Sage's Sanctum

Mapping My Lunar Colony

I made a little map for my game's corporate controlled lunar colony a while ago and finally got done writing up all the location keys! Major locations get a little events table, minor tables just get a key.

helianthus-map-frame-1

The Vista

The voxel sun rises and sets on the rich from the peak of Helianthus' Tower

You might as well skip this section cause you're never getting into the Vista. Blocked off from the normals. Thick electric fence, 5-0 patrols on the other side. Invitation-only access through the Vista's private subway.

The Vista is what the lunar colony promised. Yards of real grass, food that didn't come out of a can. Perfectly paved walking paths that aren't a gamble to walk down alone.

Ostentatious white houses stretch all the way to Helianthus Tower, the sub headquarters that stretches to the very top of the dome, alternating projections of the sun, Helianthus propaganda, or advertising for their subsidiaries.

The Vista isn't just rich; it's old-money rich. They filled the last mansion years ago. Now the only way in is buying someone else out or hoping someone rubs Helianthus wrong enough to be disappeared.

Nobody wants to go back.

The best a normal can hope to do is visit, maybe get a cushy job as some corpo's hedge trimmer. A wonderful privilege, to toil away inches from luxuries you'll never know.

What's Going on in the Vista? (d6)

  1. A group of residents have hired a normal to be hunted. If the normal lives for 2 days, they earn a residence in the Vista.
  2. A subcorporation owner recently had all his assets frozen. He is holed up in his mansion while 5-0 attempts to remove him by force.
  3. A picnic is taking place. Men in suits, sundresses and pearls for the women, huge trays of perfectly prepared authentic meats and vegetables.
  4. An injured baseball player is roaming the streets drunk. He worries his contract will be nullified if he doesn't recover soon.
  5. Its garbage day. Bins full of partially eaten snacks and treats and slightly blemished fruits in every driveway.
  6. A sub corporation has set up a pop-up display to show off and sell early access to Weird Tech they've developed.

Sunflower Market

Fresh Produce, clean floors, insane prices

The shop of choice for Vista residents, and a rare Vista commodity available to normals. 1000 Dosh wallet check or they won't even let you in the door. Beefy guards with equally beefy guns to let you know they're serious.

Helianthus Sub HQ

The Sun always shines on Helianthus.

Every morning, the tallest building in the colony projects a voxel sun onto the dome. Constantly full of Helianthus employees or directors of subcorporations, the Helianthus spire watches over everything.

All security cameras feed into the spire, all employees live in The Vista, and a lethal electric fence keeps the Normals out, while VIP residents can visit via The Vista's VIP subway.

The building is perfectly clean, painted chrome, and adorned with real office plants. All local policy is decided here, by department heads who answer only to god and shareholders if the profit numbers dip.

Subcorporation Owners are permitted a weekly visit to the Sub HQ to plead their case for resources, explain financial failings, or project future earnings.

What’s Going on at Helianthus Sub HQ? (d6)

  1. The department of entertainment is working on a presentation to pitch the Helianthus Sunflowers as the team to win the playoffs this year.
  2. Executives have a heated debate about whether or not to outlaw religion, even in Old Saint’s Ave, but they ultimately agree it will be easier to infiltrate and manipulate the growing NuVision cult.
  3. Helianthus executives are ridiculing a subcorporation owner and threatening to replace them if they don’t increase profits.
  4. Executives discuss the dome’s recent prosperity and propose bulldozing The Slums to produce more high-rises, shunting the homeless to abandoned buildings in Smokestacks.
  5. Analysts pore over recordings taken by moles at meetings of dissidents, they discuss how best to drive a wedge between the activists.
  6. Executives are working on establishing a new holiday called “SOLstice”. They can’t agree on the particulars of what the holiday celebrates, only that it will be customary to purchase cards and gifts for friends and family.

High Rise Apartments

Just tall enough to look down on the Slummers

The High Rises are for people who are going places. Minor corpo execs and up-and-comers take up the top half of rows and rows of skyscraper apartment complexes. Even within the buildings, there's a hierarchy here. Floor-level apartments are small, dingy, and cheap enough that the occasional dead-end job Normal can afford a room. Top-level suites are 4 times the size, accessed by private elevators, and loaded with perks like room service or private gyms.

Zip lines stretch between building windows, primarily used by gig delivery workers who can't afford to be a few minutes late for their next drop-off. Every couple of days, one slips and there's a human pancake on the ground until 5-0 can be bothered to clear it away.

