Safehouse

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Safehouse is a colony world located and initially established by Empirical Industries during the Undoing the Godslaying Sword crisis. Bootstrapped by all the high technology that Empirical can bring to bear, in concert with their formidable industrial capacity, it presents everything from a high-tech mini-metropolis to an untamed wilderness to explore.

Colonization

While ships were dispatched to New Namek to seek the assistance of the Namekian Dragonballs in resolving that crisis, no Empirical ships accompanied that voyage. Instead, they were scouting worlds, seeking to find a suitable world to establish a human colony on, that humanity need not fear being wiped out for sake of being only on a single planet, and that they could evacuate to if the worst occurred. The world that became known as Safehouse is the world that was selected as the best option, and colonized largely by refugees fleeing the wrath of Zell and his abominable Amalgams.

When refugees crossed the portal to the Safehouse, they found a garden world, much like environmentalists might wish the Earth to be. A golden sun illuminates the skies of the world, looking much like familiar Sol, rendering the natural flora of the world a familiar green. There is no moon, so Oozaru need not be feared short of some artificial source of moonlight. The other biggest difference between the Safehouse and Earth is also found in its night sky, for not a single star can be seen. Instead, a multihued nebula fills the skies, overwhelmed by the light of the local sun during the day, but glowing faintly during the night, making every clear-skied night on the Safehouse faintly lit. This nebula is also part of the world's perfection for its role, as its stellar location is a closely held secret, and the lack of stars in the skies prevents astronomers from easily determining their location.

Even with a year to mature, and with the formidable industrial engine of Empirical Industries backing it, the vast majority of the world remains untamed wilderness. It has been mapped to a certain degree, and Empirical has established a satellite network to provide worldwide communications as the world develops, but most of the world has yet to feel a human footfall.

The primary city of the Safehouse is called Sanctuary. Eighty five percent of the world's population lives in this small metropolis, with the other fifteen percent scattered amongst smaller towns or individual homesteads. Sanctuary hosts the local government as well as the Empirical enclave-factory, which still comprises the primary local industrial capacity of the colony world.

Continuing Immigration

Immigration to the Safehouse is controlled to prevent the population from blooming beyond the planet's infrastructure's capacity to support. As well, there are various criminal and other background checks that are completed prior to permission being granted.

Gaining citizenship in the Safehouse is not terribly difficult once residency is achieved, but does require renouncing citizenship in any other country save Cardinal, as that is the single dual-citizenship that the Safehouse permits.

Power Wielders

While the primary population of the Safehouse is, of course, mortals, there is also a fraction of the population who are power wielders of varying types and degrees. While there still remains some of the natural caution towards the inhumanly powerful on Safehouse, the population is generally more positively disposed towards them than the general Cardinalian population. This is largely due to a combination of their abilities being incredibly useful in dealing with the challenges of breaking in a virgin world, and the rarity of public powered conflicts, as secured training arenas were one of the initial facilities established by the lead Empirical colonization team, and they have continued to be expanded and improved as necessary since. As well, the vast majority of buildings in the central city of Sanctuary were built from the ground up to be more resilient than Cardinalian infrastructure, with Empirical technology and techniques, so only the most powerful of power wielders will be able to casually demolish them.

Whether this positive attitude will hold if and when a power wielder goes rogue and real trouble begins on the Safehouse is, of course, unknown.

Government

Initially, the government of the Safehouse was vested in a single man, advised by a number of experts. After six months, however, the colony was deemed sufficiently stable to begin handling its affairs in a more democratic fashion. At that point, elections were held for the Curia, the primary governing body of the colony, which is currently composed of one hundred persons. Any resident can be elected, regardless of species, and as the initial charter of the colony was essentially written by Empirical interests, the definition of 'person' is somewhat broader than it is in Cardinal. Notably, artificial intelligences are regarded as persons, and several sit as Curia members currently. The seats in the Curia are entirely volunteer positions -- they do not come with the compensation that is often attached to high governmental positions in some places. Instead, in this relatively small population, they hold a powerful respect and esteem that is uncommon for career politicians in more numerous lands, as many residents of the Safehouse are personally familiar with one or more members of the Curia -- and the very limited 'perks' that accompany the demanding job may also have something to do with that respect.

Legal Code

As the vast majority of the Safehouse's residents were born and bred in Cardinal, its legal system resembles (to the point of cut and paste) the legal system of that state to a very large degree. As time passes and the culture of the Safehouse diverges from that of Cardinal at large, this will no doubt also organically diverge as well.

Currency

Safehouse does not use the Cardinalian zenny as the basis of their currency, although the vast majority of merchants will accept it. Safehouse's currency is based on the cost to produce powered-grade technology. A megacredit is a valuation of the effort it takes to produce that, although most people deal with the lesser forms of centicredits and decicredits, or even just credits for most smaller purchases. The megacredit is largely underwritten by Empirical and their industrial capacity, and represents a third of a production man-day.

Military

The Safehouse has no dedicated military to speak of. The Sanctuary Police Department is the closest the planet has to a government-mandated force, along with a small number of people that are employed in search and rescue duties, backed up by a larger cadre of volunteers

Should the Safehouse come under danger of invasion, its sole defenses are its power wielder residents and whatever forces Empirical Industries might marshal to defend it.

Logistics

Travel to and from the Safehouse is, of course, strictly via Empirical portal. Empirical maintains a few small ships in orbit of the Safehouse, but they are just small scout ships without interstellar capacity to keep an eye on the small nebular pocket that the Safehouse and its sun exist in. It is not expected that ships will arrive from outside, as finding the relatively small pocket of clear space inside the light-years large nebula is no mean feat -- but it was done once, so they take precautions in case of a repeat. Despite the ease with which portal travel can be done, even over the interstellar distances which separate the Safehouse from Earth, few mortals often choose to do so. This is largely due to Empirical choosing as initial colonists primarily people with few remaining ties to Earth -- not hard, when so many homes and cities were completely destroyed by Zell. As such, they have little to call them back to Earth, and much to keep them busy on the Safehouse.

