Since 2020, the world has undergone enormous changes that have impacted the lives of nearly every living mortal on Earth. No matter the time or place, Vampires live in the shadow of humanity. And that means that as humanity progresses, the damned as a people themselves must cling on in the hopes of keeping pace. Kindred live in the world that humans have created for them, and this is the mortal world in 2070.
Economics
Some of the biggest changes that have come by the year 2070 are changes in the economic lives of Americans and mortals around the world. The rough economy of the 2030's and 2040's combined with weakening labor laws and mass automation have dramatically widened the gap between rich and poor. When a generally high inflation rate is taken into account, ordinary Americans make and own far less than they did just fifty years ago. But the wealthy are richer by orders of magnitude.
In 2070, all economic life is defined in relation to The Company - a way to refer to one's employer. Virtually all legally employed Americans are contracted with one of a number of ever-growing corporations in their cities and around the country. And where they sit in that company hierarchy determines everything about their life - from their pay to the kind of work they do and even where they're allowed to live. A brief summary of economic class in 2070 is provided below.
- The Wealthy own the Company. While there is a meaningful difference between the handful of trillionaires and the fair many billionaires of modern America, it simply doesn't matter to those beneath them. While the minor rich and billionaires tend to hold actual positions in the corporate executives - or in the government and media - the mega-rich often simply own their companies and accrue growing wealth through profits and investments.
- The Professionals work at the Company. This small upper-middle class consists of well-paid service professionals such as college professors, consultants, software programmers, and other jobs that can't quite be automated away en masse. These workers are paid well, but land ownership is usually off the table. This leaves them with little investment, and keeps their prospects uncertain. Just because machines can't replace them doesn't mean other professionals can't.
- The Middle Class is owned by the Company. In this America, the "middle class" is no longer the homeowners and self-sufficient families of America. Middle-Class workers are the large mass who do somewhat menial labor that could be automated, but is not. While these workers aren't strictly owned, they might as well be. Middle-class Americans live in company apartments, often eat in company cafeterias, work in overcrowded company offices, and those who mine and farm are required to reside in company towns. These workers are not entirely uncomfortable - their accommodations are usually convenient, and they make enough money for the occasional night out. But they can be moved, fired or, traded to another company at a moment's notice.
- The Lower Class don't work for the company. The poor are generally thought of as the urban poor, a small number of city-dwellers who find what scant jobs the Companies either haven't gotten rid of yet or don't particularly want to do. Many of these Americans own dubiously legal small businesses or carry out odd jobs under the table - low deniability affairs where they may not even know who they work for. Membership in this class is tenuous, and a great deal of flow exists between the Lower Class and...
- The Underclass don't work at all. The Underclass are most of the fifth or so of Americans who cannot find work. They pack the nation's slums and its remaining small towns, eking out a day-to-day existence in the shadow of the newly rebuilt cities. The Underclass hold on through a combination of meager welfare, whatever day labor they can get, and a vibrant black market that supplies cheap or unsafe goods and services to those who can't afford them legally. What Underclass are employed regularly are almost certainly illegally so, creating a black market for labor along with goods.
The oppressive, black spires of 2070's skylines and the humming neon lights have fueled a growing trend in culture and entertainment one could refer to as "neo-Gothic." On screens and in holograms, the end of traditional cable television has pushed programming to new extremes. Exorbitant budgets, ostentatious effects, and edgy and even dangerous programming vie to keep people watching their streaming service for just one more episodes. Professional wrestling, boxing, MMA fighting, and e-sports dominate the entertainment scene while American football has been joined by international football as a favorite on Sunday night. On the streets, pristine corporate restaurants, gyms, and dance clubs clash with the kind release people are really looking for. Nightclubs are dark, loud, and riddled with exciting new drugs, catering to the strung-out and desperate looking for escape. Casinos draw thousands nightly, all hoping to hit it big and escape their drudgery. Dive bars - real dive bars - alternate between promising babes, cheap beer, and good fights to keep the cash flowing in. And of course, the truly daring an go out looking for Vampires...
