Re naming, I think all the 'New Somewhere' names have been done to death. Especially in places dedicated to terraforming and building a new future from scratch, I imagine people wouldn't care so much for remembering back to the old cities of Earth and would like to generate new, poetic names (also wouldn't the city's politics, with terraforming it's raison d'etre, be thoroughly Consortium and thus anti-Earth sentimentalist?) Maybe something evoking water, fertility, tides, etc. Or a reference to the antiquated belief in the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canal]Martian canals[/url], now being made a reality?

The Green Slime wrote:

Maybe something evoking water, fertility, tides, etc. Or a reference to the antiquated belief in the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canal]Martian canals[/url], now being made a reality?

We could go back to Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books. Looking at fan attempts to map his cities onto the planet, http://www.erbzine.com/mag28/2807.html http://www.reocities.com/area51/dreamworld/6532/barsoom/world_files/maps... I think Helium might actually be a good name - it is a canal city, the home of the protagonist and presumably a nice place. Another Hellas-related option might be Lothar.

root@Mars Habitat Community Project [hr] I would imagine the type of person who would work here might just call it Boomtown. Half pragmatically descriptive, half passively asking the universe to make the town go boom. This might be a naming habit restricted to the local morlocks, but it'll be there. The Ukiyo reference is great, and might as well be expanded to be a description of life in the boomtown for the successful water prospector. Buddha Cowboy makes more sense in Eclipse Phase than anywhere else I've seen it attempted, and Buddha Cowboy vs Bandito-Ninja Jihadbots gets a little too awesome to ignore.

Some more stuff about HAMC. Hopefully this might help flesh out one of the major industries of Meltwater. Hellas Aquifer Mining Company HAMC is a privately owned terraforming company that has been active in the northeastern quadrant of Hellas for more than 25 years. Originally owned by several investment firms, in the Fall several of these dissappeared. The remaining owners were Banque de Nectaris (29%), UICE holdings (12%, a Martian finance firm) and two private owners, Isabella Melville (28%, socialite living in Elysium) and Yoichi Suetsugi (31%, engineering entrepreneur). The latter is chairman of the board and CEO. As long as the others trust his leadership (i.e. keeps the company profitable) he gets to do what he wants. Chairman Suetsugi is a well-known character in Meltwater. He is a big man in many respects - sleeved in a husky olympian, highly extrovert in an almost American way, generous but with a long memory for slights, happy to visit "his" company's operations. If Meltwater was a western, he would be the railroad baron. Despite his local influence he has his own problems: he is currently engaged in complex negotiations with the Floating World project, TTO and other hypercorps over the Red Eden project. While what he *should* be doing is to ensure that he and the other owners will get maximal amounts of money if HAMC gets merged into Red Eden, he might be a bit too in love with "having" the company - a potential crack in the relationship to the other owners. Takao Esashi is COO of HAMC and runs the day-to-day operations. An intelligent, exact engineer he has a no-nonsense attitude to terraforming, management and human relations. A dedicated workaholic, he rarely leaves his office in the HAMC compound where he directs operations. His ascetic dryness is a strong contrast to chairman Suetsugi's boisterousness. One reason for his clockwork-like behaviour might be emotional trauma: it seems he lost his family on Earth during the Fall and now is busy suppressing all emotion. HAMC has several divisions. Planning is located in Meltwater and directs operations. Surveying runs exploration teams looking for aquifers, measures groundwater flows, and checks out past interventions. Mining is the section that sends teams to mine or control aquifers; they are the ones with heavy equipment and drastic methods. Control deals with emergencies and water management (their unofficial motto is: "We clean up after Mining"). Liaison is the legal, PR and hypercorp-interface division. While much work is entirely online there is a crew around Meltwater that does face-to-face meetings with representatives, obstructive ecologists or the media. Typical HAMC projects consists of finding a nice vein in the mountains, mapping it out, registering a claim with the TTO (made easy because of the cosy relations the company has to the MGRAC down the street), then bringing out the miners to puncture the aquifer with heating rods, fracture the rock with drilling or explosives, and then directing the water into a suitable channel or crater with a benign microclimate. At this point one of the terraforming companies takes over and begins seeding the wet place with life, and HAMC moves on. HAMC has some responsibility for maintaining the hydrologic structure, so Control does regular checks that everything is working (it is amazing how quickly an ice blockage can build up and start the formation of a glacier lake - draining such blockages before they burst into dangerous floods is a large part of the "plumbing" work of Control). HAMC has a complicated relation with the nomads. On one hand it employs TTO nomads as subcontractors - they make great initial surveys, can monitor old aquifers, and are often happy to maintain smaller ecosystems that are hard to sell to terraforming businesses like Arbortech and Merah ke Hijau. On the other hand the nomads often accuse HAMC surveyors for claim-jumping, draining parts of aquifers already in use and for muscling them out of business. And these are the TTO nomads: the independents are even more negative. Still, nomad groups like El-Nassim Areogrammes and Chaabane EcoDev are dealing with HAMC so much that they are for all purposes daughter companies. If HAMC and the nomads have a stormy relation, that is nothing compared to the relation to the IWA. Katrina Takahashi in Pilsener City is not far away, and she seems to have made it her personal mission to drop in on chairman Suetsugi during inconvenient times to argue for worker benefits, minimum morph rules or try to rope him into her play for derailing the absorption of the Floating World into Red Eden. The IWA has called for strikes at very inconvenient times for HAMC, enraging Suetsugi. It almost seems more like a personal vendetta than union politics - many outsiders would love to figure out what is really going on. HAMC as a whole does not have any particular political or ecological agenda, but it does not use nanoswarms for much. This is largely a practical matter: nanoswarms cannot do the heavy digging the company excels in. But from a PR perspective it also works well, since the inhabitants of Meltwater vividly remember what happened to the settlement of Waddell a few ten klicks to the south during the Fall. Since HAMC is also to some extent competing for TTO funds with the ice blackening projects in the south-eastern quadrant run by their competitor Postman-Makale Inc, this is useful. When it comes to indentured workers HAMC is pretty typical. Many of the workers in Mining and Control are indentures sleeved in work morphs that are little more than mining equipment. Since living an ordinary life outside work as a heavy drill morph is hard, they either have to spend their spare time as infomorphs or rent morphs from one of Meltwater's bodybanks. This is something the IWA protests against; the union want everybody to have a liveable morph and at most telepresence mining equipment. HAMCs past and present use of "plowshare" terraforming nukes have induced some criticism, mainly from afar. However, since the company does handle seriously dangerous explosive materiel the martian rangers regularly check up on them and have to be present when nukes are being used. There have been some thefts of components that have made the rangers nervous.

