Chapter IV

The REGESTs

A REGEST keeps whatever no corporation wanted to buy.

What is left of the traditional governments: twenty countries that still exist on paper, each shrunk down to the part of itself that made no profit. There is freedom there, and little else.

The twenty REGESTs

History + Fiction What is left of each of the twenty largest countries, and why.

The REGESTs are the remains of the democratic governments. They survive by pawning what is left of their sovereignty to the corporations. They offer a precarious "economic and personal freedom", amid poverty, missing infrastructure and failed public security.

The rule + contribute

A REGEST keeps whatever no corporation wanted to buy. There is no fixed shape: each country kept the part of itself that made no profit. For the twenty largest countries of 2026, this is what happened:

No.	Country	What is left
1	Brazil	Federal District (Brasília)
2	United States	The Great Plains, over the spent Ogallala Aquifer
3	Mexico	Mexico City, sinking and dry
4	Canada	The Canadian Shield, burnt forest
5	China	The Loess Plateau, eroded land
6	Japan	Inland Tōhoku, empty villages
7	South Korea	Gangwon, against the demilitarised zone
8	India	The Thar Desert
9	Indonesia	North Jakarta, below sea level
10	Australia	The arid interior, around Alice Springs
11	Germany	Lusatia, craters of old lignite mines
12	United Kingdom	The Fens, flooded
13	France	The empty diagonal, in the Massif Central
14	Italy	Basilicata, the inland south
15	Spain	Emptied Spain, around Soria
16	Netherlands	The polders Thalassa has not flooded yet
17	Switzerland	Valais, valleys without glaciers
18	Russia	Kalmykia, steppe turning to desert
19	Saudi Arabia	The edge of the Rub' al-Khali
20	Türkiye	The Konya basin, ground sinking over a dry aquifer

Some of these places are already in trouble today: the Ogallala Aquifer is being drained by irrigation ^[8], Jakarta is sinking ^[9] and France has a nearly empty inland band ^[10]. The setting just let the trend continue.

Why they still exist + contribute

Because it is useful that they do. A REGEST is where the dismissed go, the market where corporations sell their leftovers, and the proof that the alternative to the companies is worse.

The Brasília REGEST

History + Fiction A capital without a country, depending on the water of a reservoir that is no longer its own.

Of Brazil, the Federal District is what is left. When OmniTerra bought the country after the First Corporate War, the DF was left out: a seat of government, far from the coast, with no port and no heavy industry. Nobody wanted to buy it.

Brasília still has ministries, a Congress, embassies from other REGESTs and four million people. It also has a problem: water.

The Sale of the Strip + contribute

The Federal District has always depended on the Descoberto reservoir, on the border with Goiás. Back in 2017 and 2018 it nearly ran dry, and the city spent about a year and a half under rationing ^[6] ^[7]. In 2097, in debt, the REGEST sold the reservoir strip to OmniTerra. In return it got the Humanitarian Contract of 2097, which guarantees Brasília a water quota through the Old Main.

The quota shrank at every renewal. Today most of the Descoberto goes to the Planalto Core, an OmniTerra data centre that processes telemetry from the space-mining fleet. The city lives under permanent rationing.

Brasília in 2126 + contribute

The Plano Piloto still stands, with cracked public buildings and dry lawns.
The towns around it (Taguatinga, Ceilândia, Samambaia) live off water trucks.
Post 4, on the border with OmniTerra, is the busiest border in the Centre-West.

Brasília is the setting of the opening adventure, Audit at Descoberto.

Life in a REGEST

Fiction Freedom, poverty and the trade only nomads will do.

In a REGEST nobody is relocated or dismissed, because almost nobody is hired. There are elections, a press that may criticise a corporation, churches, unions and spoons in the drawers. There is no running water every day, no medicine, no jobs and no police who come when called.

What goes in and what comes out + contribute

The laws of the ESTEMPs do not protect those outside them. So carrying cargo into a REGEST is risky, and those who do it charge a lot. The nomads run that trade.

Who lives there + contribute

Those who always did. Families who never worked for a corporation.
The dismissed. Blocked by the Corporate Quarantine, this is where they come.
Those who came back. People who left an ESTEMP on purpose. They are few, and the corporations love to show them on the news, thin and regretful.