Sigma

Sigma is the Capital city of Gaia Nebulous Prime. While the regions and continents are generally free to consider themselves sovereign they all pay heed to Sigma. Located in the middle of the Westland continent and 150 miles southeast of the vast mountain ranges, Sigma is a thriving metropolis not wholly unlike Midgar from Final Fantasy VII.

Population: 450,000-?*

Note: The population is hard to get down, as the different sectors of town vary wildly in degree of quality and the lesser quality slums inadequately get counted by the census.

Sectors
While the city itself is surrounded by a great defensive wall, the interior sectors are not walled off, per se. Any person is free to visit any sector, but the more upscale you go the more you will stand out and seem suspicious if you are not generally a part of it. It is not uncommon for authorities to profile a citizen from a poorer district and harass him regardless of his purpose of being there. Likewise, the more aristocratic people tend to avoid slumming it and their appearance there raises nearly as many eyebrows. The city sectors are located around the center in a pie wedge fashion.

The main sector is called Virtue. Virtue is a beautifully kept up sector that is home to the most state of the art hospital in the world and a Smithsonean caliber museum. The average residents there are prosperous and probably well educated.

The next sector is known as Nouveau Vie. While not as upscale as Virtue, it is not without its merits. It has a vast and famous market called Cloverlock that has spices, trinkets, books and all sorts of baubles from all over the system. The houses are all nicely constructed and it is perfectly common to see citizens from the Virtue or Final Leaf districts perusing the area.

Final Leaf is the third sector and this district is the blue collar one. Your average working Joe lives here and works hard to get by, but they do without too much trouble. There are some nice parks around here, but mostly it is filled with factories and offices to work at.

Thornwedge is the 4th sector and it is a ghetto slum. There is allegedly a black market here but the police tend not to enforce it, though occasionally they will make busts. There are factories to work in here as well, but the working conditions are not as state of the art of some of the other sectors. People get by, but because of their lowered incomes the medical facilities in this sector are hardly inspiring. Technomancers can be found here without harrasment and the capital's technomancy tenement is found in this sector.

Still, the worst sector of all is called Last Reward. There is nothing rewarding about it. Crime is common and jokingly referred to as the most popular career choice. Conditions are generally crummy and while some lobbyists in other districts fight to improve conditions, the Ulm Counsel has enough on their hands keeping up the nicer places and keeping general order throughout all the lands that they almost always neglect Las Reward. Technomancers are welcome there and in Thornwedge but tend to be frowned upon should they enter the nicer districts, though they technically are free to go wherever they like.

At the center of all of the sectors is the Ulm Counsel. It is the main Government of Sigma and really the world. All sectors have at least limited access to the Counsel and each sector leads up to it. There is a transport train system that connects through the Counsel to reach the other sectors more quickly as well. Each sector has 4 elected officials to represent it and then the Counsel itself works similiar to Congress, to make sure there are some forms of checks and balances and is employed by many people who tend to live in either Final Leaf or Nouveau Vie. Only a few of the real higher ups working in the government find themselves living in Virtue. That tends to be where the Shadowy Overlords that influence government policy live in. The buildings in the Ulm Counsel rise high above the rest of the city and include their own airport. It is in these upper levels that confederate senators and congressmen meet with the Federal state representatives and the Ulm Counsel to discuss and vote on national policy.

Language
All of the sectors speak the language Federal. Royal is very popular in the upper districts as well, particularly Nouveau Vie. However, Last Reward has adopted a regional language called Junepei that is similar in sound and accent to German. Thornwedge and Final Leaf areas are known to use this language and thus several shop owners in Neouveau Vie's Cloverlock market understand it at at least a basic level. The language derives from the general land region toward the south and west, particularly toward the mountain ranges, and as many of those people migrated to Sigma it found its way there as well.