[GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 26 [CTY] What's the population of Vagrants and Squatters in YOU-Topia?

Well now, those are two very different things, now aren't they?

Vagrants, homeless people who live on the street in terrible conditions and have no real building to call home, form about 1% of the city's population. (comparable to modern new york, which has a lot more homeless than any other city in the US). That's a lot of people, but it pales in comparison to the squatters.

Squatters are people living in a building they don't have any legal rights to. Large portions of the city have been taken over by squatters, who move into any building that isn't locked down, locked up, and guarded. Such locations support whole communities, and these communities are among the poorest in the city, and generally run and managed by people other than the official government. Sometimes a owner has been able to run gangs demanding protection money to gain a form of rent without any of the legal hassle. Other times the area is run by traditional crooks. Somewhere between 8% and 12% of the city's population lives in such communities.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

Sorry about the delay.
The submarine dock I could see as either part of the underside of the city or as a seperate facility built in the trench.

Question 44 The Old Ways
Did the smugglers use a base in the trench or dock with underside of the city? What's the base like?

Answer 44 [SUB] - Old Ways Depot Garnet|Heroic|Four-08
In the trench below 'the N' lies Submarine Depot Heroic, on the old Garnet smuggling route, at a depth of 4,080 metres- thus, Garnet|Heroic|Four-08. The dock on the underside of the island, at 500 meters and when accessible by smugglers, is Garnet|Heroic|Zero-50.

Four-08 was built two centuries ago and has been bombed, rebuilt, decommissioned, recommissioned, renovated, expanded, interdicted and reclaimed a number of times in its history. And having lay under a city of 11 million for most of that history, the once clean and precise military design is silted over by a layer of jetsam, effluvium and detritus.

It has 7 main modules connected by a network of tunnels, for command and staff living quarters, power, food and water production, munitions store and 3 cargo sub docking/loading facilities. These are surrounded by a few dozen other building modules of various sizes and states of operability, used for lookout, defense, maintenance, oil storage, servicing smaller vessels, hiding contraband and also just for hiding out in. The base is built halfway up the wall of the trench with 100 to 200 metres clearance below it and a similar distance to the lip of the trench.

Currently it is being used by two groups. First is The Resistance Fleet, the smuggling cartel comprised of remnants of the DGC military, who one would think must be paying bribes to the right people to be able to operate despite scrutiny from C-Po or the Coast Guard. The second is Project 2109, an off-book NeuroTech research unit who seem to want to avoid attention and are in fact paying a nice sum of money to TRF to keep them operating as cover for the unit's comings and goings.

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Question 50 [SUB][NTC]- NeuroTech's Project 2109
What is Project 2109 researching in commandeered submarine depot modules beneath the city? Are they avoiding scrutiny for possible PARADIGM violations or is it something else?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Example of post format:

Answer 47 [CTY]
His real name is Cornelius Ngo, but everyone just calls him Neo for some reason.

Question 48 [CTY]
What currencies do you need in the city?

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 47 [CTY] What is The Neon Neo?
Question 48 [CTY/SET] What currencies do you need in the city? What other major currencies are there?

Very clever. You have the patience of a very cunning ambush predator.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 47 [CTY] What is The Neon Neo?

Answer 47 [CTY][LOC] - The Neon Neo
The Neon Neo is a fancy night club and betting hall for the nightly water races that are run out of the decidedly-unfancy Port N.

The club building itself is suspended from a dockside crane that parks it atop a stack of cargo containers during the day. At dusk, the club is lowered onto the tarmac for a couple of hours allowing punters to enter. When the racing starts to get serious, the crane swings the multi-level building out over the water of the port to get a clear vantage of the on-water action. At this point, eviction of rowdy troublemakers becomes more interesting.

The water racing consists of all kinds of competition. There are jet sleds, flyboards, power foils and rocket boats, racing through obstacle courses, out to the deep ocean, around the OTEC platforms or around the whole island. There are straight up races and those with more active interference from other contestants. There's even a drone pursuit race, where competitors must outrun airborne drones carrying limpet bombs that they try to tag the boats with.

Even if you're not into the racing, there's a lot that goes on there. Many patrons enjoy the privacy and security given by the club's unique location, so a lot of meetings between cartel types and corporate types occur here. And if you want the low-down on what's going down, don't ask Cornelius the bartender. He knows how to keep a secret.

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Question 51 [CTY]- City Council
Who is in charge of the city council? And who is most likely to be pulling their strings?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 51.1 [CTY]- City Council Composition
In YOU-Topia, in order to vote, you need to hold a Top-Level Lot Lease (T3L). This entitles you to vote in one of the seventy-one boroughs where the lot is located. Unleased lots are considered held by NeuroCorp. Boroughs are generally divided on lines of land use.

