The Blood Hound
- Intent: To flesh out the sphere constructed for refugees on the Scintilla, which will also serve as a basis for upcoming lore stories and ideas.
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Scherezade deWinter
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- Space Station Name: HOPE
- Station Model: HOPE Class Civilian Sphere
- Classification: City Sphere
- Location: The Scintilla, Unknown Regions
- Affiliation: Agents of Chaos
- Population: Moderate - Heavy. Presently, HOPE averages out at around the moderate. However, during times of active war, especially that takes place in more than one part of the galaxy, the population tends to temporarily increase into the heavy. At present, the available resources of either HOPE or what the Scintilla can provide it have not yet truly been challenged in any capacity. We look forward to having a story made of this happening at some point in the future.
- Demographics: Depends on the season and which planets are being abused around the galaxy at present. While it is true that the majority of species fall into the near human category, given the location of the Scintilla and its open door policy, one is likely to find extremely rare species that are rarely to never heard about in other spaces.
- Accessibility: HOPE is incredibly easy to reach. It is one of the outlying spheres on the Scintilla, ready to accept refugees from nearly any world that make it to its doors in the Unknown Regions.
- Traffic: At present, the traffic is Moderate. However, during times of full scale galactic war such as Invasion season 2019, the sphere is prepared to be required to handle Congested level traffic.
- Description: On the outside, HOPE looks as any other sphere that is part of the Scintilla construct – round, one main color (in this case white), and connected via giant tunnels to other spheres. Inside is a different story. Deciding to make more use of the space available within a sphere that has such a large diameter (50km), it was decided to make five discs instead of one, each of them being quite big in square meters, ensuring that there would be more than sufficient living space for any and all refugees that managed to make it to their little corner in the Unknown Regions. Each disc offers different natural living areas, and holds a different sort of climate on it, all designed by the advanced AI's that are used to make up most of the natural mimications of weather and climate control around the different areas of the Scintilla itself.
The Top Disc - Kor
The High Disc – Mal'a
Mal'a is the disc with the least amount of refugees inhabiting it, holding only a few small collection of ground-floor buildings scattered across it. These buildings are inhabited by farmers who tend to the crops that are grown here, where many of the foodstuff that is used to feed the people of HOPE are grown. Additionally, a small portion of the disc has been walled and access to it restricted, where several researchers are working on the development of modified foodstuff. In a space construct that is entirely man-made (or species made? What is the correct term here?), the biological opportunities to grow or even live are slim to none in advance, as even the malfunctioning of the weather and breathing AI's can cause death on a wide scale, which is but one of the reasons that the best scientists that have moved to were made on the Scintilla are working on ways to feed the masses without needing to rely on imports for anything other than luxuries. Their success thus has been modest, and the Scintilla still needs to import food, however, with time, the percentages of imports they require for life sustainment is on the drop.
The Center Disc – Gaia
The center disc is the one that has drawn a lot of inspiration from the urban city-planets such as Coruscant. Tall buildings block the full sky view from almost anywhere you stand on, with many offices and business places inhabiting large proportions of the disc, which is the largest one present on the station. This is also where most entertainment and food establishments can be found within the sphere, ranging from cheese stripper bars and tiny dhabba's to upper scale opera houses with high end fine dining.
Several schools exist on this disc, some of them opened by the refugees themselves, and a few of the Alwine School of Galactic Possibilities which are open for children and adults alike. While none of the refugees of legal age and above are required to attend, there is a huge emphasis placed on education for children, and indeed, giving them said formal education is one of the core values of HOPE, where families are obligated to send their children to get educated or risk losing their option to remain on the Scintilla. Current discussions about opening an academy on the disc are happening as well, with plans to constructing one that would manage to hold a galaxy-wide reputation and name in the future.
The Low Disc – Sheol
The Low Disc, Sheol, is the giant marketplace of HOPE. Many refugees choose to work here, either as vendors or security, offering their wares and buying from merchants who come the Scintilla or other places. This disc is attached to a secured dockyard, where ships coming and going are scanned to ensure the wares are safe enough. Those entering Sheol from higher levels are also subject to security sans. It is probably the most protected disc within this sphere. Some weapons are permitted, but not all. As foodstuff is also available for selling or buying here, this is the disc where those who have become homeless despite the opportunities offered in the other discs tend to choose to stay. Sometimes, they disappear. Rumor has it that they sometimes mistakenly enter Nom, but so far there have been no confirmations regarding whether not that has happened even once.
The Bottom Disc – Nom
Initially, no one had expected Nom to become anything that would include criminals and other sots of unfavorables. The expectation was that a slums would rise on Gaia, and the other discs would be mostly free of such unwanted things and activities. It was Nom that became the disc of the scum and lowlives. Those who enter Nom typically do not come out of there, though there are rumors of a small group that goes in and out regularly. Food on Nom, while not great, is mostly grown locally, and not much is needed since the population there is relatively small. In the earlier days of Nom, some of the militia forces of Eve attempt to stage a re-takeover of the disc, but Discordia stopped them, demanding that the disc be left alone for the time being. Exits have been mostly blocked off.
