Slums

Slums

The Sky Cities dominate the centre of their slums. These slums are filled with organic sprawl of low level buildings with plenty of rotting wood, tarps, corrugated plastic, tin and mud. The streets are filled with life. Because transportation is not cheap, the people huddle together so they’re able to walk to where they need to go. They often live in compact multi-family dwellings above noisy shops that operate day and night.

Walking the streets, you might come across what would be easily recognized in the Midieval world as ‘souqs’ or markets. These are concentrations of similar types of shops. Walking down a tightly packed main street filled with shoppers and donkeys, you could find yourself in a mattress market where tinkers are busy curling springs. Or you could end up in shoe market where each stall has a cobbler hammering behind a mountain of work boots, sandles or slippers. Some of the more modern markets offer cybernetics, chips, software, hardware, weapons and body film.

It’s very common to see people in the slums that are modded. Glowing eyes, animated tattoos, and metal arms are complemented by leather jackets, wild hair and pulse guns. Sky City citizens often call slum dwellers scrappers because of scrap metal on their bodies. They call their slums names like the scrap or rust pile, the sewer, or the junk pit.

Gangs and Empires

Ottoman II

Some gangs have become incredibly powerful. The most powerful gang in the world calls itself the Sultanate. The Sultanate gang is headquartered in Istanbul and controls all the territory of the Middle East right through to Central Asia. While they can’t touch the Sky Cities in their territory, the Sultanate would otherwise be recognized as an empire. The world knows this empire as Ottoman II because it fashions itself as the second comming of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman II is the cultural and power centre of the world beyond the perimeter of the Sky Cities. The Sultanate weilds some influence over Urumqi, though that city is still fractured and lawless.

At the centre of Ottoman II culture is a healthy selection of blood sports known collectively as The Pits. Performed in huge subterranean arenas under Istanbul, spectators can watch a huge number of ever changing gladiatorial-style blood sports, as well as some juiced-up Olympic feats of strength. The Pits are one of the few places where citizens and scrappers can be found in the same room. There’s even a tunnel between the Istanbul Sky City and the Pits. Citizens will often fold their jump suits and dress up as scrappers so they can sneak into the Pits.

The Pits are so popular that copycat pits have popped up in almost every major slum around the world, though the Pits of Istanbul are considered the best. And they are.

North America