Just found these geological maps of the region at USGS: http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2557/i2557.pdf http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3096/ Maybe too technical for most of us, but might come in handy for describing particular locations. The pamphlet gives some details about the geology of the Dao landscape. I think there might be some nicely eroded rocks around, as well as the fairly sheer canyon walls and truncated riverbeds - maybe some salt deposits, useful for halogen mining? Here is a geological map of the entire Hellas region http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2694/ Overall, USGS has some nice Mars maps I often use: http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Gallery/MapsAndGlobes/mars.html Looking at the region using Google Earth/Mars shows some pretty neat landscape around the Vallis. Things get steep and dramatic as you go into the uplands towards Hadriachus Mons. I especially like the narrow connecting canyon to Niger vallis at 35 06''05'' S, 91 59'44'' - looks like the perfect place for an ambush. And don't those nearby mountains look riddled with caves? Meanwhile much of the surrounding landscape looks flat and desert like, but still pretty varied. Check out the bizarre domes surrounded by dunes and badland mesas at 33 18'23'.79 S 84 28'11.56E up in Coronae Montes

Demonseed Elite wrote:

That raises an interesting question: where in Dao Vallis would you think is the ideal site for the habitat? If there was much planning involved, I could see it being close to the tributaries where multiple valleys connect. But it's equally possible that it sprung up without long-term planning and is located wherever it is most immediately convenient for melting ice.

I think it was somewhat planned, and even if it wasn't the most conveniently located settlement will tend to grow the most. I am getting the idea that it is located in a dry side channel so it gets a nice microclimate, is close to the main valley (whose floor is unsuitable because of occasional flood risk but is also pretty fertile by Martian standards) One option is the valleys around the central bend with the hills here http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=-39.478605&lon=85.891113&zoom=8 this is pretty far down. Another option is the meeting between Dao and Niger at http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=-36.465471&lon=90.631713&zoom=8 - I don't see a truly nice valley on Google, but I think running Google Mars will find better places. In fact, the deep and narrow canyon connecting Dao and Niger I mentioned above might make a good location. It is right in the middle here, but not visible: http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=-35.128894&lon=91.917114&zoom=8 I imagine the place as a hanging valley opening up into Dao Vallis on the south side, with the settlement at the lip looking down on the Vallis. Inflated plastic domes cover "downtown" and some covering across the valley that helps maintain the microclimate for local farming and avoid dust storms.

