A Cultural Guide to Fenspace: Crystal Tokyo

[shaderic]

By B. Ganders
For Sherry and Mei, who I should have come up to the stars for a lot sooner.
___________
Fen.
This is the name given to those who have left the planet using the power of handwavium. Over the years, tens of thousands of people from all around the world have come up to what used to be called outer space and made it their home. Each one taking a little bit of their own culture with them, along with their hopes and dreams. But you don't hear about groups of eurpeans putting together a martial arts style for cyborgs. You don't hear about a bunch of american girls making a fantasy kingdom on the moon. You DO hear about how the Fen fought a war in space, colonized a planet outside the solar system, and are terraforming Venus.
As an American I couldn't help but draw certain nostalgic paralells, even though like a great many people on the ground I thought most Fen were a little nuts.
Then I came up and realized two things.
The first, is that while on Earth you tend to hear about the Fen as a whole, they're actually splintered into dozens and dozens of factions. And each one has it's own quirks, values, and ideas about how the universe should work. People still hold onto parts of their earth heritage, but they also tend to gain a whole new nationality in Fenspace that has nothing to with where they were born.
The second thing, is that the Fen aren't a little nuts. They are, and I say this in the most respectful way possible, completely insane.
These are the people that left the planet on flying vehicles made with a dangerous substance that, to this day, no one has any idea whatsoever on how it functions, where it came from and is considered fairly unpredictable at best. They then decided to build space-craft, cities and entire societies based on comic books, scifi novels, and TV shows. In some cases, they even change their own bodies to better fit with their ideals on how things should be.
And, against all odds, they make this work for them. Fenspace is a melting pot of cultures and rivalries that manages to flourish in the unforgiving expanse of space.
It's no utopia, of course. The Boskone War wreaked havoc across the solar system, destroying entire cities and hundreds of lives. Crime still exists, and accidents still happen.
But the Fen continue to build the society of their dreams. In orbit around Earth, a hotel mogul plans yet another expansion to his business empire, while on Mars a cyborg teaches those still new to their wings how to fly. It's easy to get caught up in the impossible things that happen everyday.
This book is meant to be a more in depth guide to the city of Crystal Tokyo in Fenspace. Partly because covering all of Fenspace in one book would be problematic at best, and partly because while you can find lots of facts and figures about various factions and cities, presuming you know where to look, you don't hear a lot about their day to day life. I chose Crystal Tokyo as the starting point for this little venture, partialy because I happen to live there and partialy because it's the headquarters of the Crystal Millenium, one of the six major factions of Fenspace.
Whether you've never been up to Fenspace, or were one of the first ones up here, I hope you enjoy this book and find it informative.
A/N: Thus, I begin yet another project when I really should be working on something else.
The Cultural Guide is basically meant as a more interesting way of fleshing out the various factions and locations of Fenspace. It's going to be a composition of interviews, city walkthroughs, little anecdotes, commentary, and whatever the hell else I can think of to make things more lifelike.
The lens I'm doing this all through is Benjamin Ganders, from Legacy Project. Who's writing this as a book for Fen and Dane alike, from the perspective of a guy who's making the transition from Dane to Fen. So, he/I will be making the effort to lampshade the hell out of how ridiculous some of this stuff is, while pointing out just how amazing it is at the same time. Expect a more complimentary explanation of the insanity of Fenspace by him/me later.
Anyway, the next segment is supposed to be about the physical layout of the city. I'm going be taking a lot of info from the Legacy Project thread and the wiki, but a couple of quick questions: Someone said there wasn't a tether anchoring the city to the surface, but the wiki says there is. If the tether is there, are there any facilities at the base of it?
And does anyone have any idea how much the terraforming project is tied into the cities? I realize most of it's probably automated, but I don't know how many people are tied into it. For that matter, how is the terraforming being done? I can see on the wiki that the Crystal cities are organized into clusters, but how close are they together?
Also, where does the food come from? Is it all imported, or is one of the Crystal cities a farm too?
And before I forget, it's an open project. If anyone wants submit stuff about Crystal Tokyo or write articles about it, that'd be cool.

[robkelk]

I do like what you're doing here, and the approach you're taking to it...

Someone said there wasn't a tether anchoring the city to the surface, but the wiki says there is. If the tether is there, are there any facilities at the base of it?

