Shield Space 3B of many

Gnome Home:
Gnome Home is old, well established and huge!  The core of Gnome Home is a
large chamber 15,000 feet across and 12,000 feet high.  Around this chamber
is a 200-foot wide road open on one side towards this chamber spiralling
from the bottom 33 times before it reaches the top.   Each interval between
this winding road is comprised of about 25 sub floors creating a city with
850 levels.  The Gnomes refer to the Spiralling road as
"The-main-road-that-is-two-hundred-feet-wide-and-starts-at-the-bottom-of-the
-city-and-spirals-thirty-three-times-till-it-reaches-the-top-and-has-a-train
-and-a-monorail-on-it."  Humans refer to it as "The Way".

The Way is 200 feet wide and is flat on top with a two-foot high retaining
wall on the outside edge.  The underside of this road comes down at a 45%
angle to merge with the wall at about 150 feet above the road below.  The
150 feet of flat expanse or frontage has been hollowed out and turned into
the equivalent of apartment buildings that extend back into the mountain by
varying amounts.  The first level is almost totally devoted to public
facilities, stores, churches, bars, restaurants etc.  The remaining levels
tend to be offices, storage, housing, pools, spas, etc...  The first floor
shops tend to have 8 to 12 foot ceilings, with most subsequent levels being
5 to 6 feet high.  There tends to be about 20 floors that open over the Way
and about another 6 that are "between levels" These 6 levels are very high
about 25 feet with 8 feet of rock between each level.  This is where most of
the Gnomes' Forests, Orchards, Farms, etc are kept making the city
completely self-sufficient.

 To give an idea of scale the center chamber is about 15,000 feet wide,
making each level of the Way about 9 miles long.  Therefore, 9 x 33 = 297
miles of 20 floor buildings.  The way has several interesting transport
systems available.

There is a train line running the length of the Way that is mostly for
Cargo.  Then there is the human influenced/designed Monorail, a train
hanging from a single track hanging from the road above.  It is quite fast
with four stops on each level.  There are Gnome flinger stations paired with
Gnome catcher nets about and elevators as well.  There are even staircases
that go all the way to the next level on occasion.  The central chamber is a
giant park with a one-mile wide lake in the middle.  This city never sleeps
and is very noisy, very busy and very noisy.  As a point of interest, the
Gnomes much prefer the thin air at Gnome Home to the base of the mountain
(About 500 millibars as compared to 1000 millibars at "sea" level).
Everyone except Gnomes will have some difficulty breathing, as the amount of
oxygen per breath is much lower than at sea level and care should be taken
to prevent high-altitude illnesses.

Rockport
About 60% of the Human population lives in the city of Rockport at the base
of the mountain.  The rest are scattered in small settlements about the
"planet".

The climate is generally sunny with daytime temperatures averaging around 25
degrees centigrade and dropping a few degrees during the "night".  As
Rockport is at the base of a very large mountain, the shadow that is cast is
quite large creating a twilight almost night like effect akin to a solar
eclipse.  Street lighting is not necessary very often as "night" time
ambient light is much brighter then a full moon.  Only with heavy cloud
cover will this effect approach true night and this happens perhaps 10 to 15
times a year.

 Humidity is low at about 20 to 25 percent most of the time with no seasonal
variations as there are no seasons.  Wind is constant from the mountain out
to the lake at about 10 miles per hour and is a few degrees cooler then
ambient creating a quite pleasant and refreshing breeze.  All in all the
weather is extremely pleasant for humans as is the Great Lake.

  The lake in the shore area tends to be in the 24 plus degree range and is
extremely clean.  Raw sewage is not dumped into the lake but does go to a
treatment plant via underground piping away from the city.  A public beach
with clean filtered white sand has been established with a perimeter using
underwater fencing to keep everybody safe.

