High Steelforge

Of the many vast arcologies scattered across colonized space, none approach the all-encompassing scale of High Steelforge, a city which covers a full hemisphere of its planet in a dense urban construct in many places more than a kilometer deep. It is by far the most populous settlement in Elyrion, and its economic and political influence are felt throughout the Nova Compact and beyond. From space, the planet's populated hemisphere has the appearance of a colossal spiral of glass, steel and concrete. The center of the city is a space elevator, one of the few known to be in existence, connecting the planet to its amenably positioned moon, now known as the Grayport, which was largely hollowed out and converted into a vast spaceport by the UCS engineers who built the city.

Key Metrics

Population: 24,512,351,942,675

Surface Area: 401.3 million square kilometers (of which approximately 49.7% is densely populated)

GDP: 523.25 billion gigawatts

Day Length: 13 standard hours.

Average Surface Gravity: 8.13 m/s^2

Government and Major Institutions

High Steelforge is governed by the High Steelforge Federal Authority, a technocratic republic. All government officials, both appointed and elected, must be graduates of the Civics Academy, a selective and prestigious graduate institute offering a five-year course of study, or have passed the Federal Service Examination, a grueling test of one's knowledge of history, public policy, and the details of High Steelforge's government, economy, and infrastructure. Though frequently derided as undemocratic, the Authority maintains (with some credibility) that this intensive selection process is essential to maintaining a city whose very existence is dependent on the long-term management of complex infrastructure. While highly selective and often inflexible, the Federal Authority has had notable success in maintaining the planet's habitability despite its vast population and industry, as well as maintaining the firm grip of the law on almost all areas and levels of the city.

Local administration is divided into districts, which roughly follow the city's radial organization. Each district maintains local transportation networks, education, and local wastewater and exhaust-air handling. Each district elects a local Federal Council to oversee and manage its affairs, and to represent its interests within the Authority's labyrinthine bureaucracy. In addition to districts of the city proper, permanently inhabited areas of the Grayport and other major installations throughout the system also have local council representation. Offworld and extrasolar colonies governed by the Federal Authority typically have far less stringent requirements for participation in government. Service in offworld administrations is a popular path into politics for those without the means to attend the Civics Academy or study for the Service Exams, and the politics of these possessions is typically far more dynamic and lively than those of Steelforge itself.

High Steelforge also plays host to a large number of other important institutions which are highly active in local affairs.

Concord Industries is headquartered in the North Central district, and directly or indirectly owns large stakes in a significant fraction of the planet's industrial and commercial endeavors. Many of its flagship businesses, including Concord Starflight, Concord Star Lines, and Concord Electrics, center much of their production and activity in High Steelforge's vast factories and starport facilities.

The Voidswright's Guild's second largest chapter is based in Grayport, where local ship-makers and mechanics claim membership. The Guild's famous rivalry with Concord Starflight plays out most dramatically in the fearsome battles over ship construction and repair contracts within Grayport, and the myriad suppliers which serve the starship industry have long since learned to navigate the turbulent relationship between the two titans of the ship-building world.

Many academic institutions of High Steelforge were part of the original coalition which grew into the Academia Arcanos, and links between local academics and the Academia itself are strong, with many universities granting Academia-recognized degrees. For the large number of students seeking an Academia education, High Steelforge universities are often their second choice following the Academia itself.

Topography and Infrastructure

The city of High Steelforge proper is built on a vast spiral radiating outwards from the base of the Grayport Spire, the space elevator connecting the world to its hollow moon. Radiating outwards in the eight cardinal directions (north, northwest, west, et cetera) are the Radia lines, maglev rail arteries which ferry passengers and goods to and from the Spire. At fifteen degree increments, a maglev line perpendicular to the Radia spurs intersects them, tracing out a circle centered on the Spire. Thus, the innermost perpendicular line traces out a circle 15 degrees from the Spire, the second at 30, the third at 45, and so on, with the larges circle circumnavigating the planet from pole to pole. Eight additional Radia spurs originate at the 45 degree mark, each new line exactly halfway between two of the lines originating at the center (thus going north-northwest, west-northwest, south-southwest, et cetera). These radiating maglev lines naturally trace out planetary regions, which serve as governing districts. Each district is centered on a Radia line's intersection with a circular line.

