The City

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<infobox> <title source="name"><default>The City</default></title>

<image source="image"><default>File:Placeholder location.png</default></image> <header>Basic Information</header> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> <header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label> </infobox> The City or just the The Megalopolis is a major urban area of Gimel.US, though it doesn't have an official name.

Geography/Description

The City's location is roughly equivalent to the New York - Boston corridor, but further offset to the northeast, where Brockton Bay and its portal were located.<ref>We’d bled into the areas surrounding the portals. Brockton Bay had been the first, but we’d had a few in a few major cities and New York was a big one. The cluster of settlements around the portals in the northeastern US and people’s desire to have ready access to that cluster and the resources, community, information and security it afforded had played a big part in the megalopolis forming.

One blob around New York, one blob around the New Brockton settlement, clusters south of New Brockton, near what would or should be Boston, and everything had spread out or extended from there, mostly hugging the coast and connecting to one another. - Excerpt from Daybreak 1.2 </ref>

At the second year it already had a population of roughly 50 million<ref>Gimel has five major points of settlement, with civilization finding its foothold around these points. The City, as of yet unnamed, is the primary US point of settlement and one of the primary waypoints. The City is a megalopolis with a commonly cited population of fifty million. - Glow-worm P.6</ref> (something around the half of the North-American survivors).<ref>Of the five people contending for mayorship over the city, where roughly half of the North American survivors of Gold Morning were staying, he polled in fourth place. - Excerpt from Shadow Interlude 5x II</ref> The city grew rapidly, with new stores and skyscrapers every day,<ref name="P.2e1">[A18 11:11:47] Moonsong: And your family? Your parents? I liked them when I saw them.

[A18 11:12:00] Cap: alive. we’re in the city. they’re trying to come to terms with things
[A18 11:12:35] Cap: things are really coming together like crazy. new skyscrapers every day, new stores. good and almost like a city in Earth Bet but it isn’t really home
[A18 11:15:08] Moonsong: It isn’t. We’re in the city too.
[A18 11:16:17] Cap: You and your folks?  they’reokay?
[A18 11:17:40] Moonsong: They’re good.  Dad is taking a shot at mayor or councilman.  We’ll see what happens - Glow-worm P.2</ref> so bright yellow construction equipment and the gold-tinted windows of skyscrapers dominate the skyline,<ref name="II.1.1e1">The skyline was a half-and-half mix of skyscrapers and buildings in progress.  The latter were skeletons of tall buildings in the process of being filled in and put together, and hazard signs, tarps, the materials that made up the countless cranes and the painted letters on steel girders were all in bright yellows.  The completed skyscrapers were paneled with mirrored or reflective glass that were tinted in that same hue.  All put together, the light that bounced off of the city and reached skyward gave the clouds linings that were gold, not silver. - Excerpt from Daybreak 1.1 </ref> despite the implications attached to that color from Gold Morning. The city growth radiated outwards from the portal from Bet, with pockets of dense housing clustering around the portals in Gimel Northeastern US, foremost among them Brockton Bay and New York, with smaller clusters around the Boston Area<ref>https://www.parahumans.net/2017/11/14/daybreak-1-2/</ref>. It took half a day to get from the west end to the east end of the City, and three quarters of a day to get from the southwest end to the northeast.<ref name="16.2IIe1"/> 

The strung-out nature of the City led to a new nomenclature - strips of development that ran east-west were called "spans", those that ran north-south were called "stretches", those that didn't run in a cardinal direction lacked these descriptors. Regardless, regions were usually named after whatever settlement was in the equivalent area on Bet, although there was sometimes conflict over what to name them after.<ref>“In terms of the bands that rope everything in together, we go by the cities and locations that were there beforehand. If you look at where Norwalk would be on a map, that’s the name for the region we’re heading to. If it’s east-west it’s a span. If it’s north-south it’s a stretch. But it’s all a part of the city.”
“What if it’s both?” someone asked.
“Then it’s neither,” Jasper said. “You just give it a name.”
“More accurately, you try to give it a name and end up in a heated, months-long debate about what to call the area, with way too many emotions tied up into things,” I said. - excerpt from Daybreak 1.2</ref>

Streets and parks of city are filled with numerous memorial pillars, honoring lives lost during Scion's rampage.<ref name="II.1.1">Daybreak 1.1</ref> Due to lack of city planning road traffic is quite bad.