Rockport is comprised of two main areas, the inner and outer city.  The
inner city is in a rather large cavern deep within the mountain.  The major
access to this cavern is through a large lava tube about five miles long.
This tube is about 200 feet wide and 50 high.  A rapid river flows out of
the cavern in a channel about 50 feet wide.  There is another channel about
15 feet wide right beside the first.  This channel is flooded and a paddle
and cable arrangement is set up with a large wheel at both ends of these
channels.  The current moves the shuttle boats out and at the same time
drives the paddle system that pushes shuttle boats in the other channel into
the Cavern.  There are a large number of such shuttles available for general
use.  The shuttles are rectangular, 50 feet long by 14 feet wide with fins
on the bottom that are designed so that the shuttle is always veering to the
left into the paddle belts and are also be used to guide the shuttles into
docking stations.  These shuttles or ferries are able to bear the weight of
most vehicles available.

In recent times the shuttle boat traffic as dropped considerably as most now
use the subway and Hall Effect gates.

A second way in and out of Rockport that has recently become operational is
the underground train or subway.  The subway is currently a make-work
project for thousands of Kobolds and a scattering of Giants with too much
time on their hands.  As their labour is cheap and little in materials is
required to allow them to dig, they are currently putting in a grand tunnel
system under the city that may someday be a mass transit system when the
city is big enough to need it.  In the meantime, a few key stations have
been built and a monorail has been put in with a few trains.  The tunnels
are also used to link many of the cities buildings together, and have formed
into shopping and social areas underground (much like the "underground city"
in Montreal)

The cavern also has an aboveground tunnel.  This is where any sky or
SpellJammer ships enter and exit.  Part of the fleet is stationed inside the
cavern on a ledge about 1000 feet up.  The Shipyards and a number of other
industries are based in the cavern, as is about 20% of Rockport's
population.

The navel base on the ledge is called Norfolk and is where the fleet is
based and serviced.  There is a large shipyard for the construction of
Starships and other military ships.  More military and civilian vessels are
built in the shipyards below and outside.  Each Starship has two teleport
gates, one linking to Norfolk and the other to Lionheart.  Ships can be
re-supplied via these gates.  Security is heavy at Norfolk with access
restricted only to people who need to be there.  Patrols are heavy and
trespassers are dealt with harshly.

A large spring from the back wall of the cavern about 1000 feet from the
floor creates a waterfall which cascades down into a small lake and then
feeds the river leading out of the cavern.  This water is cold, clear and
clean.  Noticeable features are the large turbines at the base of the
waterfall.  These provide force for the machine shops and such to either
side of the falls.  Within the spring before the falls, more turbines have
been installed to generate electrical power.  The base of the falls below
ground level has two tunnel systems.  One, where air that is mixed in with
the falling water is funnelled, provides a large reservoir of compressed air
(about 600 PSI) that is used to run air tools, pneumatic tube delivery
systems, and whatnot throughout the city.  The other is used as a water ram
and reservoir to provide water pressure for Rockport's water system.


Though the city is in a large cavern, it is a bright busy cheerful place.
(Not unlike night in Times Square in New York City or the Las Vegas strip in
some areas but even brighter)  With lots of lighting, parks, open air cafes
and restaurants, tree-lined streets and a Gnomish amusement park designed
for human-sized creatures, as well as shops and other services like
theatres, etc.  Many of the original stalagmites have been shaped and
hollowed out to form theme buildings, along with more typical types of
structures.

 Most buildings have elevators, running water and all the other services you
would expect today.  As many of the original Humans from Earth are still
alive due to magical means, they have influenced the development of Shield a
great deal.   In an attempt to recreate what once was, many interesting if
not practical buildings, monuments, and other attractions have been
recreated from around old Earth.  (The Gnomes have been quite enthusiastic
about this practice and have often covered the extra expense involved as
they are fascinated by anything coming from old Earth.)


Near the very center of the cavern a huge five-sided tower composed of a
glowing white metal rising to connect to the cavern roof about 1500 feet
above.  The tower also serves as a Clock.  A red band of light about 10 feet
high slowly moves from about 300 feet up the tower to about 1200 feet up,
where it fades and reappears at the 300-foot mark.  This takes one day and
based on the height and markings, you can tell what time it is.  As well as
the tower providing light, a section of the cavern roof 1500 feet wide
circling the tower glows brilliantly providing full spectrum light, making
that entire section of the cavern almost as bright as outside under the sun!
The tower is the seat of government and the location of the magic guild.
The tower is referred to as the Pentagon.