The open entrance to HOPE is as open as it can be, with the only kind of security being the type that manages the traffic, making sure there's enough space for everyone to enter comfortably. Within HOPE, three of the discs are entirely open, and no one will stop anyone for an ID check or weapon confiscation outside of special emergency events. The tunnels that sprout from Sheol's vicinity and move towards other parts of the Scintilla are heavily guarded, and all those who enter must undergo a fill physical scan, an ID and background check, and receive a ship that monitors where in the Scintilla they are at any given moment, until they return. The ways that lead in and out of Nom are self-maintained by the refugee's own forces. In the case of Nom being overrun with enemies (an event that has to date, never occurred), the tunnels that connect HOPE to the Scintilla may be disconnected, effectively closing HOPE off from the rest of the space construct.
The sphere chosen for the task was one of the larger ones. Unlike most spheres, Discordia specifically ordered for several discs to be constructed on this one, wishing to have only one single station dedicated to the project, and no more. Fugitives were already hiding within Eve, and she wanted them properly taken care of for as long as they chose to be part of the Scintilla.
Housing the refugees, in Discordia's opinion, was not enough. Though she knew that many of her Firsts and those that served under them would use HOPE for propaganda. The notion did not bother her, though for herself, her reasoning behind the entire thing was entirely different. She had alluded to such, to several of the Firsts, but none of them had ever been able to get more information about that from the elusive woman.
The plans for those who would come to HOPE was a simple one. None of the refugees that arrived would remain alive in camps and just wait day to day until their planet was released from the grip of those who'd made them refugees.
Every capable refugee above the age of eighteen standard galactic years was set to work. The Scintilla was still being constructed, and refugee labor was cheap. Workers included the menial tasks such as street cleaners and construction workers, but those who had come with the experience and knowledge for white collar jobs were put to those jobs as well. Not a single potential resource was to be wasted for no reason.
Children beneath the age of eighteen were sent to school. Galactic studies were absolutely required and tested on, but every planet that had a sizeable enough of a refugee population representation on HOPE also received funding for extra hours so that subjects that mattered to their world could be added to the curriculum.
Young adults, or adults, who wished for higher studies, received financial aid. The Scintilla at the time had no academies, but they support students who learned from a distance, or even children within refugee families who had eyes to study in another part of the 'verse. The jobs fulfilled by their parents helped to cover tuition, and only a very few specific cases of those who requested aid were entirely denied.
The philosophy that was sewn into the entire plan was that people, even refugees, were important. The ones you helped today, would fight on your side tomorrow. And indeed, plans were set down as well. Any refugee that had been an active student or worker (or was a special case) could become a naturalized citizen of the Scintilla, with all that entailed. Dual and even triple citizenships were made legal.
This, of course, was a very silly thing, for the Scinilla was still at the stage at which it accepted more or less nearly everyone, but it was the intent that mattered as well as how it painted them. To the big shmo's who ran the Galaxy, the Agents of Chaos and their little space construct were little more than silly insurgents from the Unknown Regions who would likely die out soon enough because of internal quibbles that never happened.
But to many people in the Unknown Regions and nearby, their agenda and consistency had made them heroes. With several planets that no one would have thought worthy of liberating now being either freed or in the process of being freed, their fate in them continued to grow. And indeed, people were piling not just into HOPE, but to the Scintilla in general.
In the earlier days of the Scintilla, the time of work a refugee spent was set to two months. As the Scintilla grew, slowly the number of months began to grow as well.
Following the Agents of Chaos' wins in both Kuat and Alderaan had marked a chance in the traffic of those who came to HOPE. Where in the beginning it had been a big sphere for a small number of planets, suddenly HOPE found itself full with over a million different refuges, and the numbers began to grow as well. People looking to escape their brutally occupied planets knew that there was a place called HOPE, and it was incredibly easy to find. If earlier the refugee population had mostly come from the Unknown Regions, now the Scintilla began to find itself with refugees from the Core and the Eastern Galactic Regions as well.
The different discs in HOPE each have a different purpose. Only the top three came to be as they were originally planned, with Kor being the disc for snowy climate creatures, Mal'a being the place to produce food, and Gaia being the metropolitan city that was a gigantic cultural and species-al melting pot. Nom, was an unexpected thing. The Agents of Chaos had expected something of this to develop after their experience with the development of the Slums in Eve, but they had thought it would be one of the neighborhoods in Gaia rather than an entire disc of its own.
Forces were prepared to go into that disc and drag everyone out of there, dead or alive, but Discordia interfered at the last moment, ruling that those who wished to go there, were more than free to remain there. Forever. There are no tunnels leading out of Nom except the elevators that take it up to Nom, but these are rarely if ever used. Little is known about what's happening in Nom right now, but the air and water supplies are being sent regularly, and will be, for as long as the Scintilla sensors detect life on that disc.
On a single occasion, Discordia had been caught looking at the surveillance screens of Nom, many of them blackened, but a few looking at a refugee camp that had been constructed out of tents and improvised materials, her long nails tapping against the table. The intern who'd found her like that has never been seen since, and no one else had since "caught" Discordia doing that.
Sheol, initially intended to be some sort of industrial sector for the sphere, had with time changed from that entirely. Companies were preferring to set up camp either on Gaia or nowhere near HOPE at all, and Sheol, marking the line between Nom and the rest of HOPE, had become the bazaar at which the two could meet.
Analysts estimate that HOPE itself can provide and acquire resources to support a population about twenty times its current size, but all those in charge of the HOPE sphere hope it would never come even close to that. The current moderate population seems to be pretty close to what they are at the moment comfortable with.
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