The wiki is not 100% consistent, despite our best efforts. I'm the someone who said there wasn't a tether, but I could be mistaken... If there is a tether, it would have to be made of something that can stand up to the heat and corrosive atmosphere at the lower altitudes of Venus, which would be difficult even with handwavium.

If there is a tether, there's definitely no infrastructure down there - if there was and there was an accident, everybody down there would die.

Edit: Perhaps there's a "dangly bit" like the one on the Cloud City of Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back, that everybody calls a tether...?

And does anyone have any idea how much the terraforming project is tied into the cities? I realize most of it's probably automated, but I don't know how many people are tied into it. For that matter, how is the terraforming being done? I can see on the wiki that the Crystal cities are organized into clusters, but how close are they together?

The Crystal Cities exist for the Venus Terraforming Project. Crystal Osaka used to be the main bio-lab, before it was destroyed; Crystal Kyoto has taken over that role (giving up some of the space it was dedicating to being the local vacation spot). Crystal Titusville turns atmospheric hydrocarbons into fuels, polymers, and other things. Crystal Paris and Crystal Hiroshima are primarily spacedocks, with Paris being the drydock and Hiroshima being the naval base. Crystal Tokyo is the administrative center - as the first of the Crystal Cities, it also has basic equipment to perform all of the functions that the other cities specialize in.

Each cluster is one-third of the way around the planet from each of the other two clusters, give or take a few degrees of longitude - they drift according to the needs of the VTP. (I suppose there would have to be communications satellites midway between each cluster, so they could stay in touch without horizon effects interfering with the radio signals.)

Also, where does the food come from? Is it all imported, or is one of the Crystal cities a farm too?

There would have to be a farm somewhere in the Crystal Cities - there are too many people spending money on too many other things for them to bring in all of their food from elsewhere. (Crystal Sapporo already has a brewery; it could also have farms that produce the wheat, barley, hops, and malt for the brewery, along with other foods. We still haven't discussed what's at Crystal Moscow, Crystal Venice, and Crystal Rio - one of those could also be a good candidate for the home of some of the farms.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

Crystal Sapporo already has a brewery; it could also have farms that produce the wheat, barley, hops, and malt for the brewery

Point of reference from the homebrewer: malt is barley (well, any grain), allowed to sprout and then dried and crushed. Wheat's an unusual choice for a Japanese-themed brewery (it's more a European ingredient, and an infrequent one at that [compared to barley]), but I suppose rice would be a lot harder to manage, what with simulating paddies and flooding and all that.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Rakhasa]

Yay, more city guides. I love the idea, and this half-way perpective is wonderful.

They wiki claims the cities are tethered, but it also claims they move over Venus to float where they are more needed; since they are terraformation bases, I say we go for the second (and they would be the only fliing Unreal State in fenspace than needs a tether anyway; they actually moved form Luna to Venus in the first place, so they can move)

Once I finish Marduk, one of my following proyects was to touch on a couple of the unknown Crystal cities, were Venice would be full of channels and pools, and dedicated to fishing and seaweed farms (Crystal Rio was to be, in a shameless show of stereotyping and research laziness, Venus' party town) ; we can pick the European Cluster as the food producers: Venice for the water products, Moscow for farming, the docks in Paris to coordinate hauling the food to the other cities.

We probably should increase slightly the population: 5,000 people may be too small for a planetary capital, center of a mayor faction, and the node of the Venus Terraformation Proyect. Even if we discount Kandor's hordes, Port Luna has 35,000 people, and a space station like Genaros 22,000. 5,000 may have been the population when Crystal Tokyo lifted, but by the end of the war when you write the guide many more people -not all of then Senshi- would have moved.

It is a capital city, and designed to be a capital city, by a faction of optimistic dreamers -from the "magical Girl" fandom, no less. This means a monumental city centre, with avenues, parks, monuments, and crystal palaces (which will remain mostly empty for the next few years until Tokyo upgrades from "town" to "capital city"). A palace for the queen, museums and a univesity, gazebos, towers and crenellatiosn were the girls can hand out and be wooed by their knights. Form (to be exact, "magical fairy realm form") always, always, trumps function in the visible areas.

Those buildimg may not be used right now, but they will have either been built, or be already designed (perharps with an holographic emmiter to show the future monument as it will be?)

