Prohibition Index
Premise
The year is 1920, in a world quite different from the one you know. After the failed Martian invasion in 1899, mankind has been making leaps and strides into a new age of advanced technology. The era is somewhat more advanced, but also somewhat regressive compared to the current era, having never entire outgrown the utopian and nationalistic mass-movement cults of Marxism, Futurism and Fascism.
Appropriating the machines of the invaders, who were struck down by the microbes of the Earth's biosphere, has allowed scientific progress to climb ahead past the expectations of all previous eras. Energy weaponry, sophisticated smart materials and the improvement of the human being are ubiquitous, as the Industrial Revolution has given way to the Futurist Revolution, emboldened by the seizure of Martian technology. The universal robot and the android, servants of mankind, have increasingly replaced the poor working class, stabilizing and empowering mainland Europe and causing the United States to momentarily close its borders as it struggles to integrate vast immigrant populations that it cannot employ. The western players in the increasingly relevant League of Nations believes it can achieve hegemony by capturing more of the alien technology than its rivals.
Despite the apparent power of mass movements in the era, a single individual can do much. Industrialists found hidden enclaves for themselves and their entourages in the few frontiers of the world, including Antarctica, the bottom of the ocean and the highest places in the sky. A new type of supercriminal who employs his wits, alien overtechnology and manipulation of the law to cheat the system is rising from the restrictive bounds of Prohibition.
Everyone is looking for a pawn, from the electric old men of the homeland, to the rich robber barons of the New World, but as a child of the new era, you're too smart, too fast and too wild to be someone's chess piece. It won't be long before you break out of the rat race and seize a part of the century for yourself!