If people don't mind me contributing something, I had an idea for a local group... The Layabouts. Every frontier town has its share of hangers-on. Even as far back as the Old West, drunks and louts who worked only as much as they had to for their next glass of whiskey still existed, and it is no different in the modern day. The Layabouts are part business, part sub-culture, part gang, forged from the critical mass of lingerers in the wake of Meltwater's growth. The ice-melting industry centred on Meltwater, and the frequent flooding of the area around it, led to a certain amount of immigration, both of free-men and of indentures. With many indentures working just to pay off the body they were sleeved in, and the abundance and relative cheapness of indentures, a slow but steady trickle of out-of-work ice-crackers and miners began to appear in the city. Most bought their way to other cities, one way or another, but some, without any sort of prospects elsewhere, lingered. Unable to find work, or just plain unwilling to take it, many took to micro-filtering the lakes and rivers for particles of rare metals. While the returns on the effort were minimal, they were enough to pay for cheap food, cheap lodgings, and cheap booze. The effort itself was also minimal, apart from the tedium involved, as most filter workers only needed to stay by their posts to change the filters and keep away poachers. As the numbers of filterers increased, many turned to harvesting in groups to fight the boredom of the profession, earning them the nickname Layabouts. As numbers increased, so did competition. When it became evident that there was profit to be made, however small, other businesses started to make their claim on the river's produce. With the efficiency of self-monitoring machines doing the job for less than even the poor filterers, many started to organize and sabotage the newcomers to the scene. Some of these sabotage gangs, not content to return to routine after their violent ambitions gave them a taste of action, they turned on their fellow filterers. Before long, gangs consumed or destroyed one another, forming and breaking alliances, until one stood above the rest. Taking the derisive monicker of their chosen profession as their label, the Layabouts finally became an organized force. The Layabouts used the power of their emerging collective effort to greatly improve their living conditions, but are also an occasional problem for the locals. Using their collective weight and threats of violence, they scare off anyone who tries to muscle in on their territory, are frequently in trouble with the law for disorderly conduct, and, lately, have even begun to hastle small businesses for protection money. However, unlike many criminal organizations, the Layabouts really do provide protection, acting as a sort of disorganized militia, who bring vigilante justice to any criminal who assaults their "customers". The current leader of the Layabouts, Joseph Gauthier, is a former infugee and indenture from Quebec on Earth. Previously a member of the Hell's Angels, he is quite familiar with the crudeness of gang life and "roughing it". He is only leader because he leads the Gold Teeth Boys, one of the largest and crudest gangs within the collective known as the Layabouts, and because he has managed to maneuver cunningly around the leaders of the other gangs.

Old Jin "Old Jin" was Meltwater's first inhabitant. He lived there before there was a settlement, even before the region was carefully surveyed. To the townspeople he is an odd recluse and almost a bit of a lucky charm. Old Jin doesn't acknowledge the town. He rarely speaks, prefering to listen and watch - perhaps warily, perhaps with interest, perhaps just as a habit. His real name is Ran Jian and he was a first generation space colonist and - to his great detriment - celebrated author. One of the younger taikonauts participating in the early Mars exploration and colonization efforts, he always had a sharp eye for the poetry of the hard life - how people created miniature worlds of the imagination inside their cramped quarters, how the rituals of cleaning equipment from abrasive dust took on a Zen-like meditative air, the strange human relationships formed as the colonists found themselves alone on a vast and empty world, the frightening beauty of the original Martian desert. After the death of his partner on a recon mission he began to write about his experiences. At first merely intended as a blog it soon became a full-fledged book: literature somewhere in between a novel, an autobiography and a poem. Titled just "Sha" ("Sand") it was a literary sensation back on Earth - even generations used to immersive entertainment found the simple language with the poignant, almost haiku-like observations rewarding. While the book was pretty popular on Mars too, most locals had other things to do than to read about their own harsh lives. But a major publisher contacted Jian and contracted him for a sequel. At first it seemed simple to Jian - he had plenty of notes and ideas, Sha was literally the tip of the dune. But as he tried to form his material into something he could publish he found himself stymied. Maybe it was the recognition among fellow colonists, maybe it was that Mars was already changing, maybe it was just the demand that he produce *anything* that could be sold. His writers block just got worse, and the worse it got, the more insistent the publisher became. Finally he couldn't take it any more. He disappeared. He used his savings to set up a homestead in the caves fringing Niger Vallis and took the name Jin. Never a true hermit, he did some prospecting and trade with local nomads. A few years later Meltwater started to grow nearby. He considered moving away but decided against it. Instead he became the towns resident weird old geezer - perhaps not too old at the start, but he seemed to slip into the role easily. As the years went by he did not have to pretend anymore: his flat body is ageing, and years of keeping to himself has made him more than a little odd. His health is slowly failing but he refuses any modern treatments, perhaps fearing that they will reveal who he was. If he dies his dingy and cramped homestead among the South Wall caves hides a treasure. After disappearing he did not stop writing, and he has continued working on his poetry. The texts have been polished by years of slow work and clever observation as an outsider. If revealed they would be a literary sensation. But Old Jin has no plans for publication or to ever reveal who he was. He prefers to watch the dust storms, the evolution of slang among the Layabouts, the occasional flowering of cacti and the deadliness of the desert for what they are, not as some literary material.