[Foxboy]

So there's a degree of "Hey! They let us go to the really neat parts of the castle, unlike Disneyland!"
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[HRogge]

Sounds like the start of a very interesting project... I also like that it (seems to) finally be a new project happening in Season 2 (2015 and later), and not in Season 1... (maybe because most I write happens in Season 2 ).

I am already curious how do you plan to continue with this.

[M Fnord]

Someone said there wasn't a tether anchoring the city to the surface, but the wiki says there is. If the tether is there, are there any facilities at the base of it?

The whole bit about the tether stems from the most improbable part of the terraforming of Venus, the Big Spin. I can't remember if it's in the VTP article on the wiki, but the idea was that, eventually, the cities would anchor to the planet and then use their gravity engines to increase Venus's rotation until it hit a proper 24 hour day, instead of the 200-something day rotation it has OTL.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[HRogge]

Someone said there wasn't a tether anchoring the city to the surface, but the wiki says there is. If the tether is there, are there any facilities at the base of it?

The whole bit about the tether stems from the most improbable part of the terraforming of Venus, the Big Spin. I can't remember if it's in the VTP article on the wiki, but the idea was that, eventually, the cities would anchor to the planet and then use their gravity engines to increase Venus's rotation until it hit a proper 24 hour day, instead of the 200-something day rotation it has OTL.

O.O

...
...
...

WOW.

[Rakhasa]

Someone said there wasn't a tether anchoring the city to the surface, but the wiki says there is. If the tether is there, are there any facilities at the base of it?

The whole bit about the tether stems from the most improbable part of the terraforming of Venus, the Big Spin. I can't remember if it's in the VTP article on the wiki, but the idea was that, eventually, the cities would anchor to the planet and then use their gravity engines to increase Venus's rotation until it hit a proper 24 hour day, instead of the 200-something day rotation it has OTL.

It  probably would be better to use many smaller, dedicated engiges rather then the place where you are living...
Mmm. Here is a thought: What seemed a good idea when the Proyect starts, suddenly does not look that intelligent once one of the cities collapsed to the ground. It may be than the Crystal cities were tethered, but as part of the frantic secutiry redesigns all cities underwent after the fall of Crystal Osaka the tether were loosenes, and now a swarm of small asteroids is slowly being moved from the Belt for anchor the new tethers.
  

[Warringer]

Like the idea and the result. Both thumbs up and keep going.

[robkelk]

Mmm. Here is a thought: What seemed a good idea when the Proyect starts, suddenly does not look that intelligent once one of the cities collapsed to the ground. It may be than the Crystal cities were tethered, but as part of the frantic secutiry redesigns all cities underwent after the fall of Crystal Osaka the tether were loosenes, and now a swarm of small asteroids is slowly being moved from the Belt for anchor the new tethers.

Sounds good to me.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

I still think there should be a solar-shield to help shade and eventually cause Venus to cool off. Could pull double-duty by generating power and somehow getting it to the crystal cities.

[Norgarth]

I still think there should be a solar-shield to help shade and eventually cause Venus to cool off. Could pull double-duty by generating power and somehow getting it to the crystal cities.

hmm, how about this for a basic procedure: the sheild converts light to electricity, then the electricity to microwaves, transmited to a receiving station near Venus which can then retransmit to satelites around Venus (easier to target the sats from the secondary station amd if the primary (more powerful) microwave beam drifts off target, it won't be blasting the planet.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[robkelk]

I still think there should be a solar-shield to help shade and eventually cause Venus to cool off. Could pull double-duty by generating power and somehow getting it to the crystal cities.

There will be - Rin-Rin designed one in Legend of Galactic Girls chapter 2.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

Ahhh, okay! Sounds like that'd be a good gig for the Roughnecks. With their fleet of Outlaw-class grappler ships, they'd be able to assemble something of that scale real quick.  Probably still take a few years to do, but when you think of the sheer size...

