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In one of my games the group had received their first serious windfall and the City Rat decided it was time for home-ownership once they got back to urban civilization. Had to spend a bit flipping through a few books to get a feel for costs, mostly found pricing for really crappy hotel rooms, a few decent hotels, and one decent boarding house, then compared that against modern equivalents in my head. Going off her budget, and several positive 'luck rolls', managed to turn up a couple decent places in the area she was looking at, offering a small home over in Escanoba and an upper loft outside of Manistique City as her top choices at a low million credits each, noting that owning, rather than renting, gets a fair bit more expensive the deeper into the city places go. In the end, she preferred having a real home within a city, and went for the house in the less cosmopolitan industrial city.

Now I have to invent a great deal about the city of Escanoba within the Manistique Imperium.

Actually glad she went with the industrial town, it is likely to get less coverage than Manistique City, so less worry about conflicting with any material in the upcoming Northern Gun or Black Market books. However, until something comes out, material on the Manistique Imperium in general is a little thin. Besides tidbits about Manistique and Wellington Industries in the RMB, RUE, and the Merc books, has anyone seen any other good bits of info on that area?

Currently dreaming it up as a fairly 'blue collar' town where most of the people work their shifts in the factories, and head home or to the bar after work. Described the main drag as having a handful of commercial shops and factory outlets, but once they left that it was all industry and residential. Also figuring it must be based on the pre-Rifts city of Escanaba, since there isn't a Escanoba in our current Michigan, though Google would seem to indicate that it is a common misspelling, and that a fair about of work has been put in restoring Highway 2 between Escanaba and Manistique, with lakeside towns and farms dotting the way between the major manufacturing city and the namesake of the Imperium.
Considering that RUE still puts a sizable DBee population there, I'm also considering putting some aquatic DBees living in flooded pre-Rifts housing along the current shoreline as well.

Sounds good

I would not charge her 1 million for the home though.
I'd charge her about 100K if its a great place, with high tech fixtures, etc...
Normal Normal homes like our today or less high tech...id charge only about 10-20K.

Why, if the MI has Properiety Taxes, that alone kinda get expensive depending on how much land goes with the home...

It's a small home, but well made, and in a real city. Would have been a fair bit less in the Burbs or one of the smaller towns of the Imperium. For the most part I feel like a was closer to too generous in the pricing, but between a fair amount of luck on their part and the decent MA and great PB between the two that went on that trip, I can justify it. Players didn't see the pricing as a bad deal either, so it feels like I hit the right groove.

As a city home, you are getting those fancy 20th century perks like electricity and running water, plus law enforcement and a decreased chance of being completely overrun by monsters. Well, electric looks like it would be fairly common for Imperium towns as well, but still.

I don't see the Manistique Imperium pulling off a property tax any more than I would an income tax, though I see local powers charging per capita tax, possibly sales tax, business licenses, and so on, and in turn paying that toward their tithes to the Imperium's government. I've been considering a 'Citizenship Tax' or fee, that should be paid to uphold standing as a full MI citizen though, though now as registered property owners they probably rate somewhere on the citizenship scale already. Me and Imperiums, I can't help be see some layer of bureaucracy and 'levels' of citizenship.

Today's realization: Scale.
Escanoba is roughtly 9 times the size of MercTown, 10 times the population of the Arzno Territory.
Still far less than a mega-city or major kingdom though.

Need to figure out the factions, cliques, and gangs that a city that large deserves to have..
Still, given the nature of the city, I don't see those as being an out of control issue. Imagine corporate espionage and sabotage being a larger concern than gang violence. Not that there wouldn't be gang violence.
Hm.. company lines. working-class, engineers & eggheads, managers, unions.. gangs, spies, black market frontmen, DBees.. Ah the fun to be had.

