The Megacities of Cardinal, Saraswati, Soon-Bok, Nazzdack and Sarajevo house about 80% of the approximately five billion people in the New World. Megacities are comprised of up to a dozen interconnected spires, gigantic skyscrapers that contain and produce everything required for the employees of that spire, as well as the manufacturing of exports to other Holdings Companies. Some outlying spires are more purpose-built for hydroponic farming or the production of technology, while the central spire always houses the executive and management suites high into the troposphere. Every spire has its own undercity datacenter deep in the foundations of the building, dedicated to archiving and transferring the innumerable zettabytes of data produced by pornotainment, Sense-Tanks, social media profiles and reams of sales and banking data. Tunnels have often been excavated into neighbouring datacenters by the strange underworld denizens, and quite often prospectors unintentionally discover the apocalypse bunkers of the Old World, along with whatever treasures or mutants inside.
Life in the megacities is cramped, dreary and invasive, especially for the tens of millions of dead-end employees that inhabit the lower levels. Single-user habicubes are no larger than a standard shipping container, and house little more than a futon lounge/bedroom, a toilet with shower, and a hallway that is fitted with cooking and laundry utilities. Those that can afford double-wide habicubes are often higher up or specially trained corporate employees, mercenaries, or in the case of Kitty Kitsune, sought after coders-for-hire.
Corpo-Cop presence drops off significantly in the lower levels, to the point where it seems like the bottom thirds of any given spire are abandoned by management, save the shipping elevators that supply the merchant caravan landings. As such, gang activity is rife, the territory to sell smuggled goods, drugs and weapons are fought over constantly, and cheap, alternative brand franchises headed by shamed or ousted executives are prevalent. Holographic Bounty Boards are affixed to every wall, graffiti coats every surface, vigilante groups from the Fighter's Guild prowl the streets and bars and nightclubs sell stolen or home made booze to anyone with enough scars to prove they're local.
On the plus side, towards the ground levels, many storefronts here aren't corporate brands, instead rented by self-employed entrepreneurs, and there is an indie atmosphere about the lower levels that many find enchanting. For every pit fighter, there's an up-and-coming musician. For every scarred and tattooed ganger, there's an old salt guiding adventurers along the rebel path. The night life is vibrant, and the food - smuggled or hunted from outside - is often spicy and nutritious in comparison to the synthetic, sugary and drug-filled crap those in the middle levels eat.
Towards the higher levels, life is generally of a higher quality, for the comfort of franchise managers and directors. More space, better equipped habicubes, a higher quantity of piped oxygen, closer to the hydroponic farms for fresher - and real - fruit and vegetables, a higher security presence and local boarding schools to maintain the despotic executive familial units. Executives rub shoulders with local celebrities, expertly trained doctors and scientists, and spend their down time in exquisite smoking lounges, rooftop bars and dance halls.
That's not to say there is no danger in the upper levels. Corporate in-fighting has birthed places like the Assassin's Guild, a high-end boarding school and training centre for the younger sons and daughters that stand to inherit very little from their parents, instead learning the ways of genteel and etiquette-driven murder for hire. Every executive worth their salt has a personal security about them at all times, and often hire a staff from the grimy lower levels to do their cooking and cleaning, people able to defend themselves in case of attack by assassins or the private forces of a competing director. Many pit fighters and mercenaries end up in maid and butler outfits once their careers are over.
Honeycombing the outer walls of every spire are the private landing pads of managerial A.Vs, personal aerial vehicles used to flit from spire to spire to oversee their workers. These solar powered aerial vehicles rarely have the power to go any further than to the next megacity, certainly not across territories, and there's rarely any need to barring an emergency meeting.
For the four billion people houses in megacity spires, most will never see true sunlight or feel real sand beneath their feet. They're fated to inherit the jobs of their parents, live, work, and die inside the walls of their birth spire. But for adventurers and entrepreneurial types, megacities are an excellent place to earn creds, find a fresh quest from a local fixer, and restock supplies before setting back out on the dusty trail.
