The City of Sed
Sed, the capital of the Sed province is actually one of the least populated of all capital cities, though it would be impossible to tell just by looking at it. From anywhere in or around the city giant manufacturing plants and distribution facilities (not to mention the many corporate headquarters) reach for the clouds and beyond.
And like the city of Bree, it is the only other capital city to have no official government or political structure in place. Instead, an embassy representing each province was built a few decades after the One Day War to protect against monopolies and inadequate working conditions, or the worst case scenario riots and wars.
Many people ask how the city can be so large and still have so few residents. The answer is simple. The only people living in the city of Sed are a few wealthy corporation owners, maintenance workers or assembly line workers. The rest of the hundreds and thousands of people that can be found there at almost any time don’t actually live there. Instead, nearly every company and plant operates in shifts. Ranging from two to four weeks at a time, workers will come and live in the company housing, then return to their homes for an equal amount of time. Working from eight to sixteen hours a day, and for up to four weeks at a time (seven days a week).
Such an intense schedule frightens many away from the lucrative adventure. However, most shifts are actually rather reasonable, with the average being three weeks on, three off, 12 hours a day. And though the jobs aren’t for everyone, those who work them wouldn’t have it any other way. Many say they were born for their jobs and couldn’t be happier with the working conditions or their lives.
The work in Sed was not always as ‘pleasant’ as it is today. Only recently have workers finally been given adequate rights and protection under the same laws as workers throughout the rest of Atla.
After the quite literal enslavement of the native people, the much improved conditions have made many workers across Atla eager to fill the many job opportunities. However, for many years even after the first regulations were passed, the way the new workers were treated was hardly any different from that of the natives. Even after the first embassy was built and representatives of Atla as a whole experienced the horrid conditions daily, they did nothing to change them. Every day people were maimed and killed by faulty Magi-Tech devices that would break catastrophically if not maintained to exacting specifications or were used even slightly different than intended. Conditions were nearly as horrid even a few short years ago, as they were in the early years of Jenna Rockenheimer’s factories. The only difference was that instead of mistreating the workers directly, the machines the workers used, though more advanced than anything around, would often overload and explode if the Magi using them didn’t pay constant attention.
Many years ago the living conditions were nearly as horrible as the work, as the first groups and companies sacrificed anything they could to increase profit. Rats, most which carried diseases, and roaches a dense as a plague all multiplied faster than the steady human workforce was being brought in. Black skies never showing day or night and water thick with contaminates made even the simplest things difficult and dangerous. Bathing often brought on more diseases and germs than it killed. Before showers and drainage systems were invented, and even afterwards when they couldn’t be implemented quickly enough, a large bathing hole built from the remains of one of the bogs was the only source of fairly clean water. But as the population of workers increased, the pathetic purification systems grew inadequate. Before long, the water was thick and murky and as black as the midnight sky.
Countless stories of survival and horror escaped from the land of Sed along with the people even a few years after the One Day War. Newspapers across Atla ran headlines almost weekly detailing the latest catastrophe or story of someone who escaped the conditions. And indeed one did have to escape to leave. Promised luxurious working conditions in the pamphlets and advertisements distributed across Atla, the people who traveled there seeking the promised riches were greeted with something far different. Aside from the deadly conditions, there was no way to return. The caravans bringing people by ship or land never made return voyages with any passengers. For every five people to die, ten more would arrive on boat or caravan to take their place and eventually, the rate of deaths to new arrivals evened out. Newspapers and plays of the era often told and retold stories of workers attempting escape by ship or empty wagon train heading back to any city on their way to pick up new workers. Set at random intervals for hundreds of kilometers out from the city, checkpoints at the roadways monitored incoming goods and also saw to it that everything leaving the city was exactly as it should have been.
Fences were scattered sporadically throughout the area around the city, but they were superfluous when placed in the swamps and marshes. Without an intimate knowledge of the hundreds of kilometers of wetlands it was impossible to leave the area by any other way than the road. Those who ventured into the waters were almost always lost or killed by alligators, snakes or numberless other deadly creatures.
For every tale of adventurous and miraculous escape from the city of Sed or the city of Death as it came to be known, there were thousands of other untold stories of death and suffering every day. Even the natives, protected from working in the plants felt the effects of the industrialization as their lands (despite the protection acts) were consumed and destroyed or their animals killed–all while the air outside the city was turning to ash and soot.
To make matters worse and once again disrupt the natives way of life, the thin, dark skinned people were left homeless after being released from slavery (after the One Day War) and found they had become segregated from their homelands. Those who once worked, or were born to those who worked in the manufacturing plants weren’t allowed back to the ever shrinking homeland. Treated as devils and destroyers of the land they were immediately killed upon returning. It was this group of people, numerous yet alone, who made the most escape attempts out of the land. Nobody outside of the conditions realized, and if they did they didn’t care, that the native workers were literally, completely surrounded by death.
It took several decades of slow improvements after the One Day War before conditions got to where they are today. For both workers and natives of Sed the situation is better now than it has been since outsiders first settled the region. The native people that separated themselves from the plants long ago have almost forgotten the feel of industrialized humanity upon their culture. Vast areas of undisturbed land just outside the city have been declared national conservation areas where influence of the outside world is prohibited. There, the native people are able to progress and continue their lives without the interaction or interference. And those working in the city now, have a stable and safe area to work. Forming unions after protesting, sabotage and bargaining, workers finally have a say in not only their lives, but the companies as a whole. But as a testament to what happened years ago, the corporate county in the heart of Sed has been named Emigration Plains in memory of all those who tried to escape the horrible truth of what Sed really was.
Despite the countless rules and strict regulation there are always a few people looking to cut costs here and there which inevitably affects not the owners or bosses, but the workers and their families. This rare occurrence usually doesn’t last long however. Between the careful watch of the other provinces (mainly through the newly regulated and independent embassy) and the laborers demanding change, the workers have enough power to keep things from getting out of hand.