[shaderic]

'Sup.
Let's get get some work done.
___________________________________
The Senshi have a reputation for wearing short skirts, leotards, and revealing clothing. The primary reason for this, is emulation of their various idols, magical girls, and female superheroes.
The secondary reason, is because the Crystal Cities are all very warm. I'm not sure if this is because they're built on Venus, one of the hottest planets in the solar system, if it's a side-effect of all terraforming equipment chugging away in their moonstone bottoms, or if it's just that whoever has control of the thermostat has it cranked up so the skirts are practical. Whatever the reason, the Crystal Cities all tend to be about eighty degrees fahrenheit. Luckily, the air cyclers on the station suck the moisture from the air, making it a dry, arid heat. Having spent some time in Texas, I believe the elimination of humidity from station to be an incredibly brilliant design decision.
___________________________________
Okay, that was a weak blurb.
And I'm not actually sure if I'm going to get away with the temperature thing. I have no idea what altitude the cities are at, or how good at conducting heat the crystal bits of the city are. If they're higher up, then being in space could actually make area close to the 'edge' cooler. If lower, then they might be hotter. On the other hand, it might be irrelevant if the crystal bits don't conduct heat. The reason I'm wondering about this, is because I'm wondering what the 'weather' would be like a crystal city. Not about the non-existant rain, but in an enclosure of this size different areas might be different temperatures, which might actually cause breezes. Mind you, they'd probably be small and localized, given the cramped arrangements, but still.
The reason I'm bringing this up, is because I remembered reading years ago about an underground shopping center that had an artificial breeze. Unfortunately, I don't remember where it was, or how it was accomplished.
Another thing I'm wondering, is what the gravity is like. I know Venus's gravity is supposed to be lower than Earth's, but is it noticably so? Is it even lower, since they're miles above the ground? Is gravity at earth normal anyway, due to wave-hax?
And, again, I'm wondering about how all the cities tie together. There's ten (eleven, if you count Osaka) of them, organized into three clusters. I'm jumping between a few models of thoughts for these. One, is a Commuter model. You have a Primary City where you work, and then a city where you live. The Japan Cluster probably wouldn't operate on this, given that it's the 'busiest' and probably most populated. The Europe Cluster, on the other hand, has most of Moscow and Venice given over to farms. So, people might prefer to live in Paris. This makes the Euro Cluster a lot closer knit than the other ones. They're probably arranged slightly closer to ease transit between cities, and the people who live there might identify more with being on the Euro Cluster, than their individual city.
The American Cluster, on the other hand, is organized like the Japan cluster. You live and work in the same city, so the Cluster isn't as tightly tied together. However, this gives each city more of it's own identity... But I'm not going into that. Doing cultural write-ups for ten different cities, and accounting for the reasons why their individual cultures drifted apart would be a pain. Given that each of the cities is only a few years old, there's barely anytime for them to drift.
On an unrelated note, who would be the people to nag about Panzer Kunst?

[Ace Dreamer]

I think if you want to be a Senshi, you're stuck with the uniform. There's no need to justify it, it's just one of those "Life's like that" things. There are probably some habitats in Fenspace where social nudity is the norm, with everyone carring emergency rescue bubbles in a small pouch on a waist belt, or something. Like people had to carry gas masks everywhere in London in WWII. People get used to the strangest things...

I think you'd likely want the thermostat set lower if you want to emulate say Tokyo or Japanese weather in general. You've got all that Venusian atmosphere to dump heat into, so you should be OK. Otherwise, Cherry Blossom time, and green areas without a lot of watering, just wouldn't happen.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[shaderic]

It's just something why I came up with.

Partly because I have trouble imagining a society where everyone wears a short skirt, and partly because I like corroborating reasons for why things are done. Also, I'm not a botanist so I have no real idea what the proper temperatures for plant development are. I'm not sure if you need rotary seasons for some of the things there, either. Partly because I haven't really fleshed out the park yet, and fleshing out a whole god-damn internal weather system for ten stations sounds like a pain in the ass.

Although, it'd likely be a large concern in the Euro cluster, given that they do agriculture and shipping. Appropriate temperatures to assist with different stages of 'seasons' and all.

That said, I'm not sure how much the other clusters would do local weather emulation. I KNOW Seattle wouldn't, because Washington is a wet and miserable state. No offense meant, but most of what I hear about it consists of 'cold, wet, and rainy'. And I see doing rain in an artifcial environment like this to be a incredibly difficult thing to do. Incorporating proper drainage alone would be a massive project, not to mention the water distribution system you'd have to use, and all the water you'd need to wet an entire city. No, plant life is likely tended to localy. God's Own Thermostat (I don't why I'm calling it that. Shouldn't it be Sailor Venus's Own Thermostat?) is set to Warm to help make skirts comfortable, and the air is dry because I hate humidity so that you can get some water out of it.

Which makes me think that you'd get some mad static going.

