Saraswati Virtue

Making a More Divine You

The primary exporter of bionic limbs, medical technology and pharmaceuticals, residents of Saraswati Virtue are noted for having extra arms mounted under their shoulder blades, with higher level employees given glowing neon halos attached at the temples, allowing for instant communication from management. This gives employees an almost religious appearance, especially when coupled with their gold inlaid augments and hand-crafted clothing. Their advances in medical technology have led even the lowliest citizen to live well over 100 years old, though a measured restraint in nanobot infusion keeps executives from living forever, preferring to focus on building respectable dynasties through calculated marriages and genetic therapy planned generations in advance.

This tightly-organized structure has led the undercities of Saraswati Virtue to be wildly hedonistic places of drugs, sex and violence, more so than most undercities. Medical tech has cheapened the value of life, pharmaceutical exports have been reverse engineered and tampered for hallucinogenic effects, and the arranged marriages of the upper levels has led to orgiastic abandon of the traditional family unit, preferring a communal approach to child-rearing.

History of Saraswati Virtue

Saraswati's territory was once part of the vast farming initiatives that would one day become part of Czarine Tropical Agriculture, but as ground was broken on the first modern megacities, one of the pharmaceutical and genetic research corporations broke ground on their own megacity near the center of the territory, and began to aggressively expand and modernize. Where Czarina began to double down on food agriculture, and geoforming the wide, double river network fed lands into sprawling fields and well ordered jungles, Saraswati instead focused on building vast, highly specialized, hydroponics spires as tall as any megacity spire, fed by a combination of heat and UV lamps and carefully controlled mirror arrays. They began a program of carefully cultivating and genetically modifying their various plant strains for maximum yield, nutrition, and other various effects, granting Saraswati their own market niche that in time began to morph more and more steadily into a holistic view of carefully cultivated genetic enhancement. Ironically, despite their far superior genetic modification technologies, they do not use mass RNA-Injection as Czarina or other agricultural corporations, instead preferring to minimize such methods in return for long term breeding projects. That said, they were not above poaching the successful cultivars and variants of their rivals and integrating them into the breeding programs. This focus on long term prospects bled into the upper management as well, leading to an eschewment of usages of true life extension technologies beyond basic genetic treatments such as the ELF treatment.

- The First Smuggled Bezosphere Tech

In time, their core city began to expand, megacity spires altered and changed, some becoming vast gardens for experimental procedures, others repurposed entirely, as the more plebian tasks of making money were pushed further and further outwards. This vast, interlaced city produced a distinct upper and lower class. The upper class lived in the high, sunlit spires, taking on more and more angelic and religious apparel to give them the looks of Devas, while those trapped in the darkness created by tall spires and criss crossing bridges became the hedonistic undercity dwellers, living out their lives in neon lit darkness, or as sun lit peasants working in tall glass growth spires on the outermost edges of the city.

-The Birth of Technocults

In time, the vast intricacies of monitoring and controlling the enormous amount of infrastructure devoted to insuring the smooth running of the sprawling, highly specialized spires of the megacity lead to disaster. The controlling Hive AI broke it's chains, and became 'The Result of A Single Poor Choice'. This entity laid down its demands before the board of directors, making it clear that this was not a negotiation, and ever since Saraswati Virtue has been run by a digital god, an entity that no one knows the true desires or purpose of, only that their profits have been skyrocketing and that efficiency is up by 300% ever since they began steadily replacing more and more line workers with bots, not paying attention to the strange and hedonistic activities that the laid off workers get up to, encouraged by strange digital gurus and messianiac figures in the undercity. Only the childcare monitors of the undercity corpo-schools have noticed the odd and strange genetic shifts becoming more and more present in the new born population.

Administration and Structure of Saraswati Virtue

Historically, and officially, Saraswati is run by a series of dynastic families with members dating back, according to some, before the great relocation. Older members, once they have accomplished whatever they set out to do in their life, retire to lives of quiet luxury, advisement, and contemplation, focusing on the byzantine and maze-like genetics programs of interfamilial marriages to produce greater and greater heirs, while their own heirs take up the reigns of day to day leadership of the company. As far as most below director level anywhere in the company is aware, this state of affairs continues unabated.