Although refugees lack a proper government,<ref name="P8">We have no authorities. We have no system of government. We have no national cape team or licensed heroes. We can’t even agree on a name for Gimel’s megalopolis! - Glow-worm P.8</ref> there was mention of a Mayor and city council,<ref name="P.2e1"/> as well as functioning, although understaffed on periphery, police force.<ref name="II.1.1"/>

The inner, urbanized parts of the city had standardized rents, but not the sprawl, which was mostly farms<ref name="P6">► Venturain
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
the corner world places aren’t inherently bad tho, right? we (my family) just got into the city one month ago. right away pressure pressure. we can move into city but standardized rent and we need to earn wage and we may be asked to move. best option is to move to city periphery and farm. they say they will give us tools and resources to get started but good spots are taken or very far away and farming isn’t easy

corner worlds are closer in a way. go to noon, go to wherever from there.

if we aren’t reconstruction or farming we aren’t wanted. so why become cogs in the city’s machine? we can strike off on our own. minor risk but total freedom - Excerpt from Glow-worm P.6</ref> and tent cities. Distinction between urban centers and rural periphery is somewhat blurry — need for proper housing is still high, so people settle in apartments instead of private houses even in "rural" areas.<ref>We’ve got these long narrow bands of mingled city and agriculture connecting the primary settlement points, to the point it’s hard to say where one thing starts and the other ends. And instead of building five big houses they’d rather build an apartment building that hosts twenty, which makes things fuzzy with the distinctions of urban and rural. - Excerpt from Daybreak 1.2 </ref>

Two years after Gold Morning, large sections of the city were still without power routinely at night.<ref>Shadow 5.7</ref> As such, candles returned to widespread usage as light sources,<ref>interlude 5d II</ref> and were presumably a sound economic investment.

The dominant currency in the City is the Trading Dollar, which was set up by the Number Man.<ref>So many things were reliant on resources. Money- they handled money and they had money. Kurt had arranged the trading dollar and he’d made it work. A city couldn’t run on barter, and a megalopolis was far more involved than a city. - Excerpt from Interlude 5x II</ref> A separate currency, the New Dollar, is also in use in some parts of the City, but has decreased in value.<ref>“I wasn’t happy about it being New Dollars,” Durbin volunteered. “She was nice about giving me more when the value dropped.”

Anelace nodded, looking at me. Unconventional currency for the unconventional settlement of Wailings. The Trading Dollar was the dominant currency across the Megalopolis. Other currencies were tied to natural resources, to other Earth currencies, but they had their issues. The New Dollar had its issues, but it was still used in places, on the fringes. - Excerpt from Torch 7.6</ref>

Residents

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The golden streets by Lonsheep

Organizations

• The Wardens
  • Advance Guard
  • Foresight
  • The Attendant (defunct)
  • The Shepherds
• Auzure
• PRTCJ
• Breakthrough

Individuals

• Capricorn and their family
• Moonsong
  • Moonsong's father - running for councilman or mayor.<ref name="P.2e1"/>
• Chris Elman<ref name="P.6e2"/><ref name="P.6e1">Curious_Cephalopod: ? Did you disconnect?
  Heart_Shaped_Pupil: So I was thinking we should meet in the city. You were talking about logistics and I was thinking about where eveyrone was. you’re closest to me and we’re the same age I think? - Glow-worm P.6 </ref>
• Ashley Stillons<ref name="P.6e2"/>
• Kenzie Martin<ref name="P.6e1"/><ref name="P.6e2">Curious_Cephalopod: …the problem is we’re so geographically spread out. even if we discount R.
  

of5: I’m aiming to move into the city. There are complications - Glow-worm P.6</ref>

