Ol' Federal is the central headquarters for the MPD and serves as their administrative hub.

Location

Ol' Federal stands in the southcentral portion of Rivertown Central, about one mile northwest of Summerland.

History

In the days before society's collapse, Ol' Federal was a beautiful federal courthouse, renowned for its unique architecture. As a widely reconizable federal building, it bore the brunt of many anti-government attacks in the months of unrest before the superflu, including two bombings. Fires eventually gutted the building but did minimal structural damage. It sat empty for many years, housing the occasional squatter.

The MPD seized Ol' Federal during Project Reclamation and evicted squatters from it and the surrounding buildings. It is now used for administrative purposes.

Condition

Though badly damaged, the MPD rennovated much the interior, boarding up blackened windows, reinforcing supports, and laying new floors using scrap materials in portions of the building. While still far from its former glory and a third of building still remains ruined, Ol' Federal is one of the most impressive reclamation projects in Greater Rivertown.

The tower, which stands nine stories from street level, gives excellent views of the surrounding area. Shielded snipers stay in the tower around the clock, sounding an alarm if they see any suspicious behavior in the area. They routinely fire warning shots at scavengers who stray into their field of vision, with theirs shots sometimes finding their mark.

Inhabitants

The building houses a number of permanent administrative staff as well as provides group sleeping quarters for guards on rotation. It also rents out permanent lockers for guards without an official place of residence.

Scavengers in Rivertown Central learn to avoid the blocks surrounding Ol' Federal due to the aggressive policing of the area. In addition to the snipers, squads perform random sweeps of the adjacent buildings multiple times daily, clearing out any residents with murderous force.

Contents

As the administrative center for the MPD, they have acquired a good deal of furniture and have reconstructed a series of highly functional office spaces. The first key department run entirely at Ol' Federal is Inventory, where clerks track supplies and the movement of goods between MPD warehouses. The basement of Ol' Federal serves as a warehouse for rarities such as expensive liquors, cigars, and other luxury items that are generally the sole property of the Four Families and their closest constituents. Communication links between the many warehouses and the central record keeping Inventory Department is poor at best making precise inventory control an impossibility, a fact many clerks and warehouse workers exploit as a fringe benefit.

The second key department is Promotions, the branch that counts official commendations (know as feathers) received for each guard in the MPD, which in turn impacts their renumeration level as well as possibility for advancement through the MPD ranks. In practice the MPD hierarchy promotes whomever they wish regardless, simply fudging the books as necessary; however commendations have a real impact on renumeration, and individual guards are charged with keeping track of their own commendations and can face punishment for wayward record keeping, and expulsion or execution for deliberately falsifying records.

General accounting is the final and largest department, which tracks the finances of each Rivertown citizen including all deposits and withdrawals from their account. As with promotions, citizens (including guards) are responsible for keeping a legitimate record of their own, which must be reconciled with the accounting staff at Ol' Federal annually. Units of credit, also known as notes, are accrued monthly and can be used for bartering purposes with the staff at Ol' Federal determining the suggested exchange rates for common items.

Thought unknown to nearly all citizens besides the workers at Ol' Federal, the building has an operational bank of computers which are networked to terminals at the other headquarters. This makes each department much more accurate than the paper-based system of notes it purports to use.