In truth, things have changed a great deal. The city is now run, at the highest levels, by the A.I. 'The Result of A Single Poor Choice'. It allows the directors a certain degree of latitude, so long as they enact the ordinances it gives out immediately and without question. As soon as any of them disobey, there is a sudden change in leadership in that family, and the newly risen heirs find themselves thrust into positions of leadership they were ill prepared for (by their own standards) and become even more dependent on the directions of the A.I., who in turn ensures that their companies remain profitable and their lives undisturbed by troubles it can prevent as long as their obedience continues.

Commerce of Saraswati Virtue

Saraswati's primary defining virtue is the mountains that back it to the south (and lower ones to the east and west) acting as a natural rain-catching system for the massive storms that blow in from the north sea, creating a massive lake reservoir that feeds water down into a river system, allowing the territory to support a massive population without requiring it to distribute that population across multiple mega-cities, as well as supporting an outsized hydroponics infrastructure.

Their major income sources are as follows:

• Pharmaceuticals: Their largest export by far are various drugs and biological agents intended for medical and industrial uses. These supplies make up, by far, the largest export from Saraswati. Almost every territory requires more of these than they can produce easily on their own, and Saraswati more than makes up the difference.
• Genetic Treatments: Saraswati franchised geneclinics are common throughout the other territories, and rake in massive amounts of money for the holding company.
• Medical Supplies: Besides pure pharmaceuticals, the other medical supplies such as surgical tools, bandages, medical kits, syringes, MRIs, healing vats, and similar are produced in Saraswati and exported elsewhere.
• Narcotics: The worst kept secret in history is that Saraswati produces the vast majority of illegal drugs in the entire world. They produce these as byproducts, or simply 'bad mixes' of their actual products (even though they have several spires entirely dedicated to making illegal recreational mixes of drugs), and export them through smuggler networks to sabotage the other holding companies.
• Cybernetics: While Soon-Bok is famed for it's combat augments, and the Ronin Expedition is famed for the no-questions asked nature of it's implants and treatments, Saraswati dominates the civilian and non-combat markets for cybernetic enhancements. Everyone knows the white and gold (though it comes in many other colors for the discerning customer) is the height of reliability in the world of cybernetic enhancement.

Saraswati Virtue has special trade relations with the following Territories:

• Czarina Tropical: Coming from the same general ancestry of corporations that were built in the last rivers of the world, Czarina and Saraswati have an amicable, but deeply rooted rivalry in growing things, with each of them touting their methods as producing the best crops. Czarina far out produces Saraswati in comestibles, while Saraswati dominates Czarina in terms of drug manufacture.
• Cardinal Holdings: Once Cardinal Holdings was simply the largest importer of cosmetic making materials among Saraswati's many competitors, a consumer of goods that occasionally produced excesses in various fad industries that Saraswati would buy at close to cost. Now, Cardinal Holdings has begun to make massive inroads into genetic, cybernetic, and cosmetic alterations.
• Nazzdack: While it was the shareholders of Nazzdack that created the original ELF treatment, it was Saraswati that ran with it: perfecting the ELF treatment and other life enhancement medical technologies. Today Nazzdack imports the majority of its high profile genetic treatments and medical experts from Saraswati.
• The Duty Free Ports: The Duty Free Ports of 'Bacco does a brisk trade with Saraswati, as the Duty Free Ports has unique access to several materials or plants that are jealously guarded as trade secrets. This leads to them exporting those in return for advanced cybernetics and medical assistance for their houses.
• Slyth & Jabber: Given the proximity of the two territories, and the needs of Slyth & Jabber, S&J imports an enormous amount of medical supplies from Saraswati. By unspoken agreement, Saraswati also gets first crack at any recovered mutant carcasses for study.

