Arcangeles (Symphony Interplanetary)

Arcangeles is a space-station city in geosynchronous orbit over the longitude of Los Angeles. Legally, it is a city and county of California and thus US territory. Its economic base is various vacuum industries (including production of foamed and macrocrystalline metals) and a microwave power relay into the North American grid.
Physically, Arcangeles is a thick ring with an irregular glob of tanks and boxy things in the middle. This glob is the industrial center; the ring is the residential area. The current population is several hundred thousand.
Since Arcangeles is a building as well as a city, there is no real "outside." The nearest thing is a small collection of arboretum parks. The nicer parts of the city avoid a claustrophobic feel with high ceilings, cool pale colors, lots of potted plants, mirrors, and holo-murals. These areas tend to be on the upper, inner side of the ring, where the gravity is a tad lower than Earth-normal. ("Inner ring" is slang for the privileged class in many Anglophone orbital cities.) Commercial areas are all malls. The less pleasant parts of the station are the reverse of the inner rings ~ claustrophobic, industrial-looking, either bare of decor or plastered with grafitti and advertizing. There are also the undeveloped parts of the station ~ wide, dark, empty decks, with the steel bones of the station showing through.
== Tethers ==
The archangels have no intention of letting Arcangeles go the way of its dirtside ancestor. As a result, divine tethers outnumber infernal ones, so far.
=== Lightning ===
The whole station is a vast tether to Lightning, which is the main reason the divine predominates, but most of it is "outer precincts," so to speak. It channels Essence to Jean, but that's about it. The inner precincts of the tether are in the City Services Center, where everything from power grid to recycling of air and water to orbital adjustment are controlled.
There is a second tether ~ or a secondary center to the single tether ~ in the main computer bay, which is the home to the largest community in the city of AIs with souls. Servitors of Jean and Dominic work to protect the rights of this new breed of mortal, and sometimes wind up associating with lilim working for Freedom. However, Lilith has noted that three lilim have gone bright as a result of these associations, one even taking service with Dominic.
=== Fire ===
Focus One, the first and still biggest & busiest solar smelter. It is out in the glob of industry, at the ring's center. When the tether staff are corporeal, they appear as spacesuited figures busy at some technical task.
=== Wind ===
The docks, all around the station, but centered in the conning tower. Its staff are also usually anonymous spacesuited figures. Usually in a hurry, of course, or sometimes doing a flashy zero-g manoeuver.
=== Trade ===
Getting Arcangeles up there was something of an economic miracle, as well as a technical one, and that's where Marc came in. The Vacuum Industries Association was his main mortal tool in this, and he has a tether in their offices in the inner ring.
=== Flowers ===
The first and biggest air farm in the station. This is a series of greenhouse-like chambers, lit by light-pipes from the hull, full of pipes and huge glass tanks filled with bubbling green water. Not the kind of place you usually associate with Novalis, but it is here that her Word keeps the whole population alive and breathing. Thanks to the work of her servitors, one of the larger arboreta has been built next door and the tether's borders have expanded to take it in. There, people relax and soak in the peace of the celestial side of her Word. But the raw life is in the plumbing.
=== Technology ===
Arcangeles was a battleground between Lightning and Technology since it was just a blueprint. Lightning has the ascendancy for now, but Technology has never given up and has a tether in the microwave power relay. This is supposed to beam power down, in the form of microwaves, to a few acres of receiving antenna out in the California deserts. Thanks to Vapulan-inspired corner-cutting, the transmitter doesn't use quite the right frequencies and is slowly baking the desert beneath the antenna into sterility. It also sporadically loses alignment and zaps Pasadena, causing massive power failures, communications problems, and gremlin plagues. The tether includes the beam itself and the receiving antenna. Vapulan demons can teleport up and down between Arcangeles and the desert (or, occasionally, Pasadena).
=== Media ===
Nybbas has a thriving tether in the offices of Circle Star Network, headquartered in Arcangeles and the nucleus of "Hollywood Heights," the unofficial name for the orbital side of the west coast entertainment industry. CSN is most famous for its international marketing. It broadcasts culturally and politically tailored programming to anyone who pays for it ~ mostly shopping channels, porn, and artfully slanted news. The CSN logo is a star perched on the rim of a thick circle, like a large diamond on a ring; some detractors have pointed out that the star is an inverted pentacle.
=== Greed ===
Mammon has a minor tether in the offices of GeoSync Financial Services, working toward the economic stratification of all the cities of the Geosync.
== Adventure Ideas ==
* Endless turf wars between Lightning and Technology, of course.
* The uneasy dance between servitors or Jean, Dominic, and Lilith has been mentioned.
* If Lilith tries to found a tether in the AI community, and if the AIs become anti-human enough in their attitudes and methods, Lilith could find herself being muscled out by Factions.
* A space station is a temptingly fragile environment for servitors of Saminga to attack. You could get so much death from so little an investment of time and trouble. Servitors of Lightning could be employed in blocking such an effort.
Category:Cities
Category:Earth orbit
Category:Symphony Interplanetary