McCallavre

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McCallavre is an unusual-looking sanct consisting of four sparred platforms floating in a squre formation. It is located in relatively protected waters near the Kildari coast. It was founded in 2978 ASC as a merger of four smaller sancts and named after Dante McCallavre to commemorate the artist and his works.

Foundation

McCallavre's structure is unusual for a sanct - most sancts consisting of multiple platforms are locked together to form one large platform, whereas McCallavre's platforms are connected with steel beams about 40 meters long on average. The reason for this is that when the Novi Dalmacijan and Antyan builders first got into the sanct-building business, they were completely unable to cooperate and filled the local sea with disparately sized, styled and structured sancts. It wasn't before the Great Aracic Merger in 2978 that there was any hope of a major merger among the sancts.

The Great Aracic Merger brought together the sancts of Heavenly Towers, Rexed, Agilmo and Sharton, promising to maintain the unique culture of each (such as it was) but bring them under one government and foreign policy. While there was infighting and political trickery during the merger - for instance, the sanct's citizenship requirements had a loophole which allowed one candidate to win an election by having thousands of mainland Kildarians vote for him - the merger actually ended up holding, unlike most historical efforts toward mergers in the Kildare region. The sanct ended up thriving and becoming one of the largest sancts in Straylight.


The platforms

Each of the four platforms of McCallavre serves a different purpose today. In this list, they are enumerated in clockwise order.

Heavenly Towers

Heavenly Towers is always kept upwind of the rest of the sanct. Only about 700 people live here permanently, mostly the richest of McCallavre. Heavenly Towers is full of offices, stores, boutiques, bars, nightclubs, hotels, and even home to one of the largest parks in all of Straylight outside of Discontinuity. Heavenly Towers is, however, also the suicide capital of Straylight.

Rexed

The major residential area of McCallavre, housing over 40000 in a rather small space. It also contains stores, schools, and McCallavre's only college.

Agilmo

Agilmo, the smallest platform, is home to about 1500 residents, but nominally the working place of over 6000. It is the maricultural center of Kildare, through which tonnes of algae and fish pass through daily.

Agilmo was originally planned to become the "rich one" - the part of McCallavre that Heavenly Towers ended up taking instead. The development plans were changed at the last minute when it was found that Heavenly Towers was significantly better structured to withstand high winds safely, and it was decided that the sanct would be rotated as necessary to always keep Agilmo downwind.

As a side effect of this decision, it has been politically much easier for Agilmo to grow a significant maricultural industry than for most other sancts in Straylight, simply because such industry tends to have a rather strong smell, and in McCallavre the other platforms are spared from it.

Sharton

The center of shipping and industry in McCallavre. About 13000 people also live here, generally in worse conditions than in Rexed. Sharton also houses a nuclear power plant - something of a rarity in Straylight due to safety reasons, as it is difficult to just build nuclear plants away from where most of the people are.

Culture and economy

McCallavre's most unique contribution to Straylightian culture is the high economic specialization of its platforms, found nowhere else in the duchy. McCallavrians are infamous for their views on social order which tend to equate location with prosperity, but also popular in leadership roles for insight into organisation, uncommon among Straylightians.

Since McCallavre is largely Kildarian, it is the more or less the center of Kildari culture in Straylight, even if it's sometimes the theme park version of the culture. Among other things, there is a Soloralist Temple of Bristlebane in Rexed, and a very packed version of the forest of Hallucination in Heavenly Towers - unfortunately, they did not manage to make envisioning things possible, but at least they have a soundproofed room with trees that can be filled with filtered marijuana smoke. There has been some political hand-wringing with Halluci over the Micrasmother Room, but the business itself is doing quite well.