Thanks for the tip about the weather in the area, I'll have to take that into account as well.
Mining is mentioned among the Manistique Imperium's strong areas, and looking at maps showing how much of their region is national forest areas in our time, I can see why other natural resources are also on the list.
Hm, considering that vehicle production is one of the things they are known for, I could imagine heavy-duty nuclear-powered plow-trucks helping keep the major route in the Imperium relatively clear, but with that much weather, I'd have to wager a lot of the bulk stuff would be shipped by water between the major cities during the winter..
Making winter a prime time of year for pirates and raiders to strike the waterways and lakeside towns.

Sounds interesting... Keep us updated Armorlord.I want to hear more about what you come up with.

TechnoGothic wrote:Sounds good

I would not charge her 1 million for the home though.
I'd charge her about 100K if its a great place, with high tech fixtures, etc...
Normal Normal homes like our today or less high tech...id charge only about 10-20K.

Why, if the MI has Properiety Taxes, that alone kinda get expensive depending on how much land goes with the home...

100k sounds a bit light though, when you consider a cheap suit of PA is like 900k and a Mountaineer ATV is about 76k for a basic gasoline version. A million might be a bit on the high side, unless it is a mansion or something VERY nice. I would split the difference of you guys and make it about 500k

As for property tax, that is a good idea, keep those credits flowing. So is a maid, a cook, a gardener/lawn service, etc. Cost of upkeep will quickly overtake the initial price if you get fancy or have some luxuries. And, if you have a TW backup system in case something happens to the municipal power, that is going to cost a bit as well.

Really wish more characters had a home...

Well now, here's a fairly interesting tidbit:
Remember how the story was that the Manistique Imperium found weapons-grade designs and data at Wellington years ago, allowing them to compete directly with their neighbors in manufacturing?
Was paging through RUE looking for something else and found out that was just a cover story. Seems MI cut a deal with the Black Market, manufacturing secrets in exchange for becoming their manufacturing supplier.
Apparently my plans about having a strong Black Market presence in Escanoba are even more justified than I had thought.

So.. Northern Gun One.
I had been looking forward with the hope that they might touch on the Mantistque Imperium a bit, and give more more material to play off of in the region.
Generally seems solid, save for a giant screaming flaw that is sticking in my craw something fierce.

Rifts Main Book, page 147, right column, first paragraph, first sentence. AD 1990, referencing PA 101 wrote:The Manistique Imperium is located along the southern coast and includes the Pre-Rifts city of Escanoba and several smaller communities.

Rifts Main Book, page 147, right column, first paragraph, sentence 5 through 7. AD 1990, referencing PA 101, still within the Manitique Imperium section wrote:The population at the industrial city of Escanoba is about 220,000 (literacy is 54%). The population of Manistique is about 380,000 (literacy is 72%). Both have trade schools, libraries, and Manistique has one of the great universities.

As their industrial center, it seems it gets top billing even over the city the Imperium is named for.

Rifts Ultimate Edition, page 30, left column, fourth paragraph (bottom left), third sentence. AD 2005, referencing PA 109 wrote:Manistique is located along the southern coast and includes the Pre-Rifts city of Escanoba and several smaller communities.

Rifts Ultimate Edition, page 30, left column, fourth paragraph (bottom left), sentence 7 through 10 (carrying over to the next column). AD 2005, referencing PA 109, still within the Manitique Imperium section wrote:The population of Escanoba has grown has grown to about 260000 (literacy is 54%). The population of Manistique City has risen to about 380,00 (literacy is 72%). Both cities have trade schools, libraries, and Manistique has an excellent university of mechanical engineering.

Strange, even when updated, there is no mention of Ishpeming annexing or conquering one of the Manistique Imperium's two major cities.


..I don't even know what to say here. We aren't talking about Ms. Tarn not knowing about something far away and then getting corrected, we're looking at detailed info from 101 PA in her chief operating area, and then updated with more information and fresh numbers in 109 PA. I mean there is almost as much information saying that Escanaba is the industrial city of MI as there is saying that Iron Heart is a major industrial part of the CS. Exaggerating the the scale just a bit, this would be comparable to getting a Lazlo book and it nonchalantly talking about IH being a part of their territory.