10-16-2015, 11:39 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-17-2015, 03:55 PM by RedDingo777.)
Here is a rough draft for the city description. I think this will be an introductory passage.
I want to go into more depth about the Sectors, their layout, and the corresponding Slums. I'm thinking Sector 8 is would have a location like Time Square. Sector 1 would be industrial and manufacturing.
Midgar
Overview
Midgar is a technological metropolis and the current center of civilization in Gaia. The city is composed of nine sectors with one at the center surrounded by the other eight radiating outward all on an enormous elevated platform called the Plate. Each sector is supported by pillars and a Mako reactor. Circling the entire city is the Wall. Some of the populous has taken to calling the Midgar the Big Pizza due to its resemblance to the eponymous dish. Detractors, however, liken it to a rotten pizza; for though the city is a marvel of technology, magitek and engineering, it is plagued with social and ecological issues. The populace is heavily divided by class as only the elite and higher ranking employees of Shin-Ra can afford to live on the Plate. The working class, the infirm, and the poor are relegated to the land beneath the Plate known as the Slums. While both the Slums and the Plate are powered by the Mako reactors, pollution and Lifestream drain has taken a heavy toll on the land around the city. Compounded with Shin-Ra’s aggressive militaristic policies, Midgar is seen as a den of inequality in which the privileged few live at the expense of not only the oppressed many but the Planet herself.
Though construction on the city began in 1976 AC, it was first conceived of by Dreyfus Shinra the founder and CEO of Shin-Ra Corp as well as the inventor of Mako powered technology. He first presented his ideas for an elevated radial city powered by Mako reactors at a convention in the Golden Saucer the year of 1962 AC. Dreyfus envisioned it to be a utopian capital of Humekind civilization in which the growth of industry, technology, and culture was promoted by the meeting of minds in an ergonomically planned urban community.
Despite his enthusiasm and the company’s monopoly of the energy industry, his investors and fellow business moguls remained cautiously skeptical. Perhaps, it was for this reason that Dreyfus began expanding Shin-Ra beyond the bounds of an electric company into other fields in order to prove the viability of his project. Sadly he contracted Mako poisoning just two years later. Taking the reins from his catatonic father, Arnold Shinra successfully expanded Shin-Ra’s holdings and resources enough to begin construction of the city.
The Upper Plate
The city proper is built on an elevated base called the Upper Plate or the Plate for short. This super structure is a series of interconnected platforms supported by network pillars on the ground level. The Plate serves as not only as the foundations for the numerous buildings and streets but also as a base for a network of sewers and tunnels that carry waste to the Ground level.
The city is divided into 9 Sectors. Around the central district, Sectors 1-8 are arrayed on wedge-shaped divisions of the Upper Plate in clockwise fashion. Each Sector has a Central Pillar that bears the brunt of its weight in addition to its system of support beams.
At key locations at the end of each Sector is one of Shin-Ra’s eight city Mako reactors. Named after each Sector, together the reactors provide power for the entire city. Though they extend to the Ground level in order to tap into the Planet’s Lifestream, entrance to the reactors is only accessible from the Plate. At any given time, at least six of the eight plants are providing power to the rest of the city.
Encircling both the reactors and the Sectors is a protective structure called the Wall. Though all nine Sectors are divided, a mass transit railroad allows the residents to commute between Sectors as well as between the Plate and the Ground levels. A series of highways extends across the Sectors through tunnels in the Wall, allowing transit in and out of the city.
Sector 0 is the central district where Shin-Ra Headquarters stands. Towering over seventy stories high, Shin-Ra HQ is dominates the skyline of Midgar. The building serves as city hall for Midgar’s nominal elected officials and the home office to the whole company. With top grade security, accommodations for all of the heads of the corporation’s divisions, landing pads and its own private Mako reactor, Shin-Ra HQ is essentially a modern age palace complete with a penthouse suite for President Shinra himself.
Authority Figures: Mayor Domino is the duly elected official of the city. However, his power to govern is in name only. In truth the elected officials are figureheads to give civilians some sense of control over their lives. It takes the backing of Shin-Ra to win any sort of election. This veneer is so thin that the offices of the mayor and his cabinet are located in the headquarters of the company itself.
The Slums
Beneath the Plate is the Ground level or the Slums as its residents call it. While the wealthy and Shin-Ra’s VIPs enjoy life in the city proper, the lower class must toil daily amidst the refuse of the former. Day or night, the Slums are shrouded in a constant shadow with only slivers of light reaching surface from between the seams and cracks of the Plate.