Lost megacities are spire clusters that - for one reason or another - have been abandoned by a Holdings Company and had its employees evacuated, or left behind. The reasons they are abandoned are innumerable; rogue Hive A.I taking over security or life support systems, undercity dweller incursions, mutant outbreaks from slapdash genetic modification, bankruptcy, or sometimes simply a large enough chunk of space debris from the Bezosphere demolishing the top levels of the spire. Lost megacities are scrubbed from official maps and merchant routes, as corporations refuse to let blunders of such magnitude stain their quarterly earnings calls to The Walled Street, but their miles high spires allows any wandering adventuring party or bandit clan to spot them across the horizon. Lost megacities are often rife with modern treasures; thousands of levels of abandoned retail storefronts, pharmaceutical supplies, weapons and armour, cybernetics and the creature comforts of the upper levels. As such, lost megacities are often found and repurposed into bandit camps, pirate fortresses or Cossack siches; but those without the fire and manpower to clear the thousands of levels of a single spire are inevitably defeated by mutants and hardlight manifestations borne within. Many adventuring parties find it safer to purloin an aerial vehicle and start their expeditions into forgotten spires a few hundred levels up, where there's less danger of cyberdriders, mutants, malware and bandits.
The oldest corporate territory of the New World, its early bankruptcy under the Gamble & Gamble umbrella company separated the territory into a Holy Roman Empire style collection of nine micro-territories, each with their own small megacity of no more than three spires each. Attached to each micro-territory are smaller, "vassalized" megacity-states, partnered to their larger territory. Since then, with the rise of Cardinal Holdings, megacity Chilaquiles has grown to become the capital of the zone, complete with seven total spires, and while the in-fighting and subterfuge among these smaller territories is legendary, a tentative peace has washed over the area.
The larger megacities of Cardinal Holdings are:
Megacity Chilaquiles - The largest megacity of the territory, though still small compared to those of Nazzdack or Sarajevo. It encompasses seven spires, and due to the machinations of Madeleine Rie, its largest exports are now genetically engineered bimbofied people and addictive, gene-altering milk products.
Megacity Abstruse - A megacity focused on refining the rare metals required for cybernetics, due to the pollution billowing upwards from its factories, executives and directors live in the lower levels while workers and employees live higher up, creating an upside down styled megacity.
Megacity Komondor - A dual-spired megacity focused on exporting hydroponically grown sugar, ethanol and powerfully strong liquor to the rest of Cardinal. Approximately 17 million Gobbos live here, though none of them do any work.
Megacity Zeugma - An ancient single spired megacity dedicated to the collection of Old World relics and artefacts. Houses the largest libraries and museums in the world. Known as Zeugma Balls to relic hunters.
Megacity Melange - Known for sour candies, sherbet and hallucinogenic drugs. Rumours are that the directors and management staff have abandoned Melange, as no one has seen a Corpo-Cop in decades and the lone spire has evolved into a strange, mind-expanding nudist colony.
Megacity Cove - A large swathe of rural territory surrounds the tri-spired megacity Cove, and borders the territory of Calico Redistribution. As a result, its often the target of pirate incursions, and many lower level gangs and rural bandit clans have piratical influence.
Megacity Crepuscular - Due to its location on the very borders of the All-Gobi Desert, as well as its poor air-conditioning and focus on manufacturing machinery, the three spired Megacity Crepuscular's work schedule involves shifts at dawn and dusk, snoozing through the hot afternoons and huddling together during the cold nights.
Megacity Apricate - Situated on the coastline well within Cardinal Territory, Apricate has become somewhat of a tourist destination for Cardinal higher-ups. Well defended from pirate incursions by the surrounding bays, Apricate's lone spire's primary exports have transitioned to swimwear and coconut based beverages.
Megacity Sago - A double spired megacity dedicated to providing a back-up datacenter to the Euphori-Tank Online Data Farms, Megacity Sago is home to the largest number of Undercity Elfs in the world. The datacenters of both spires have spread well into the middle layers of the megacity, in a bid to keep Euphori-Tank online.
Saraswati Virtue is home to a single, sprawling megacity known as Megacity Mahabharata, made up of a central spire and three concentric rings of connected outlying smaller spires. In hindsight, this was considered an incredibly bad idea, as the Hive A.I known as "The Result of A Single Poor Choice" has subsequently taken command of the entire urban infrastructure of the territory, though presently has done nothing to slow Saraswati's pharmaceutical and genetic research or endanger the lives of its hundreds of millions of employees.
