Litharge
Litharge is the capital city of Glisal II, the capital planet of the Celestine Ascendancy.
Fifty billion people live on the densely urban planet of Glisal II, the capital homeworld of the Celestine Ascendency. 72% of the population is composed of the Ascendancy's four dominant races: W'hoorn, Nath-el, Shen, and Tukkav. The other 28% of the population is a mixture of non-Ascendancy races.
Massive cities sprawl across most of Glisal II's continents, and pollution clouds the atmosphere. Towering skyscrapers soar high above smog-choked urban valleys.
The planet itself is of Earth-standard gravity and boasts a ring system similar to Saturn's which visibly takes up half the sky, even during the day. The planet also boasts platinum-rich double moons, which are a major source of wealth for the Ascendancy. Glisal II's ecology has been struggling against the burgeoning load of its population and the devastation of climate change for decades, and there are water and air filtration plants lining the coastlines of many continents. Despite all these troubles, the thick atmosphere and the glittering ring system of ice and dust that loops the planet gives Glisal II some of the most spectacular sunsets in the galaxy.
The Slab is an enormous platform that defines the 'surface' of Litharge, encircling many buildings and serving as the base for others, with huge foundations that extend down through the miles of buildings between the surface and natural ground level. It's an amalgamated framework that encases infrastructure like power, water, waste, and air filtration, and permits travel over its surface. Anything above the Slab is prime real estate: the Singing Citadel exists entirely above the Slab, as do the most prosperous businesses. Below the Slab the city is a perpetual dusky haze of artificial lighting, holo-projections, ad signs, vehicle headlights, and so on. Air pollution exists on the surface but tends to be worse below the Slab, getting worse towards the bottom. ("Slab" is rumoured to stand for Stabilised Logistics Amalgamation Bridgework, but this is a retrofitted acronym.)
Colors: Blue, gold, white
Litharge
The capital. A smog-choked, sprawling megalopolis on the shores of the Glissalian ocean. This location has been used for urban development for thousands of years now, and though the city appears to be built on high bluffs above the sea, these outcroppings are actually the compacted ruins of previous versions of Litharge. There are so many compressed layers of city-strata beneath Litharge, urban archaeologists use it to date historical events.
Litharge is:
- Vast, sprawling
- Vertical almost as much as horizontal
- Busy and bustling
- Socio-economically divided
- High-tech but industrial, polluted and grimy (beneath the idyllic facade)
- Dystopian, but not oppressively so
- Unforgiving, even unethical, but not insidious or 'evil'
- Full of opportunities
- Future-focused, less reverent of the past
- Exemplary of technology causing problems as well as solving them
The Upper City
The Singing Citadel
The Singing Citadel is a district of Litharge, named for the sound of the wind that whistles like a chorus of voices through the canyons between the forest of skyscrapers. The first impression a visitor would have of the Citadel is that it is tall. So tall, in fact, that the ground is often difficult to see, choked as the urban canyons are by smog and pollution. Skyways connect the towers like glittering threads, and personal hover vehicles crowd the sky. Many of the skyscrapers are topped with domed observatories through which the residents can observe the planet's magnificent rings, sunsets and twin moons. The Singing Citadel is the richest and most elite district of Litharge, representing the pinnacle of success for the sprawling and ancient city. Much of its grandeur has been much bolstered by the wealth of the Celestine Ascendancy, and embassies for its four dominant races are located here. Residents of the Citadel are concerned with pleasure, and expensive luxuries of every stripe are available, from high-end shops to full-immersion holographic simulators.
Notable places in the Singing Citadel include:
White Tower of the Paragons of Virtue - These elegant concubines are polymaths trained in multiple fields: conversationalists, bodyguards, trainers. They strive to practise perfection in all fields: appearance, movement, every spoken word. No 'prostitute' stigma against them: their company is highly respectable, though they may engage in sex with clients (and they're incredibly good at it). Full name is Paragons of Virtue of the Most Noble Courtesan Order of Aesthetic Perfection in All Forms Earthly and Celestial.
The Fashion District - Dynasty of Ghidda and Manifest Grace are two major, rival fashion houses in the Singing Citadel. They have very different approaches to style as embodying Platonic beauty and therefore universal (fashion as art) vs style reflecting the spirit of the times and evolving from practicality (fashion as function, ties to social analytics/trend forecasting).
Rejuvenation Row - Spa resorts and clinics. Medical surgeries. Beauty procedures. 'Rejuvenation' facilities that offer services from eye colour changes, to skin grafts/organ replacement/hormone therapies using your own cloned tissue, to arrested senescence (halted aging, biological immortality). Cybernetic implants, body part replacement. Neural implants. Neural tinkering like rewriting childhood memories, reliving traumatic experiences to do them 'better', this area has them all.
