City of Overcast

**Overcast** is one of the first and is the largest city in Cyberia, hovering around 12,801 sq. mi (33,154 sq. km). In most places, the city is quite dense, more so than other cities, especially around the military base. This however, is not to say that there are not areas of relaxed breathing room.

## Naming

Overcast has been named as such due to the near-permanent and near-total cloud cover spanning across most if not all the city's skies.

## History

### Early History

The coast was first claimed by the Soviet Union in the early 1960's in the form of the Molodyozhnaya Research Station. This served as one of the first fronts for mining operations being done nearby, excavating large amounts of high-purity silicon ore, and later uranium.

### Takeover and the Formation of Cyberia

Molodyozhnaya was one of the few separatist bases in favor of keeping the Antarctic mines for itself. Its personnel assisted in the militant takeover of the loyalist bases in the early 2000's.

After forceful claim over the major bases was achieved, the station as well as the other coastal stations acted as an entry and exit point for trade of goods by air with foreign countries and companies.

From there, man-made infrastructure expanded steadily, at first in an ad-hoc manner, but then proceeded in a semi-planned structure with the building of a new military base, named Ramiel CMB (Cyberian Military Base). Ramiel CMB started relatively close to the shore but at high elevations, with the building of a very large breeder reactor whose rated maximum power output far exceeded the power needs at the time, for expansionist purposes. Afterwards, the base expanded rapidly, and so did surrounding metropolitan areas as populations increased.

## Economy

Overcast is most known for being the "Silicon Valley of Cyberia", as it is indeed the capital of bleeding edge technology in the country, in part due to it being the city in which the Defense Department's Research & Development Division is headquartered.

### Resource Management

The City of Overcast, similar in some capacity to all other cities, is reliant on those other cities for the importation of certain key elemental resources such as iron and titanium. Overcast itself operates a large silicon mine and a uranium mine that supplies roughly half of the country with primary fuel for the country's reactors.

Overcast is agriculturally independent, utilizing multi-story buildings built on very large areas of land and equipped with powerful climate control systems for ideal crop conditions. These buildings have closed-loop energy supplies to isolate themselves from the main grid in case of blackout.

### Companies

While the military is the primary provider of R&D into new technologies, large companies also take up their own R&D interests, sometimes even in direct competition with the CMF.

￼There are a great deal many companies established in Overcast that serve the general public of Cyberia the most by far, with limited success outside of the country.

### Transportation

Public transportation is largely done by subway and jet airliner. Lesser forms of transportation come in the form of civilian-run taxi services. Due to the massive size of the city, there are three different major commercial airports, whose passenger jets fly between each other almost as often as they fly to and from outside locations. Passenger planes in Overcast take off and land once every three minutes on average.

## Points of Interest

### Ramiel CMB

*See also: Military Bases in Cyberia*
As with all major cities, Overcast has a very large military base that the city was built around. The one in question here has been named Ramiel CMB (Cyberian Military Base), which also houses the largest nuclear fission power plant in the city and the country itself. Ramiel has the long standing reputation for having been made the main base of operations for the ASC Department of Defense, the largest department of the total nine under the High Castle.

### Research & Development

Military, and by extension civilian research and development in Cyberia is centered and focused in Overcast, in the Ramiel military base. By order of the current Director of R&D, the military has built and utilizes a supercomputer with a very powerful physics simulation engine, which is used to virtually test a number of different disciplines of new technologies and other such hardware. An old example would be, a 1:1 recreation of the blowback shifted pulse mechanism, which was immediately followed by a tinkering of different calibers that it could potentially be adapted to. This supercomputer is isolated from the networks, heavily guarded on both the physical and software levels. It has quickly become a crucial component in the development of technologies and has skyrocketed the rate of testing and release.

### Demographics

The ratio of military personnel to civilians in Overcast is among the highest between the major cities in Cyberia.

### Architecture

All kinds of buildings are built quite close to one another in most areas, with very little free space between themselves and slightly more space between them and the roadways. Tall buildings are known to house multiple businesses separated by floor numbers, and many of these buildings are constructed on a planned, modular floor plan in case there is a need for expansion, which happens vertically more often than horizontally.

Due to the very densely populated nature of the city, major throughput roads such as freeways are constructed well above most of the smaller buildings, allowing for quick and efficient personal travel between districts. Businesses and other such public bustling does not seem to follow much of a schedule; that is to say, there is always liveliness in some part of the city regardless of time of day or the sun being up or down.

### Higher Education

It is not uncommon for college funding and scholarships in Overcast to be supplemented and offered by private companies, respectively, for the sake of gearing students towards a career in engineering. Kadic Academy for example, one of the most prestigious technologically inclined universities, is supported by a number of private companies, who then encourage graduating students to work for them by offering them a mid-ladder job at their business. The military is well-known to practice this kind of long-game recruiting as well; especially true at Kadic.

### Sports

The most popular sport in Overcast is ice hockey. Contenders for the most popular are car-based associations such as Formula 1, rally/rallycross and drift competitions.

### Ethnic Enclaves

Like many westernized states, Cyberia too has ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown, Little Tokyo, etc. No city but Overcast is this more true in. Large districts dedicated to certain eastern cultures are dotted around the city, and are described as walking right into an entirely different country when visiting.