The Slums are mainly comprised of shantytowns hastily put together by those who could not afford better. Amidst the heaps are old churches and cottages of towns that had once prospered until their lands were purchased and drained to build the city. Such settlements are mere relics now, their names forgotten buried in history books. Though they are supplied with energy like the rest of the city, their public infrastructure has fallen into disrepair due to neglect. Most streets, power lines, and light fixtures are built and maintained by the Slum residents at their own expense being unable to afford the services of the city. In fact learning to rig engines and cords is among the basic skills taught to children raised in the Slums.
The only facilities that Shin-Ra goes out of its way to repair and maintain are the Ground level train stations. The mass transit system is one of the only means for residents of the Slums to legally enter the city proper. Typically these “slummers” travel to the Plate to work in the factories of city’s industrial districts. There, they work for long hours in a drab and often hazardous environment on the Plate only tiredly shuffle back to their homes below after the end of their shift. The wage they receive is barely enough to get by.
Unfortunately, the slummers have little choice but to endure these conditions. Mako energy has rendered the land beneath Midgar barren. With no means of producing their own sustenance, the city imports food from rural towns like Banora in order to feed the population. In order to afford any marked up goods from the markets of the Upper Plate while being a cheaper alternative to an automated workforce of shindroids, the average slummer is forced to eschew health and comfort as luxuries.
Naturally vice and crime grows in the shadows of poverty and neglect. Amidst the dirt trodden streets of the Slums, some residents turn to theft and con; instead of making an honest living, they take the train to pickpocket or scam men and women on the Plate. Others, however, choose to live off their fellow Slum inhabitants instead of risking arrest on the guarded streets. It is not rare for slummers to return from work to ruined houses where their cloths and other valuables have been stolen and pawned off. With little response from local authorities, slummer neighborhoods are forced to rely on street gangs as form of protection. As often as not, the latter may end exploiting and terrorizing the former.
Prostitution, gambling, drug use, and alcoholism are common place in the Slums. Men and women who have a harder time finding work on the Plate are forced to sell their bodies to make ends meet. The opportunity to win big in games of chance is often more alluring than the hazards of losing what little they have. Intoxication is one of the few reprieves people from all walks of life can find in under the Plate.
If that were not enough, malevolent vermin and hostile creatures infest the Ground level. Some say that the waste of the Mako reactors is to blame for these monstrosities, however none can say for certain.
Authority Figures: Don Corneo is the wealthiest resident on the Ground level. Having accumulated power and influence through criminal activities, he owns many establishments including the infamous Honeybee Inn.
I want to go into more depth about the Sectors, their layout, and the corresponding Slums. I'm thinking Sector 8 is would have a location like Time Square. Sector 1 would be industrial and manufacturing.
Midgar
Overview
Midgar is a technological metropolis and the current center of civilization in Gaia. The city is composed of nine sectors with one at the center surrounded by the other eight radiating outward all on an enormous elevated platform called the Plate. Each sector is supported by pillars and a Mako reactor. Circling the entire city is the Wall. Some of the populous has taken to calling the Midgar the Big Pizza due to its resemblance to the eponymous dish. Detractors, however, liken it to a rotten pizza; for though the city is a marvel of technology, magitek and engineering, it is plagued with social and ecological issues. The populace is heavily divided by class as only the elite and higher ranking employees of Shin-Ra can afford to live on the Plate. The working class, the infirm, and the poor are relegated to the land beneath the Plate known as the Slums. While both the Slums and the Plate are powered by the Mako reactors, pollution and Lifestream drain has taken a heavy toll on the land around the city. Compounded with Shin-Ra’s aggressive militaristic policies, Midgar is seen as a den of inequality in which the privileged few live at the expense of not only the oppressed many but the Planet herself.
Though construction on the city began in 1976 AC, it was first conceived of by Dreyfus Shinra the founder and CEO of Shin-Ra Corp as well as the inventor of Mako powered technology. He first presented his ideas for an elevated radial city powered by Mako reactors at a convention in the Golden Saucer the year of 1962 AC. Dreyfus envisioned it to be a utopian capital of Humekind civilization in which the growth of industry, technology, and culture was promoted by the meeting of minds in an ergonomically planned urban community.
Despite his enthusiasm and the company’s monopoly of the energy industry, his investors and fellow business moguls remained cautiously skeptical. Perhaps, it was for this reason that Dreyfus began expanding Shin-Ra beyond the bounds of an electric company into other fields in order to prove the viability of his project. Sadly he contracted Mako poisoning just two years later. Taking the reins from his catatonic father, Arnold Shinra successfully expanded Shin-Ra’s holdings and resources enough to begin construction of the city.