The urban structure varies in depth - outlying regions look very much like conventional cities, while near the Spire the urban structure extends several kilometers down, from the highly elevated streets down to the bedrock. Nearly every layer is inhabited; some of the taller skyscrapers boast over five hundred continuous stories between their spires high in the atmosphere and their bases deep beneath the surface. Given the vast network of streets, maintenance corridors, and forgotten tunnels that exist within the layered arcology of High Steelforge, it is impossible for law enforcement to effectively patrol all inhabited areas. The largely ungoverned areas away from main streets and operational facilities is known as the backstreets, and hosts an underworld of criminals, beggars, and social undesirables who eke out a living outside the city's formal economy.

The city's large-scale structures are all radially symmetric around the Spire. Power generating stations, major water purifiers, and other such utilities are regularly positioned, as are the larger pipes and cables which convey water, air, and electricity around the planet. However, this symmetry is not enforced and the level of non-major streets and buildings, so it is still all too easy to become lost, especially in the lower levels of the city where the sky is not visible.

The economic lifeblood of the city is its maglev rail system and the Spire to which they lead. Passenger service is famous for operating to the second, with trains arriving at Radia stations every two hours. Passenger services operate at just over 1 kilometer per second, making extensive planetary journeys relatively fast. Though these services could in theory be beat by sub-orbital flight, supersonic travel through the atmosphere is tightly regulated to limit the impact of sonic booms. Local air taxis and other airborne vehicles are common, but heavy lift vehicles and long-range passenger transports are vanishingly rare, the former used only to move the bulkiest and most unwieldy of payloads, and the latter only serving the very rich and well-connected who can afford streamlined low-boom air and space craft. The standard gauge of rail is 2m, with railcars wider than 5m and taller than 10m prohibited due to the limitations of the tunnels through which the lines run for practically their entire extent. Cargo services are far less regimented than passenger, with the schedules for high-speed and regional freight being dynamically set by complex algorithms run by the rail control authority.

The Spire is one of the great engineering marvels of the galaxy. It is a circular tower, 5.7 kilometers in diameter, which extends from the planet's surface to its moon in geostationary orbit, spanning a length of 20,800 kilometers. It contains 1020 square tunnels of 160 meters to a side through which bundles of up to 400 standard shipping containers are propelled at 416m/s, with average trip times of about 14 hours. On average, 61 billion kilograms pass through the Spire every second. The use of pseudo-gravity allows passenger trains to run at full speed along the exterior of the Spire; this allows journeys between surface and Grayport of just under 7 hours. The view from such trains is extraordinary, although several carriages on each trip keep their windows opaque to avert the nausea that results from the difference between the orientation of the outside and the direction of apparent gravity within the car. The area extending tens of kilometers in every direction from the planetside base of the spire is given over to the freight yards which process the vast throughput. This yard also doubles as the primary operating yard for high-speed passenger services. At the edge of the yard is Grand Central Station, a vast passenger concourse where every planetary Radia service terminates and from which trains continue either around the planet or up the Spire.

In addition to the agricultural hemisphere, much of the food, clean water, and oxygen used by the city is produced by vast algae cultivation lakes below the city's surface.

Climate and Ecology

With practically all of the planet's surface either buried deep beneath the city's foundation or intensively managed for agricultural or industrial purposes, the planet's climate is entirely managed by bureaus of the Federal Authority. The reflectivity of buildings and surfaces across the planet is carefully managed to ensure mild wind at the surface, while rain, seeded by the strategic release of water vapor and the management of atmospheric particles, is often employed to aid in both street cleaning and the transport of water around the planet.

Thanks to hanging gardens, specially chosen materials, and careful management, High Steelforge's biosphere is surprisingly rich. Many small rodent-like creatures populate the lower streets, while various avian species flit through the air between skyscrapers, herded away from air traffic by audio and visual guides. In addition to making life in an endless city far more tolerable, these animals help with the management and circulation of organic material that might otherwise require manual intervention to prevent sanitary hazards. A similarly closely managed ecosystem exists on the planet's agricultural hemisphere, which significantly cuts down the chemical intervention required for the healthy and vigorous growth of the plants and fungi which feed the people and provide a great deal of industrial feedstock.

In addition to the carefully managed urban and agricultural ecosystem, large domes within the city's lower levels preserve sections what is believed to have been the planet's original biosphere. With artificial skies and an almost total absence of visible development, these domes are popular vacation destinations, and many have been used to house complex ecological experiments that would be impossible without the close monitoring and control provided by the dome environment. In fact, the practices used to manage the urban and agricultural ecosystems were originally developed by studies involving the planet's domes.