Old Jin is awesome. It felt rather refreshing to read something like that, to be honest; added a very nice humanizing element to all of this. On that note, might as well add to this... Muntasir (Muntasir al-Baariq ibn Faqih ibn Allam al-Ard) Before there was a Planetary Consortium, there were multinational corporatons; before there was terraforming, there was Mars; and before there was Meltwater, there were nomads. Out in the deserts near Meltwater, nomads sift the red dust and transform it into usable soil, gradually shifting Mars into a new Earth. While many of these are contractors with no particular ties to anyone but their corporation, a few sufi families also work out in the wastes, many even working as sub-contractors for groups like El-Nassim Areogrammes. Though they frequently migrate elsewhere, depending on the season, they make frequent appearances near and even in the city. Amongst the nomads who drift near Meltwater, the name Muntasir is well known. A refugee from Earth, the man known as Muntasir lives in a small home on the outskirts of the settlement. When he arrived, he was pitied by many, especially those in the Muslim community, for, in the Fall, he had lost all his family. His only remaining relative known to him is a distant cousin who fled for the outer system long before the Fall, with whom he has never had any contact. Quiet and reserved, Muntasir lives a humble and pious life by all appearances. When not tending to his ongoing plant experiments in a small shelter just outside the city, he is devoting his time to charitable works, such as organizing community events and caring for the enfeebled. Notably intelligent and scholarly, it soon became common for men and women of the community to seek Muntasir's advice on matters of faith, eventually earning him the title of Imam. With an excellent memory and keen mind, he is certainly an expert at interpreting the scriptures, and is well read on a broad variety of subjects. His reputation has even spread as far as to cause many nomads who visit the settlement to seek his counsel. Muntasir's plant experiments are also of particular note to those who know of him, as he uses very cautious gene therapy to modify plants (in only the most minor of ways, usually) to make them better adapted to surviving in the Martian environment and putting out the largest amounts of usable oxygen. Thus far, he's not turned up anything ground-breaking, but his developments are interesting enough that he fully funds himself on a stipend from the Argonauts that supports his meager lifestyle and research, as well as many charitable activities. Beyond all his kind works and scholarly activity, though, the calm and quiet exterior of the man so many look up to as a leader in their community conceals many silent worries and fears. These fears go beyond the usual weights placed upon the shoulders of any spiritual leader; he can face problems such as those and, as a result, finds little reason to worry about them. There is one problem that he cannot face, however, at the heart of which lies a dark secret that he has been carrying with him since the days of the Fall. Muntasir is an Async. When fleeing Earth, Muntasir was infected with a strain of the Exsurgent Virus that changed his mind. Years of hard work and prayer, along with the comforting care of very patient Muslim brothers who looked after him, eventually broke him of the curse of insanity his condition placed upon him. He still does not know what caused his mind to suffer so traumatically and assumes it was simply the witnessing of so much terror and human suffering. What Muntasir does know is that he is different now. He is far more personable than he ever remembers being, able to read people's emotions with great ease and feels incredible delight at their happiness. His memory is sharper, and he sees the world in a different light. However, he also hears voices, and sees faces he remembers, had forgotten, and never knew. Occasionally, on the Martian wind, he hears great prayers whispered backwards in blasphemous mockery. Dark voices whisper to him frequently in his sleep, and he has, on at least one occasion, met a traveller formed of smokeless fire when out alone in the desert. He is not sure if his gifts are a blessing, a curse, or merely the grips of madness, but he wonders, hopes, and fears, deep in the part of his mind that questions his purpose in life, if Allah has chosen him for some greater meaning.

Another thing, apropos the environment: SmartSkates As more aquifers are tapped, water ends up on the Martian surface. While the goal is to keep it liquid, it commonly freezes during the night or winter. This provides excellent skating opportunities in the low gravity and thin atmosphere. SmartSkates are like normal diamond-bladed skates but are adaptive: the blades are equipped with adaptive microscale rollers that allows them to act like rollerblades on rough but hard surfaces. The skater can skate on a paved street as well as on ice. This has some limitations: soft surfaces like soil or gravel impair skating, and the skates cannot handle too large rocks. Among Meltwater inhabitants skating on the valles floor is a fairly popular sport. There is a few informal hockey teams playing rough games against each other, to the amusement of the viewers (and profit of morph repair people). SmartSkis Corresponding to SmartSkates, SmartSkis allow skiing over both ice, snow, dust and sand. Again, the surface is composed of adaptive rollers that allow them to glide over any sufficiently even surface (and even drive the skier forward, in some models). An added benefit is that the SmartSkis prevent sinking into the ground, even when it is very loose like after a dust storm. People in Meltwater and many of the nomads widely use SmartSkis when moving around on the smooth plains surrounding Niger and Dao Vallis. While vehicles are good for getting somewhere fast, skis are excellent for quiet ground-level reconnaissance.

Demonseed Elite wrote:

Given Meltwater's rapid growth as a boomtown, would it make more sense that it consists of multiple, smaller, connected domes rather than a single centralized dome? Perhaps a handful of small domes with lots of tin cans and prefabs between them as shantytowns and souks. Maybe that small Dao-Niger cross-valley is covered, to produce a micro-climate and keep away the dust storms, as Arenamontanus mentioned above. It could be used for farming, with water from the melted ice being moved into that valley's irrigation system.

Yes, it strikes me as a bit unplanned. The canyon is a good candidate for being covered, but there is not going to be much space, and what space there was has already been taken by the first settlers, HAMC, MGRAC and local farming. So the rest would be souks, a network of plastic-covered walkways, a rough road network and a few inflatable domes. Not very aesthetic, but bustling. On the south/Niger side there seems to be a slightly protected valley outside the main canyon. I expect this to have been the second stage of growth, with maybe one or two domes. Meanwhile the north/Dao side is better for agriculture (more sunlight and warmth) so this is where you get more greenhouses and seed orchards. The top of the plateau is likely not very hospitable, but a good place for landing air vehicles. So this is where there will be some garage infrastructure, and some elevators down to the canyon. A bit further out there will be facilities like explosives storage and manufacturing. I wonder how good the road up Dao Vallis is? Is it a proper highway, or is it still under development?