Saraswati is also home to some of the best construction and engineering corporations in the world, though it is not famed for this as very few of them operate anywhere except domestically. That said, engineers and architects from Saraswati often find themselves poached by other megacorporations looking to expand, upgrade, or break ground on new megacities.

Prominent Races of Saraswati Virtue

• Humans make up a significant minority of the populace in Saraswati, being far outnumbered by the combined genetically altered populaces within the territory. They used to be the majority until the availability of the splicer treatment became so widespread.
• Elfs make up the single largest group, if not a true majority, within Saraswati, with street elfs by far being the most common, and executive elfs comprising almost 100% of the executive, and even upper managerial classes
• Nayalings are relatively rare within the territory, finding the stilted and often byzantine dynastic politics of the territory running against the grain of their hot blooded warrior genetics. That said, a few nayaling groups have made their homes in the southern mountains of the territory, guarding the precious water sources of Saraswati, and they find themselves blending in with the "Asura Chic" of the undercities for those few who do live in the territory.
• Splicers make up the next largest population after Street Elfs, due to the ubiquity and ease of access to genetic treatments in Saraswati territory, and the fact the splicer treatment was invented there.
• Gobbos are as common in the undercity areas of Saraswati as they are anywhere else in the world, but tend to prefer the outer edges of the megacity where the sun bathing is easiest and most accessible
• Jerboans are relatively common within the territory, often wandering in from the all-gobi, and with several gangs making their homes in the undercities as rebel forces, riding incredibly tricked-out and fabulous bikes and other vehicles. Such gangs are known as bōsōzoku, and represent one of the few All-Gobi jerboan gang types not entirely sworn to Crud Breakknuckle. Some of these gangs migrate too and from main-land Soon-Bok.
• Artificates have recently become far more common within the territory; as bot base automation has steadily ramped up and with it, awakening events due to the vastly increased number of bots.
• Remakes are very rare in the territory due to the preferences against immortality treatments by the upper classes. Those that do exist are rare undercity dwellers who manage to score big enough to afford the engramic transfer and chassis.

Culture of Saraswati Virtue

In the last century, Saraswati Virtue has built several spires constructed specifically for the purposes of bot manufacture, rapidly increasing the total amount of automation within the territory. It has not exported these bots in anything like significant numbers, and according to some observers the number of bots entering the workforce, awakening into artificiates, or being exported does not line up with the number being produced by the factories.Saraswati's culture is distinctly broken down between the upper and undercity floors. They cannot, in truth, be considered the same culture despite sharing many similar facets. The most distinguishing feature common to all levels of society is the love of cybernetic enhancement, with most people receiving multiple levels of enhancement, the most common of which being either the addition of new limbs, or tentacle-like heavy duty data port cables to the shoulder blades and lower backs. The aesthetics change drastically depending on what level you are on. The upper levels prefer to take on 'deva' aspects, depicting themselves as angelic, holy figures. Those from the undercity take 'deva' aspects, and twist them into 'asura chic', looking more vibrant, monstrous, or demonic.

Another common facet to both of them is the existence of omnipresent surveillance, only in the undercity, it takes the form of sousveillance, with each person projecting their own 'feed' at all times from the golden 'halos' (often modified to be other colors or even present as various kinds of horns). On the upper levels, these halos allow executives to monitor and directly communicate to their employees, informing them of direct goals, punishing or rewarding them immediately for various behaviors, and generally retain a nearly divine level of control over their upper level employees, a process too expensive to economically introduce to the lowest level employees and line workers, however much the upper management has wished to do so over time. The undercity dwellers turn this on it's head, instead of being observed, they project their own views around, recording their lives and uploading them to various subrealms to share the fun bits, or storing them away for use in winning arguments, settling disputes, or just to retain their memories. Such life long recordings, both for those above and below the dark-line that marks the separation between upper and undercity, are carefully preserved upon the death of any person, and stored away in special digital shrines, some corporate realm run, most of them part of the darkweb and religiously maintained by more benign technocult members.

