Arca

Also known as Arcarus City and The Arc. The largest and oldest city in The Empire.

Description
Though the empress’ seat of power is elsewhere, Arcarus (just “Arca” or “The Arc” to most) is widely considered to be the heart of the empire. It’s the most populous, sprawling, diverse and developed city, a city of extremes where everything gets lost in the middle. The economic heartbeat of the empire, and also the most financially stratified, you can find a bit of everything in Arca, but good luck getting someone to show you where to look. Most people here are focused on them and theirs – maybe Albion and Leighton have time for politics and abstract ideas, but The Arc is real life and its citizens are busy living.

Arcarus was the empire’s first conquest, and the oldest and finest jewel in its crown. Its people put up a fight when the Empress first tried to acquire it, but what happened has passed out of living memory, and the people that live there today are quite a bit different. What did things used to be like? Few people know, and fewer care. The city has undergone so much architectural development that most people aren’t sure which buildings are part of the original structure anymore, but everyone agrees that they probably belong to the fatcats.

As a city, Arca was the first to start building up. It’s more likely you’ll see people walking along the myriad bridges from building to building, stopping at the hanging gardens and public parks that pepper the city, than driving along the streets at ground level – ground level is for entertainment, tourism, people who want to show off their fancy cars and soak in the luminescent scenery that lights the city from below. People who are going from place to place go by train, aircab, or the web of bridges that checker the city’s skyline.

True to its population, public opinion of The Arc on the collapse of the empire is legion. If there is a general sentiment, it’s hard to discern what it is, but the fact that it is usually muttered beneath ones breath in between a person’s drink of choice does offer some insight. Much of Arca was destroyed in the fight that broke the empire, and it seems by and large the city is concentrating its efforts on cleaning up – starting with the wealthy financial districts, of course, where most of the patching has already been done. Poor industrial districts are still littered with debris and twisted metal, and the cranes and scaffolding that have taken up residence in the outer city’s skyline will likely be there for some time.

Additional info

 * Key concepts: Cyberpunk, commercial, sophisticated, blase
 * Virtues: Wit, cunning, tenacity
 * Vices: Greed, selfishness, apathy
 * People who would live here: Spike Spiegel, Rufus Shinra & the Turks, Garrus Vakarian, Miranda Lawson, Andrew Ryan