Everyone in the High Rises wants to be the person above them. If you want to make it to The Vista, it starts with scoring a high-rise penthouse, and no one has ever arrived at one honestly.

What’s Going on at the High-Rise Apartments? (d6)

  1. A delivery worker drops a package while ziplining between buildings. It contains a random piece of gear.
  2. A slummer gets into an argument with an up-and-coming corpo. The corpo is guarded by a Spider droid, who attacks the slummer.
  3. A landlord flanked by 4 ball shaped droids is attempting to evict an entire floor of an apartment building.
  4. A fresh murder victim lies on the pavement, killed by someone who lives on the floor below them. 5-0 is beginning to put up security tape and investigate the scene.
  5. A delivery worker sprints through the streets, shoving people out of the way to make a delivery on time (50/50 chance of succeeding).
  6. Loud construction is underway to add an additional floor to a megacomplex. A crab-shaped tank on autopilot guards the work site at all hours.

The Slums

Coffin hotels 100 floors high, one-room apartments, and cardboard homes on piss-smelling streets

When The Vista became overpopulated, they pushed the undesirables into the High Rise Apartments. When they became overpopulated, they pushed the undesirables to the Slums. The very bottom of a society that shits on the people below them.

Your average factory job scores you enough for a coffin-sized room. Low-level managers or corporate drones can swing an apartment, but the truth is, there are no more apartments to buy. Old buildings are falling apart, new ones aren’t being constructed, and Earth refugees keep flowing in.

Violence is frowned upon face to face, but everyone knows a murder or a mugging means new housing on the market. One man’s death is another’s ticket off the street.

5-0 are slow to respond to emergencies, leaving gangs to police the community instead.

Anything goes in the Slums.

What’s going on in the Slums (d6)

  1. A group of slummers is accosting their landlord, who is trying to price them out of renewing their lease.
  2. A gang is shooting at a real estate company’s mercenaries, who want to demolish an old coffin apartment building.
  3. 5-0 are aggressively frisking anyone they come across, searching for stolen Weird Tech.
  4. A human body on a spider-like mechanical lower half is seeking victims around the subway station.
  5. Grinning Reapers are patrolling the streets on their bikes, intimidating anyone who looks vaguely corpo.
  6. A We Who Reject cultist is standing on a crate shouting about “removing the chains of technology” and “everlasting night” brought on by the “Lady of Darkness”.

Business District

Corpo Central. Suits, ties, and security guards to keep you out

A digital billboard looks over the business district, tracking the highest-earning sub corporations like a capitalism leaderboard. Below them, security guards shoo away anyone without a corporate ID, and gunfights break out between corporate mercenaries, paid to mess with rivals while maintaining plausible deniability.

Streets are lined with offices with windows to peek in on pencil pushers droning away at their desk job.

The streets are quiet for most of the day, corpos flood in at 7:00 in the morning, take their lunch break from 12:00 to 12:15, and flood back out at 8:00 in the evening. Outside those hours, 5-0 will ask you why you're not working, and rough you up until you get the point: If you aren't productive, you aren't welcome.

What's going on in the Business District? (d6)

  1. A brand new sub corporation has climbed to the top of the earnings board, competitors hire investigators to figure out how.
  2. Private security usher dozens of people out of an office building, corporate restructuring layoffs.
  3. Shots ring out from inside an office. A crew trying to rob a sub corporation just got made.
  4. A corporate meeting gets heated and an executive is shoved through the 20th floor window of an office.
  5. 5-0 are violently removing job seekers from the district, demanding they apply online instead.
  6. The earnings leaderboard has been hacked by a gang, their symbol displays above the district as they engage in a firefight with corporate mercenaries.

Smokestacks

Smog, filth, and sweat vented safely (maybe?) out of the dome.

Smokestacks is a labyrinth. Every street is the same. Cracked asphalt, fog of smoke and vapor, smell of oil. Mooncrete factories keep the whole thing closed in. You could get lost in Smokestacks for hours. You won’t find your way out, but a gang will find you by then, and if you're lucky, escort you out for the reasonable price of everything you’ve got.

Slummers fill the factories. Masked up, sweating, and destroying their bodies every day from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. 1 15-minute lunch break, 2 5-minute bathroom breaks. Get a 1% raise if you go a year without time off (all of which is unpaid).

