency is still sorely lacking.
Conglomerate Compounds
In addition to the mines, factories, foodDomes, and energy plants the Conglomerate also operates other compounds in the Greylands. Two large military bases are operated by KrugerDef where they maintain a small standing army and perform advanced weapons research. Spread out along the coast lie three massive desalination plants, and together they provide about 80% of the freshwater needed, the rest coming from gathered rainwater and the few clean groundwater basins left. Rumors say there are prisons and classified research-facilities hidden away in the Greylands as well, where the Conglomerate is free to do what it wants with the outCaste, deviants and criminals rounded up by KrugerSec and never seen again but this has never been verified.