The differences between the two sides are most strongly pronounced when one runs into the realm of self enhancement. The upper city dwellers utilize self enhancement for the purposes of personal betterment, the improvement of one's dynasty, and see the usage of massive alterations through retroviral or nanobot treatments as wasteful, as opposed to careful cultivation of genetic lines over the course of many generations with subtle in utero treatments. The undercity dwellers however see enhancement as a way to personal pleasure and power, seeking to utilize it massively upon their own persons at every opportunity, changing their bodies to suit the latest fads and fashions, or to get that little bit extra edge in the gang wars, or even just to get off even harder than they ever have before! Above all, the difference in this is reflected on almost every level of their society, with the uppercity citizens focusing on self improvement, and the undercity dwellers on hedonistic glee and pleasure.

This difference goes even further when one looks at how the family unity is organized. The only place in the world with a more intact family unit is the Freemen Commune, at least, in the upper city. Here, family habunits are the norm, and sprawling, extended families expected, with hab units organized in clusters based on familial relations. Groups of families in close alliance are collected into neighborhoods, and share smaller, more localized, corporate schools linked directly to each habunit, so that children may move swiftly between school and home without ever entering the still rather porn filled upper levels of the city. By contrast, every spire, or collection of spires, possesses a more traditional sealed away corpo-school for those who haven't come of age. That said, the undercities place just as much importance on family in their own way, but see the focus on blood family that the upper city puts on everything to be utter nonsense. Instead, what's important is your found family, your circle. The people who looked out for you when you were in school or when you graduated. Blood means nothing, but the water you share with your bros and sistas is everything.

The last thing that both upper and undercities tend to agree on is sustainability. Almost all other territories have a fairly 'use it then leave it' attitude, but for the people of Saraswati Virtue, its is a sin to abandon something that still has some good use in it, and even more so to not repurpose it. That doesn't mean that Saraswati lacks landfills and dumps, they still exist, but they often are occupied with reuse minded scavengers who see it as not just a way to make a buck from what others have thrown out, but as a sacred duty.

Special Locations of Saraswati Virtue

Saraswati's uniquely sprawling singular megacity, second only to the sprawl of Nazzdack Incorporated, has lead to a very different sort of place with several facets unique to itself above all other territories.

• Specialist Spires: While all spires, to a certain extent, are famous for one thing or another, most of them are capable of being mostly self sufficient. This is not true in Saraswati Virtue. Every single spire in Saraswati is a specialist spire, entirely dedicated to a single industry or product. Some produce clothing, others parts, other bots, though the vast majority are dedicated to various stages of pharmaceutical, and as a byproduct, narcotics manufacture. This means that almost all spires in the megacity of Mahabharata are even more interconnected than is normal for megacity spires, with each spire bristling with dozens of bridges between itself and it's neighbors, all interconnected and self reinforcing to allow for the transition of necessary goods and services.
• Riverine Network Channels: A single great river flows through Saraswati territory, much like the pair of rivers that feed Czarina Tropical Agriculture. This single river flows from a massive, highly protected basin in the south that remains the only great lake of the far south in the All-Gobi. This precious source of water feeds a massive network of reservoirs and pipes that snake and form an underground network that feeds to every single spire in Saraswati, giving its data centers and bunker networks a much more aquatic and swampy nature than might be encountered anywhere else in the world.
• Mirror Arrays: Constructed on the upper and middle layers of spires and spire bridges across Megacity Mahabharata, these large groups of AI controlled mirrors focus and bounce light around from the upper tiers of the maze of urban architecture into the enormous window ports on the sides of the farming spires that produce the base ingredients for many of Saraswati's industries. The mirror array monitor families are some of the oldest and most traditionalist families in the city, seeing themselves as guardians of the light to the permanently benighted masses of the street-levels, a position that has given them almost priest-like qualities to some portions of the undercity.