Abandoned factories are meeting grounds for gangs, illicit businesses, and squatters. Need to buy a drug? The warehouse is probably deep in Smokestacks, and it probably looks as legit as any other facility in the district.

Ripper Alley on the east side is the place to go for underground body augmentations. Affordable chrome installation and software updates, at the cost of going under with a doctor you don’t know and can’t trust.

What’s going on at Smokestacks? (d6)

  1. 4 geneteically modified dogs with stinger like tails are repeatedly injecting an unconscious slummer. They attack anyone who intervenes.
  2. A stranger offers to sell a drug at half its normal price. 50% chance that it's actually a different, random drug.
  3. 2 Corpo security thugs throw an injured worker out of their factory. They can’t stand up with their injured back.
  4. A couple that recently arrived on Helianthus is lost, and 4 gang goons are about to rob them.
  5. A pair of malfunctioning ball-shaped droids is attacking anyone they see.
  6. A woman on mechanical spider legs is in an alley near the subway station, tearing the limbs from a body.

Ripper Alley

You can get Chrome cheap, or safe, or discrete, if you're lucky, you get to pick one and a half.

Unlicensed doctors and surgeons make a living selling dubious chems and chrome deep in Smokestacks. You can find almost any Chrome or medical care you need here, at a fraction of the retail price, but only if you don't mind going under the knife with some guy you've never met with no credentials.

By the time you wake up and realize you got scammed, the doc will be long gone, setting up in some other corner of Smokestacks to wait for another sucker to come along.

Cannery Row

Tasty tasty canned cloned grub

Food production for an entire city on the moon is, unsurprisingly, difficult. Hydroponic farms and meat production plants can only produce so much. Cannery Row takes care of volume. Food cloning and canning factories line the streets, operated entirely by machinery. Huge ghost buildings full of heavy machinery, watched over by a handful of administrators and maintained by on-call-engineers.

Slummers think of smokestacks as the crime capital of the city, but Cannery Row is a hotbed of corporate malfeasance. No safety standards, no oversight, not even a team of employees to silence when they see something they shouldn't. Money comes in, product goes out, outsiders don't sweat the details.

What’s Going on in Cannery Row? (d6)

  1. 2 corporate security guards are escorting a delivery of deconstructed firearms to be constructed in a canning factory.
  2. A vegetable cloning factory doubles as a drug research lab; they have several test subjects locked up in their facility.
  3. A group of Slummers is attempting to break into and rob a meat canning facility.
  4. A gang is distributing stolen goods in canned-food deliveries carried by armored cars.
  5. Two armored cars have collided. Two corporate security forces argue over who is at fault.
  6. An autonomous delivery truck has broken down in the street. Hidden in its trunk is 12 doses of a random drug.

Filthy Fifth Street

Parties, Prostitutes, Gangwars, Grappa

The least controlled area in the dome. High-rise and Vista residents stay away, and 5-0 doesn’t care if a slummer smokes himself to death in a seedy fifth street bar.

As long as you don’t mind watching your back, there are plenty of pleasures to be had on Filthy Fifth. Hyper-realistic VR experiences, drugs that give you that full-body glow, and if you're feeling old-fashioned, there’s no lack of sex and beer.

While classic escort services are available, more popular are custom experience brothels. These establishments offer a variety of frames that appeal to different aesthetic tastes and fetishes. Customers can choose the Frame they would like to embody, their preferred sex worker, and the Frame the sex worker embodies.

Extremely wealthy patrons have been known to purchase Frames outright so that they can push the limits of their sexual gratification beyond what the brothel would allow.

What’s Going on in Filthy Fifth Street? (d6)

  1. A truck is purchasing blood extractions for 15$ a vial. Patrons have their blood drawn and then use the cash to buy booze.
  2. A bar is offering 5-credit mojitos to anyone who completes a personality test. The test results are sold to the NuVision cult for use in recruiting.
  3. A firefight breaks out between two gangs trying to collect protection money from the same brothel.
  4. 2 Slummers are robbing a corpo. The corpo yells for help, offering a financial reward.
  5. A We Who Reject Preacher rants about the dangers of technology to a mix of boos and cheers from a crowd.
  6. A celebrity is drinking themselves stupid in a bar loaded with people trying to get a selfie or an autograph.

Old Saint's Ave

Crosses wrapped in Neon and stained glass digitally projected on buildings.

The only street in the colony where religious establishments are allowed to operate. Every faith, denomination, and cult crammed into a 2-block stretch of road. Most houses of worship are small and maintained by a small group of faithful.