The central spire of Mahabharata is known as Spire Brahma, and contains the entirety of Mahabharata's current directorial and management staff, as well as hosting "The Result of A Single Poor Choice". The inner circle of smaller spires is called Wall Damayanti, the central circle is Wall Shakuntala, and the outer circle Wall Kacha, where the majority of lower level employees reside.
The staggering scale of Megacity Mahabharata, as well as Saraswati Virtue's advances in medicine and gene therapy, make Saraswati feel like something from another world altogether. Beyond the relatively podunk efforts of cosmetic genetic manipulation of the Splicers, Saraswati houses humanoids of alien beauty, immortal demi-gods of technology, medicine and century-long breeding plans, as well as the majority of Nayalings and Street Elfs in the New World. It's also home to the largest manufacturers of designer and psychedelic drugs, and the mind-expanding culture of Wall Kacha's residents is a testament to that.
The megacities of Soon-Bok are known as Dosi, and are each built over resource rich mineral deposits in Soon-Bok's never-ending quest to arm the planet with guns, swords and military robots. Due to the territory encompassing a collection of islands and the more extreme tropical weather found on the coast, Soon-Bok's Dosi are lower to the ground, taper close to the top of each spire, and have splayed roof-like structures separating each ascending spire block. Soon-Bok's Dosi also feature more spires to counter their lower population capacity, as well as encourage settlers and prospective parents with larger habicubes, floral arrangements and public zen gardens inside the spires. At ground level, Soon-Bok is home to the majority of tea-houses and onsens found in the world, but also wandering ronin, bandit clans and piratical waegu terrorising the streets. As a way to encourage Hwang Jin's personal doctrine of personal defence, Corpo-Cops are extremely rare aside from the highest level of Dosi spires, instead civilians pay to hire bands of samurai to solve their problems.
While entire Dosi get lost in the ever-expanding sprawl of Soon-Bok, here are the largest:
Dosi Hana - The capital Dosi of Soon-Bok, as well as home to the most spires and military ordnance. Dosi Hana is home to Hwang Jin, current Daejang of the territory. As with all Dosi, Hana's main export is firearms, ammunition, and melee weaponry. Dosi Hana is considered an extremely beautiful place to live by all travellers, though the lack of palpable sleaze tends to put off potential immigrants from other megacities.
Dosi Yori - Known for its delightful fish and rice dishes, advertised as having "almost no plastic", Dosi Yori is also the primary defence against incursions from The Ronin Expedition, and features dragon-engraved artillery on the coast to deter any larger flotillas.
Dosi Jihwaja - On the absolute edge of Soon-Bok territory, Dosi Jihwaja's spires form a huge wall to keep the desert and dust storms from encroaching into the tropical zone. The wind-break function of this wall of spires means constant maintenance and repair to the outer walls is required; a massive but necessary drain on Soon-Bok's economy.
Dosi Naru - Acting as a bridge between Soon-Bok's mainland and it's island territories, Dosi Naru is the only known floating megacity in the world. An incredible act of engineering, Dosi Naru's ability to reposition its spires to allow en-masse land transport of island manufactured goods to the mainland is a sight to behold. Boats would have been easier but much less impressive.
Dosi Daebak - Built over a series of active geysers, Dosi Daebak is an entire megacity dedicated to bath houses, hot springs and water parks. Another effort to attract more expatriates, Dosi Daebak is quite possibly the largest tourist attraction in the world. Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume and variety of travellers, Daebak is also a prime recruitment zone for technocults and waegu clans, and adventuring parties rarely have much time to relax before becoming embroiled in another conflict.
Similar to Cardinal in it's constant corporate in-fighting, and hierarchal makeup, Sarajevo Seven comprises of seven individual territories, though differing from Cardinal in that it hosts the S7 Council; a board of directors dedicating to unified decision making and increasing of market share across all seven smaller territories. While Sarajevo directors still jostle for position among their contemporaries, the S7 Council ensures consolidated responses to outside threats. But as far as domestic affairs are considered, Sarajevo is in shambles. Constant changes in megacity ownership and the endless subterfuge between directors means megacities are largely governed on autopilot, exporting very little to other territories and having gigantic crime syndicates control huge portions of the megacities. It's even been rumoured that, due to the incredible turnover of S7 Council members, gang bosses have made their way up the ranks and found themselves directors of companies and seats on the Council. The complete disarray of the lower levels and innumerable assassinations of directors, financed by other directors, means that the despotic nature of other corporate holdings companies has almost vanished in Sarajevo. The surprising lack of Elfs on the S7 Council might lend those rumours some credence.