(does this make sense?) Policing in Meltwater Meltwater has three kinds of law enforcement: Hogo-Aegis, the militia and the Martian rangers. Hogo-Aegis is a security corp active around Hellas and Terra Arabia. They are the current security supplier for HAMC and protect HAMC operations - but nothing else. They are a rational security firm, using the minimum amount of manpower to provide exactly the security agreed in the contract but nothing more, at a maximum profit. HAMC is not entirely happy with their services but are still contractually bound for two more years. When Meltwater was founded the Helium Development Company got the Floating World project to send one of their security people over as a formal sheriff. This worked the first few years, but as the settlement grew the sheriff was increasingly overwhelmed. This led to the spontaneous formation and growth of a militia recruited from able-bodied and civic-minded inhabitants. One settler in particular, Tyrone Mauriello, became a forceful militia leader and often clashed with sheriff Arno over lacking enforcement. After the Fall, when the militia had shown their mettle the Floating World Project found it practical to hire Mauriello as sheriff (Arno got promoted to "district security coordination ombudsman" and disappeared into the corporate bureaucracy). Since then he has been sheriff, deputizing many militia members to maintain order. While his own budget is very limited there are several well-off residents that donate to the militia, including chairman Suetsugi. The militia is a mixed lot. There is a small core around sheriff Mauriello of experienced, tough long-term residents that provide the most policing. Especially deputy Xiao Musi is known for her skill at handling drunken brawls and attempted botjacking. The rest are people attracted to the idea of being in a militia or interested in the pay of being a part-time policeman. The quality varies between eager youngsters to cynical thugs who know it is good to be in the officially supported gang. The sheriff seems to have a blind spot for what his underlings do, at least until they mess up badly. There has been understanding between Hogo-Aegis and the sheriff for a long time: they handle HAMC stuff, he handles everything else. Unfortunately not all militia members get this, and enough HAMC employees get themselves into trouble each year to lead to some jurisdictional quarrels. The Martian Rangers patrol the area outside the town, mainly focusing on keeping the roads safe. A high priority is the Ryukyu Uumakus, but there are enough other crimes and accidents to keep them busy. Relations to Hogo-Aegis and the militia are cool but far better than in many other places. The main source of friction is the weak security surrounding some of the demolitions equipment: the rangers have officially complained about HAs incompetence, something that has further spread bad blood. Magistrate Ventola is the local circuit judge. She is in Meltwater fairly often since it is conveniently located and there are plenty of cases. She is pretty competent but slightly eccentric (as long as discussions can be kept away from theology everything is fine, but don't get her started on the pagan roots of hypercorporate culture). She works well with the sheriff and rangers, but not with Hogo-Aegis. Sheriff Tyrone Mauriello Sheriff Mauriello is a conservative person. Some of his friends joke he was born a century or two too late, and he does not disagree. He likes the idea of a society that remains stable year from year, where rules are rules and people are people. He moved to Mars with his wide Oda because he wanted to get away from the chaos of Earth and build a new, proper life on the frontier. Trained as an agronomist he has worked with providing terraforming material in Meltwater, but his real passion has always been managing people. As he shaped up the militia he found his true calling and he has developed himself into a passable policeman: tough, perceptive and knowledgeable about the law. His greatest triumph was when he convinced Floating World to appoint him sheriff rather than the incompetent Arno. Sheriff Mauriello dislikes criminals, autonomists and layabouts - society needs structure and order, and these people are free riders on the hard work of others. He also dislikes corporate rule: there ought to be a government passing the laws, not some bunch of hypercorps. He is one of the staunchest supporters of the Tharsis League in Meltwater, and often argues with anybody who cares to listen that what Mars need is a proper government with a strong Secretary General - not a pinko like Dhiagelev or a consortium stooge like Ngan. He is bioconservative and has firm prejudices against uplifts and AGIs - as he sees it, they are soulless creations, nothing more than property that talks. Most of the time he keeps to the law when dealing with them, but he is hardly polite about it. He is however quite accepting towards people in synthmorphs: while he thinks it is a darn shame they are stuck that way, they are people and should be respected (as long as they are civic minded, of course). He thinks he is fairly politically savvy, but he isn't. Floating World sees him as the cheap choice for keeping Meltwater functional. He is easily dazzled by chairman Suetsugi and swallows his "HAMC is Meltwater" line without critical thought. He thinks the militia is under his firm control. Sooner or later he is going to have a nasty awakening from his dream of being the white hat sheriff of law and order. His wife Oda Mauriello is an educator, helping children interface with the right education software and advising adults on what to download. She is a quiet woman, very much staying in a traditional role behind her husband. They have three kids, aged 13 (Esteban), 14 (Chale) and 23 (Carmen, a real straight A student, currently getting a degree in nanodesign at MIT in Noctis-Qianjiao). Her father is a fairly major media personality on Luna who has been trying to get her to move to "the old orbit" without much success.