Technology
The world of 2070 wouldn't have been possible without massive leaps in technology, and humans find themselves trying to navigate a world that may well be getting a bit beyond them. By 2070, simple consumer technologies are almost ubiquitous. Free, public Wi-Fi is available even in the most destitute slums if you're willing to sit through some ads and consent to having your browser history monitored. And even the poor have smartphones - though perhaps they didn't quite get theirs legally. Beyond these simple necessities, though, a few game-changers have had massive impacts on how humans live in 2070.
- Nano-Technology is the root of most of the advances that have taken place in the last fifty years. Using improved, intelligent nanobots, scientists and engineers are able to make adjustments to materials and products at a microscopic level to render them more durable, more conductive, and (sometimes) safer. The most direct application of nano-technology has been in new construction materials responsible for the obsidian, techno-gothic architecture of modern cities.
- Artificial intelligence has become a commonplace feature of modern workplaces, venues, and across society. These programs tend to be limited by design, programmed to specialize in one area and specifically prevented from exceeding certain bounds by their programming. But outside of corporate offices, bootleggers are rumored to be constructing AI's with a bit more kick to them. Artificial intelligence programs intended for human interaction are called Virtual Intelligences, and are the most common humans will interact with on a day-to-day basis.
- 3D printing has replaced big box stores and other retailers with simple kiosks that allow individuals to submit their own (licensed) blueprints for a product or simply buy one from the company that owns it. Simple tools and items are made from molds and materials that can be customized at the micro-level, leaving only complicated electronics and other luxury products as the only things still sitting on shelves. Most humans are never far from a vending machine that can produce anything from a hammer to a hat.
- Stem cells as a field has made rapid progress. Improved mastery of genetic engineering has allowed for the mass production of lab-grown meat that has replaced traditional chicken and beef on plates. Meat from an actual animal is a luxury afforded for special occasions and for the very rich. In the medical field, this technology has made blood and organs for donations more plentiful, has improved cancer treatments, and has even enabled therapy for genetic conditions. For those who can't afford that kind of care, the black market has its own, substantially more dangerous options.
- Bio-implants are perhaps the most controversial new technology emerging today. By combining advances in computers, materials, and organics, scientists have been able to fashion internal implants that can augment or replace existing human organs or senses. What little meaningful political discussion is focused on these implants and the potential for criminality and unfairness they impose. This has prevented most legal enterprises from offering them for anything but medical necessity, but the black market has fewer concerns about who has x-ray vision or super hearing.
- Holographic technology has replaced virtual reality as the focus of reality augmentation. The development of nano-holographics that could provide tactile inputs that virtual reality struggled to do. While this technology is difficult to implement on a personal level, holographs have become increasingly popular as mediums for mass entertainment and gatherings. Recreational hologram rooms known colloquially as "holodecks" have become popular hangouts for those with means, and tactical holographic interfaces for Virtual Intelligences have similarly become popular novelties.
Americans have never been engaged voters, but in 2070 they have less reason than ever to tune in. The Democratic and Republican Parties still exist, but both are all-but-openly in the pockets of the same trillionaires and corporations. And even if they weren't, the government has been sufficiently privatized that they would find it impossible to enact any real political reform. This reality has led laws across America to become somewhat uniform. The vast majority of Americans live in states and cities with lenient social policies, fairly strict gun laws, low taxes, few workplace or environmental regulations, and no minimum wage. Debates on these issues are window-dressing - theater to keep what few people do pay attention distracted. The real power government holds is in doling out the trillions of dollars in contracts still administered by it, a process mired in a web of corporate and political intrigue obfuscated far from the public eye. While these deals often see massive amounts of money change hands, they simply wouldn't matter to most people even if they did know about it. Who cares what megacorporation runs the mail when they all treat their customers and workers exactly he same?
