the lore
Welcome to the Lore page, your gateway to the world of Metropius. Dive deep into its stories, secrets, and rich history. Enjoy the journey!
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era one : digging for oil
Metropius was founded when its first settlers struck oil. A gold rush of sorts followed. When pioneering families heard of what had been found beneath the earth, they came in search of wealth and prosperity. From all walks of life, at its peak, Metropius flourished with diversity, all united under a single banner: Metropians.
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A stout woman of farming origins, named Rose, is honoured as the founder of Metropius. It is said she is the first to discover the oil with her pickaxe, by accident. In the eras that follow, numerous biographies contradict one another as to who exactly Rose was. She found an oil unlike anything previously known, thereafter called Rose Diesel. A potent substance with unique properties, it allows the development of efficient, and advanced machinery.
But as they soon discover, the oil only held these special properties for a short time out of the ground. Any attempts to ship and sell the oil away from the blossoming settlement is a failure. Those who wished to capitalise on the discovery would have to move to Metropius and start a new life.
And come they did. The world’s most ambitious inventors and savvy businessmen. A committee is formed from representatives of each of the founding families. This committee writes the early laws and designs the first structures of the city.
Incessant mining leaves the ground unstable, so the city grows upwards. Levels are created: the farmers move to the upper tier, which they named the Perianth, where they could access the rain and sun. The secondary industries occupied the heart of the city with tall upright structures, which they called the Filament.
The founding families ran each civic duty as a business, trading and selling their services and goods to one another. As the generations pass, and Metropius grows, their children take their places on the committee that would become known as the Board of Directors.
Metropius is singular in purpose and design: to grow into the world’s greatest, most functional city. A city of opportunity, where everyone had a place and purpose and a ladder to climb. A beacon of the best and brightest, and it would be an honour to call oneself a Metropian. If you are not from Metropius, you are the ‘other’. If you’re not in Metropius, you may as well be nowhere.
era two : supremecy achieved
With Rose Diesel firmly in its grasp, Metropius blossoms. The city grows and expands, its inhabitants enjoy a high quality of life. Especially those on the Perianth, who hold the reins tightly to the supply of food, water and clean air, and profit accordingly.
Metropius is stable, and with superior technology, can hold off any threat of invasion. They have won the arms race. The vision of the city strove for has been achieved. Metropius, as a machine, is complete.
It becomes a time of decadence, excess and show. Citizens rush to upgrade to the latest gadgets, the competing tech companies more than happy to meet demand.
Tensions between the private companies of the founding families dial-up from healthy business competition to class war. The Perianth settlers, confident in their stranglehold on their resources, raise prices, and the Perianth’s control over the Filament is established. Fewer people are willing to work in the mines and perform the basic manual labour necessary to run and maintain a mechanical city. The city is facing a crisis where it could cease to operate. The city’s population explodes as more pilgrims make the journey in search of fortune. The city struggles to expand upwards. Mining for Rose Diesel leaves the ground infertile and fragile for miles outside the city perimeter. Soon, supply struggles to meet the demand and excess.
Companies pitch solutions to earn the contract from the Board to prevent collapse. To prevent a crisis, the Filament and Perianth close their borders to any new settlers. Rose Ministries, formally the city’s incarceration and rehabilitation provider, successfully wins the right to restore equilibrium to the city, and to provide Metropius with a new identity and goal.
Their product: The Roses. A new branch of policing and religious order, the Roses are women styled in the image of the city’s founder. They capture the minds and hearts of the people as pseudo-religious figures, preaching the rewards of hard work, and moving up the ladder of society. They promise promotions to the Perianth, for those who knuckle down and see this hard phase through.
era three : cogs in the machine
Still present in the third era are those who grew up before the introduction of the Roses. They remember a time when it was just district police officers who kept the peace. But now, the police force are slowly becoming irrelevant, in the years after the Roses took power.
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These people remember the time of crisis from which the Roses saved them, and are thankful for. These are people grateful for what they have now, and don’t complain. It’s a head down, work hard attitude, and they know they’ll be rewarded. Things could be worse, after all.
This is also the first generation of people entering the workforce who have had their aptitudes tested, their jobs recommended to them, and their lives largely mapped out from them. This is a generation that faces punishment for not doing their part, for not fitting in, or not holding themselves to the moral standard set by the Roses. This is the era of cogs in the machine.
People work hard in the jobs they are assigned, with the illusion of upward promotion through arbitrary levels. Competing currencies are exchanged between the different tiers of the city, and working out which companies trade in what, make it all the more confusing.
The Roses have grown more powerful than the Board of Directors expected, with their religious messages growing in the minds of the people. Where once fads came and went easily, now the Roses resist and fight to maintain their own relevance. They too must upgrade and expand in an effort to remain dominant and hold onto their military contract with the city.
But the people of Metropius are starting to feel restless. The Roses have too many secrets, and people are starting to uncover them. The city’s heyday is over. The Perianth, driven to mass production, no longer has the wealth or quality of life it once boasted. It remains an ideal for the people to strive for, but the reality is now a lie.
The people are starting to want their freedom and choice and autonomy, and are willing to push back against the Roses for the chance of change. This dissonance is alive and well in the Roots.
to be continued...
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