But hey, everything's flexible. I'd still like a second opinion on this, though. 

[Rakhasa]

Ace, you are mixing your cause and effect. The senshi as a faction, and their uniform, are older than the Crystal cities; so they do not wear skirts because the city is warm; the city is warm because they all wear skirts.

Because we must remember then the Crystal cities, currently and for the near future, are actually huge space stations, with closed enviroments. They will be at whatever temperature the life suport technicians set the thermostat. Japanese weather is nice... until you visit in a place like, say, Costa Rica or the Canaries, with 20-25 degrees year round.

Need a couple weeks of spring for the Sakura trees to flower? You push the "spring" button. Want snow for christmas? Fiddle with the rain sprinklers unitl it snows. A perfect summer week for the city founding aniversary? Up the temperature a couple decrees and open a bit the UV screens to get more sun.

Also, the mad static? A proper engineer would get rid of it. The Crystal cities were designed by Fen. So they did not even try to get rid of it; it dischargeds in huge storms of kilometer-long lightning...

[Ace Dreamer]

Maybe its because I don't like hot weather... All that Celtic blood and red hair...

If you get waved into a short-shirted Senshi form, do you get any resistance to the weather with this? I've seen fanfics that speculate on that... If the senior Senshi dress like that and don't complain, those who wear it as a uniform might have to suppress their shivers, grin and bear it. That's the sort of logic I was following...

I think you'd want occasional rain to help keep the city clean. Anywhere people live will get dusty, and its nice to sit in a house and watch the rain, occasionally. I think the setting of the city thermostat would be the sort of thing elections would be fought over. [grin]

Are there any elected positions in the Crystal Cities, the Advisory Council to the Queen, or something?

I like the kilometer-long lightning...
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[shaderic]

Nah, it's partly my fault there. Looking again, I blurred the lines in the IC bit.

Although I really doubt you could harness that much static here. I bring it up, because I remember getting static shocks in the winter. Here, with it being dry all the time, I'd imagine it's worse. I don't think you can get kilometer long lightning though. And, again, I question the feasability of an internal weather system, given the resources and infrastructure that'd require. That said... If such a system were implemented, I imagine that it could also be used to fight fires that occurs on 'surface' levels. Just route your 'rain' to a specific point, and crank it up a notch or five. Not the most precise system in the world, but I don't imagine there being a lot of fire hydrants for some reason. 
  EDIT:
And I am late to the party.
Getting to actual stuff, the Queen is democratically elected, so it makes sense that other positions would be too.
Each city (or should that be Cluster?) likely has it's own Governor/Mayor/Duchess/Whatever, with various groups under them. Each one is probably a BNF in their own right, but we don't have characters for those positions.
Yet. Gimme some time and Dr. Pepper and we'll see.

[Dartz]

Of course, the Crystal Cities were also the first place to perfect the air-conditioned Tuxedo. No matter how hot or humid, the wearer always looks perfectly cool. Because walking around in the heat in formal evening wear is sweaty torture at the best of times. Doing it day-to-day is horrific.

The weather system reminds of the Genaros system. You've got dual benefits that a good rainshower can keep the streets clean, it simplifies the plumbing somewhat enabling the use of natural flowing sewage systems and the water tanks can be used to ballast and stabilise the city as loads fluctuate throughout the day.

The Genaros system has it's own flaws, however.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

Are there any elected positions in the Crystal Cities, the Advisory Council to the Queen, or something?

That's been kept nebulous until such time as somebody needed it for a story. (Read: Beats me, we haven't made that up yet.)

There are two ways to go with the Advisory Council: the US way (the person in charge chooses whoever she or he wants from the entire country) and the Commonwealth way (the person in charge chooses whoever she or he wants from the people who were elected, but she or he has to "want" people from all the voting regions). I don't know what system Japan uses.

Which one sounds better?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Ace Dreamer]

I'd like to know if anyone pays and attention to the Moon Cats. [grin]

http://colins-sailor-moon-collection.yo ... ces/16.jpg
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Proginoskes]

Shaderic, you're not the only person to do something similar (not in any way identical, but similar). I recommend checking out L5: A Travelogue, a very similar exercise covering the Earth-Luna L5 stations by Gen. Malaclypse Fnord, and So You Want to Come to Fenspace?, a brief and generic "tourist's advisory" by Herr Bad Moon.