I had an idea for a brothel myself, wrote a whole thing about it, but then decided against it; my idea was far too extravagant for a boomtown brothel. I'll use it somewhere, but the Candy Box fits far better in Meltwater than my thought. That said, there is a character I want to transplant... Thirty-Five-Oh-Nine (3509) In frontier towns all throughout history, the fringes of society have been a safe place for cultural experimentation. From the mining towns of the Gold Rush to colonies like Ionia, these places have been areas for free thought to escape the confines of societal norms. However, even on these fringes, there are those who push the limits that civilization allows. 3509's life is a story of falling from grace. A talented genehacker who developed their first customized skin texture before they were sixteen, they were quickly snapped up by Skinesthesia after they developed a few Open Source mods. Thus began a meteoric rise to fame and stardom that reached its peak just before the Fall. Then came the Fall, the devastation of Earth, and the ensuing paranoia that saw anyone with a highly abnormal morph persecuted. Some unusualness was okay, everyone liked the novel, but the outright bizarre forms of pre-Fall society were viewed with disdain as potential Exsurgents in disguise. When mob witch-hunts began, it spelled the end of 3509's career. The Fall was not the only reason for 3509's sudden decline, however. Other "extreme" modders and genehackers existed and many simply adapted to the new trends, but 3509 was a deva; their rise to fame had given them a highly inflated sense of self-worth and, with the market no longer demanding their creations, they could not accept the loss of their importance. Unable to accept that the glory days were over, fewer and fewer job openings came to them, and fewer clients were willing to return calls. As they exhausted their favours, 3509 gradually began to sink into obscurity. 3509 isn't sure how they came to Meltwater, really; their agent, who now has little time for them, simply found a job to shut them up and save a little face. Now, they work at the local body bank and design custom modifications as a side job, but few are willing to go to them for such things; all modifications 3509 creates are inevitably weird in appearance, even if their design is magnificently streamlined and efficient. Anyone who asks them to design to a certain aesthetic, disregarding their own, gets shouted out for trying to compromise the artistic vision. One place that used to see 3509 rather regularly is the Candy Box, but they have since been banned, after an "incident" that all parties concerned signed non-disclosure agreements over and a significant amount of credits transferred to the proprietors. 3509 still lingers around the area, though, and frequently hounds the workers outside, offering to "make them beautiful". Thus far, no such hounding has approached a level to warrant police intervention, however. 3509's personal morph is a work of art, though whether anyone would consider it desirable or even merely tasteful is a matter of personal taste that few would attest to. Tall, lithe, and androgynous, it evokes the Uncanny Valley in the most distracting of ways, combined with more traditionally attractive features. The soft face has pupiless eyes that are as black and reflective as obsidian glass, and the skin is a gentle mixture of pink, white, and purple, transitioning evenly from one to the other without any apparent pattern. The smile is just a little too wide, the arms just a little too long, and the teeth far too sharp. The form is also asymmetrical, lending itself to guiding the eye flowingly. A single feminine breast adorns the right side of the chest, usually barely concealed when the atmosphere allows it, while the left side of the chest is tattooed with the owner's name. As if it should come at any surprise, 3509 carries both sets of genitals, but their male components more greatly resemble a hydraulic hose than anything human. For the most part, 3509 is reclusive, rarely emerging from their room at the body bank to wander the settlement. When they do, it is with great effort, and they usually mutter derisively about people being small-minded. Invariably, these excursions are to gather materials for their maker or to purchase alcohol, the latter of which usually results in them stalking the Candy Box and waiting for its employees, to speak offers of glory in a stereo voice drawn from a twinned pair of voice boxes.

Great work, everyone! Love the school and intro. And it is good to know who the Firewall plant is. I have been thinking of adding a few kids anyway: Dominick van der Laan Dom, 13 years old, is the son of three homesteaders down-valley and has been sent to Meltwater for proper schooling and socialization. Dad and mumda felt that it would do him good to be around more kids of the same age, while mom thought it would be enough to interact on-line - he was pretty helpful on the farm. They might all have been right. Dom grew up tending to the broad sensor/actuator networks used on the farm and knows how to handle smart dust and spimes intuitively. He is also intensely curious about people - a result of living in the middle of nowhere. So he has become a bit of a Peeping Tom. He likes to watch people and figure out their behaviour without them noticing. While he is gradually getting the hang of being normally social, he finds it exciting to be in a place with so many people - each with intriguing secrets and quirks - to investigate. Among the school-kids of Meltwater the quiet Dom is gaining popularity for his occasional leaks of interesting video clips showing adults they know of doing something they shouldn't. He is also learning how to couch his interest in terms of 'sousveillance' and 'community self-observation' in case some adults gets on his case. Lisa Myslim Lisa is the daughter of HAMC engineers, a socially skilled 14 year old who is a natural networker among her peers. While most of her interests are pretty typical of a teenage girl - catching the eyes of that hunky hockey player Thad in the Dao Avalanches, getting access to the new NeoChicago simspace everybody is talking about, getting good grades so she can get out of Meltwater and gaining enough c-rep to get by - she also has a slightly more unusual secret ambition: she wants to become a lama. A few years back she was lining various historical documentaries about Earth and came across descriptions of Tibet. She immediately decided she wanted to run a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. After all, the mountains of Mars would make a great location, right? Since then she has read up on Tibetan spirituality, learning the distinctions between Buddhism and Bön, as well as all sorts of trivia. Her parents indulge her - a youthful interest in some almost extinct Earth-religion is far safer than a desire to join the Extropian Mormons or hang out with Layabout kids. However, her interest doesn't seem to abate despite the high likelihood predictions the parenting software gave them. While Lisa doesn't exactly presume to be a reincarnated lama it would certainly fit, she admits to herself. Now she just needs to find enough people like her, get funding and the necessary education, and set up her dream monastery somewhere in Nereidum Montes.

