Ecstascity

Ecstacity is an underwater metropolis, and possibly one of the empire's largest cities.
The city was built by the survivors from Fhrahallar, Bhom, Horgolir, and more generally former inhabitants of the Thalodor Isles. 
The city was built deep under the waves of the Matted sea, in order to escape the horrors of the war waged by king Torermal and the line of Avaltank. 
This fact remains very real in Ecstascian culture, where Avaltank is considered a curse word.
== History ==
=== Refugees ===
Originally the refugees of the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth nations of the Thalodor Isles fled to the impermanent isles of the Matted Sea. The impermanent Isles are land masses that appeared and disappeared seemingly at random, they are found in the Matted sea, but the phenomenon has been observed elsewhere. 
Most of those fleeing were the former ruling class of their respective nations in Thalodor, as such were not particularly adept at colonizing the new lands.
They began settling the area by arriving on 90° Freighters. The Dalmer would set up their habitations, farms, mines and lumber camps on these isles and trade with the empire. 
The settlements were constantly raided by pirates from the coasts around the islands. To combat this, the settlers installed watchtowers and defensive walls, but the impermanent nature of the islands made this impractical. 
Though some strongholds still exist, most of the settlers used the 90° Freighters to submerge themselves when pirates were near, using the Spearnet Lighthouse to warn them to submerge.
=== Sealed to the Floor ===
Over time the operation of sinking the Freighters became less and less accepted by the Dalmer, who then took to permanently sealing the freighters to the sea floor, eventually creating the area known as the Freighter Fields, the arrival area for newcomers to the city.
For a while, the population manages to move from one freighter to another using Barracuda class submarines repurposed for transport. But these were in too short supply for the population and businesses couldn’t keep up with the demand for personal submarines. This led to a referendum for the creation of a walkway system that would connect the freighters. After months of debates, a majority voted for the creation of a series of walkways made of repurposed metal and reinforced glass, dubbed the Glassworks. In order to find the necessary amounts of sand to build the reinforced glass panes, expeditions were sent to find suitable sources of sand. Once these areas were depleted, they would serve as the next expansions of the city.
=== Gigacetidae Brings Life ===
The “Birth” of Ecstascity is considered to be when a prehistoric sea monster, disturbed by the Dalmeran Celestial Defense and Exploration Array celestial communications array, travels to the underwater city and destroys the array, effectively cutting it off from the rest of the Empire. The Empire fails to notice this.
The stranded population adapts by adopting a waste picking economy. This is successful at first as resources recycled from waste are bountiful. This gave place to scavenger merchants and trade caravans in the burgeoning city. However this did not last long as the population grew, resources to be scavenged became rare. The transition had to be made to produce goods autonomously in order to meet expanding needs. But this could only happen if property rights (which were basically forfeit when the waste picking economy was established) were respected. This was not the case and skirmishes over resources (such as precious diving gear, indispensable in order to scavenge the deeps) became commonplace. Over time the different factions were absorbed by the East Matted Sea Mercantile trading company, who effectively replaced the void of government with something much worse.
At its height the EMSM effectively controlled trade and policing in the city, having the largest number of defensive robots to control their territory. The EMSM profited greatly from its dominance over the city, as it effectively controlled it through its cheap wares, which destroyed any chances of competition. As the company and the city grew, the company detected dissent and, in a spectacularly selfless move, created a political administration AI at the behest of the population. The AI, who somehow managed to connect with the Aether Web (an important plot point), applied the up to date laws of Dalmeran, and ordered the immediate atomization of the EMSM into a galaxy of small businesses. 
This had both positive and negative effects on the city, the positive effect was that competition became viable and the city became prosperous, but still unexplainably isolated from the Empire. The negative side was that with free trade came expansion of the city into Shakfish territory, who would frequently clash with the city.
== Conflicts ==
=== The Excavation site battle ===
The earliest conflict between the City and the Shakfish. The excavation site was situated on an enormous sand mound necessary to the construction of the Glassworks. Mining the so called Sand Mountain uncovered one of the Shakfishes innumerable temples and shrines that litter the Matted Sea. 
The temple was of particular interest to the Dalmer who wished to study Shakfish culture. The shakfish didn’t take kindly to this and summarily killed the researchers. A mobile campaign was sent with a double objective, reclaiming the excavation site, and destroying the Shakfish armies.
The excavation site was surrounded on three sides by the Shakfish, this was found out in an event known as the reveal, when the Nautical Satellite array of the city revealed that the site was in reality sieged by the three armies.
The excavation site was difficult to defend, with four main entrances that were difficult to defend from the invaders giant scaphandriers and two headed sea dragons. The Dalmer used the sea dragons natural unpredictability against the Shakfish, baiting them to fight the other armies and causing chaos in their ranks.
=== Robot revolts ===
The city is cursed with its labor problem which nothing seems to fix. Labor quarters are made from the infamous 90° Freighters connected with pathways.
The city first started with regular robots to solve its labor problem, this proved effective and the robot servants were perfected to the point of being near indistinguishable from regular Dalmer, this caused them to be uncanny and creeped the population out. 
