Law Enforcement
All law enforcement in The Divided City is run and overseen by the Supreme Lord Chancellor and their appointed head of enforcement. Law enforcement officers and officials of The Divided City are known as
enforcers, but colloquially referred to as "Tin-lickers" by Dwellers and distrusting High Risers. Although enforcers are employed by the government to preserve and uphold law across both the Rises and the Dwelling, the organisation has historically been known to be fairly discriminatory and corrupt, paying little attention to High Risers and terrorising Dwellers for so much as looking at them the wrong way.
Dwelling Administration
Due to the extreme segregation between the Rises and the Dwelling, as well as a general lack of interest from the government towards Dweller society, the districts of the Dwelling are predominantly run and governed by various gangs and other criminal organisations, who are constantly vying for more power and wealth. These various organisations and their respective leaders are generally responsible for managing the majority of the Dwelling's economy, and will often bribe enforcers to get them to turn a blind-eye to their criminal activities.
Organisations
The Divided City is home to numerous organisations of all sizes and ideals. Notable organisations of The Divided City include
Collectors,
Enforcers,
The Syndicate and
Vision Industries.
Districts
The Divided City is broken up into various different districts both across the Rises and the Dwelling, most of which are centred around different important city buildings and trade centres.
Districts In The Rises
For the most part, the districts of the Rises are divided up into professions and industries such as manufacturing, farming, design, genetics, biotech, commerce and so on. Although High Risers are generally free to travel between the different districts as they please, most tend to stick relatively close to their home districts, rarely venturing out beyond the immediately neighbouring districts. Even though the districts are generally segregated by profession and industry, most will contain entire ecosystems of their own due to the vastness of the city.
Dwelling Districts
The districts of the Dwelling are generally centred around elevators that serve as transitory points between the Rises and the Dwelling, and partitioned by the various buildings and the roads that weave between them. Generally speaking, the districts of the Dwelling are of less economic significance than those of the Rises, and for the most part are used only as a way for the various criminal organisations that rule over them to lay claim to territory.
Economy
Wealth in The Divided City is, for the most part, measured in terms of its local currency:
bits. The circulation of bits into the economy is controlled and monitored by the Supreme Lord Chancellor and The High Council. Despite both operating on the same or similar principles of wealth, the Rises and the Dwelling have fairly different economic systems due to the distinct divide between their average levels of wealth, with High Riser wealth averaging well over 100 times the average wealth of a Dweller. By maintaining this distinct division between the wealth-levels of the Rises and the Dwelling, the governing body of The Divided City are able to ensure the prosperity of one at the expense of the other.
In the Rises, all service roles, such as those found in industries like hospitality and retail, are performed by specifically designed and engineered single-purpose machines. This retains the ability for humans to carry out more important tasks, or in fact no tasks at all. Similar machines exist in the Dwelling, however these machines are mostly controlled by the government and are few and far between and so are instead relegated to different roles such as the collection of taxes. Some Dwellers have designed and manufactured their own machines as a way of helping automate their businesses, however for the most part these similar service roles are performed by humans. This allows the inhabitants of the Dwelling to be in more direct control of their monetary wealth, the circulation of bits in their own economy, and not have to rely on government-appointed machines to take care of business for them.
Currency
The local currency of Kastkardia is the
Kastkardian bit. Bits are mostly traded electronically through devices such as credit chits and BioChips™, although physical versions of the currency do exist in the forms of coins made from various different metallic materials, with the rarity of the material determining the value of the coin. Each coin is embossed with an image of The Sceptre on its obverse, and the coin's value and date of printing on its reverse. Coins were phased out after the invention of BioChips™, and are no longer accepted as a form of currency in the Rises, however are common amongst the criminal underground of the Dwelling due to their inability to be traced.
Professions
Common professions, as most everything else in The Divided City, vary between High Risers and Dwellers. For the most part, High Riser professions generally revolve around maintaining and expanding the economy and technology of the Realm, whereas Dwellers will generally take up a profession merely as a way of ensuring their survival. It's also common for the wealthier High Risers to work much less than the average High Riser, and in fact many of the incredibly wealthy citizens tend to not do any work at all, relying on passive income or family support instead.
Common Dweller professions include, but are not limited to:
Scrapper; Merchant; Mechanic; Criminal.
Common High Riser professions include, but are not limited to: Researcher; Designer; Manufacturer; Bioengineer; Geneticist; Engineer.
Technology
Technology plays a hugely important societal role in Kastkardia, and as such the city is fairly technologically advanced. However, as much as there is a wealth and class divide between the inhabitants of the Rises and the Dwelling, there is also a severe technological divide. High Risers are the technological innovators, designing, developing and manufacturing new and improved technology on a regular basis. Once a new piece of technology has been developed and distributed amongst the Rises, older versions of that technology will begin to get phased out in favour of the new and improved version. The subsequent technological waste, or scrap, is then often taken out to
The Scraps and dumped, or, in rare cases, taken down to the Dwelling to be distributed or sold. Due to this, Dweller technology tends to be generations behind that of the High Risers', and will often have gone through many owners, iterations and repairs before ending up in their hands.
Scrappers also play an important role in the acquisition and maintenance of technology amongst Dweller society. By retrieving discarded High Riser technology from The Scraps and trading it for bits, they are partly responsible for being able to maintain and repair existing technology with new parts, as well as bring into circulation new technology that might not have been disseminated directly by the High Risers.
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