Chrysaor Robotics CR is a local robotics shop that buys, sells, repairs, etc. all kinds of robots, from creepies and servitors to a wide variety of synth sleeves. And if the 'bot you want isn't available in store, it can be ordered in extremely short order: CR owns one of the few legal and unrestricted (or more accurately, minimally-restricted) nanofabs in Meltwater as necessary for it's business operations: Nearly all modern robotics use nanocircuitry in their designs and importing the necessary spare parts rapidly becomes uneconomical along delaying necessary repairs. The Requisite licenses and weaving of red tape were a major investment for CR that has paid off handsomely since then and given CR just the edge it needed. The Physical presence of CR centers on relatively large dome with an old-school physical LED sign. Inside the shop there are various models on display stands, all available for sale. The Display also includes two fully armed and operational security-AI managed Reapers (also for sale, if you have proper licenses). Sheriff Mauriello thinks this level of security is "bit overkill", but has not raised too many objections as the security upgrade stems from a rather notorious armed robbery incident that nearly killed Andrew Carter, the sole owner and proprietor of CR. That's the legal part of the business. What Andrew keeps carefully secret is that aside the legal unit in the backroom of his workshop which carefully logs everything it produces and gets regularly inspected by the Rangers, he also operates a completely illegal "Latest from Locus" nanofabber in a series of anonymously rented warehouses via quantum-encrypted telepresence link under alias "J.P. Hackworth" (cf. Neal Stephenson, "Diamond Age"). The Illegal fabber produce is the usual: Guns, Open Source robots, proscribed nanoswarms, unrestricted desktop nanofacs, all sorts of pirated hardware, et cetera. "Hackworth" buys all sorts of unrestricted blueprints and offers major discounts to customers willing to provide copies of blueprints that he doesn't already have and copies of which are later sold to other customers. He has already collected a rather large library of designs, some of which are quite alarming. The Profits are channeled to Lunarian banks, where Andrew has already built up a quite decent nest egg. Andrew also maintains regular backups and a Gold Contract at Redoubtronics. While the business is currently running smooth and The Law has only vaguest of hints of the existence of his illegal operation, things could go pear-shaped very, very fast. One day the scam will come to an end, one way or another. He has set himself a goal: Five million PC credits, after which he plans to shut down the illegal part, sell CR and move to Extropia. Andrew's main problem is keeping his 'sideline' business hidden from market analysis: Sheriff Mauriello isn't exactly stupid and will rapidly deduce the existence of the operation if too many gangbangers start sporting shiny new toys. While the current level of production is easily blamed on various smuggling rings, the level and grade of the illicit production is constantly shifting in balance with the level of local smuggling activity, buyers' interest and Andrew's own greed. It would be all too easy for Andrew to sell one railgun autorifle too many to Ryukyu Uumakus and awaken the Sheriff's suspicions. Andrew 'Andy' Carter +Wealth, +Freedom, +Techno-Progressivism Born in Ottawa, Canada, thirty years before the Fall, Andy has always had a nearly supernatural sense on which way the wind is blowing. He escaped Earth when the Fall was barely starting, reinvesting all his assets on one-way ticket to Mars and an Alpiner Morph. He managed to snag a job as a junior mechanic for TTO subsidiary, which he promptly lost along most of his assets when the White Zone was born. When he arrived to Meltwater in AF2, he had 20 credits on his account and his most valuable possessions consisted of a cold-weather gear, pressure tent and a toolkit. Chrysaor Robotics was founded six months later and business has grown steadily ever since. Andy is a businessman. Not in the "sociopathic hypercorp bureaucrat" style, but someone who believes that a honest business transaction should benefit both of the participants. He's rather proud of the positive impact he's made on Meltwater in general. Even the illegal part of his business is having a beneficial impact on Meltwater, bringing prosperity to poor who could never afford a legal nanofab or licensed servitor robots. Note: Andy's Alpiner is from an older series without the "Planned Obsolescence" trait. "An Elegant design for a more civilized age", as he has been known to quip. Nobody else in Meltwater knows that aside basic biomods, mesh inserts etc. Andy is equipped with a Dead Switch and Multitasking cyberware. He's sworn to never become indentured and the multitasking makes it possible to run the illegal part of his business at the same time as the legal part, giving him a (small) degree of alibi. Needless to say, he updates his backup at Redoubtronics religiously. Adventure Seeds: *Your intrepid Firewall team needs big guns and fast. Who could provide such firepower fast? *Andrew has finally slipped and the Sheriff's office is starting to suspect that someone is running an illegal nanofabbing operation in Meltwater. Fortunately Andy got a tip of the suspicion, rapidly shut down the operation and now just needs few people to move couple large crates of sealed goods elsewhere, no questions asked. *Recently one of the Layabouts salvaged an EMP-deactivated fractal among other robotics scrap, which he sold to "J.P. Hackworth". Andrew immediately recognized the design as TITAN-originated and his first instinct was to slag it immediately, but then his greed and curiosity overrode his better judgement. Andrew nanofabbed the components for a small research laboratory, closed the shop and told everyone he was going to take couple weeks of vacation at the fleshpots of Valles-New Shanghai. Instead, he's planning to set up a research project in the desert, take the fractal apart atom by atom and find out few secrets that will make him rich. What he doesn't know that Larry Hall, the local Firewall mole, has also recognized the the design origin of the artifact from the Layabout's drunken description and has already called for Firewall backup to find the mysterious "J.P. Hackworth" and sort things out...