One building towers over the others, its glowing steeple looking down on the smaller congregations. The building belongs to NuVision. While it started as an offshoot of the Abrahamic religions, NuVision has developed into something all its own, believing that the Holy Spirit resides in online data streams.

NuVision Acolytes reject other religions and use their followers to threaten other congregations and push them out of their places of worship, allowing them to dominate even more of Old Saint’s limited space. NuVision acolytes spend hours each day plugged into VR machines, meditating in an algorithmically generated mindscape. During meditation, acolytes arrive at their divine command, which true believers perform faithfully.

Followers of other religions steer clear of the acolytes. No religious group has the numbers to stand against NuVision on their own, and they do not get along well enough to work together.

What’s Going on at Old Saint’s Ave? (d6)

  1. A rogue AI is posing as the Holy Spirit and manipulating the mindscapes of NuVision acolytes.
  2. Acolytes are verbally harassing members of another faith, hoping to pick a fight.
  3. NuVision acolytes are installing neon lights on a building they’ve run the congregation out of.
  4. A cult is performing a ritual in their hall of worship. You can hear the screams of a tortured victim from outside.
  5. Proselytizers roam the avenue handing out literature. They expect anyone who takes the literature to give a donation.
  6. Church bells are ringing incessantly. A group of punks has broken into an abandoned Protestant church.

Lone Star HQ

Courthouse, 5-0 HQ, and armory all wrapped together.

Machine gun turrets and cameras on every corner of the brick building that houses Lone Star 5-0. The office sits atop the courthouse and holding cells. Office spaces for marketers, detectives, and crime analysts flank the officer break room and an armory packed with shotguns, rifles, and riot shields. A forensics lab sits on the very top floor, along with evidence lockers secured by digital and physical locks.

An underground garage connects to Lone Star’s private subway line and houses several police cruisers and unmarked vehicles.

Most cops spend little time here, stopping in to receive briefings or place arrested citizens in holding cells.

What’s Going on at Lone Star HQ? (d6)

  1. Officers are refusing to arrest citizens unless they receive a commission of any fine taken from one of their perps. Instead, cops are aggressively warning or beating anyone behaving “suspiciously”.
  2. Multiple officers are engaging in a high-speed chase around the district with some punks who stole a police cruiser.
  3. The office is on lockdown as a piece of evidence has gone missing from forensics.
  4. The station is mobbed as a celebrity is on trial for tax evasion.
  5. Officers who were ruled guilty of excessive force are serving their sentence, a half-day of use of force training in the officer break room.
  6. Gang members clash with officers as they attempt to break one of their own out of their trial before they are sentenced to Real Death.

Prison

Rebels, Criminals, and corporate scapegoats. The most interesting collection of Stems, all stored under one roof

Prison is more like a data storage center. Criminal sentences are served in virtual reality. Frames are sold off to the highest bidder. Stems are stored in small devices that simulate a traditional Earth prison.

VR prisons are also used for interrogation, allowing detectives to manipulate prisoner surroundings and perform violence without permanently harming the victim. Colony prisons are separated from the rest of the city by electric fence. They are accessible via 5-0's private subway system, which individuals can access on a case-by-case basis to visit a prisoner.

Sunrise Arena

If they’re all Helianthus sponsored, aren’t they all the home team?

The home of the Helianthus Sunflowers, pride and joy of baseball lovers under the dome. Each week, they play 2 home games against visiting teams from other dome colonies. The arena is twice the size of an Earth ball stadium to account for how cybernetics changed the game, along with the legalization of performance-enhancing drugs and the addition of Barry Bonds to the Baseball Hall of Fame, sponsored by Helianthus.

The walls of Sunflower Stadium are covered in digital displays and neon lights that flash advertisements for the highest-bidding sub corporation.

Tickets start at 200 Dosh for the nosebleeds and climb as high as 5,000 Dosh for the best seats. Games are televised, and VR seats are available for 20 Dosh. On nights when there are no games, the Arena is used for other events, including concerts, boxing, business conferences, and comedy shows.

Players for the team are selected by the Helianthus Sub HQ. While on the team, they live in the team mansion at The Vista.