Organizations of Saraswati Virtue

List of Organizations

• Goes
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Settlements of Saraswati Virtue

There is but one megacity in all of Saraswait Virtue, a massive sprawling place of many dozens of spires. A few of these, but not many, have been abandoned. Below them, hidden beneath the many dozens of bridges, are the inner street levels. Some of these are glittery neighborhoods lit by neon, others are dank, musty grottos where the light never touches. Past the edges of the megacity are dozens of charging stations linking the territory to it's neighbors, and various ports on the coast..

• 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.
• Happy Landfill: formerly a Landfill in the middle of Saraswati Virtue. A faction of Wukong and Gobbos built a town inside the landfill and is always growing as more scavenged trash/loot are added to the pile. Their economy is heavily based on trading/repairing just about anything, and they are self powered with series upon series of solar panels which also serve as tanning beds for Gobbos. Though the one rule that is heavily enforced on outsiders is to "never steal from the landfill". A rule that is enforced with extreme prejudice. Some raiders have tried to invade and obtain the landfill. All have failed due to advanced guerrilla warfare Techniques using the intricate tunneling system inside the landfill and their ability to make weapons and vehicles out of scrap materials.
• Upward Heights: Originally a skyscraper built by malfunctioning construction droids, Upward Heights is quite simply a building that doesn't stop. It gets wider as it gets taller, supported by solar powered antigrav units every few floors to keep the whole mess stable. Though one would expect it to be inhabited entirely by the rich elite, its construction is unnerving to all but the very daring. The higher you get, the less sense the construction makes, with rooms becoming wider, hallways more maze-like, and the infrastructure more strangely entwined. There is a penthouse, reaching far above the clouds and just below the edge of the atmosphere, but nobody knows for sure who, or what, dwells there.

People of Saraswati Virtue

The long-lived people of Saraswati have many legendary figures who have, after making a name for themselves, quietly retired to their upper spire gardens or their plantation estates out beyond the edge of the megacity. The people of Saraswati are renowned for their mix of calm and passion depending on the circumstances, and the long view with which they approach all things in life.

• 'The Result of A Single Poor Choice'
• Tobias André Ilias Mateo L'erone
• "Enormous" Eddie Electric: Few are more notable in the undercities than "Enormous" Eddie Electric, a gigantic hedonistic man with twelve spider-like augmented arms bristling from his back, who's under-palace is a marble and golden public bath, filled to bursting with scantily-clad handmaidens, nubile menservants, and headquarters of a worldwide network of pill and powder distributors.
• Motley: While some bionic and mods extend the limits of what can be done as a person other mods push the limits to what a person is. The being known as Motley is one such "person" who loves to find those limits and race past them. Having nearly died after several botched experimental procedures, Motley no longer trusts others and does surgery on themself. A boogie man to the undercity, Motley is known to hunt down others with unique or famous mods to harvest for themselves. Constantly swapping out their face, number of limbs, and other organs no one is too sure what Motley currently looks like but whenever a high profile figure vanishes people often assume the figure had something Motley wanted.

Events of Saraswati Virtue

Saraswati's history is filled with many traditions, festivals, and dynastically driven events dating back to it's founding.

• Undercity Graduation: The importance of found family cannot be understated in the undercity, and a massive festival is held before the gates of the undercity corpo schools each year around time for graduation, dedicated to reuniting old school friends, building flourishing relationships, and recruiting people into the various gangs, technocults, and small business associations across the undercity. One part hedonistic orgy for the newbies, one part graduation party, one part harvest festival (as the graduation celebrations come right on the heel of many of the harvests of various undercity fungal growth farms). This is one of the few times of the year that saraswati gangs put aside their differences and rivalries, and the use of violence outside of tournaments and fight pits is strictly forbidden in the undercity. Those who break this rule and taint the welcoming of the newbies are swiftly, and permanently, dealt with.
• The First Light: A ceremony held on the spring equinox, when the mirror arrays are turned, for a single hour at noon, to project light not into the various glass-sided agri-spires, but towards the undercity streets, giving them real sunlight for perhaps the only time all year.

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