The Red Hourglass "Only watch your step, this place can be a little rough" --Obi-Wan Kenobi The Red Hourglass (RH) is one of the lower-class bars in Silt Town. What makes it mildly notable is the fact that it's one of the more notorious "hives of agitation" for the Movement, IWA and Anarchist ideology, a place where seditious plans and anti-PC propaganda bubble barely below the surface and alcohol-fueled rants regularly condemn whatever incompetence, insanity or oppressive policy the hypercorps in general and HAMC in particular have cooked up recently. RH can be a rough place. Voicing wrong opinions can easily get a person thrown out after a beating and there are persistent rumours of people asking too many questions quietly disappearing into martian night. (Martian black humor: People disappear into martian night because terraforming has not progressed enough for proper fog yet... (look up "Night and Fog") :evil:). The Sheriff's office is keeping an eye on the place, but hasn't found much actionable. Frida the bartender is known to keep a Shredder under the bar which she uses to encourage brawlers to take their arguments outside if things threaten to get out of hand and there are rumors that she also had microwave agonizer pop-up turrets installed during the last renovation. The Place is appropriately decorated. There are several regularly-changing virtual posters of old political figures that PC would want to forget (von Mises, Kropotkin, Nestor Makhno, Ayn Rand, George Washington, etc.). Furniture is heavy titanium alloy, bolted on the floor (brawls are a frequent occurrence), and the main bar is a carefully polished, diamondoid-surfaced slab of Ilmenite, a piece of asteroid that ended on Mars during the Late Heavy Bombardment about 4 billion years ago. There are several descendants of one-armed bandit. Most of the service is handled by servitors, but Frida herself rules everything from behind the bar. Most of the food and drink repertoire are locally synthesized with a food fabricator using Open Source blueprints (the marginally legal ones created by Argonauts, at least that's what the Sheriff's inspection found), but the "house special" is known as "White Lightning", a traditional 96% moonshine distilled from locally-grown corn in the bar backroom. The Moonshine is served raw and customer adds mixers according to personal taste; a favourite form of hazing newbies is to dare them to chug the stuff down raw. Aside the bar and tables, RH offers TEMPEST-screened and bug-swept "private cabinets" for customers who want privacy. The Sheriff's office has suspicions regarding what goes on there, but they haven't successfully penetrated the counter-surveillance screen. At least not yet. Aside criminal and political conspiring and a wide variety of private negotiations, these cabinets are regularly used for private poker games by a number of people. RH is one of the vanguards of the rep system on Meltwater, preferring payments for food and drink to be conducted in favors. Frida can handle a wide variety of network favors and (of course) PC credits as necessary. Gold, silver, platinum and other rare metals are also accepted (favorite form of payment for Layabouts) and she keeps a small assayer under the bar. Frida Hayek The Owner and operator of The Red Hourglass is a woman known as Frida Hayek. Everyone knows that this is quite probably is not her true name (small amount of digging shows it's probably conflation of Frida Kahlo and Salma Hayek), but it's the only name and identity anyone in Mars has regarding her. What is known about her is that she arrived from Outer System two years ago and set up shop as a publican in Silt Town. Another public rumor is that Dr. Winston Argyle wanted to buy into Red Hourglass six months ago after a major brawl necessitated large renovations causing RH some financial distress. According to the rumor, his offer was rebuffed firmly and barely politely with comment that "The Red Hourglass is not for sale". Frida Hayek was originally born as Joseph Mortensen in Noctis. He escaped to Locus after NCPD started asking too many questions regarding a certain shoot-out that left half-dozen smugglers dead with slagged cortical stacks. Joe the Locus, especially the anarchist economy and unrestricted nanofabbers, but his heart remained on Mars. Thus, after things had cooled down and a suitable cover-ID had been created, Frida Hayek was born and moved to mars. Frida is not particularly active with the movement itself, being mostly a fellow traveler. Her actions are nevertheless quietly subverting the local underground economy by introducing anarchist @-rep system, something that Dr. Argyle thinks might become a problem in the longer term. There are hundreds of other similar potential sources of trouble, though. Frida's sleeved in a Fury morph, which is known to have a Circle-A nanotattoo stamped on right butt-cheek.