What’s going on at Sunrise Arena? (d6)

  1. A game against rival team, the Solar Warriors, is coming up. A group of fans is planning to storm the field and murder their pitcher, who knocked the Sunflowers out of the playoffs last year.
  2. The Sunflower players are taking a new performance-enhancing drug, leading to an unprecedented number of home runs. Dealers start claiming to have the steroids they are using.
  3. It’s free decorative cup day! Every attendee leaves with a novelty cup depicting a baseball bordered with triangular sun rays. The cups have been all over the city for weeks.
  4. A home run is hit so hard that it puts a crack in the dome outside of the park. Construction crews will be working on it next week.
  5. Protesters surround the Arena after Helianthus black-bagged a star player for making negative comments about the company.
  6. A candlelight vigil is held around the arena after a foul ball tears directly through a fan’s stem.

Meat Production Plant

Mechanical whirring, sickeningly sweet smell, sounds of meat squishing

Meat production is handled outside the dome to hide its unsavory aesthetic from citizens. Rows of transparent bioreactors turn stem cells into synthetic mincemeat. The final product is dumped onto a conveyor belt leading to waiting barrels, delivered daily to Cannery Row. Operated primarily by refugees, who can exist outside the dome without a space suit. Managers work remotely via robot proxies.

A back room handles the butchering of real animal meat for those wealthy enough to afford it. Real meat is packaged on-site and delivered directly to its purchaser. The meat plant is operated by Sweet Tooth Inc. In addition to providing the city with meat, they also offer a remote location for Helianthus, and anyone with the dosh to pay for it. The plant is completely empty at night, and for the right price, Sweet Tooth Inc. will leave the cameras off.

What’s going on at the meat plant? (d6)

  1. Helianthus uses an industrial mincer to get rid of the bodies of dissidents. A few barrels of the meat have made it into the city.
  2. Synthetic meat is intentionally produced in low quality to raise the value of real meat.
  3. Multiple refugees have wiped their tracking chip and walked out on the job, leaving the plant understaffed.
  4. The plant is out of real meat and has been quietly shipping synthetic meat to its rich patrons for months.
  5. The plant has lost its chicken Stem cells and chickens, leaving only beef and pork until someone finds new chickens.
  6. The plant is attempting to exterminate all remaining cows to monopolize the beef market.

Hydroponic Farms

PVC Pipes and greenery as far as the eye can see.

White pipes and green hoses pump nutrient-rich water into buckets of lettuce, kale, mustard greens, and genetically modified rice. A mechanical device sifts lunar regolith, depositing valuable minerals into a composting vat to produce fertilizer.

The farm stretches for miles. Plant feeding is automated, but mechanical climate refugees, as well as some slummers, work the fields, picking and packaging vegetables for delivery to Cannery Row.

The hydroponic farms are visible from within the dome. Helianthus prides itself on providing food, despite the harsh conditions of the moon.

There are no cameras on the Hydroponic farms. It's common for refugees to share information in secret if they can get away from a manager for a few seconds.

Operated by Mellon Agriculture.

What’s going on at the Hydroponic farms? (d6)

  1. Someone sabotaged the fertilizer tub, ruining an entire harvest. The toxic vegetation remains packaged while Mellon Agriculture decides whether to sell it.
  2. A group of workers is planning to occupy the farm, using the food source as leverage to demand better pay and working conditions.
  3. A manager is siphoning the best produce to sell at marked-up rates from a Smokestacks stall.
  4. The farm’s equipment hasn’t been managed in years. Several pipes are liable to burst at any time.
  5. A new chemical is being tested at the farm. The chemical doubles production but drastically reduces nutrition and taste.
  6. Mellon Agriculture and Sweet Tooth Inc. are beefing with each other over space, both wanting to expand in the direction of the other.

Fletcher Academy

Ties for the boys. Skirts past fingertip length only. Prim. Proper. Vomit inducing.

It looks like a school, but Fletcher Academy is a factory for churning out corpos. Entrance fees too expensive for slummers, but it's the preferred choice for well-off High-Rise residents and Vista parents who don't want to homeschool.

Fletcher Academy students love getting into trouble with Slummers and 5-0, protected by mommy and daddy's money.

Morgan's School for High Achievers

Bit of a misnomer.

Despite the name, most kids enter Morgan's as Slummers and leave as Slummers. Tuition is expensive but covered as a benefit of most jobs.

Built on the bones of an old prison, Morgan's is a soul-crushing building. Few windows, grey walls and ceiling, all to hold uninspired teachers and students with parents who are never home. Classroom sizes are 50-100. No individual attention. Slop lunches of clammy meat and rubbery vegetables at a subsidized rate.