The Multiverse Open!

Following is an overview of two cities important to this role-play. It includes information such as the level of technological achievement, an historical synopsis of each city's development, physical description, and moral characterization.



Drifting superciliously in a prismatic nebula of permutable vapor is an interlacing system of habitable dwellings, bound with presumable irrevocability by a large organism, a type of algae, sustaining itself via the fumes of the stellar mass it inhabits. Beginning as chunks of frozen debris coursing haphazardly enough through the cosmos for the nebula's gravity to ensnare them and, subsequently, lose themselves to the whiles of the verdure, these abodes now scintillate as crown jewels of the galaxy. It is Verisimilitude, a city like none other, with residents from all over the known universe who with pride call it their vacation spot, their entrepreneurial exploit, and their home.

~*Appearances

Although with a substratum of stone, the upper-reaches of Verismilitude are contrastingly different, hewn from the spread of the galaxy, with coruscating gems, glassy towers, pillars of light, and immutable citadels of atramentous iron. Comparative to the materials of construction, a myriad of architectural strains blossom from each foundation, analogous to diverse islands drifting in an obliging sea, all overwhelmingly lovely; a city very much like its ancient, Venetian counterpart.

An apparatus by which to maintain an artificial atmosphere is inexistent, for the organism excretes such naturally, literally allowing passage between structures―through open space―securely. Canals of fumes and flora separate the islands, which occasionally find unity in bridges or walkways; however, more often than not, small transports, much like gondolas, litter the aery causeways.

~*Antiquity

Throwing themselves headlong into the stars after consuming Earth's natural resources, abandoning all in poverty, humanity's best enter into the colonization of space; colonies and moon settlements dot the galaxy, strung loosely together by wormholes and tesseracts. They exist as the only intelligent life and, as far as they know, will remain that way―space is as large as it is empty, and its trappings are all for their taking.

From humble beginnings as a mining settlement, Verisimilitude's aesthetic qualities were eventually considered; immediately following came its rapid redeveloped into a massive luxury city, and by the year 2132 it was a sector-capital, central routing station, and economic bastion.

~*Government

The city is a modest utopia, with freedom and choice supreme, supernal in its scorn of enslavement and laws to rein in individual will where it ought to be set free. It is a democracy, both houses equal, and no executive branch to assert authority where such is absent. Laissez-faire pervades economics, privacy is held in esteem, and rather than fear the law the citizens of Verisimilitude hold it in the highest regard.

~*Technology

Conveniences run amok, especially for those of affluence, but the zenith of technological dreaming is not yet. Space transport is no private or inexpensive commodity, but of public use with set schedules of travel between stellar bodies; fusion drives barely outpace light's speed, yet without them sojourning the ethereal expanse would be impossible; artificial intelligence and robotics are still rudimentary, hardly capable of an overthrow despite fear mongers' contrary protestations; cybernetics are crude―still, despite limits, it is an era of renaissance in knowledge and computing.



Strung to pendulum's nib by an onerous fetter dancing to the clockwork of a glaring scarlet star (this of vicious, pulsating rays, stellar torrents, and blasts of heat ever-threatening to shear the current of life from its compass), is a metropolis―a blisteringly hot assembly of alloy cylinders writhing in a torturous embrace. It slinks charily at the cusp of surviving the lethal, flaming titan, finding salvation in an auspiciously refulgent dope reflecting back the conflagration's embrace and apportioning the interior a relatively bearable atmosphere. Created by humankind, Veritas stands as a testament ingenuity as well as blasphemy, hovering just beyond the threshold of a heavenly inferno.

~*Appearances

Like an argent nest of serpents haphazardly knotting through one another, so grows the city; originally a ring, now many, each one indecipherable from the next. Meters of metal separate habitat from the chaotic extremities of nature lurking ferociously beyond and cyan lights bathe the twisting interior in a chill glow, casting an even more depressing pallor on the otherwise uninspiring environment; concerns, perhaps, for those given to vagaries of beauty, but such romanticists are rare.

From immense domiciles with ornamentations in glittering gold, onyx, and jasper to dismal tunnels connecting diminutive slums to hovels, Veritas is utterly windowless, purely synthetic, and necessarily cold; without such cold, the blistering metal husk would fail to achieve equilibrium and swiftly melt. It is a place where madness comes easy and survival is the ultimate goal.

~*Antiquity

Malignant and pullulating, humanity's overwhelming appetite for dominion cleaves it from Earth, where only the lowliest and most abject of God's creations remain. Those worthies, those leech-like charlatans on a reckless undertaking―they infest the fathoms of space, firm in the knowledge that, solitarily, their existence has merit and, if a challenge to that manifest destiny should arise, it is theirs to subjugate.

With origins like its present, rife with misdeeds and errs, Veritas—which may have been the light of the galaxy―became a battleground; a bleak fortress amongst luminous pin-pricks, feeding off a dying planetary cluster where several mining camps, like parasites, usher resources into its voracious belly. If one wishes a consort for war, it is in her they will find it.

~*Government

Mafiosi and despotism elongate the plagues of dread and malcontent through Veritas' icily-lit corridors. Edicts, not laws, control the conurbation, casting down individuals in favor of a singular will, possessed by whoever is in authority. A downward-spiraling autocracy of lies and spooks leads to recesses of vermin-incubating black markets, frequent death, crime, and overall corruption. Strength is ephemeral power, along with money and influence, all as fleeting as the lives of those who wield them.

~*Technology

As in history, where the sword came before armor, so too do the many weapons of this era outpace defenses built up as an aegis against them. Discarding nuclear armaments as ineffective, au courant methods of human eradication are at hand: electron-disruption missiles, antimatter bombs, and high-density lasers. Blockades of stone and iron are futile, yet in their stead are portentous technological advances in plasma and electromagnetics, offering artificial cloaking from sight and shielding from harmful rays―still not enough, for with such potential for harm, humanity's survival is a miracle.