The larger megacities - those that have seats on the S7 Council - are listed below:
Megacity Nova - Home to Charles Large of Large Acquisitions, Megacity Nova is probably the most stable of the seven, though largely from the expansive smuggling rings throughout its five spires. Products from House 'Bacco, Nazzdack, Ur-Um and J.A.V line the halls of this megacity, and the noticeable lack of Corpo-Cop presence allows these goods to be traded in the open.
Megacity Disdain - Practically considered a Lost Megacity, situated on the coast and rife with pirates, wandering 'Bacco knights and gangers. Most of Disdain deals in high level financial services, located in the higher levels of its three spires, and are cordoned off by a strong Corpo-Cop presence on the level below, though they dare not venture any lower.
Megacity Thrice - A three spired Megacity on the fringes of Sarajevo territory dedicated to keeping encroaching Kaiju at bay. Unlike other megacities, Thrice's spires are approximately two hundred miles away from each other, attached by incredible, flexible bridges and laden with artillery to gatekeep against the many Firewhirls and Wyverns that would otherwise attack the inner territory. Walking a Thrice bridge is considered a right of passage for its denizens, for avoiding the bizarre people that choose to live inside the bridges is an act of impressive social stealth.
Megacity Opaque - Also known as the Black Pyramid, Opaque is a gigantic windowless casino city, the largest gambling den in the world. Financed by infamous technocult The Simulationists - known for believing that one wakes up from a perceived "role-playing game" after death - Opaque is the newest seat on the S7 Council. Though it was never bankrolled by Sarajevo, the immense wealth the megacity generates from travelling gamblers, adventurers, and technocultists, has earned it a place at the table.
Megacity Glasgow - A double-spired megacity known for producing extremely large swords and extremely strong painkillers. Glasgow is second only to Saraswati for its advances in medicine, though these impressive leaps in healing technology seem to be fuelled by the desire to swing gigantic swords at each other. Glasgow is noted for its high output of Enforcer and Ronin adventurers, though they often ask why they ever left.
Megacity Court - Situated at the coastal point closest to the Duty Free Ports of House 'Bacco, Court has inevitably accrued a portion of the chivalric surfer culture over the centuries. While not as stringent and orderly as the Lordly Houses of 'Bacco, Court is known for its surprisingly uptight and refined etiquette, combined with its "speedos and bikinis" fashion sense. Courts primary exports are to House 'Bacco, including synthesised foodstuff and beverages, as well as cheap polysteel armour that 'Bacco uses to protect lesser knights.
Megacity Forum - Similar to Cardinal's Megacity Zeugma, Forum is dedicated to the collection and archival of Old World Relics, though retrieval efforts are financed by personal collectors instead of by corporate appointment. The export of these relics is a huge financial gain for Sarajevo, as they take a substantial auction-like commission for each artefact. Forum also houses the entirety of corporate boarding schools for Sarajevo, and is considered somewhat of a place for learning due to the lackluster hold Sarajevo has over its megacities. Vast libraries of non-corporate knowledge line the halls of Forum's single spire, as all data collected from Old World relics is copied and archived into its treasuries. Technocults consider Forum a place of extreme blasphemy, and raids into the lower levels means a constant supply of work and creds for any adventurers and mercenaries nearby.
As the territory the wealthiest Old World groups and individuals fled to during the Great Relocation, the entire island of Nazzdack is a sprawling metropolis, dotted with smaller, prototypical megacities. Rather than identifying itself through its megacities - which are more akin to Old World business-focused skyscrapers with executive penthouses throughout the levels - Nazzdack is divided by five districts known as Carbons; layered urban areas focused on providing goods to the wealthier inhabitants of their central megacity spires. Nazzdack is also home to The Walled Street, a heavily fortified gated community that homes the vast majority of shareholders of the New World as they wait for rocket-bound transport to the Bezosphere. Notably, Nazzdack has no sway over The Walled Street, and must compete for market share like every other territory.
