Daria: Hunter

Daria: Hunter is an alternate universe science fiction series created by Jim North. It is also a shared world, though other writes have yet to pick it up.

It was nominated for Favorite New Series in the 2009 Daria Fanworks Awards.

Summary

The year is 2172. Daria and Jane are fugitive recovery agents (more commonly known as bounty hunters) working for Tom, a bail bondsman. In the course of their regular job of hunting down people who have jumped bail in the Lawndale City area, they run across a string of unusual criminals wielding strange powers, abilities, and/or gadgets.

The world of Daria: Hunter is set in universe D-2172.

Future history

In the mid-21st century, the world had reached a definite crisis point concerning pollution and the depletion of natural non-renewable resources. Unable to ignore these problems any further, sweeping reforms and strict green laws were passed virtually worldwide, set to finally remove the human race's dependence on these ecologically destructive substances.

Unfortunately, these attempts to save the world almost ended it. Several industries across the globe ground to a halt, leading many national economies to bend and others to shatter completely. There were many violent protests and, in some few cases, full out war caused by the reforms. Nuclear holocaust loomed, but gradually fell by the wayside as more and more nations became more absorbed in simply keeping themselves together than in trying to capitalize on the weakness of their neighbors.

Bit by bit, as the decades rolled on, the research critical to clean running products and clean burning energy were solved. The people of the world were slowly able to pick up the pieces and get on with the occupation of civilization. But while the aftermath was clean, it wasn't pretty. Several of the world's nations had either been snapped up by their bigger, stronger neighbors or had Balkanized into smaller, quarreling tribes.

Geopolitically, the world has changed forever and quite possibly for the worst, but at least everyone can have flying cars that get 30 kilometers to the liter of tap water and don't harm the ozone layer.

Though hampered by the aforementioned economic and political crises, the suburb of Lawndale spent most of the 21st and 22nd centuries building itself up into Lawndale City. As the new name entails, it has become a city in its own right with its own suburbs, all contained within the small section of North America that makes up what's left of the United States after the rest of it split off into two completely new neighboring nations.

Lawndale City is home to the highest of the social elite as well as the lowest criminal scum. The rich and famous tend to live atop the highest sections of the city's many colony structures, the middle classes congregate in the lower lying suburbs, and the criminal element tends to be relegated to the shadowy Undercity, a section of Lawndale far below the tallest skyscrapers, where sunlight never reaches.

Technology

Due to the virtual halt of progress in the mid-21st century, much of the technology in the year 2172 is what humanity had expected they would have nearly a hundred years earlier. Due to the fact that most every piece of sophisticated tech in the world is almost completely clean running, however, most people who were born after those terrible times see it as a fair trade off.

Please note: While much of the technology seen in the Daria: Hunter series is simply the imaginings of the author, some pieces here and there are either real world products that will see commercial production within the next couple of decades or are extrapolations from currently existing products. These items are noted where appropriate in the full listing of D:H tech. Daria: Hunter Shared World

On November 20, 2009, Jim announced that the D:H universe was open for use by other fanfic authors as a shared world series.

The series bible can be found on the PPMB.

Daria: Hunter Art

• Daria: Hunter - Daria and Jane

   Daria: Hunter - Kev and Brit
   Daria: Hunter - Quinn and Stacy
   Daria: Hunter - Sandi and Tiffany
   Daria: Hunter - Tom and Andrea

Story List

These stories constitute the main storyline of the D:H universe.

• Suited for Crime - Daria and Jane are sent on what seems like an easy job to re-capture two too-dumb-to-live criminals, but their targets' new threads make the situation anything but what it seems . . .
• The Love Triangle - Quinn has a secret admirer who may just want to admire her to death . . .
• Mind over Plasma - Jane and Daria's day off gets cut short when an odd little man with strange abilities begs for their help . . .
• Rememory - Daria receives a precious gift . . .
• Strictly Business - When the identities of the people backing the mysterious 'doctor' are finally revealed, Daria and Jane decide to take care of business personally . . .
• Infectious - An emergency call from DENA HQ pulls Daria and Jane into a trap from which even death may not give them release . . .