The Upper Plate
The city proper is built on an elevated base called the Upper Plate or the Plate for short. This super structure is a series of interconnected platforms supported by network pillars on the ground level. The Plate serves as not only as the foundations for the numerous buildings and streets but also as a base for a network of sewers and tunnels that carry waste to the Ground level.
The city is divided into 9 Sectors. Around the central district, Sectors 1-8 are arrayed on wedge-shaped divisions of the Upper Plate in clockwise fashion. Each Sector has a Central Pillar that bears the brunt of its weight in addition to its system of support beams.
At key locations at the end of each Sector is one of Shin-Ra’s eight city Mako reactors. Named after each Sector, together the reactors provide power for the entire city. Though they extend to the Ground level in order to tap into the Planet’s Lifestream, entrance to the reactors is only accessible from the Plate. At any given time, at least six of the eight plants are providing power to the rest of the city.
Encircling both the reactors and the Sectors is a protective structure called the Wall. Though all nine Sectors are divided, a mass transit railroad allows the residents to commute between Sectors as well as between the Plate and the Ground levels. A series of highways extends across the Sectors through tunnels in the Wall, allowing transit in and out of the city.
Sector 0 is the central district where Shin-Ra Headquarters stands. Towering over seventy stories high, Shin-Ra HQ is dominates the skyline of Midgar. The building serves as city hall for Midgar’s nominal elected officials and the home office to the whole company. With top grade security, accommodations for all of the heads of the corporation’s divisions, landing pads and its own private Mako reactor, Shin-Ra HQ is essentially a modern age palace complete with a penthouse suite for President Shinra himself.
Authority Figures: Mayor Domino is the duly elected official of the city. However, his power to govern is in name only. In truth the elected officials are figureheads to give civilians some sense of control over their lives. It takes the backing of Shin-Ra to win any sort of election. This veneer is so thin that the offices of the mayor and his cabinet are located in the headquarters of the company itself.
The Slums
Beneath the Plate is the Ground level or the Slums as its residents call it. While the wealthy and Shin-Ra’s VIPs enjoy life in the city proper, the lower class must toil daily amidst the refuse of the former. Day or night, the Slums are shrouded in a constant shadow with only slivers of light reaching surface from between the seams and cracks of the Plate.
The Slums are mainly comprised of shantytowns hastily put together by those who could not afford better. Amidst the heaps are old churches and cottages of towns that had once prospered until their lands were purchased and drained to build the city. Such settlements are mere relics now, their names forgotten buried in history books. Though they are supplied with energy like the rest of the city, their public infrastructure has fallen into disrepair due to neglect. Most streets, power lines, and light fixtures are built and maintained by the Slum residents at their own expense being unable to afford the services of the city. In fact learning to rig engines and cords is among the basic skills taught to children raised in the Slums.
The only facilities that Shin-Ra goes out of its way to repair and maintain are the Ground level train stations. The mass transit system is one of the only means for residents of the Slums to legally enter the city proper. Typically these “slummers” travel to the Plate to work in the factories of city’s industrial districts. There, they work for long hours in a drab and often hazardous environment on the Plate only tiredly shuffle back to their homes below after the end of their shift. The wage they receive is barely enough to get by.
Unfortunately, the slummers have little choice but to endure these conditions. Mako energy has rendered the land beneath Midgar barren. With no means of producing their own sustenance, the city imports food from rural towns like Banora in order to feed the population. In order to afford any marked up goods from the markets of the Upper Plate while being a cheaper alternative to an automated workforce of shindroids, the average slummer is forced to eschew health and comfort as luxuries.
Naturally vice and crime grows in the shadows of poverty and neglect. Amidst the dirt trodden streets of the Slums, some residents turn to theft and con; instead of making an honest living, they take the train to pickpocket or scam men and women on the Plate. Others, however, choose to live off their fellow Slum inhabitants instead of risking arrest on the guarded streets. It is not rare for slummers to return from work to ruined houses where their cloths and other valuables have been stolen and pawned off. With little response from local authorities, slummer neighborhoods are forced to rely on street gangs as form of protection. As often as not, the latter may end exploiting and terrorizing the former.
Prostitution, gambling, drug use, and alcoholism are common place in the Slums. Men and women who have a harder time finding work on the Plate are forced to sell their bodies to make ends meet. The opportunity to win big in games of chance is often more alluring than the hazards of losing what little they have. Intoxication is one of the few reprieves people from all walks of life can find in under the Plate.
If that were not enough, malevolent vermin and hostile creatures infest the Ground level. Some say that the waste of the Mako reactors is to blame for these monstrosities, however none can say for certain.
Authority Figures: Don Corneo is the wealthiest resident on the Ground level. Having accumulated power and influence through criminal activities, he owns many establishments including the infamous Honeybee Inn.