(SL) Sancts

[Ari Rahikkala]

I made a map of all the sancts of historical and economical importance in Straylight and wrote a short blurb about each one tonight. After that, I went on to describe a few things (the capital city of Straylight, called Discontinuity, and a massive colonised "plain" on the sea, called Sea of Pandemonium) until I noticed I'd already used up all of my inspiration tonight on the blurbs and the stuff I wrote on Disco and Pandemo was quite awfully vapid. Thus, I'll now post the stuff that's at least somewhat interesting, and leave the rest for later. Have fun reading this.The map. It's not quaranteed to be final - the version that I sent to Bill certainly wasn't (well, the only change from it was renaming Wave Manifold to Sea of Pandemonium, but it's a change nevertheless). The font I used turned out to be a bit small, but hopefully you can read it.Unspeakable Horror - the first sanct not designed by Dante McCallavre, Unspeakable Horror is commonly considered the most uninspired and simply boring architectural creation in all of Straylight. It's not ugly per se - it's just that it looks like nothing but a floating city. The original name of the city was Straylight Sanct, but the name used by the great architect soon stuck.Sargassum - one of the earlier sancts, the citizens of Sargassum pioneered Straylightian aquaculture. The name was chosen for irony, because nobody would actually try to use these foul-smelling seaweeds for human consumption - the most common crops in Sargassum are Laminaria, Hizikia and Undaria instead. Blavatsky - a strange city built in the shape of a pentagon. Blavatsky is known for the poor engineering of its lighting system and the bad choice of shape, which cause a perpetual twilight in most parts of the city. Blavatsky is also home to the Center of Occult Studies, an institute of magic that takes care of all the supernatural developments in the county. Elemental water mages from Blavatsky sometimes offer themselves for hire as mercenaries.Backbone Site - a center of networking, and a wonderful store of information. Backbone Site is home to the copyright-free library Xanadu, an immense collection of works that's a marvel to researchers all around the world, and a reason for thousands of them to visit the sanct regularly. Backbone Site is networked with several PoELs connecting it to more sancts than any other one in all of Straylight, and with undersea cables leading to Amity. Sea of Pandemonium - a complex area that'll be explained in a post of its own, unless I start considering the idea too unlikely.Discontinuity - the capital city of Straylight, a subject that'll be explained in a post of its own.Pohjankaupunki - home of the strongest Finnish contingent in Straylight (of course Straylight has a Finnish contingent), Pohjankaupunki is the only sanct with a system of welfare ran by the city government. In general Straylightians prefer to look after themselves, but somehow things seem to work out here, too. The name Pohjankaupunki stands for "city of the bottom", and refers to the seafloor torpedo base that the sanct was built over. The torpedo base has now been converted into a mining base to make use of the large reservoirs of methane hydrate in the immediate area. Small experiments are expected to turn into large-scale sediment mining soon.Incremental Search - the very first sanct. That's all there is to it. It's small and located basically next to Yardistani coast. Complementarily to Sanctuary Dome, it's of not much interest to outsiders, but Straylightians often visit it, especially if they're spending a lot of time in Yardistan and want to get a homely feeling for a change.Much Rejoicing - a popular stop on trips between Kildare and Yardistan and approximately the halfway mark of most of them. Much Rejoicing has the best nightlife anywhere in Straylight not counting Discontinuity itself.Deep Trouble - a popular stop on trips between Kildare and anywhere else in Shireroth, Deep Trouble is, like Pohjankaupunki, built over a seafloor torpedo base. Here the seafloor base, however, was destroyed in an accident involving a secret store of munitions whose existence nobody present remembered. The city was named after the accident.McCallavre - being located on Kildari coast, the sanct of McCallavre is tailored to Kildari values and aesthetics. This makes it widely respected in other parts of Straylight.Gensym - one of the less remarkable sancts in this list, but an economically prosperous one, partly thanks to its being the biggest tourist trap that can be cheaply reached from Musica and thus from almost anywhere in Brookshire. Both Sargassum and Unspeakable Horror are simply too boring to attract a lot of tourism, and Blavatsky is farther away and not interesting to most people anyway, so if you're a Brookshirian you're likely to just stop in Gensym instead of going all the way to Backbone Site to experience the wonders of a major sanct.Sanctuary Dome - a more subtle and refined tourist trap than Gensym, but still a tourist trap. Very few Straylightians ever want to travel to Sanctuary Dome and to the cold current from the north it floats in, but Goldshirians and Elwynnese often find the idea of a little break in Sanctuary Dome quite interesting.(*) PoEL stands for Peak of Eternal Light. Each Sanct is equipped with one of these tall towers which communicate with each other mostly on the microwave band. They're both technologically and economically a rather unlikely solution to the problem of networking cities on the sea, but hey, I'm already assuming some rather unlikely construction technologies for Straylight. Remembering that the sancts on the map are only a small part of the total amount of sancts, one could assume that the "chains" leading from somewhere around Musica to Novi Nigrad, and again to Aracigrad, are actually lined with sancts no further than two hundred kilometres apart - in this case it should be enough to have towers of about eight hundred meters. The league of sadistic telepaths: "There's someone in your head and it's not you"

[Osman Shahanshah]

Random question. How easy would it be to sink one of these cities?

