New Alexandria
New Alexandria is Nordic Frog Beach's largest and most prosperous city. Founded merely eight years after the planet's discovery by Scrud and her crew, New Alexandria has become referred to as "Humanity's Shining Jewel" due to its diamond architecture and its many beautiful parks and courtyards. After the collapse of Martian civilization, New Alexandria has become the center of human civilization even outside of Nordic Frog Beach - it is certainly the species' largest existing city.
New Alexandria is renowned throughout all human settlements for its high quality of life, its natural beauty, its wealth and prosperity, and for the quality of its universities' graduates. It is the headquarters of the Order of Grimms, and the planet's center of resource refining and manufacturing.
Demographics
Seventy percent of the city (2.4 million people) is basic splicer humans - humans who have received no more gene-modification than a simple inurement to genetic diseases and minor edits to genes that allow for a longer, healthier life.
About twenty percent of the city's population (700,000 people) are in Seafolk bodies, which are humanoid but designed for amphibious living.
The remaining 400,000 people are a myriad mix of different types of bodies. Octomorphs are the most popular among the remainder, but bodies of all shapes and sizes can be found in New Alexandria.
Humans representing all of Earth's lost cultures can be found in New Alexandria. The largest proportion of the population can trace their ancestry to East Asian, Indian, and Latin American ancestors, although Europeans and Africans make up a non-negligible minority.
Government
The government of New Alexandria is a loose one. It takes taxation from the largest hoards and transactions of resources and uses those resources to fund social services, law enforcement, and public education.
Twenty years of educational resources are available for all New Alexandrian citizens (those born in the city) and five years of resources are made available for transplants. Citizens are free to use or not use any number of those years, and the resources include access to teachers and tutors, research materials, information, study space, and room and board for students.
Law enforcement consists of the Protectors Organization. Protectors are state-sanctioned mental health and career counselors with state funding and self-defense training. The job of a Protector is to defend the citizenry from attack and to serve any whose lives have gotten off-track. A Protector is referred to a new case by a contact of the individual needing attention. After they're on the case, their job is to identify any problem points in that individual's life, and then authorize state resources to address those problems.
Social services include public works projects, recreation centers, parks, family and reproductive services, public life planners, and more. The goal of the Social Services Division is partially to ensure that all citizens have dignified and fulfilling work to complete, and partially so that there is ample public land for communal recreation and work.
Defences
New Alexandria is protected by a powerful force-field bubble that envelops the entire city and a significant portion of its outskirts. The force-field bubble protects the city from missile attacks, physical incursion, and natural disaster. The city's outskirts are also equipped with large energy-weapon turret emplacements.
In addition to the automated defenses, the city has another defender: Ischyro, the Argent Shield. The Argent Shield is a subroutine of a larger sentient A.I. whose job is to protect the city's citizens. She mainly employs airborne point-defense drones, but she is also capable of subverting the city's nanofabrication capabilities in an emergency in order to manufacture additional defenses such as tanks, fighter jets, and long-range missiles.
Industry & Trade
The settlement's biggest exports are university graduates, advanced technology, processed and refined materials, and other specialized goods.
The city imports mainly biomass and other raw materials such as ores, stone, rubberfiber, and rare metals like copper and gold.
The city mostly provides its own food through biomass conversion to nutrient paste and localized farming. Its citizens are primarily employed in fishing, studying, specialized crafting, construction, agriculture, or in nanofabrication.
Because the planet's resource distribution is done via nanofabrication, the city's fabber industry mainly converts raw materials into electronics or machinery for export and use elsewhere. New Alexandria also boasts a healthy recycling industry that operates using the nanofabricators, transforming unwanted materials and machines into useful things.
Infrastructure
The Library of New Alexandria is the city's crown jewel. Soaring marble arches announce its presence, and diamond walls coated in a photovoltaic film glitter between them. The massive structure accommodates both digital and physical archives, including the largest known collection of surviving Earth relics. The structure is adjacent to the Hall of Grimm, a white stone monastery that serves as the headquarters of the Order of Grimms. The Grimms administrate the Library, and they also provide their own security and procurement. The Library and the Hall are major providers of employment for the city, and also source nearly all of the city's primary-sourced academic information.
The Alexandrite University of Natural Sciences is the largest center of higher learning on Nordic Frog Beach. With classic brick architecture, beautiful courtyards, and a myriad of scientific equipment and infrastructure, the University is home to thousands of students of social or life sciences at any one time.
The Port of New Alexandria is the world's largest and busiest port, handling 3 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) per year. It has the dock space to host dozens of large boats and submarines, and is bustling and busy all year long with fishers, traders, undersea explorers and travelers.
History
New Alexandria was settled at first by a small group of independent farmers. Their farming settlement became the centerpoint of a city soon afterwards, when the Martian civilization failed and large numbers of immigrants began arriving on Nordic Frog Beach. The river valley was a prime point for potential human habitation, and the Order of the Grimms founding their Library of Alexandria merely served to accelerate the city's development into the center of human civilization on the planet.
Architecture
Buildings are primarily made of diamond or carbonfiber nanotubes. The buildings glimmer in sunlight because they are frequently roofed and walled with solar cells. Rooftop gardens and other urban cultivated life provides decoration on the outside of most buildings. The architectural style is swooping and curved, with structures built to easily repel wind, rain, and other elements. Artistic expression is valued just as highly as utilitarian design, so each building is a unique work of art created by an architect who loved their work.
Geography
New Alexandria lies in a fertile river valley. It is within a delta wetland, and adjacent to a wide and deep bay. The coastline is rocky, with high cliffs rather than low with sandy beaches. To the west, high mountains rise from the nearer foothills. New Alexandria, thus, is in the continental lowlands.
Natural Resources
New Alexandria has access to fresh water, river clay, stone from upriver quarries, rubber fibers, fish, pirinci weed, and seaweed. Using nanofabrication, its citizens can create anything made out of silicon, hydrogen, oxygen, or carbon easily.
Founding Date
Spring, Nordic Frog Year 8
Alternative Name(s)
The Shining Jewel of Humanity
Type
Large city
Population
3.5 million
Inhabitant Demonym
Alexandrian
Characters in Location
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