Foldburg
Several of the terms used in this article are undefined at present, owing in part to the fact that they relate to the Matrioska Multiverse and adjacent settings beyond the Manifold Sky. Some definitions may be found in the Oxo article. Beware - spoilers abound!
Foldburg is an artificial city located in the Oxo equivalent of the Booming Hills Range in Medial G.
Created as a means of training Substrate agents like Eline Messer for long-term infiltration within Manifold Sky societies, Foldburg is also a believable, functioning microcosm of life within the Manifold. This means that the site can also be used in assessments of unwitting visitors from the Manifold, such as the recently deceased (via collaboration with The Waiting Room), those eperiencing near-death experiences, dreamers, comatose people, and even those in the midst of hallucinogenic or religious reveries. In this manner, Foldburg functions much like the 'Easttown' locations of Voxelia's Bards-Recursant - places in which to make infiltrators culturally fluent in an 'enemy' culture - without the later locations' bellicose intentions.Demographics
Almost all 'citizens' of Foldburg are actually various non-instance blanks undergoing training for future infiltration missions or (rarely) 'recreational' embodiment.
Government
Foldburg governing officials are elder, choir, or structural blanks who directly consult with ComInDs and the Creator with regards to overall operations at the settlement. When agents return from the field, having experienced the current disposition of the Manifold's various sentient species, they are often debriefed by this governing body to make the artifice of Foldburg that much more believable.
Defences
Foldtown's location on Oxo is a remarkably potent defense in and of itself, as Oxo is the exclusive domain of the Creator (in his setting-specific guise as The White-Haired Gentleman) and his attendant members of the Substrate (the celestial bureaucracy that oversees the Matrioshka Multiverse and all instances within it). Short of infiltration by powerful individuals like The Garbage Man, getting into Oxo generally requires that one actually die and then somehow escape the Waiting Room without being apprehended or caught in the non-Euclidean geometry of the place. Then, should one somehow know about Foldburg and have a desire to get there, they would have to sneak past or defeat powerful elder blanks that, using the power of the Word, can manipulate the very laws of physics on a local (or even regional) level.
Industry & Trade
The primary import and export of Foldburg is human intelligence and individuals who are remarkably skilled at acquiring it through noninvasive means. A graduate of Foldburg acculturation can generally spend a whole lifetime within the Manifold without ever being detected. Once made veteran through exposure to the Manifold, agents then provide their knowledge and experience to the next batch of agents in Foldburg. All of this is done with the intention that the Creator and his bureaucracy, the de facto gaolers of the Manifold Sky's souls, can better oversee the process of reforming those wayward souls into potential members in good standing of the Substrate once more.
Infrastructure
Roads leading into and out of the districts are intentionally mazelike, tending to lead those attempting to escape back into the district of origin via circuitous routes. These mazes of road and the isolated stretches hidden between them serve as training grounds for agents to familiarize themselves with modern vehicles - an important skill for infiltrating a setting currently dominated by dieseltech and the various unique automotive products based thereupon. Authorized individuals, such as experienced agents, are made aware of the secret roads leading into adjacent districts.
Hidden passages and chambers are spread throughout the buldings, streets, and even landforms of Foldburg. Agents and governing officials, including the strong local contingent of the Oxo Guard, can appear from anywhere to intervene should things somehow get out of hand; this is also the means by which new 'citizens' are introduced into the population. Ubiquitous surveillance is employed not because the Substrate does not trust its agents but because this allows instructors to observe agents in traing for later guidance. It should be noted that all Substrate-based citizens of Foldburg are there voluntarily and are made aware of the fact that they are being watched; this is done as much as a matter of courtesy as a way to emphasize the need for absolute verisimilitude.
Districts
The naturally mountainous terrain of the 'beta' Booming Hills Range subdivides the city into various districts. Each district lies in a valley which has been carefully terraformed and developed to resemble a typical mid-sized town for one of the several Manifold-based cultures. The largest districts are themselves subdivided into regions where architecture and cultural norms are more reflective of older eras; this both emulates the layered historical backgrounds found in the aesthetics of a real municipality and allows for analysis of those blanks held over from much older times (i.e. an individual who has been in a coma or some other form of stasis since those eras).
A hidden, subterranean 'district' provides a base for surveillance, instruction, administrative, and security functions. This hidden district is located in deep, isolated underground pockets such that that even the simulated bunker complexes of the district emulating Bunker Primus do not directly connect to them. Indeed, with the exception of ground-based access from the adjacent Medial A face, the hidden district can only be accessed by dimensional shift abilities.
Occasionally, when a major civilization in the Manifold represented by a district collapses, that district may be maintained as a sort of museum or cultural preserve. These preserves are populated by a selection of instance blanks from that civilization who are, due to the amnesia that comes with a step through the cycle of reincarnation, unaware of the artificial nature of their surroundings. The Lepidosian peoples are one such group, as the Creator had a special fondness for them that extended back to before The Curved Time - indeed, to the time of the Creator's own semi-organic life before the Matrioshka Multiverse itself was created.
History
While the Manifold Sky setting did not exist before the end of The Curved Time - indeed, last-Kekuniism is a totally valid philosophical point of view in the setting - it wasn't always necessary to use sophisticated methods like those developed in Foldburg to keep tabs on the Manifold's population. Primitive sentients in the Manifold, religious and without written documentation as they were, could be fooled through relatively simple means. An agent caught out for their deception could feign mythological provenance, partially scramble the memories of one or a small group of witnesses, or simply return a few witnesses to the cycle (i.e. kill them and let them reincarnate) to cover their tracks. Later, as culture developed and some of the religious worldview began to fade in the face of empirical thought, it became apparent to the Substrate that more complex methods of subterfuge were required. Thus, around 4,300 AC in the Manifold Standard Calendar, Foldburg was converted from a cultural preserve into a larger campus to train future agents in such methods. The subsequent construction of districts in response to current events within the Manifold led to the development of Foldburg into the diverse - if atomized - city simulator it is today.
Comments