Institute of Gastronomic Empiricism - A renowned culinary institute run by a Shen family dynasty. Their stated mission is pursuit of enlightenment through food. Somewhat hedonistic but more spiritual/philosophical. Founded upon science e.g. molecular gastronomy, analysing flavour molecules, taste receptors and brain scans. The institute attracts gastronomic philosophers and is financed through restaurants, sale or licensing of research, and wealthy patrons. Their HQ is based in the Singing Citadel but sends research teams to new worlds to discover new flavors.
Banquets of the Culinary Dramaturges - In the Citadel's fine dining district. Artists stage meals as shows. Think: listening to ocean sounds while eating a course of seafood. Molecular gastronomy meets avant garde performance art with full audience involvement.
The Opera Sensorium - A holo-opera with full sensory immersion. Sound, scents, visuals. It's the type of place where you'd need to book a ticket a year in advance unless you were mega-rich.
The Promenade
The Promenade is a stretch of the Slab on the surface running parallel to the Singing Citadel, with the Arcoplex at one end and the Space Elevator at the other. It is a rare open space in a city where public parks are a foreign concept. The beauty of the Citadel and the ice rings in the sky above make for picturesque scenery, if you ignore the pollution, cityscape, and heavy traffic. Many vendors and performers set up shop along this stretch of the Slab. It's a place to see and be seen.
The Space Elevator
This superfreighter elevator connects the spaceport on the western side of the city to the Glisal Orbital Synergy Halo just beyond the planet's atmosphere.
Raphite Towers
A neighborhood in the vicinity of the Singing Citadel, this mainly residential area of densely packed supertall skyscrapers and apartment buildings is one of the rare middle class areas in Litharge. For a decent monthly rent, an apartment here comes with the luxury of a few square meters of space: perhaps a living room, a studio, or a kitchen. (The cheaper option is a sleepbox in a capsule apartment building, but those mostly occupy cheaper real estate.) The most newly constructed buildings of Raphite Towers crest the surface, built right on top of many more progressively older buildings which descend below the Slab. A network of skybridges, walkways, lifts, and transit systems interconnects this district.
Power, plumbing, and air filtration are the norm in apartments here. Residents pay a fee to collectively contract the services of private security firms. Some take self-defense into their own hands, but Raphite Towers is generally not home to those who openly defy the law. Landlords must have sharp wits to avoid hostile acquisition of their building by wealthy investors eager to mass evict and redevelop. Street punks prowl the lower levels. Advertising is everywhere, targeting residents with money to spend but not enough to command immunity. Some small businesses operate in this area: those operating out of apartments, as well as bars, food vendors, transportation.
Some notable buildings in Raphite towers are:
The Skyspire - a W'hoorn apartment building.
The Ring and Crescent - a Shen apartment building comprised of two towers side by side.
Hotel Ukhiad - a Shen apartment building.
The Phalanstery - Nath-el apartments. Row of buildings purchased and fused/grafted together by additional construction. Communal dwelling for Nath-el who can't find a place in the Hives.
Braktul Block - a Tukkav apartment building.
The Corporate Territories
A district of skyscrapers, office buildings, and other facilities that support the businesses of Litharge. Herds of uniform-clad salaried employees are a common sight, even post-revolution.
Each race of the Ascendancy is represented by at least one major business in this area: Shen Great Families with dynastic real estate and interstellar transport empires, W'hoorn military subsidiaries performing weapons and shielding R&D, Tukkav magnates and conglomerates operating shipyards, and Nath-el hives focused on AI development. The skyline is a showcase of racial architecture, with influences intermingling over the centuries. Several building lobbies are accessible, but beyond that one must have authorisation to gain lift access.
This region also features hotels, data facilities, restaurants and corp bars, some manufacturing, and maintenance infrastructure. It constantly bustles with busy skylanes of hover transports, pedestrians, and jetpack couriers coming and going from touchdown pads.
The Arcoplex
Built on the site of a failed arcology project, the Arcoplex developers converted the unfinished arcology framework into an enormous shopping complex. Visible on the surface skyline where a massive illuminated pyramid frame stands apart from the surrounding skyscrapers, the Arcoplex continues down through the Slab, with lifts and moving walkways conveying patrons up and down many dozens of floors. Because drone delivery and the efficiency of spime tracking and logistics means department stores are an obsolete loop between manufacturer and end consumer, the Arcoplex instead features small businesses, specialised outlets, artisan vendors, food, and services. Advertising was once intense, but since the Angel's revolution the Arcoplex has fallen somewhat into disrepair - with many empty shopfronts. Vestigial arcology elements stand out within: geodesic design, air recycling, and repurposed living quarters.