 The Pentagon was completed in AE 70 (10 years to build) and was built by
the Dwarven clan of Zizus and a few thousand other dwarves (and some hired
magical talent) who had come in from all over to help with this huge project
as a thank you for the land grant and help from the humans of Shield during
the first In-human war.

The Pentagon in human terms is a huge project, but to the Dwarves it was no
bigger than any of their space-faring citadel projects.  Dwarves may be
short but they can think and build big.

The Pentagon is really a series of five buildings connected to one another
to form a five-sided structure.  Each outside facing is 500 feet long and
has an open inner courtyard 250 feet wide.  The pentagon rises 150 stories
and connects to the cavern ceiling and also runs an additional 50 floors
into the cavern floor for 200 levels.

  The courtyard area is divided by a platform every 10 levels creating in
essence twenty 100-foot high courtyard or atrium areas.  Access across these
five connected buildings is only possible at the courtyard levels.  Of the
five towers, one is reserved strictly for the Magic user guild and the
Oracle, one for government use and a third for living quarters for
authorized personnel while the other two are mostly empty at this time.

Each tower is about twice the size floor space wise as the former New York
City World Trade Center towers.  Each floor is about 320,000 square feet, if
we assume 25% loss to stairs, halls, airshafts, plumbing runs, and
elevators, etc, each floor is left with about 240,000 square feet of useable
space.  If we assume an average dwelling is about 600 square feet one floor
could have 400 apartments.  In total, the five buildings offer about 240
million square feet of useable floor space!

 Each courtyard area is used as a "sky lobby" There are 20 Hall Effect
transport gates on the ground floor and in each courtyard, allowing easy
access to each 10-floor section.  From there elevators service that 10 floor
section plus the courtyard above for a total of eleven floors.  Using the
elevator system would allow access to any point in the building without the
gates but could take awhile as from ground floor to the top would require 15
sequential elevator rides.


Close to the Pentagon is the "Transit system" referred to as Rockport
station.  The building itself is a replica of Penn Station in New York City
with numbered arrival and departure terminals.  The destinations of each
terminal are fixed; so one terminal is required for each destination.
Outbound security is light for the most part but inbound security from
outside Rockport is heavy.  Any gate can be shut down by security and all
gates are behind checkpoints much like a customs area.  The transit system
is meant for people and light cargo.  It cannot replace shipping of bulk
goods but is capable of transporting anybody to the matching destination
regardless of the distance within the crystal sphere.  (Speed of light
limitations applies.)

 If one were to leave Shield to go to another planet the traveler would
arrive in about the same amount of time light would have taken, though to
the traveler, this seems instantaneous.  There are a fair number of people
here at any given time and the services that go along with a train or buss
depot environment such as food, lounges and small or mini hotel rooms that
are just big enough for a bed (the ideal being to offer a cheap place to
sleep for a few hours while waiting.)  Due to the nature of the gate system,
this is the hub of all gate travel so people must come here to go elsewhere
via gate.  Some destinations have two gates assigned to them, an outbound
and inbound if the traffic warrants this.

 There are two types of gate in operation the walk through the portal and
you will pop out elsewhere which is used for destinations off planet and the
Hall Effect gates that link two gates real time as if there were a hall
connecting them.  These gates allow 2-way simultaneous travel.  Though the
gates can be maintained or open at all times, they are usually shut down
when not used.

Other destinations that have little traffic and are too far to use a Hall
Effect gate are serviced by one gate that is scheduled to work in one
direction, then the other.  Thus far, each major town on Shield has a Hall
Effect gate connection, as does the Dwarven keep Zizus, Kangki (The capitol
of the Kobold city state), and Gnome Home.