• Mark and Carol Dallon
• Victoria Dallon<ref name="II.1.1" />
• Crystal Pelham
• Gilpatrick

Points of Interest

• Two main origin-settlements:
  • New Brockton
  • New York Central
    • The Wardens Fortress-Headquarters (disappeared,<ref>Torch 7.1</ref> then rebuilt)
• Cedar Point
• Stratford airfield - One of the earliest settled areas following the evacuation.<ref>Stratford station and the surrounding neighborhood were an area of the megalopolis I primarily knew for its airfield. Helicopters were in and out, and as someone who often had to fly past, I had to be mindful of the airspace. I usually flew low or gave it a wider berth, using the highway to the north as my guide.
  
  Now that I was in the neighborhood and moving at a walking pace, I could see it was one of the quainter areas. It was one of the first areas to be settled, and the buildings were smaller, with more houses. Not too dissimilar to my mom’s neighborhood. Even the apartment buildings were three or four floors tall at the highest. Like many of the buildings in the early settlements, they’d been built broad rather than tall. - Excerpt from Shadow 5.6</ref>
• Bridgeport
• Westport Stretch, fairly large & has an airport so flight is restricted there<ref name="8.5II">Beacon 8.5</ref>
• (New) Boston cluster
  • Fenway Station
• New Haven — close to a Fallen settlement.<ref>Flare 2.1</ref> It has its own portal to Earth Bet.
  • Canaan — a peripheral town some distance away, known territory of The Fallen.<ref>Flare 2.1</ref>
• Lyme
• Portals:
  • Two to Earth Bet:
    • One in the east of the city.<ref>I have access through the portal at the east of the city. When I go through I’ve been doing loops through the old neighborhoods to see what I can scrounge up. - Excerpt from Glow-worm P.1 </ref>
    • One in New York Central area.
  • Two to Earth N:
    • One near the Norwalk-Fairfield (Norfair) span (widened)
    • Another in unspecified location (G-N station, saved)
  • Big cluster of portals in New York Central area (at least 4) (widened)
  • Portal out to world that has a portal to the world with the new prison.<ref>“I’m thinking about the prison,” Tristan said. He stabbed a marker at the series of squares and lines that depicted the prison. “To get there, you have to travel to one portal, which is about twenty-five minutes away from the city, and then you have to travel for another twenty minutes to get to the next portal. That one’s where the guards and security are. That’s without the time it takes to reach the first portal. It’s deliberately set out of reach. What are our options?” - Beacon 8.7</ref>
  • The distant direct portal to Earth Shin (intact).