Crime and the Black Market
On its face, the criminal underworld of American society has changed immensely since 2020. In a nation where almost everything is now legal and what laws there are often go unenforced against those of means, there simply isn't a need for the Mafia or other organized crime rings. Despite the disappearance of large scale criminal organizations in the United States, though, is almost ubiquitous. Among the upper echelons of society, the rich leverage their contacts to get each other products and curiosities that aren't exactly for sale. Priceless artifacts and antiques, exotic animals, cybernetic implants, and whatever drugs are dangerous enough to still be forbidden commonly swap hands at the most exclusive parties. Professional and middle-class Americans are more likely to turn to the black market to get a cut price on services they need or the option to buy those they don't necessarily need. Fake prescriptions for anti-psychotics and anti-depressants are the most common of these, along with under-the-table surgeries - cosmetic and medical - and healthcare and unregistered electronics to trim the edges of daily costs. For the very poor, virtually every economic activity they participate in is some kind of illegal. The small bodegas, diners, bars, and gambling dins of the slums are usually illegal, strictly speaking, and the black market floods these shantytowns with cheap necessities and basic consumer products. The authorities turn a blind eye to this activity, usually only clamping down as retribution for riots and other disturbances. These low-end black market goods come from a variety of sources - defective products pawned off for a quick buck by factory floor managers (who make sure to cut their managers in), the occasional missing tanker crate, and knock-off third-party products created in illegal 3d printing mills all keep the supply rolling. In the most secretive pockets of the underworld, though, the trade is information and technology. Working in basements and backwoods shacks, some of the brightest minds working outside of the law develop dangerous, but enticing technologies ranging from new cybernetic implants to drugs made with exotic matter and even artificial intelligences capable of doing real damage. With some luck, they may well find the right client and strike it big.
Vampires
Vampires are the modern night's elephant in the room. Since the first evidence of the existence of the damned escaped the Camarilla's Masquerade in the early 2030's, human governments, media outlets, scientific institutions, entertainment industry, and celebrities (with some few daft exceptions) have unequivocally denied the existence of Vampires. Explicit mentions of Vampires are censored from news and television, gagged on the internet by algorithms, and otherwise denied any sort of official validation. But no matter what their leaders say, humans know Vampires exist. Even the people denying it know that Vampires exist. And in the 30 years since they've been discovered in the modern world, attitudes have shifted and adapted with regards to the nocturnal predators known to stalk the night. In the earliest nights, Vampires or humans rumored to be in league with them were subject to street violence from fearful populations. But as humans have become used to the Kindred, they've attained a certain degree of integration.
On the extreme ends, there will always be humans who hate and fear the damned and those who seek them out as objects of fascination or desire. But most humans have come to see Vampires as something between a necessity and a menace. Among the poor, Vampires are simply part of the struggles that face them every day. A slum-dweller may pay half of their rent in blood to their Vampire landlord, receive cheap medical care from a fleshcrafter, and flee a bar when a bunch of rowdy Kindred show up making noise. Humans generally know that the Vampires among the destitute have a few with a bit more personality, and those Vampires may be confronted if one of their own has gone off the rails. Vampires who are too destructive and too deadly to the humans they live among may very well find themselves at the wrong end of an angry mob. And while the trappings of the wealthy may lend themselves to different specifics, the sentiment is much the same. Wealthy Vampires will never be left off the invitation list to a gala, and humans might well ply them for favors. But corporate executives remain wary of the possibility of being drawn into the rich Kindred's deadly schemes.
Beyond the fact that Vampires exist, most humans know little of Kindred politics and care even less. Your average human knows that the Kindred exist, and understand that different Vampires broadly have different powers and act differently. But unless they're directly involved with the damned, they'll know nothing of "Clans" or "Sects" or the movements of the Jyhad. They know just what they need to survive the night.