Silverbridge

Silverbridge is a chartered city founded about sixty years ago by the Sugai Dai Ichizoku, to more efficiently access their deposits of iron, carbon, clay, and silver in the area. The city claims about four hundred square kilometers of the badlands at the edges of the Eastern Desert, the Eastern Kiso Mountains, the Tiger Leap Canyons, and the Eastern Sea in the Argent Chiku. The end of the last geologic age saw the retreat of glaciers and the redirection of several rivers and the sea in the area, which left behind currently dormant volcanoes (Soren-san, Sparta Yama, Timber Mountain, and Mount Nonda), active fault zones (the Elsinore Rift, the Nankai Trench, and the Honey Lake Fault), and major deposits of iron, clay, dimension stones, kaolinite, feldspar, flint, fossils, salts, petrified wood, jadeite, obsidian, blue opal, beryl, quartzes, garnet, lead, zinc, lithium, uranium, nickel, azurite, copper, tungsten, mercury, silica, chromium, turquoise, tin, carbon, industrial diamonds, gold (mines 'produce' under one hundred tonnes per year), and silver. There are several steel mills (aogami, shirogami, tamahagane, gingami, stainless, molybdenum, damascus, and industrial), porcelain works, ferrocrete works, ceramic factories, glass factories, and military grade armor producers located in the slowly growing settlement. Even now decades after its founding, the city is still somewhat remote and secluded - at present there are no tollways through the chiku, and the population remains under twenty thousand residents. Until recently the city remained unnoticed by pirates and outside aggressors and was only occaisionally harassed by local bandits, due mostly to the bulk nature of its products. It is popular with artists and crafters in metal, clay, and stone. Bladesmiths and jewelry smiths are the fastest growing population due to the exemplary quality of the local resources. The newest addition to Silverbridge is Gossamer (publicly traded 38.7 Ryu per share), a textile company that combines fibers from the ironwoods of the Sequoia Rainforest, spider silks, and other natural fibers to produce fabrics used in personnel armor, sports equipment, athletic apparel, intimate apparel, space apparel and equipment, hazardous environment and materials handling apparel, storage and equipment, personal protective safety gear, compression wear, and support wear. Due to climate and geography supercells are common in this area producing torrential rains, flash floods, macrobursts, dust storms, tornadoes, and lightning clusters - therefore most of the still growing city is built underground in the Hebi Tani {snake valley}, or within Flower Peak (1472 meters) part of the Hebi Han'i {snake range} with tunnels connecting various areas of the city and mines, some as far as sixty kilometers away from the city center. Local travel around the city (outside of rail, water, and air) utilizes off road and all terrain vehicles as there are no paved roads above ground, and travel through the tunnel systems are restricted to electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, some are large enough to accomodate fuel cell powered industrial mechs. Agriculture is mostly confined to 'ponic and vertical farms and greenhouses, with the exception of several herds of free-range domesticated deer, sheep, and goats which utilize specially trained guardian dogs and storm shelters within their grazing zones in the hills and mountains. The city center (mostly public buildings such as City Hall, the Guildhall Collegium, the hospital emergency entrance and landing pads, solar and wind farms, the Chiku offices {Rafe Vilkas MP}, and Hebi Station - a showstopper of marbled peach and green polished marble) is constructed of dimension stones, mostly basalt and granite, and military grade ballistic glass to withstand earthquakes and storms, with no building allowed over ten stories high - including the newly constructing NPO Tower and the Sugai Yoroi Zensho-chi {outpost}. Summer highs regularly reach forty degrees celsius which makes the city underground more comfortable to live and work, and so reaches as deep as thirty stories in places with spaces large enough for factories, sports fields, and concert halls. The landscape is dotted with sensor equipped camouflaged and secured cisterns, skylights, garage, and ventilation architecture. The north end of the valley hosts a small regional airport (Argent Aerodrome) and the inland Argent Canal waterway (suitable for narrowboats, river junks, and barges supplied by waysides and road stations at the locks) fed by a small offshoot of the Chikugo-gawa, the Gin-gawa {silver river}, that links to Silverbridge Port (currently only reachable by rail, air, and water) on the coast of the Eastern Sea at the outermost border of the city, approximately one hundred kilometers from the city center. Currently the biggest corporate entities in the city are Stark Heavy Industries - metal refineries and armor factories (publicly traded 1,810 Ryu per share), Light Au Naturale - manufactures solar tube lights, skylights, and natural daylight fixtures and bulbs (private), and Cypriot - manufactures organic ultra filtered and strained goat milk greek yogurt in plain and a dozen or so revolving seasonal flavors like berry smooth, lemon curd, pumpkin pie, and chocolate truffle (public 47.3 Ryu per share). Visitors are advised to be cautious and aware as most of the human habitation and activity is underground the wildlife has prerogative above and roams throughout the area with absolute freedom, including migrating herds (bighorn sheep, antlered rabbits, boar, goats, horses) and predators (cougar, eagle owl, coywolves, adder,
harpy eagle, landsharks {constrictor snake - six to eight meters}, novosaurs) willing and able to take down adult humans.