Sanctum

A city built among the waves of the southern sea. It is built on the wreckage of the destroyed skytown Makeshift. The city is now a collection of mostly ramshackle buildings and the interiors of ships which attached themselves to it. This is how the city grows. The city's citizens for the most part live and work inside the ships that make up the city, protecting them from any potential storms that may occur during the winter months. Travel between the structures making up the city is done via metal walkways reaching between them.

Sanctum has no allies and no enemies, preferring to stay out of the way of world politics. Those exiled from their home cities and those who are tired of the world at large sometimes find their way to Sanctum. The city doesn't care who you were before you came there, but only about what you do once you've arrived. For this reason it is known as the city of outcasts.

Unlike what one might expect from 'the city of outcasts', Sanctum has a low crime rate. Being an isolated city in the middle of the southern sea, there really isn't anywhere for a criminal to run to. Punishment is decided by the sheriff and his deputies, and repeat offenders are shipped out of Sanctum with the supply ships. Sanctum does enforce the death sentence.

Sanctum is a rather close knit community, and they tend to be wary of people passing through the city, since to 'pass through' a traveler would have had to go out of their way to reach Sanctum in the first place. If an outsider causes trouble, Sanctumites will band together against them.

Sanctum has its own currency separate from the world economy, and trade with the outside world is normally done via barter. The Sanctum unit of money is the Chip, and they consist of metal coins with holes carved into them. The coins are plated with copper, silver, or gold, and the number of holes determines the value. Unlike what one might expect, more holes indicates less value. When bartering, items are normally exchanged, but services in exchange for products is not an unusual trade either. This is a contributing factor to the rarity of travelers visiting Sanctum; they are used to dealing in monetary transactions. Stealing is seen as a more serious offense in Sanctum, and is dealt with more harshly than in other places.

Sanctum's primary export is oil, which is pumped from the sea bed at the city's base. The city has some refineries, but most of what is exported is still crude oil. The refineries produce gas and oil for Sanctum's use, as well as some left over for shipping. Sanctum imports almost all of its manufactured products, as with no factories of its own the city has limited manufacturing ability. Items produced in Sanctum are normally hand-made, and the city is home to a few artisans.

One of the most important facilities in Sanctum is the water purification plant. This facility is located near the center of the city, and it uses a combination of densine, solar energy, and some of the pumped oil to boil the impurities from the ocean water for use by Sanctum's population. The purified water produced is used for both drinking and irrigation of crops grown on artificial farm plots located on the decks of some of the ships.

Due to Sanctum's neutrality and removal from world politics, the city has sometimes been used by smugglers to trade around embargos. Due to a history of this, Sanctum keeps careful records of arrivals and departures from its docks. Very little can arrive or depart the city without a record of it, and these records are open to the public.