Numlle

Numlle (pronounced /ˈnʌməli/) is the Norgan capital world of Usus, goddess of civilization. The entire devare is covered on both sides by an enormous city, with a few parks and plazas but otherwise a vast mass of tall buildings, with narrow streets between them. (Even many of the parks and plazas are elevated, with buildings beneath them.) The sides of the conasters connecting Numlle's two faces are likewise lined with buildings; indeed, aside from the aforementioned parks there is hardly a bare spot anywhere on the entire world. Many of the buildings extend all the way through the devare, rising on both sides (and possessing a number of low- or zero-gravity floors in the middle).

History

When the empire first found the world that would become Norg, it was a pastoral world populated by rebels who resisted Norg's expansion. Using their ingenuity, their purity of motivation, and their better knowledge of the terrain of their homeworld, they fought against the Empire with its greater numbers, magic, and resources. Naturally, the rebels didn't stand a chance, and the world was soon incorporated into the Empire. Mistrusting their new subjects not to try further rebellion, the Empire quickly colonized the world with its own citizens, and founded several large cities there. Once the Empire's foothold was firm, they used their powers to further subjugate the world's natives through thelxis and other enchantments.

As it became clear that the world had a number of useful resources (not the least of which was its now much more tractable previous inhabitants), more and more settlers arrived. This increased drastically when finally the first conasters were constructed, and the other face was found to be an uninhabited land from which the empire could now reach any number of other new worlds. Numlle increasingly became both wealthy and strategically significant, and its population boomed. When it was chosen as Usus's capital world, the population exploded even further, and those parts of the world still unurbanized were covered with city.

Geography

Although Numlle does have oceans and continents like most terrestrial worlds, they are scarcely discernible from the air, since the oceans are as covered with buildings as the continents are. The only perceptible difference lies between the buildings, which are still filled with water below sea level rather than the earth of elsewhere. Actually, the earth and water displaced by the underground and underwater parts of the buildings have slightly increased the diameter of the world, but left the contours of the continents roughly the same. The diameter would have been increased even further, were it not that some of this material was exported to other worlds.

The most notable "geographic" features now, then, do not relate to the physical contours of the land, but to those of the buildings that cover it. Although both surfaces of the world are covered entirely by one continuous city, different parts of the city have notably different characters. Industrial sectors belch out smoke and pollutants; wealthy sectors are notably more ornate and made of more expensive materials.

Government

Like all of the capital worlds, Numlle is a theocracy, the entire world directly under the rulership of the church of Usus. The leader of Numlle is the archprelate, a gent named Xnnendi. However, Numlle also has a mayor, who works as a sort of a deputy to the archprelate. How much power the mayor actually has depends on how much the archprelate decides to delegate to him. Some archprelates like to see to all the governing of the world themselves, leaving the mayor little more than an errand boy who does the archprelate's bidding; others prefer to focus on religious matters and leave the actual running of the world to the mayor, leaving him a free hand to rule as he sees fit. The current mayor, a glashan Ususite named Taer caTau, finds himself in between these two positions; Xnnendi does assign many decisions to him, but reserves some matters to himself, and there are certain subjects the two discuss together before acting on.

As huge and populous as Numlle is, however, the archprelate and the mayor cannot personally see to all the local details. The city is divided into four hundred and fifteen wards, each of which is overseen by a prefect and has its own law enforcement, economic, and other departments. In turn, the wards are divided into boroughs, which in turn are divided into precincts.

People

As is the case with most worlds of Norg, a plurality of Numlle's population is human, or at least started as human—many of Numlle's inhabitants, human and otherwise, are Ususites. Numlle tends to be rather more diverse than most Norgan worlds, however, with a relatively smaller human population and a larger population of minorities less represented elsewhere. Numlle also has a fair population of gents, certainly more, both absolutely and proportionately, than any other major world of Norg.

Due to its dense population, many tradesmen in Numlle can afford to focus on very specialized types of product or service. Bakers exist in Numlle who only sell a certain obscure kind of sweet roll; woodcarvers who only sell statues of winged bears; medics who specialize in disorders unique to the central eye of the meakey. Because of the huge numbers of people in the vicinity of any given location on the devare, even such highly specialized workers may have little trouble finding enough custom to make a living.

It is common among inhabitants of Numlle to make a conscious effort to strike a balance between local customs and traditions and those of their races or immigrant ancestors. Because many of these people come from families who have lived in Numlle for numerous generations, however, a good proportion of these ancestral customs have been forgotten or distorted, often leading to these mangled versions of tradition being passed along to other Numllans of similar background, and to the widespread belief on Numlle of ancient traditions that in fact never existed anywhere else in any form close to their observance there.

Life

Certainly, the complete urbanization of Numlle has destroyed its existing ecosystems, or at the very least drastically altered them, and most of the native life of Numlle has been eradicated except in zoos and other preserves. Nevertheless, some life forms that had already been adapted to cities have survived and even thrived in the present urban environment, and others have managed to adapt in time to escape the extinction in the wild that struck most of their codevarals.

Rats and roaches have thrived in Numlle, especially in the more low-income parts of the ecumenopolis, and bats and various types of birds roost in the eaves and attics. Some fish still survive in the polluted remnants of Numlle's oceans. Pipeworms and onthologs live in the sewers, while phase wasps, skitters, and corlemmers are common pests. In addition to these organisms that live undomesticated on Numlle, the world's inhabitants also keep many pets, some of them of various exotic species. It's not uncommon for some of those pets to escape or be abandoned and to go feral and add to its "wild" population.

Economy

Any natural resources that may once have existed on Numlle have been exploited to oblivion long ago, no open land exists to make practical any kind of farming, and the few life forms that maintain a tenuous foothold aren't numerous, accessible, or useful enough to make their harvest worthwhile. That being the case, Numlle makes its income almost entirely from two sources: trade and manufacture. It also exports some art, but this is a relatively minor contribution to its economy. Much of the raw material for these pursuits is imported, but a fair amount is recycled from its plentiful waste. In fact, of necessity Numlle has had to develop an extensive recycling program to deal with all its rubbish and refuse, though some of this material is instead just shunted off to other planes.

Numlle's markets are known all over Norg, bested only by those of Therqin. Goods from all over the empire are traded there, as well as items manufactured locally. If there is one aspect in which Numlle's markets perhaps have an advantage over Therqin's, it is in trade in ancient collectibles. Coins from Norg's prior days and from other worlds entirely, archaeological artifacts, and even the odd fossil can be found for sale—making up a tiny fraction of the total merchandise, but still with a better selection than in most any other place.

As for Numlle's manufacture, virtually any kind of artifact is made somewhere on the world, from powerful talismans to complex but nonmagical feats of clockwork and contrivance. Some of the messier or more odorous concerns, such as tanneries and forges, are often sequestered in smelly, smoky industrial sectors where no one lives who can afford to live elsewhere.