Between the Great Lake and Mount Nevermind is a strip or ring of land
varying from about 15 to 20 miles wide.  This land generally slopes from the
mountain to the lake by 2 to 3% and is mostly covered by heavy forest except
for the area of Rockport where the forest has been cut back by about 10
miles to each side of the city.  This area is used for farms and the like.

 Most of the building stone was taken from a quarry in the middle of the
city.  Once the pit was large enough it was filled with water to form a
rather nice man-made lake.  The city walls start at the mountainside and
forms a U back to the mountain.  This U extends 20 miles towards the
shoreline and is 20 miles wide creating a walled city with about 400 square
miles of surface area.

 This city wall is 60 feet high and 60 feet thick at the base tapering on
the inside to 20 feet thick at the top.  The taper is interrupted 50 feet up
by a flat 10-foot ledge.  This wall was completed in AE 20 and took 3 years
to build.  It currently seems to serve no real purpose, as it is not even
patrolled regularly.  All the rock used to create the wall came from the
central granite quarry.  This quarry is one square mile in size and was dug
down 30 feet to make this wall, or the wall required 30 million cubic yards
of granite to construct.

The main city gate facing the port or lake at the center of the wall is
under a 1 to 1 replica of the St. Louis Gateway arch.  The Arch rests on the
60-foot high walls rising an additional 630 feet and spans 630 feet (inside
dimension) and is made of polished stainless steel magically fused into one
giant piece (just like a Starship).  As with the original, there is an
observation deck at the top of the arch where visibility is over 80 miles
and is accessible via a Hall Effect gate so one does not have to travel in
claustrophobic inducing elevator as in the original.  (The Gateway Arch took
two years to build and was completed in AE 60.)

Rockport looks more like Washington DC with palm trees than anywhere else.
Most of the buildings are of uniform height (12 stories) and are mostly made
of a whitish granite block with steel-reinforced construction (very tough).
Streets are wide with many green spaces.

The streets are laid out in a uniform grid pattern from the central lake and
there are two main boulevards forming an X through the city with the central
lake at the junction.  The city is further divided into five zones.  The
central zone is where the lake and the surrounding buildings lie.  Freeport
lies to the North where there is easy access to the lakeside docks.  The
West side is where the industrial park is located.  The other two zones are
devoted to farming, as there are not enough people to bother developing
these areas.  The central area, Freeport and the industrial park are all
lightly utilized as is.  The city was designed with growth in mind and can
be developed to house well over a million people without crowding (the city
walls enclose 400 square miles)

In the middle of Rockport is the aforementioned square mile lake (6000 feet
to a side really).  A lightly treed park about 3000 feet wide forming a
square 12,000 feet wide surrounds this lake in total.  Around this square is
a wide thoroughfare and this in turn is surrounded by high-end apartment
buildings each the same height (15 stories).  Think New York City's Central
Park.  The first floor of each of these buildings house stores, restaurants
and such and tend to be "up-scale".  The view from these buildings looking
into the square is quite nice and the apartments and condominium's are in
high demand for those who can afford them.

 The lake is currently about 60 feet deep and is fresh clean water with the
design of the sewer systems ensuring that the lake will not be polluted by
any runoff.  The lake is fed by an underground spring with a valve assembly
to maintain a constant depth with regard for weather conditions such as rain
or drought.  The lake has been stocked with an assortment of fish and is
home to some friendly giant Octopi and other assorted tame and interesting
creatures.  The park area has rest rooms, picnic tables, "hot dog" carts,
pedal boat & bicycle rentals, and some lakeshore open-air eateries; it is a
very pleasant area.

In the middle of this lake is a "Great Tree" soaring up over 500 feet high
on a small square island 500 feet to a side.  This tree is tended to by the
DOS (Druids of Shield).  The tree also provides an abundance of produce,
such as apple assortments, oranges, bananas, plums, coconuts, cherries,
strawberries, grapes, figs, various melons like cantaloupe and honeydew,
squash, pears, assorted nuts, limes, etc. (yes all from the same plant, go
figure?)  Nets of different mesh sizes have been set up to catch the food in
layers as it ripens and falls from the tree  Of note, all the produce from
this tree is seedless!