The dalmer generally mistreated the servants who came to be as smart as they were, but their short lifespan meant their subpar AI deteriorated within a few years and all that remains is a lifeless shell. This distressed the intelligent robots immensely, but the Dalmer paid no heed to their requests for longer lives. The robots eventually revolted when a misidentified shuttle carrying hundreds of servants was shot down by the city’s defense system and the Dalmer authorities refused to acknowledge the act, or give recognition to what they saw as simple servants. 
The servants revolution was bloody, but eventually quelled as the Dalmer still held the automated defenses of the city. The servants then went underground, posing as Dalmer and some committed acts of guerilla warfare against the Dalmer. The shaky period of peace in the city led to special servant hunting units to be created within the city, yielding mostly positive results.
This peace did not resolve the cities problems however, as since Ecstacity did not have sufficient power to provide the city’s population with fully automated farms and industries. 
=== The biomechanical limbs craze ===
In order to push people to work the factories and farms instead of their usual higher intellectual pursuits, the government of Ecstascity funded diverse biomechanical parts as part of the cities healthcare plan. These were precursors to prosthetics. This has mixed results as those who do accept abuse the system and have dozens of biomechanical parts installed into their bodies. These parts include black boxes, prosthetic livers, empathy boxes, electric eyes, “sea slug” hands, and mood organs. Some took the craze even further and became copy paste UC’s and placed themselves into robotic shells.
=== The Invasion  ===
While the biomechanical craze had the benefit of resolving the cities issues with labor, food and access to goods, the city experienced a widespread affinity for philosophizing on the nature of Dalmerty. This went to such a point that a neighboring kingdom invades the city with ease, and eliminates the out of phase residents.
The invasion of Ecstacity was quick, but once the invaders were in command, they were no more inclined to work the factories and farms than the previous occupants. To counter this, they did the unimaginable, used slaves to use their technology for them.
=== The Slave craze ===
To complement the worker shortage, slaves were imported from the surface and given puzzle tests to see if they can fix the cities industrial complex. Those who succeed are then sent to different factories to ensure production of the cities goods, those who don’t are either killed or used as manual labor. This creates a group of super slaves, who were kept in small cages like apartments and fed via dispensers like animals. 
Over time this caused the Dalmer living in the city to forget how the industrial technology worked, and become increasingly dependent on the super slaves. 
Over time, since the supervisors forgot how the machines worked the slaves got more and more leeway, and finally knew exactly what they were building and how to use them. The abducted slaves eventually revolt, and using their skills create their own weapons, and eventually a warp gate to return to their lands, the incorrectly calibrated machine causes a portion of the city to implode under the sea’s pressure. The catastrophe wasn't discovered until 34 years later.
=== The cultivator AI debacle ===
After the Gigacetidae rampaged across the sea, the city of Ecstacity was rediscovered. To avoid past mistakes measures were taken, and space buoys were tripled to ensure communication with the surface entrusted to an AI. Eventually the AI responsible for construction malfunctioned, assuming the surface had been destroyed by an extinction level event, and forbade travel to the surface world. This made the AI go into its more extreme prerogatives of maintaining the Dalmer, which it called its “charges”, alive without a proper definition. This gives place to odd and terrifying results.
== Sunken City Demons ==
Birth decline in the city and isolation leads to people turning to cults for answers. Demons gave them babies with powers. Those who opposed demons kill the babes. The cults end up invoking entire Delphic cities where demons live. The Imperial government learns of the arrival of the city and nukes these areas to prevent the spread of demonic influence. The cults were ready for this thanks to fortified bunkers and survived. They return to the surface after the destruction and enact terrorist attacks to usher in a new government. The new government deals in viable embryos, but is later toppled by AI led robots bent on stamping out demonic influence in the population through eugenics. In the meantime, demon worshippers at the bottom of the sea return to the surface offering gifts to the remaining living people. 
In Ecstacity, the dalmer invented synthesized yeast (called Essence) from the luminescent biomass on the seafloor. Originally essence was supposed to give every citizen a limited telekinetic ability that connected directly to the PSS. Guests arriving in the city are indoctrinated with yeast, justifying the medical centers situated just after the entrance of freighter fields. 
A side effect of Essence usage was that organs would mutate and turn into supplementary hearts. The people who use essence also start exhibiting strange behavior, treating weapons like babies, an inability to see their faces out of shame and the appearance of strange mutated children that extract essence from corpses. Several cults emerged, the cult of the scalpel and the disciples of the thousands pieces of her face who want beauty made obligatory. Some cults hunt the demons that patrol the streets, and retrieve Essence from corpses of the dead. In Ecstacity the demons are all kept prisoner and their only way out is through pacts with those that would attempt to summon them. 
Ghosts of past essence users can be seen by those who use essence. They are more than happy to give tips and clues to those that explore the city, mostly out of shame over their actions. Much later, the Essence would be responsible for giving the dalmer two of their more strange abilities, random onset telepathy, and limited telekinesis. Both these powers would be derived from an AF warhead detonation on the surface, spreading Essence all over the empire. The detonatino was detected however, and the city was bombarded by depth charges by the Steward.
Ever since, several underwater cities were created, although with much stricter protocols to avoid isolation.
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