Bottletown

Taking the concept of a ship in a bottle to the logical extreme, Bottletown is a New Cobalt Protectorate settlement protected within a geodesic sphere as it floats among the face-spanning crater lakes of the secluded Western G cube.

Demographics

New Cobalt Protectorate Arms by BCGR_Wurth

Bottletown is an overwhelmingly Cobalt Rostran settlement, with most citizens of that settlement belonging to Clan Intepioi. It should be noted, however, that not all citizens are members of that clan, as this would present a danger of inbreeding - as a rule, Cobalt Rostrans marry outside of their own clan, with clan membership being patrilineal in nature.
At any given time, up to 1000 of the citizens are living and working outside the bottle proper, whether in seagoing vessels, mining stations, or outlying settlements of some description (i.e. fishing barges). 512 Bottletown citizens are Civil Ovinex; these individuals are prized for their proficiency at prying ores from hard-to-reach, land-based ore veins in the surrounding Remnant, and are seldom seen in the Bottle itself unless as a civil servant or a female with child around the time of Lambing Day. Members of other professed ethnicities are rare in the extreme, with non-Rostrans and non-Ovinex not normally being allowed within The Bottle proper unless in extenuating circumstances (i.e. medical emergency).

Government

Like all New Cobalt Protectorate settlements, Bottletown is operated via the Clan Council system. Bottletown is the clanhold of Clan Intepioi, with the various vessels and small settlements in the surrounding region owing fealty to that clan.

Defences

The Bottle itself provides some defense against small arms fire and ramming, as the tinted glass is thick, tempered, and sandwiched around layers of protective wire mesh to provide additional stability. The Bottle can be sealed against vaporous or weather-based attacks in short order. Otherwise, bottletown relies on its naval militia, external gun and flak cannon modules, and reinforcements from nearby New Cobalt Protectorate allies to repel potential invaders. The relative islolation of Western G - the cube having only submerged commissures and being accessible only through the inflection layer of another sparsely explored cube - is it's own form of natural defense against attack.

Industry & Trade

The bottom of The Bottle is filled with sea water, including an artificial sea floor comprised of dredged-up soil. This allows the inhabitants to conduct a degree of aquaculture without having to leave The Bottle. The actual habitable sections of The Bottle are constructed on a large platform raised over this artificial sea floor in the manner of an oil platform; from without, this construction appears to be the 'Ship' within 'The Bottle.' Almost every available bit of roof or ground pace is taken up with garden plots or expanses of ankle-high grass. Through these resources, the Rostran and Ovinex population can feed themselves indefinitely if required to do so, though they often trade with travelers from other parts of the New Cobalt Protectorate for more exotic foodstuffs.
The largest non-agricultural industry related to Bottletown is heavy metal extraction. Bottletown supports numerous expeditions to the volcanic islands and still-exposed bits of sea floor created as a result of the Ventral A Volcanic Event, with most of these events focussed on gathering up the heavy metal veins exposed or made easier to reach as a consequence of the Event.

Infrastructure

by Ryunosuke Kikuno

The most notable infrastructure project of Bottletown is the eponymous bottle itself, a dual-layered geodesic sphere of glass and battleship steel trusswork roughly a quarter mile across at the equator. This is The Bottle, an engineering wonder first created as a massive lifting gas envelope (in the manner of the MCSV Celestial Praxis) before being gently lowered into the sea via ballast. The glass used in the construction of The Bottle is tinted an amber-brown to help filter the sunlight, providing a modest greenhouse effect and stabilizing the internal climate without slow-roasting the inhabitants. A series of louvered vents replacing some of the geodesic triangles can be actuated to further regulate the atmospheric conditions within The Bottle.
The Bottle's 'Neck' is a 250ft wide (and long) glass-enclosed spaceframe cylinder that provides ingress and exit through a hole in the bottle where the glass panels are absent. Adjustable ballasts mounted at geodesic intersections along the 'bottom' of the bottle keep this neck angled downward so that its bottom lip will just touch the surface of the ocean on calm days. Irises at both ends of the neck provide access control to the interior of The Bottle.
A collapsible truss ring of docking platforms and thrust bumpers surrounds The Bottle, providing embarking and disembarking facilities for seagoing vessels; this has recently been expanded to include an airship landing platform, though an in-flight mooring gantry also sprouts from the top of The Bottle for personnel transfers. Numerous anchors are also attached to this platform for those times when the residents of Bottletown want the settlement to remain in one location for an extended period of time (i.e. for repairs). Over time, these external facilities have been expanded through modular, self-propelled additions, including drydocks, warehouses, barracks, inns, and defensive emplacements.
Waste managment and biodiesel production are handled by bioreactors, while power is generated through a combination of solar-thermal collectors on the exterior of The Bottle and a small dieseltech generator station. Like Still Atoll, another city enclosed in a domed roof near the sea, Bottletown supplements its direct water purification facility with water condensed from the walls of The Bottle itself. Several RadNet antennae are laid out across the outer surfaces of The Bottle's trusses to provide telecommunication services, as there was initially a fear that the structure itself might interfere with signals originating from within.

Guilds and Factions

Clan Intepioi is the most powerful political faction in Bottletown and, through family connections, also has strong influence over the local industries as well. While the Navigator's Guild would be allowed to operate out of a module on the outskirts of Bottletown, the residents have not voluntarily made their presence known to the Guild as of yet. Bottletown sometimes summons missions from the Sorority of Solace to assist with certain emergency affairs, as the town has a limited capacity for search-and-rescue and a limited amount of space in their local hospital.

Architecture

Architecture within bottletown embraces triangular and hexagonal forms, as these most easily match the contours of the surrounding Bottle walls.

Geography

Bottletown loiters in one of the face-spanning crater sease formed as a part of the Ventral A Volcanic Event Remnant, moving under tug power along the surface of a given sea or traversing one of the many wide canyons along the cube's vertices to change faces. They do this both to resist easy discover and to be closer to important natural resources in the region (i.e. heavy metal deposits). This means that the location of bottletown at any given moment within the cube is a matter of speculation - which is exactly the way that the famously reclusive Cobalt Rostrans prefer it.

Natural Resources

The Ventral A Volcanic Event Remnant is rich in heavy metal ore veins close to the surface, permitting the residents of Bottletown to mine them at their leisure. The local seas also play host to a plethora of edible fish and seaweed to supplement the settlement's diet of farmed produce, while the volcanic coastlines are fertile ground for tropical fruit trees.

Founding Date

9925

Alternative Name(s)

The Bottle

Type

Town

Population

6,517

Related Ethnicities

• Cobalt Rostran

Inhabitant Demonym

Bottlenauts

Owning Organization

New Cobalt Protectorate

The Manifold At A Glance

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This is a generalized map of the Manifold Sky, with cubes and tesseracts shown based on their relative connections to one another. Tesseract labels are based on Navigator's Guild nomenclature. Cube topology and geopolitical boundaries are excluded. Additional layers show various points of interest and the comfortable habitatats of the various sentient species within the Manifold. Note that the compass rose shows the progression of day and night through the tesseracts, as well as the relative position of magnetic north (green arrow).