Industries

One of the major industries on the Safehouse is farming. As a virgin planet that has never known the touch of industrial farming methods, the soil is extremely fertile, and with the colony solidly on its feet now, it has begun to export foodstuffs to Cardinal. Not only do they grow and export foods of Earth, they have also discovered various species of plant which are good in both taste and nutrition and begun cultivating those as well. In fact, a great deal of effort is poured into analyzing the native flora and fauna for useful pharmaceutical compounds, and collecting those materials which cannot yet be synthesized to create new drugs is a small but significant part of the Safehouse's economy.

Little to no mining happens on the surface of Safehouse. Instead, there are several portal links to lifeless moons and planetoids in other systems that Empirical has located that host mining operations that supply Safehouse. These are accessible to private prospectors that are appropriately equipped, and not solely an Empirical concern. Empirical instead requires a small per-trip fee, regardless of how much the prospectors retrieve in terms of material. Empirical also offers processing services to those prospectors that do not have their own capacity to do so, or links to another company to handle that for them, and will also often simply assay and purchase ore outright.

While the Empirical enclave-factory is the biggest point source of industrial manufacturing, they have also carefully nourished smaller specialty producers of goods, being careful to not drive them out of business so that a healthy economy can be sustained. This has ended up in what are essentially 'cottage' industries using advanced microrobotics, available through Empirical at a discount to the residents of Safehouse, to produce commercial-quality goods at a level of efficiency that normally requires a much larger scale and accompanying investment of capital. As these 'microfactories' are fairly common, this has resulted in intellectual property right being very firmly vested in the Safehouse legal code, and as often as not, rather than buy a physical item, a person will license a design and have it produced at a local microfactory. Indeed, there are stores that specialize in doing exactly that -- their 'stock' is composed of electronic blueprints and whatever raw materials they may need. Some of these products have also begun to be sold through Empirical's distribution channels on Earth, enhancing the colony's fledgling economy.

Native Life

Flora

In the rich soil of the Safehouse, colourful plant life grows in abundance, and agricultural crops grow just as well. One of the early parts of the colonization process was analyzing the native plant life to determine which could be usefully eaten by human life, and which would be noxious or lethal. While few of the useful plants have been domesticated so far -- most of the farming relying on plants native to Earth -- there have been some tamed to human use.

Fauna

Wherever humanity goes, his old allies go with him. Humans brought the usual animal life with them, dogs and cats and all the other pets that bring comfort to humans an unspeakable distance from their home. Notably, through the technology that supports the Empirical portal system, and required quarantine scans, many pests such as mosquitos and flies have been prevented from infecting Safehouse so far.

However, the Safehouse was not without native fauna when it was discovered. While no intelligent life has been discovered, it does have a diverse collection of native life. Not having evolved in contact with humans, the animals have no particular fear of humans. While most are merely nuisances, some do regard humans as potential meals. This has resulted in outlying communities installing sonic fences that dissuade the creatures from coming too close to their residences, and the unpowered always go armed when they venture into the wilderness -- and they pack a heavy punch, because the armoured skull of a terrorsaurus needs a hefty round to drop the beast when it is charging.

Places of Interest

Training Arenas

The easiest place to find local power wielders, Sanctuary plays host to a number of technologically-advanced training arenas. Installed by Empirical Industries, these arenas make full use of high-energy holographic and gravitic technologies, instant manufacturing, and robotic adversaries. While using them, any number of environments can be simulated, even low-pressure atmospheric and microgravity conditions for learning to fight in space, all without any threat to the surrounding city. When not in use by power wielders for training, they're sometimes used as recreational or educational environments. Through them, students can walk among the stars, and weddings can be held deep under the sea, all in perfect safety.

The training arenas, with their infinitely variable facilities, are also where the Safehouse planetary fighting tournaments take place. The fighting at these facilities is not an equivalent to the Tenkaichi Budoukai of Earth, although some see it as a steppings stone, a useful training tool for preparing for the great annual tournament on Earth. Rather than hold one annual event, they have ongoing ladder rankings, allowing power wielders to test themselves against each other without waiting for an annual tournament to roll around. They also have intermittent special events, such as mini-tournaments for power wielders of certain strengths, for example.

Attached to the training arenas is an Empirical medcentre that treats the results of training there, as well as being the foremost critical care/trauma hospital on the planet. All worst-case patients are transferred here. They are capable of treating all the major races with full hospital benefits.

Government House

Despite the name, the Curia members are rarely found at this modest edifice. Previously the residence of the colonial governor, it is the ceremonial residence of the Speaker of the Curia, now. While it has a meeting hall that the Curia can use for their meetings, typically all government meetings are conducted electronically, via teleconference, which any resident of the planet may observe. The meeting hall also has systems for observing the teleconference and making presentations to the Curia conference, in case a resident lacks a suitable system of their own to do so. Some ceremonies, such as citizenship ceremonies, are held at this location as well.

Empirical Enclave

The Enclave is a compound of offices and industrial buildings staffed by Empirical. It remains the single largest industrial point on the world, and is capable of rapidly producing everything from microelectronics to advanced materials for high-strength building construction. Rumour has it that there is far more underground than can be seen by the eye, and while it is known that some of the facility's space is underground, the exact blueprints are not public knowledge.

The Enclave is where Daedalus, the AI that masterminds Empirical's operations on Safehouse is installed and operates from, but the exact location of its processing centre is, of course, a tightly-held secret.