The Undercity
The undercity is the sprawling region far below the Slab, beneath Raphite Towers, where the common folk live. It exists in perpetual twilight lit by street lights and neon signs. Street punks, crime, sleaze, dark dealings, and shadowy alleyways are common, but it's not all bad, and there are many legitimate businesses, bars, clubs, street food vendors, and small business enterprises that would be unable to thrive in the shark-eat-dog Corporate Territories.
The Industrial Zone
Development in Litharge is far from organised, but a high concentration of industrial facilities, factories, and warehouses define this region below the Slab. Power plants, warehouses, waste management, refineries, automated manufacturing, and rare element synthesis facilities fill this region. A lot of the city's pollution comes from here.
Protein fields
Most food in Litharge is manufactured from vat-grown protein. It's the most efficient and sustainable way. Raising livestock is completely impractical to feed a planet of 50 billion people and hydroponic farming is limited to luxuries.
- Algal cultivars are used for many protein, fats, and flours.
- Mycoprotein (fungus) is used for most 'meat'. It's processed, flavours are added, and it's moulded into the desired texture and shape.
- Algal cultivars and mycoprotein are grown in vats. Keep feeding them nutrients and water and they'll double in volume every few hours. Production facilities are huge.
- Hypermeat (vat-grown meat) exists, but is strangely unpopular. Shen don't eat meat at all, and W'hoorn tend to find it weird and prefer the real thing.
Fullerene forges
Fullerene is the colloquial name for manufacturing plants for molecules for nanomachines (eg. fullerenes and other carbon allotropes). These plants are responsible for a lot of small-particle air pollution, but their impact on the economy means that they somehow get away with it.
Scrapston
A large borough sprawling beneath the bluffs of Litharge proper, on the shores of the ocean. Primarily occupied by poor communities and non-Ascendancy races. Thanks to rising sea levels, this neighborhood was flooded some decades ago, turning its narrow alleyways into a warren of canals. There is a lot of mold thanks to the encroaching water, overcrowding, and lots of homeless people. Despite this, there seems to be a sense of community pride, with small businesses and co-operatives springing up, often based out of shipping containers. Skiffs and makeshift rafts are a primary method of transportation through the canals, for those too poor to afford a hovercraft.
The Subnet
Glisal II is so built up that there is a substantial population of 'off the grid' types living in tunnels, sewers, and habitations beneath the major urban centers. This is referred to, collectively, as the Subnet (so called because it catches anyone who falls through the cracks). Though most of the inhabitants are poor, the almost total absence of the law means certain types of people have been able to acquire power and untracked wealth. This particular subnet is located in the Lithargian bluffs beneath the Singing Citadel, which are actually the ruins of former versions of Litharge. There's also a pretty amazing slushie stand.
The Dregs
Litharge is a city of skyscrapers built on top of older skyscrapers, all the way down. The Dregs lurk at the bottom. They comprise the city's oldest districts, its slums. The ground underfoot is the collapsed, compacted rubble of buildings toppled in controlled demolition, made impractical to remove by urban density. Overhead is a webwork of foundation piles supporting buildings up above, and the Slab many miles overhead. This far down there are no air currents or reliable filtration to stir the air pollution, so the smog is a perpetual haze, making goggles and a respirator necessary attire. Some regions of the Dregs suffer from runoff and industrial waste dumping, but not so badly as the Subnet. Entire buildings are rumoured to exist completely isolated within the rubble layer, forgotten in the march of development, still running on self-sustaining closed systems, but their integrated hardware/software would require techno-archaeologists to decipher.
The Dregs are a place for those with nowhere better to go, but who haven't yet fallen between the cracks to end up in the Subnet: the working poor, failed entrepreneurs and hustlers, fringe-dwellers, addicts. They're also an excellent place to operate for anyone who doesn't want their business known: the criminal element, smugglers, dealers, data slicers, corps running unsanctioned business.
Dreg End Beach
Where the garbage and refuse of Litharge spills down to the Glisalian Ocean, the Dreg's End Beach curves along the footprint of the Dregs for as far as the eye can see, home to vermin, skulking trash crabs, and scavenging fishhook gulls.
Hyndoh Prison
Many cities have a 'bad part of town' - on Glisal II, Hyndoh Prison is often referred to as the bad part of the planet. More of an enclosed and fortified city than a prison, this gulag was built by the W'hoorn and is filled with the worst the Ascendency has to offer. Located on an island in the middle of a highly acidic inland sea. Tamiko Lane was briefly interred here before her execution.