Helium City, it has been said, is the still point of the turning world, the center around which the three cultural "spokes" of North America, the Neobedouin, the Skyloft and the Neovictorians, rotate.
Helium City is neutral territory, the only place where all three cultures can meet in (relative) peace.
History: Long ago, Helium City was known as Amarillo, and sat upon the biggest deposits of helium in the world, on the windy plains of the Texas Panhandle. At the time of the Great Rectification it was not considered important by the Emperor, since he did not have many airships, and its population were rounded up and fed to the beasts early on. Once the Skyloft movement began, the Skyfolk quickly realized the importance of the place. As the Imperial ground forces pulled out of Texas with the introduction of the uber-beasts into the area, the Skyfolk seized their chance. The sky city of High Amarillo, largely inhabited by refugees from the original city of the same name, fortified itself with high wooden walls on the outskirts of its platform and landed near the site of the helium mines. From this position of strength they were able to slowly push the uber-beasts back, expanding the defensive walls outward to include the drilling rigs.
It wasn't long before the local Neobedouin tribes began to trade with the city, and airships came down from other sky cities to buy the precious liftgas. Soon, the city began producing its own currency which would eventually become the currency of all Free Peoples, the Helios, backed by the wealth of helium upon which the city sat.
It was some time before the Emperor realized quite how important Helium City (as it was now calling itself) had become. As more and more sky cities were built, he began to wish he had an airship fleet, and the key to that was the vast helium resources below the upstart city.
Early in 2101, a massive army set out from Desolation with the intention of taking Helium City. Guarded by a scant few airships, they marched for weeks across the desolate, beast-filled wilderness. Many soldiers were picked off by sabre-tooths, giant lions, bears and racids, others by Neobedouin who harassed them night and day. It was a sad and sorry remnant who arrived in Helium City - a remnant far too small to make an attack or mount a siege. No one inside the Change Cage cities were made aware of this, but outside, the ill-fated invasion came to be known as Emperor's Folly.
The Neobedouin and the Skyfolk expected the President of Helium City to demand the surrender of the remaining soldiers - instead he declared a truce and invited them inside the walls, tended their wounds and offered to open talks with the Neovictorians. No one is quite sure whether President Miguel Higgins was greedy or far-sighted. Maybe it was a bit of both. He argued that opening Helium City to trade with the Neovictorians would be a way of bettering relations with them and defusing the tensions, though some though he was really after the raw materials that the Neovictorians would use to pay for the helium they wanted and which his city would then sell on to the Skyfolk at a profit.
Higgins called the representatives of the Skyfolk and the Neobedouins and put the proposal to them. Many were unimpressed, but they took the proposals back to their cities and tribes and three months later came back with their answers - they would support the notion of the city as neutral ground (they too could see the advantage of access to the products of the Neovictorian mines), but would not respect any truce outside Helium City - particularly if the Emperor used his new airships to attack the Skyfolk.
Colonel Jamieson Cheetham-Harris, the leader of the Neovictorian army who had been living as a guest of the city while waiting for the results of the Free Peoples' deliberations, welcomed the news. He went further and had it written into the treaty that the IAN would not attack anyone within 50 miles of Helium City. All three groups signed the Tripartite Agreement. Cheetham-Harris returned to Desolation where he was immediately thrown into the Change Cage on orders of the Emperor; but the Neovictorians kept their part of the bargain, and have never since tried to attack Helium City.
Melting Pot: You can meet anyone in Helium City. Inside its high stone walls, which enclose an area of five square miles, grizzled Neobedouin outriders rub shoulders with haughty IAN captains and drunken pirates. Undercover Chuno Ggun agents infiltrate seedy bars in search of the fugitive sons of Neovictorain noblemen. Dolls conduct their business along the canalside docks. Bargefolk do eager trade with all and sundry. Thick-skinned Misbegotten mercenaries and down-at-heel sailors come here seeking work, filling the doss-houses and inns that cater for any tastes. Escaped slaves from Skyloft cities seek a haven, knowing that if they can live here free for a year and a day, they cannot be reclaimed by their owners.
At the heart of the city, where one would normally expect the business district, the tall towers of the gas refinereis stand, their steel pipework glemaing in the sunlight and throwing off flares of burning methane into the night sky. Over them looms the rectangular slab of the Chase Tower, the shell of a 31-story building left over from before the Apocalypse - its windows are gone, its furniture looted, but its stairs are intact, and in the summer months when trade is at its maximum, dozens of airships can be seen anchored to the ancient structure. THe owner of the building, a wily old ex-Neobedouin called Jack Bear, makes a fortune renting moorings to the many traders who visit, with prices inversely proportional to the number of stairs you have to climb to reach your airship.
The rest of the city is lower - single story, sandy brick buildings with curved surfaces, designed to weather the tornadoes which sweep across the area in spring and autumn. At that time of year, bringing an airship to Helium City is considered foolhardy at best, and probably suicidal.
The citizens are a mixture of many creeds and colors. The permanent inhabitants consider themselves honorary Skyfolk, even though most of them have never set foot on an airship. Many are helium miners, many more merchants, traders and brokers, but the majority work in service industries serving (and even fleecing) the visitors who flood into the city every summer.
As well as the people who have grown up in Helium City, there are many from other cultures who came to visit and decided to stay. Whether it be those who have run away from the Change Cage cities, Neobedouin who have traded freedom for safety, or Skyfolk who have given up the high air for the chance to make a fortune, anyone and everyone can find a place here.
Trade City: Helium City thrives on trade. In the tornado seasons of spring and autumn, and in the snows of midwinter, it is relatively quiet, but from June to September the size of the population almost doubles as Skyfolk, Bargefolk, Neobedouin and Neovictorian sailors flood into the city. The peak of the season is mid-July when representatives of all the Neobedouin tribes on the continent trek to the city for a two week festival of trade, music, dance, marriage and just plain hedonism. The walls become surrounded by Neobedouin encampments and it sometimes seems as if no one sleeps for fourteen days. Airships bob above, anchored to anything available, shining colored lights down onto the revelers below, and the scent of mammoth-steak drifts up into the night air from a thousand cooking pits. Protections under the Tripartite Agreement apply. No one attacks this gathering, not even the Chuno Ggun.
Helium City Today: Almost fifty years have passed since the signing of the Tripartite Agreement, and while there have been minor incidents over the years, it has never been broken. The Emperor used his supplies of helium to build the Imperial Air Navy, but has never managed to use it to conquer the Skylofts, due to their own Declaration of Allegiance Pact. The Neobedouin have probably come off worst from the Agreement, as they bear the brunt of Chuno Ggun and IAN attacks. Even they, however, have not broken away, because trade at Helium City has become too much a part of their culture.
The present President of Helium City (chosen by democratic vote of all the citizens) is Jaqui Remmington, a no-nonsense woman in her mid-forties who came up through the ranks of the Union of Helium Drillers and Bottlers. Her plan to tax the obscenely rich helium merchants of the city to pay for the building of hospitals and schools for the less well-off is meeting with some opposition (particulary among the obscenely rich) and there are rumors that an assassion has been paid to get rid of her. Her links with the UHDB mean that she can shut down helium production with a nod and a wink, and she holds this threat over the heads of thsoe who would oppose her idealistic plans.
Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:48 pm