The tree itself looks like a well-tended citrus tree that has been trimmed
to have a round and leafy canopy while its trunk is much like that of an
oak.  The amount of produce that comes off this tree is amazing and needs to
be tended to 24/7, as the nets will overflow otherwise.  Not even the Druids
know why this tree has "decided" to create such an abundant and varied
amount of food.  No one even knows why the tree "choose" to grow in this
location in the first place as the tree is not getting its nutrients from
the soil.  It took root in AE 59 and grew to its current size 10 days.  As a
side note, as far as the DOS are concerned, this is a direct manifestation
of their god and they do worship and protect it. Non-DOS personnel are not
allowed near the tree, much less touch it.

The outer city serves as a seaport and shipyard for surface ships, and
extensive dry-dock facilities for constructing as well as repairing and
refitting visiting SpellJammers.  There are also some large industries such
as a concrete and a float glass factory and a number of canneries (mostly
glass jars are used, so jareries?).

The dock section of the outer city is also known as Freeport and is easy to
find as the main terminal and control building is in the middle of a four
square mile field used as a landing and parking area.  This terminal
building is a black 500-foot high pyramid in the center.  Of note, an
extremely powerful red beam of light shoots straight up from the pyramid and
is bright enough to be used as a beacon to SpellJammers landing at Freeport.
Freeport only charges 1% duty on goods traded and allows some latitude in
the enforcement of tariff collection.  Fair docking fees are charged for
providing a secure haven for all.  (Almost*)

Freeport is home to a huge market or Bazaar and almost anything can be had
with the exception of slaves.  There are many inns, brothels, restaurants,
even a large casino (Think Amsterdam with better shopping.)  Morality laws
are few; most law enforcement revolves around theft, assault and the like.
The city makes a good income from all the people moving through Freeport and
any service that can be thought of to extract money from the crews and
passengers is probably available.  As Freeport and its accompanying services
generate a great deal of revenue for Shield, great care is taken to insure
not only the safety of the travelers but that they are treated fairly as
well.

The defence network of Rockport is impressive, from the scores of
accelerator gun turrets parked in the mountainside ready to slide out on
rails on a moment's notice, to the additional weapons on the city walls and
a squadron of heavy fighters.  Rockport has garrisons of about 20,000 troops
with another 10,000-support personnel, an additional force of about 5,000
marines and another 3,000-support personnel scattered about the Fleet.

There is also a standing Militia of about 5,000 to 6,000 in any given year.
(Almost all citizens must serve in the militia for 2 years when their
studies are complete.  They then can muster out or join the armed forces.)
Moving about Rockport can be accomplished in a number of ways.

 There is of course walking, though walking from inner Rockport to the Lake
can be quite time consuming.  Taxis are abundant and varied such as 2 and 4
passenger bike taxis (mostly manned by Kobolds, but there are some notable
exceptions such as Minotaur and a few giants) to some expensive air taxis.
Horses and other types of mounts are available but are used mostly for
travel outside the city.  Moreover, there is the monorail, yes monorail.

 Not only is a monorail simpler to build than a conventional train, its
design precludes most forms of sabotage and accidents that a rail system
would be subject to.  The monorail is a ribbon of steel or concrete 2 feet
wide by 3 feet high.  The rail car simply straddles this solid track.  It is
almost imposable to derail and the track can withstand a large amount of
damage and still be serviceable while debris left on a track is simply
knocked off by the train.

(A steel tube 2 feet by 3 feet is simply stupid strong and can support
itself and a train over a decent span without additional bracing, additional
ribbing can be used inside the tube to make it even stronger)  Switching
tracks is easily accomplished by a Y like section of track that pivots too
two or more different tracks.  This track can be at ground level, easily
elevated or go into a tunnel system based on location and need.  Currently
the Monorail system runs in a beltway about one mile from the outer wall and
in an X formation with the junction at the Square Mile Lake.  At this
junction, a monorail line runs to Inner Rockport.  Monorail stations are
typically every mile.