[Fax Celestis]

I was under the impression they were already underwater. Viatax Sitadi Axdivijink Regigoraauk

[Osman Shahanshah]

Dunno, I just get the feeling they are on the surfaceQuote:It's not ugly per se - it's just that it looks like nothing but a floating cityQuote:a rather unlikely solution to the problem of networking cities on the sea

[Fax Celestis]

You're probably right. Viatax Sitadi Axdivijink Regigoraauk

[AngelGuardian93]

Lay one hand on them Ardy, and i'll ban you. No more playing. There are no flowers, no not this time. There will be no angels gracing the lines, just these stark words I find.

[osmose1000]

They call it a signature, but no one ever signs their posts...

[Emir of Raspur]

You know the trouble with Yardistanis, everything is sacred to them. I'll test that threat later. “Religion is what the common people see as true, the wise people see as false, and the rulers see as useful.”-Seneca

[AngelGuardian93]

Wait a minute... aren't babkhans the one who make everything sacred, what with their religion and all?? There are no flowers, no not this time. There will be no angels gracing the lines, just these stark words I find.

[Osman Shahanshah]

Yes but their sacredness comes from martyrdom.

[Bill3000]

I apologize for the bad news, but Ryan is leaning on not allowing Straylight cities to be shown on the MCS map. I will of course place it on the Shireroth map, however, although I think you overdid it on the cities. Bill Dusch - Archon of SoloralismCitizen of ShirerothBaron of AntyaProud to be Apollonianvar txtList = new Array()txtList[txtList.length]="'Whoa! You're in...college now? You got...older! I guess that's what happens when time passes, but still...' - Scott Siskind";txtList[txtList.length]="'The Hindenburg Uncertainty Principle, by contrast states that before you get on a blimp, you can never be certain whether it's going to catch on fire or not' - Scott Siskind";txtList[txtList.length]="'We.....are.....not....FANTASY!>?!POE' - Scott Siskind, on hearing Bill Dusch say that Shireroth's theme is percieved to be Fiction-Fantasy based";txtList[txtList.length]="'me to. well almost, we have to worship the living god, Bill3000.' - Hubert";txtList[txtList.length]="'Y'know what? I am never going to get out of micronations. I think I need to be assassinated or something.' - Jason Steffke";txtList[txtList.length]="'Bill, you are STILL young and stupid.' - Jason Steffke, Control of Destiny 1";txtList[txtList.length]="'I think we've gotta promote you. You now have slightly more diplomatic skills than a random rock.' - Sirithil nos Feanor, to Bill Dusch";txtList[txtList.length]="'Wow. I'm this close to admitting you're no longer young and stupid.' - Scott Siskind, to Bill";txtList[txtList.length]="'ow! I've been thrwappen! Now I have a sudden urge to enter politics...' - Gryphon the Pure, after being hit by a shard of Pure Mischief";txtList[txtList.length]="'I could probably date Hypatia's Mom. Now THAT'S scary.' - Ryan Caruso"; j=parseInt(Math.random()*txtList.length);j=(isNaN(j))?0:j;document.write(txtList[j]);Edited by: Bill3000 at: 10/28/05 10:04

[AngelGuardian93]