Each borough elects two councilmembers, a primary and an alternate. In the event the primary is incapacitated, the alternate is seated until an election can be held. Sometimes boroughs elect an alternate of a different political alignment than the primary. This can make things very interesting when an important vote comes up.

With a very small number of voters in each borough, councilmembers are usually held to account by voters. Many are often residents of YOU-Topia themselves, and are unlikely to be in favor short-term gains. There have been high-profile cases of corruption, usually with bribes in the billions.

The boroughs and T3Ls were frozen for 99 years, after weeks of non-stop negotiation. This has resulted in many problems, including some boroughs effectively controlled by one company, and some single family homes having fewer than one vote between them. The 99 year agreement is going to lapse very soon...

Does that contradict what was said before, about it being internationally appointed?

Originally Posted by ericthered

Youtopia is technically a territory of the Union of Argalese Islands, but as the Argalese don't grant citizenship to immigrants, rule is generally through international treaties the "home nations" of the multi-generational immigrants make with the UAI. Day to day rule is by an appointed council worked out internationally. Which is to say the inhabitants have only indirect say in who rules them and their ability to influence it is tied to the origin of their great-grandparents and political winds in a country they don't live in.

[Daigoro]

Actually, I was trying to ask about the person of the mayor/governor/provost/superintendent/head honcho.

Maybe your answer could be incorporated somehow? Is there a second layer of governance? A citizen-lease holders' advocacy panel? A bicameral system? Is that part of NeuroCorp corporate governance, as shareholders, instead of the nationally imposed governance?

[TGLS]

I am working on a new 51.

[Daigoro]

Question 22 [CTY][Name 10] Name and describe 10 different districts or locales in the city. [Two more]

Answer 22.9 [CTY][CORP] - NeuroCorp Plaza
Nicknamed 'The Black Tulip', the 630 metre NeuroCorp Plaza serves as the world headquarters for the corporation. It is an architectural paradox of simultaneous elegance and brutalist ugliness. Raw slabs of matt black gyre-crete form the blank windowless edifice of each of four lobes of a pointed quatrefoil that swirls up in a smooth spiral for eighty-eight floors. Thin needle projections continue each lobe's profile to their apex as the top twelve floors are magnetically suspended over a 30 metre gap, the building's peak gently revolving mid-air and looking like a pistol bullet fired from a gun barrel.

Below the surface, there are 20 sub-basements as well as two cargo, four personnel and an executive elevator that all descend 500 metres from level B5 to a large submarine dock on the underside of the island. The plaza is located in the bottom-right quarter of the N, taking over the location of the original constructor transmission tower, and sits on a traffic island in the centre of nested rings of elevated expressway. Off-ramps from the expressway lead directly to the plaza's basement parking. Otherwise access is via suspended monorail, which passes through the building's 10th floor, or quad rotor, to bays on the 30th and 60th floors or to the 88th floor landing pad.

The top 12 floors are effectively the private citadel of the reclusive CEO, Blake Musa ver IX, and his family. The corporation's boardroom fills the entire 87th floor, with the 88th floor being for utilities, security and support for the rooftop sculpture garden, executive recreation area and helipad.

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Question 52 [CORP] - Blake Musa ver IX
52.1 How long has Blake Musa been in charge, as ver IX and in his earlier incarnations?
52.2 What were his earlier versions and what happened to them?
52.3 What else do we know about Blake Musa?
52.4 What do we know about the rest of his family?

[TGLS]

Question 51 [CTY] – Key factions in the Transitional Authority for YOU-Topia
Part 0 + 1/3

Introduction
After the Crisis of ’38 (approximately 72 years ago), the International Commission for YOU-Topia was created to manage the city. This was originally created to clamp down on smuggling operations from the city, curb abuses by NeuroCorp, and prepare the city for self-government. In these respects, the International Commission is largely a failure. On the other hand, NeuroCorp executives can’t publicly murder people anymore, so that’s a plus.
There are three centers of power under the banner of the Transitional Authority for YOU-Topia:

• The International Commission, which represents the interested parties and controls the structure of government
• The Office of the Special Representative, appointed by the International Commission to handle day-to-day governance.
• And the Leaseholder’s Assembly, elected by leaseholders for three-year terms. Theoretically, they make the law. In practice, the special representative can simply rule by decree.