Relative Positions

It took half a day to get from the west end to the east end of the City, and three quarters of a day to get from the southwest end to the northeast.<ref name="16.2IIe1">The city was so vast it took half a day to get from the west end to the east end. Three quarters of a day to get from the southwest to the northeast, though the Dauntless Titan had kind of trashed the Northeast by appearing there, so it wasn’t a real consideration. - excerpt from From Within 16.2</ref> The main highway going through the City ran east-west, from the city center to the Brockton Bay and Boston area. It was used by construction workers going to the city center and farm produce going from the farming areas to the east.<ref>The road was fairly busy. The timing of our trip meant we were traveling down the main East-West highway that ran through the city, and it seemed like a lot of the farming settlements were transporting stock out to the east, traveling in the direction of the Brockton Bay and Boston areas of the sprawl. That procession was compounded by the stream of construction vehicles heading toward the city center. - excerpt from Torch 7.3</ref> The Fallen camp was located west of the Boston and New Brockton districts, and south of the Meridian stretch. There was a major highway leading west from the Miridian stretch to Boston.<ref>“Standoff with the remaining Mathers Fallen and Narwhal,” I said. I assessed the situation. “I think Narwhal has it handled.” “I’d think so. I’ve found the Crowleys, they covered their retreat, and now they’re on the move. They borrowed a fleet of cars from a town north of here, and they’re heading east.” “East? Boston? New Brockton?” “I’m betting the Boston district of the Megalopolis,” she said. “They’re taking a route using roads that are barely roads, they’re so rustic. If you take the major highway, you could get ahead of them with time to spare. Give me what I need and we’ll help.” [...] If this is to be believed, the Fallen went north, to the Meridian stretch, and then they’ll go east. - excerpt from Pitch 6.6</ref> The neighbourhood Fenway Station was named after Fenway Station, a portal and train station located there.<ref name="6.9II">Pitch 6.9</ref> The closest other portal to Fenway Station Station is the one in Brockton Bay, a fair distance away.<ref>The other stations- well, they had to handle their own stuff. The closest portal to us was really Brockton Bay, and Brockton Bay wasn’t that close. - Pitch 6.9</ref> Norwalk station is located in Kenzie's neighbourhood where she lived with her parents.<ref>“Norwalk station,” Kenzie said. “That’s your neighborhood,” Sveta replied. Kenzie nodded. She was typing quickly. “My parents look okay. - Pitch 6.9</ref> 90% of Breakthrough's activities took place in the span running from Norwalk in the west and Bridgeport to the east.<ref>Beacon 8.1</ref> New York was the central hub because it was the place with the densest cluster of portals. <ref>New York was the central hub because it was the place with the densest cluster of portals. - Pitch 6.9</ref> Advance Guard chased criminals east down Post st. to Westport Stretch.<ref name="8.5II"/> Dauntless appeared in the Northeast end of the city and rendered much of that end uninhabitable.<ref name="16.2IIe1"/> The Boston area sprung from several clusters where Boston used to be, south of New Brockton.<ref>Daybreak 1.2</ref> The Norwalk-Fairfield span is close to the portal for Earth N.

New Brockton

It is an active port, filled with heavy industry and crowded to the point of barely being contained by surrounding geography. The buildings are abundantly decorated with murals, many of them are nature themed.<ref name="6.7II e1"> - Excerpt from Pitch 6.7</ref>

New Brockton is noticeably haunted by the ghost of old Brockton Bay: some of city layout is directly copied (Towers, Downtown, Lord Street); and while current New Brockton is evading socioeconomic instability, which is rising in the greater megapolis, it is unknown if success is going to last long-term or the economic demise of the old city will repeat itself.<ref>New Brockton felt like it sat on that brink between relevance and ruin. As a settlement, it was defined by tall buildings and the edifices of heavy industry. There were ships finding their way past each other on the water and big brick buildings with black plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys. Already back to the ways of an era that predated me, cutting corners to produce more at a cost to tomorrow. It was crowded and bursting at the seams, and it had been for a while now, trying to grow despite the constraints of water and mountain around it.

It didn’t escape me that the settlement continued to chug along while the gears and belts of the greater megalopolis were grinding to a stop under strikes and shutdowns
[...]
The racist graffiti no longer dominated downtown, though I did see some, with half of it partially painted over or altered. Many of the people who had lived and thrived in Brockton Bay had made their way here, after all. An attempt had been made to use wall space, to give the tenements-and-factories color when mirrored windows on skycrapers didn’t steal it from the sky or water. Murals now decorated many of the walls and building fronts, no doubt an attempt to leave less open wall space for the gang tags and symbols. Animals and symbols of humanity like clasped hands covered residential areas. Green trees, branches, and lush mountains painted almost ironically on the sides of factories and power plants.

There were places that mirrored home, in layout and the buildings that had been placed. The area that had been the Towers at the southwest corner of the city was still the Towers. Downtown was still where Downtown had been. A Lord Street stabbed north-to-south through the settlement. Despite the attempts, it wasn’t home. It came from something different. Excerpt from Glare 3.1 </ref>

New Brockton was bisected by a sabotaged portal.

Boston

It is more of a district of the megalopolis, than independent city. The resemblance to old Boston is mostly cosmetic, with common to megalopolis early housing being decorated with brownstone and brick. Although calling the area "New Boston" is still unpopular.