Nazzdack is a strange mishmash of the last four centuries of innovation and corporate rule; 21st and 22nd brickwork century buildings provide the foundation for newer glass and polysteel instalments that loom over road networks, classic billboard advertising plasters every exterior wall, above ground powerlines web throughout the open streets, and bridges and aerial vehicle routes criss-cross the sky as the ground level deteriorates. Wandering through the lower levels of Nazzdack feels like stepping back in time, and unlike the other, warmer territories, Nazzdack denizens often find themselves needing thick coats to protect from the constant rain and biting wind. The dense rainstorms also provide a thick layer of gloom to the entire territory, and outright darkness to the lower levels of the districts. The high Corpo-Cop presence throughout Nazzdack doesn't deter the rampant street level crime and territory wars, but the comparatively remote location, the lack of Old World bunkers and the island nature of Nazzdack means the threat of mutants and kaiju are minimal. Adventurers often flock to Nazzdack when they're looking for a more "classic" experience.
Below are the five districts of Nazzdack:
Carbon Red - The busiest and most populace district of Nazzdack, noted for its high population of freelance bounty hunters and Corpo-Cops. This is largely due to the sheer volume of hole-in-the-wall bars and pubs that can only hold a dozen or so patrons, far too small for the rampant and innumerable gangs that roam the streets. Gunshots ring throughout the street at all hours, punctuated only by Corpo-Cop AVs descending into the chaos to provide iron-fisted order.
Carbon Pink - Housing the fewest wealthy individuals of all the districts, Carbon Pink has devolved into a lurid mess of chippendale clubs, brothels, genetic therapy clinics and gun and liquor stores. Splicers, Gobbos and Wukong dominate the streets, engaging in drunken revelry that inevitably end up mass brawls and shootouts. Bizarrely, it's also home to an expanding art scene; swing dance halls and hip hop clubs are the lifeblood of Carbon Pink's flailing and manic economy.
Carbon White - Home to the wealthiest individuals of the territory, and closest to The Walled Street fortification, Carbon White is essentially the landing area for those looking to be invited to reside in The Walled Street, though no one has ever left to spread the criteria for getting in. Private security is not only absolute, but also somewhat of a fashion statement among the denizens of Carbon White; some opt for the overly-muscled pit fighters of Protein Adjacent, while others choose the samurai of Soon-Bok, while still others prefer the fun of a group of Wukong displaced from their conclave.
Carbon Black - A long, thin district created as a defence - or distraction - to the pirates of New Tortuga, Carbon Black finds itself slowly morphing into a beach head for pirate incursions. Taverns, watering holes and gun stores have sprung up along the beach, Corpo-Cop presence is slowly whittling away from a war of attrition, and its even been rumoured that Mad Maggie McMillan has established a permanent dwelling on the shorefront. If these rumours are true, and the immortal pirate queen has her eyes on Nazzdack, outright war may begin in Carbon Black.
Carbon Blue - Situated nearest The Duty Free Ports of House 'Bacco, Carbon Blue has become host to the wandering lesser knights of the various feuding houses, and has adopted traces of its culture to match. While too cold for the surfer culture, Carbon Blue houses on-land jousting tournaments and longhouse taverns for drinking and feasting alongside the strange chivalric knights. Due to the ever increasing pirate raids in Carbon Black, Carbon Blue is becoming somewhat of a staging area for the younger knights and squires looking to duel with the encroaching pirates.
J.A.V's primary exports are sex and sexual paraphernalia, its lush jungles overflowing with potent aphrodisiacs, groping phallic pheremonal fungus and tentacle-laden creatures, and its megacities filled with the sounds, smells and fluids of everlasting orgies. Business is performed in the brief interims of post-nut clarity, manufacturing revolves around perfecting the orgasm, and food production is entirely automated, letting residents indulge their every hedonistic whim with reckless abandon. To this extent, J.A.V has become the territory with the highest influx of migrants in the New World, it's market share growth outpacing other territories by sheer weight of numbers. To add to the fun is the incredible pharmaceutical output of performance enhancing drugs, dopamine stimulants and incredibly cheap cosmetic gene therapy, heralding an uptick in the Splicer population. Wukong and Gobbos also flock to the territory, drawn by their innate desire for fun and mischief. J.A.V's lone CEO, Silas Bubblegum, broadcasts weekly State of The Company streams - usually amongst a pile of writhing bodies - declaring that everything is pretty great, and people should keep doing what they're doing.