The International Commission
The international commission is the font of all authority in YOU-Topia. They establish the courts, ensure the government abides by international treaties (such as the PARADIGM Treaty), handles impeachment proceedings and can veto laws. The interested parties can appoint and remove representatives freely but interested parties can only be added through unanimous decision.
There are five major factions and a major non-faction on the International Commission:
The Cykeans view themselves as the inheritors of the gradualist change that began before the Master Wars, and promote multilateral cooperation, free trade, open borders, and public consultation. They support the altruism of the Humanitarians and are often the reluctant allies of the Securities. They oppose the nationalism of the Integralists and the anti-capitalism of the Neo-Mutualists. Realists in this faction disapprove of anti-smuggling measures to apply pressure to their Integralist opponents. If they had their way, the leaseholders would become freeholders and YOU-Topia would govern itself.

The Integrals were formed out of the reaction to the rising tide of transnational corporate power and globalization following the Master Wars. They aren’t automatically opposed to megacorporations; they favor national independence, protectionism, border security, and majoritarian rule. Strangely, they see little contradiction between opposing foreign interference and supporting foreign Integral groups. They often work with the Neo-Mutualists (who oppose the corporate world system) and the Humanitarians (they aren’t heartless and view the decay in YOU-Topia as a symptom of globalization). They oppose the Cykeans for their globalism and the Securities for supporting NeuroCorp. One of their chief supporters is the Union of Argalese Islands. If they had their way, the UAI would annex the city and levy heavy taxes on the non-citizen population.

The Humanitarians are perhaps the most straightforward of the factions; they simply want to improve lives of everyone living in YOU-Topia. This can take a variety of forms, from curbing corruption, providing vaccination and basic health care, literacy programs, and sometimes creating public housing and basic income programs. Sometimes this means direct action, stamping out crime or even going after out of control businesses. They are supported by most other factions to some degree or another, though the Securities are often hesitant when they go after large corporate abuses (and create higher taxes to pay for these programs) and some radical Neo-Mutualists oppose their efforts out of belief in accelerationism.

The Securities may well be the longest enduring international power bloc in the world. Sure, they have seen lots of change over the years; one buys another, a big non-security buys a security, and the names change, new ones arise by building cities or winning wars, others crumble through war and climate change. On the other hand, the Old Seven have endured everything over the last two hundred years. The Securities have maybe two key goals: maintain the mix of concessions and treaties that allow them to operate as if they were the government (or at least with minimal oversight), and to gain more concessions if possible. The Securities have had an agreement for the past hundred and sixty-two years to treat and attack on one of them as an attack on all. For this reason, the Crisis of ’38 was only settled after the Integrals threatened to completely destroy YOU-Topia. If they had their way, YOU-Topia would be restored to its pre-crisis state.

The Neo-Mutualists are the newest faction on the block, with the first such government arising about fifty years ago. Claiming descent from the revolutionaries of the Master Wars (if not literally then through a similar intellectual background), the Neo-Mutualists assert that the only solution to the rising power of transnational corporations is to completely crush the power of capital. Unlike their antecedents, who were content using market forces to do away with capital, the Neo-Mutualists use a mix of heavy taxation, regulation, surveillance and occasional violence to corrode the capital class. This has become moderately popular with some Integral states that fear their national corporations may become uncontrollable. There is a degree of ideological diversity amongst the Neo-Mutualists, including the Public Security model (which gives every citizen a non-transferrable share) and the ServiTopians (who are among the most strongly anti-PARADIGM). If they had their way, neighborhoods would be reorganized into public meetings, corporate assets would be seized and perhaps a sizable portion of the executive class would be hanging from street lamps.a

The Pragmatics are an important non-faction. This loosely defined group is composed of interested parties with no real ideological motivations, just pure realpolitik. They seek to advance their own agendas within the city and occasionally peddle influence to advance agendas outside of the city. Their willingness to make self-interested deals is probably one of the few things that keeps the Commission from getting deadlocking into opposing political camps.

Question 53 [CTY/SET][Name 10] Who are some specific interested parties? What faction do they belong to, and how do they differ from the "party line"? [ideas: International Office for Stateless Persons, National Government with a large migrant population, a corporation, a once powerful nation that trades deals to keep its seat, etc.]
Question 54 [CTY/SET]What was the Crisis of '38?
Question 55 [SET] How were the Integrals planning on destroying YOU-Topia?
Question 56 [CORP/SET] When was NeuroCorp added to The Securities? Was it shortly after they built YOU-Topia, or did it take a long time?
Question 57 [SET] What is the most powerful Neo-Mutualist state? How did Neo-Mutualists rise to power there? Are they outsiders on the international scene or are they better integrated?
Question 58 [SET] Does smuggling put a meaningful amount of stress on the Union of Argalese Islands?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Introduction
After the Crisis of ’38 (approximately 72 years ago)...

You wouldn't happen to be keeping track of a timeline, would you?
I can start putting one together, but I don't want to duplicate work if someone's already done it.