Ryan insists on realism. Crazy.As for you Ardy: Sacred through death? Your beginning to sound like a vampire. Blah! There are no flowers, no not this time. There will be no angels gracing the lines, just these stark words I find.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Quote:I was under the impression they were already underwater.Ahh... I can see the problem here. I write pitifully little about Straylight. I try to make the best of it, though, so I keep to writing only original stuff as far as I can (names don't count ). This would be all good and fine if every Shirithian had read tons of sites and articles like these (oops, did I give something away?). Since they haven't, though, they get these weird unintended impressions about Straylight because they have to fill in some huge gaps. I want to keep everything I write about Straylight at least marginally interesting, so I can't increase the volume of writing much... hm... for now I'll just ignore this problem .Quote: I apologize for the bad news, but Ryan is leaning on not allowing Straylight cities to be shown on the MCS map. I will of course place it on the Shireroth map, however, although I think you overdid it on the cities. I don't blame him. Straylight isn't exactly the most vibrant and active micronational entity out there, and definitely doesn't justify having that amount of cities on the global map. I would be more than happy if I only saw Discontinuity on the map.Quote:Random question. How easy would it be to sink one of these cities?Quote:Lay one hand on them Ardy, and i'll ban you. No more playing.* slaps Greg *The next time Ardashir asks an interesting and important question, you just sit tight and wait to get to read the answer, OK? I thought you'd know what a delight it is to have people show curiousity about a work of your own...Straylight has no unified, coordinated system of defense against crises like major natural disasters or enemy nations attacking the area with a proper navy. However, that does not mean that the county can't deal significant hurt to an invading force.If you remember the fictional history of modern Straylight, you know of the k + 1 defense system. It's a set of bases on the seafloor equipped with torpedo launchers and passive sonars. Quite a few of these bases have now been sold and converted to civilian purposes since the state could not justify the high costs of running the bases, some of them thousands of kilometres distant from Shirithian mainland. However, a few torpedo bases are still active, ran by coalitions of sancts, in locations that can't be disclosed to anyone without access to Fort Foley (since I don't have access to Fort Foley, I don't know their locations, either). If you wander too close to one with a ship of any size, you can be prepared to be blown to bits very soon.If you do evade the torpedo bases (read: you find out where they are and then just go around them) you do have a few navies to deal with. Discontinuity alone runs one. A force funded by various sources mostly in McCallavre, Deep Trouble and Much Rejoicing (and some smaller sancts in the same area), the Response Against The External World Team, commands no less than three battleships (for some reason, all of them are named Yamato). Blavatsky is the home base to two navies which I will describe some day in a post addressed to someone else.After the navies, the next line of defense is naval guns in the sancts. These are really rather scarce in Straylight, though a few sancts near the "borders" apparently are rather fond of them. For instance, Fletcher Memorial, located a few hundred kilometres southeast of Deep Trouble, has a rather respectable collection that should definitely discourage anyone from trying an overt attack with anything shorter-ranged than an ICBM.Finally, since the question was about *sinking* a sanct, not about getting to pound one to bits after smashing through all of its defenses... no, it's not enough to just lob a few bombshells at it. The next few paragraphs will be a lot easier to understand if you read the Floating Spar platform paragraph in the Seasteading book.The primary flotation of a sanct (not counting the large ones like Discontinuity) is provided by a flotation chamber underwater, which is big and easy to hit, and not so far underwater that you need depth charges to get anything to explode against it. However, hitting the flotation module won't actually sink a sanct. It will flood a few chambers, possibly debalancing the system - but all sancts are equipped against that and will automatically flood chambers on the opposite side to maintain balance. This might cause the entire structure to sink a little, but has no further consequences. Further abuse of the flotation module will cause the sanct to sink more, but as long as you don't cause so much damage to one side so quickly that the whole structure capsizes, you won't have sunk anything. Finally, even if you gnaw the entire ventral side of the sanct off, the top platform has its own flotation chambers.Hitting the spar(s) is an efficient but not necessarily simple way to turn a sanct into a heap of scrap ferrocement. The spars are designed to be as thin as possible and to withstand even large waves, so to damage a spar, an explosion has to be big and occur close. However, causing significant damage to either the one spar supporting a sanct, or enough of the spars supporting a multi-spar sanct, will cause a deadly chain reaction:First, the top platform will start capsizing. One side of it will fall from a height of about 40-45 metres into the sea. The damage is, however, local to only one edge of the city. Furthermore the spar, now partly under tensile instead of compressive stress, might completely break. As the top platform isn't horizontal anymore at this part, the low side and high side of the spar will slide apart. This causes not only that the high side will start going down almost in free-fall, but also that the low side will start going up pretty fast as the weight pressing down on it disappears. The most economical shape for a sanct's flotation module is much like a teardrop. This is, unfortunately, also a very aerodynamic (hydrodynamic?) shape. By the time the top platform and the low side of the spar connect, they might have built up enough speed that the low side of the spar will impale the city. Still, even that will only cause relatively minor, localised damage.The real damage will come when the rest of the top platform comes down to sea level. The structures on the platform aren't designed to come down to the sea in free-fall, and the lower decks of the city will be crushed under the upper ones. The lower floors are where the emergency flotation chambers obviously are. Of course, as the platform lands, it also causes a rather huge... well... splash. Splashes, as we know, cause splashbacks, so the upper decks will also be completely flooded. The result is catastrophic damage all around. Most people inside will be either crushed to death or trapped inside, while people outside will be washed away. Sooner than you know, the sanct will be completely wiped off the world map. The league of sadistic telepaths: "There's someone in your head and it's not you"

[AngelGuardian93]

I are got slapped. I are sad now. Sorry. There are no flowers, no not this time. There will be no angels gracing the lines, just these stark words I find.