But beneath the free love and casual sex lies an insidious undercurrent, unnoticed by residents and only glimpsed by passing adventuring parties. Suit-clad men and women wander among the piles of sexdrunk bodies, occasionally jotting a note down on a datapad or taking a surreptitious photo. Sometimes an out-of-place, fully-dressed worker will offer a prototype stimulant or enhancing inhaler to a group of party-goers, or a pair of well-built hirelings will take someone aside by the shoulders, the residents too hazed to notice. Something strange is happening in J.A.V, but no one can be sure, or particularly cares, what it is.
J.A.V is home to two single-spired megacities, unique in their construction in that each spire is flanked by a pair of residential domes, instead of having employees throughout the spire levels. The resulting shape of the megacities is considered a happy coincidence to everyone that sees them.
Megacity Oppai - The larger megacity of the territory, situated on the coast of J.A.V and home to Silas Bubblegum and his millions-strong harem of men and women. Oppai is noted for the sheer volume of pornographic datachips it exports to other territories, largely due to its incredible surveillance technology installed before the territory changed hands to J.A.V. It also houses the largest library of public use Sense-Tanks in the New World, and the highest number of private owners. As such, Megacity Oppai's undercity datacenters are surprisingly quiet and well-behaved, presumably due to the vast amounts of pornography streaming through their servers at all times.
Megacity Pettan - The smaller megacity of the two, its focus is on the agricultural aspects of J.A.V; namely the growth and cultivation of its endless jungles. Situated directly above a gigantic Old World reservoir, Pettan provides the desalination of seawater and massive irrigation efforts across the territory, as well as the development of new flora, fauna and pharmaceuticals. Thankfully these tasks are almost entirely automated, someone occasionally pushed out of the piles to make sure all the gauges are green. Adventurers find Megacity Pettan to be dangerously unguarded, especially with how important its water supply is to the territory of the world, but most residents are too busy to pay concerns any mind.
The Ur-Um Wines and Spirits Company
Ur-Um's lone megacity - Whaddyacallit - is the last prototype megacity still standing and occupied; all others having been replaced or reconstructed in more beneficial areas. As such, Whaddyacallit is much like the Ur-Um territory itself, a ramshackle and dilapidated artefact of a forgotten time. Largely used to house dock workers and administrative staff for its colossal alcohol exports, Ur-Um is an Old West town piled vertically. Barberdocs offer a shave and a tune-up of cybernetics, burlesque dancers can-can to ragtime piano music, tables are flipped over card games in saloons, and sarsaparilla flows freely. Alcohol is cheaper than water in Ur-Um, similarly to Czarina Tropical Agriculture, but is also one of the few places regular citizens can buy non-synthetic bread and real potatoes. Exceedingly fortunate, as high-carb meals allow denizens of the territory to keep drinking all night.
Whaddyacallit's low-profile interlinked skyscrapers each dedicated to a single cause might give cause to suspect that the megacity is larger than others, due to its wide footprint, though this is not the case. Entire districts go unpopulated as citizens take to working in the territory's agricultural and farming projects, either growing grapes for wine, distilling spirits, or herding photosynthetic cattle, as the smaller towns scattered across Ur-Um land paradoxically feel more alive and bustling than its megacity.
Whaddyacallit is home to the Prospectors Guild, a group of daring and foolhardy adventurers that brave the world's undercities and bunkers in search of loot, and to map the ever expanding network of underground facilities. The Prospectors Guild provides a secondary source of tourism for Ur-Um beyond the ability to get shitfaced, which is the quantity of Old World relics brought up to the surface. Collectors from around the world gather in Ur-Um to peruse and purchase the strange fragments of the past, and thanks to the endless flow of drink, often end up spending more money than they planned.