Lantern City
Uranus is a pretty dark world in the visual spectrum; the planet only receives 1/400th the amount of sunlight as Earth, and that’s not a whole hell of a lot. To make matters worse, Uranus’s extreme axial tilt means that entire hemispheres will spend decades cut off from even that much sunlight during the average trip around the sun. In short, there’s not a lot of light unless you bring your own.
Which is what the Fen explorers did.
After the discovery of the Oberon Gate, the Fen built two facilities on the moon. The first naturally was an enclosure designed to support gate operations, anchored around the long, deep box canyon in which the gate was first found. The second was Stratford-upon-Oberon, a settlement which was intended to support the gate facility, sited twenty kilometers down the canyon and up on the edge of the cliff for security’s sake.
Stratford is built out of a combination of large domes and spindly freestanding towers connected by walkways. It’s earned the nickname “Lantern City” because the permanent settlers in a fit of quirkiness have largely embraced the darkness of the Uranian system. Only a few areas in Stratford have full Earthlike illumination, mostly agricultural domes as well as a few small park zones for psychological reasons. Everywhere else, the city is lit by small individual streetlights, building lights, neon signs etc. In the dim light of the sun, the effect shrouds Stratford in a twilit haze.
The city of Stratford-upon-Oberon has roughly 40,000 permanent residents, with as many as 150,000 transient residents at any one time. Most business involves the gate, of course, but helium mining is also a major industry (Uranus’s atmosphere being far less turbulent that Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune) as well as scientific studies of the Uranian system itself. City defenses are under Convention Security jurisdiction, and have a “shoot first, sift the debris for answers” policy regarding unauthorized approaches towards the gate exclusion zone.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Uranus is a pretty dark world in the visual spectrum; the planet only receives 1/400th the amount of sunlight as Earth, and that’s not a whole hell of a lot. To make matters worse, Uranus’s extreme axial tilt means that entire hemispheres will spend decades cut off from even that much sunlight during the average trip around the sun. In short, there’s not a lot of light unless you bring your own.
Which is what the Fen explorers did.
After the discovery of the Oberon Gate, the Fen built two facilities on the moon. The first naturally was an enclosure designed to support gate operations, anchored around the long, deep box canyon in which the gate was first found. The second was Stratford-upon-Oberon, a settlement which was intended to support the gate facility, sited twenty kilometers down the canyon and up on the edge of the cliff for security’s sake.
Stratford is built out of a combination of large domes and spindly freestanding towers connected by walkways. It’s earned the nickname “Lantern City” because the permanent settlers in a fit of quirkiness have largely embraced the darkness of the Uranian system. Only a few areas in Stratford have full Earthlike illumination, mostly agricultural domes as well as a few small park zones for psychological reasons. Everywhere else, the city is lit by small individual streetlights, building lights, neon signs etc. In the dim light of the sun, the effect shrouds Stratford in a twilit haze.
The city of Stratford-upon-Oberon has roughly 40,000 permanent residents, with as many as 150,000 transient residents at any one time. Most business involves the gate, of course, but helium mining is also a major industry (Uranus’s atmosphere being far less turbulent that Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune) as well as scientific studies of the Uranian system itself. City defenses are under Convention Security jurisdiction, and have a “shoot first, sift the debris for answers” policy regarding unauthorized approaches towards the gate exclusion zone.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"