In contrast, Boston cape scene mostly consist of independent individuals as Wardens influence did not spread there yet.<ref>Boston. New Boston, but all attempts to make that stick had failed, in a stark contrast to how Brockton Bay had been so ready to rechristen itself as New Brockton.

Boston wasn’t a city, really. It was more of an Über-neighborhood, one set of tiles in the vast, disappearing-into-the-horizon expanse of city that was the megalopolis. It wasn’t really Boston, either. Attempts had been made to make Boston resemble its former self, but materials were different, everything was new, and the golden patina remained.

Fenway Station. A transportation hub, surrounded by quickly thrown-together homes that attempted to stay hidden or camouflaged among the brownstone and brick fixtures with gold-tinted windows.

The Boston neighorhoods had heroes of their own. Independents, and small teams separate from the Wardens. - Excerpt from Pitch 6.8</ref>

History

Background

Had no humans for a while.

Post-Echidna

A portal that had been made to send some lost people back to their earth. It was switched to this Earth, Gimel, and explored by multiple parties.<ref>The government had sent people inside, and Tattletale had followed suit. It was technically her property, they had no evidence it was anything but the curiosity of an invested businessperson, and they hadn’t complained. - Excerpt from Imago 21.4</ref>

Settlers were sent in,<ref>Drone 23.4</ref> this helped spur Brockton Bays economic redevelopment.

Post-Timeskip

More settlers came in. New Brockton was developed.

Gold Morning

At the end of the event most of the North American population was moved into Earth Gimel. As such refugee camps were everywhere.

Post-Gold Morning

The area that would become the city quickly filled up with refugees and buildings, development was greatly aided thanks to decades of behind the scenes work from various established and newly established parties, interested in social and economic development.<ref name=WR> I know some people have taken issue with ‘the city’.  There’s a segment of the fanbase that’s rooted in military sci-fi and hard sci-fi, and they’re intrigued by the idea of what it takes to get a post-apocalyptic society going.  I could have and should have telegraphed it better, but I think anyone that’s read my past serials knows that logistics and especially numbers are not my strength.  It was unfortunately never going to be the story I wanted to tell.  I personally felt and feel that having powers like The Number Man, Accord, and prep-work done over years and decades by forces like Tattletale and Cauldron explained it enough.  That the city sat on an unstable foundation and lacked identity in places was intentional, and was tied to the fact it went without a name, but I don’t think this was sufficiently telegraphed and I know some were frustrated with it when Worm had more ‘realism’. - Ward Retrospective</ref>

Glow-worm

Connections and some degree of trade with other parallel Earths were established two years after the event. Earth Cheit started providing prefab construction supplies and workforce, Shin - intermediary materials, and corner worlds as Earth N were tapped for their raw materials.<ref>I had a sense of which materials had come from where, with a lot of the prefab building segments having come from Cheit, a lot of crude materials from Shin, and outright raw materials from Earth N - Excerpt from Black 13.7</ref>

There was a immense and unparalleled construction boom, though for some reason it was made gold.<ref>It was a second chance for humanity as a whole, and they’d gone and screwed it up from the start by coloring the city gold, of all colors. - Excerpt from Daybreak 1.1</ref>

Early-Ward

Labor protests became more and more common.

Some places like Cedar Point completely stopped construction, due to disputes like this.<ref>It took me twenty minutes to reach the next.  The area was slow to wake up, which was a surprise, given the amount of construction sites I could see from above.  Usually the work started first thing.

It was a nice slice of city, with a view of the water, tall buildings, shiny, modern, with nice, large houses, but it was only halfway erected.    There were cars in driveways, but there wasn’t much life.

I flew low, stopping at one of the gates to a construction site for a taller building.

Laminated sheets had been put up on the gates.

Construction suspended until we’re given what we’re owed.

The same was on display in other places, with laminated sheets of paper and graffiti.  Some of it was angrier. - Excerpt from Flare 2.7</ref>

Post-Fallen fall

Long-standing tension produced by the infamous Fallen sect eventually boiled over into violent conflict, which culminated in the sabotage of existing multidimensional portals by unknown conspirators.

This incident added another critical strain to The City, increasing cases of riots and looting.

Blocks near portals are getting abandoned. Cell coverage and blackouts are getting worse, main roads are disrupted.<ref>Torch 7.5</ref>

Jeanne Wynn of Mortari intends to assume a leadership position over The City, once all other competitors drop from the race. She eventually succeeded in the election and may use it as a stepping stone to greater positions of political power.

Refugee processing station suffered from open paramilitary attack, resulting in a heavy loss of lives among volunteers and refugees.<ref>Interlude 7.y II</ref> According to Defiant and Dragon at this point the City was under constant, covert assault from Earth Cheit and Teacher agents.<ref>Beacon 8.1</ref>

Post-Time Bubble Pop

Teacher stripped any security from computer networks, which led to temporary shutdown of services.<ref>Black 13.11</ref>

Deader and Goner, Barrow, and The Lords of the Pit attempt to anchor themselves in desolated blocks near central portals.<ref>“The second war is over the portal-wracked areas in the heart of the city. Those of you who are more used to working over there will recognize the names. Deader and Goner operate from a corner world much as we’re operating from the Bunker. Barrow is a corner world, in a manner of speaking. The Lords of the Pit have the villains of the Pitstop under their thumb. We think the best use of resources would be to put Advance Guard on this.” - Excerpt from Breaking 14.2</ref>

Post-Attack on Teacher

Ingenue and her boys hide somewhere in the region, as well as some Teachers' soldiers.<ref name="16.1II"/>

After The Wardens captured Teacher's tech and data The City was slated to mass evacuation due to inevitable dimensional collapse of the region. This only fueled public unrest.<ref name="16.1II">From Within 16.1</ref>

The Ice Breaks

Contessa made a mistake, dooming The City.<ref name="II17.y">Sundown 17.y</ref> Around three-fifths of the city were consumed by the dimensional rift.<ref>The Mayor motioned toward a screen, that same overhead view from before. Now it showed the damage that spanned three-fifths of the city, which itself more or less spanned everything between New York and Boston and New York and New Brockton Bay. Shadows from the dust that had reached the sky above the city cast it in a noticeably darker tint, as though it were night. - Excerpt from Sundown 17.z</ref> Luckily, at that point the evacuation of The City was mostly finished, leaving only tens of thousands stragglers.<ref>“How many people are still in the city?” he asked.

“Thousands. Tens of thousands,” Citrine said, from the end of the table. - Excerpt from Sundown 17.z</ref>

Abandoned blocks of the City became a playground for Titans and a war-zone for capes and civilians.

The Machine Army entered the City thanks to Auger Titan deciding to use it as a distraction.<ref name="II18.z">Radiation 18.z</ref>

Sleeper made a short-time visit to the City.

Ward Epilogue

The ruins of the City were being reclaimed and repopulated by the capes and civilians willing to work with them.<ref>The city was being patched together. In a way, without the civilians there, it was easier to do the necessary work. The cracks were being paved over, and where they weren’t in a position to do the paving, they had quick-deploy bridges criss-crossing over the gaps like sutures. Buildings were actively being knocked down if they were hazardous, and the ones that were stable were being supported and added to.

Here and there, there were the scavenger camps. Organized, with the option for people to buy in, quickly sell, and then walk away with cash or whatever treasure they managed to dig up. There were similar projects with tree planting, farming, and setting up houses in the corner worlds… which weren’t corners anymore. - [1] from Last 20.e4</ref> Sveta proposes Perpetuity as the City's new name.<ref>“Could call the city forever,” Sveta murmured, her eyes still closed.  “Eternal City.  Perpetuity.”

“I kind of like Perpetuity, but that might be the beer talking,” Rain said.  “Do you think we could push for it, or something like it?”

“I think it’d be good,” Victoria said, smiling a little, her face lit by the fire in what was near total darkness, otherwise.  “A reminder that we press on, no matter what.  That there’s always a way forward.” - Excerpt from Last – 20.end</ref>

References

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