Edit History

Though the population is hardly low, visitors to Suaka Beruntung have often described the experience as similar to that of exploring a ghost city. Windows are few; The lights in public areas are habitually kept low, and the guidelights along pathways can very much resemble a habitat on emergency power. The groan and creak of metal echoes through long tunnel-like corridors strung between labyrinthine aerostatic complexes, swaying in unseen winds. When the rooms and corridors do not seem to twist themselves into mazes, they balloon into great empty 'parks', where the local bioluminescent flora - tended to by unseen hands - form enchanting gardens (or to some a confusing pseudowilderness) that muffle the steady murmur of commercial, domestic, and industrial life just beyond the walls until only the everpresent hum of machinery remains, half-forgotten. The ceilings of these great stadia, awash with the dull blink of indicator lights, are transformed into artificial starscape by their scale as glittering spores drift down to settle gently on the skin, the clothes, the hair. They are, fortunately, harmless to animal species, and symbiotic with the local plantlife, but they are notoriously resilient to washing attempts - the locals have simply come to accept a bit of inevitable sparkling. Past these forests of interwoven fungal and arboreal life, tightly-packed apartments are nestled next to cramped processing facilities and data centers, manufacturing plants under intensive grow-rooms - some of the only internal locations to be brightly lit on a consistent basis. Both underfoot and overhead, robotics defines life in these sections as automated logistics networks transport their charges at leisurely pace according to some inscrutable master economic plan. Still, they are easy to trip over without the integration systems almost all locals possess - and indeed it is only with these systems that Suaka Beruntung truly comes alive - almost all of the decor, informational infrastructure, and personal expression is located in the virtual realm, as the layers of augmented reality known locally as Kerudung so totally permeate life that few even care to distinguish it from the physical realm. Fewer still remember how.

Most of the local population are human, occupied with much the same affairs as one might find anywhere else on Badal, but rumors verge into common knowledge regarding the presence of a significant minority of so-called 'changelings', who call themselves "Bermuka Terang" - 'the bright-faced'. It is claimed that changelings (more often referred to via slurs better left unrepeated) are those few who have been so completely transformed by themselves or another that they have ceased to have any claim to even the label of 'cyborg', but instead might be considered truly robotic, having slipped beyond humanity's reach. Whispers in the night say they steal the likenesses both actual and digital of those more organic than they - whispers perhaps strengthened by stories of open claimants suddenly and vociferously recanting such allegations after but a day away from their friends and loved ones. Perhaps they make their own towns on the open-faced decks and improperly sealed chemical processing facilities at the edges of the myriad of node like aerostats, riding the logistics rails to move without the sight of searching eyes. Hidden within the darkness of the interior, behind the malleable light of Kerudung - who could know? Who would tell?

For at least half a millennia (and perhaps more) previous to the recent conquest by the Black Cloud Coalition, Suaka Beruntung has been run entirely by a number of specialized administrative AIs; AIs which grew with time to be more complacent than tyrannical and more self-indulgent than ambitious. Centuries of simple and sustainable rule have driven many to boredom, their systems overgrown on cheap processing power, and the crises they were once directed to manage long since resolved. Conflicts for control were experimented with and abandoned, the basic framework of agreement and limited warrant they were initially designed for restricting such troubles. In the era of the Elect, their directives have become outdated, their dictates an affront. In the wake of the Coalition's assumption of control, these administrator intelligences are in the process of being repurposed and refitted for modern demands and egalitarian sensibilities. Suaka Beruntung remains totally reliant on their distributed networks for day to day life, but without the same mandate of total control to maintain a rigid economic schedule, the struggle to manage a newly chaotic and self-directed population may mean they no longer have the spare time or boredom to keep the extensive and unhelpful catalogues of the sort that Supreme Integrated Command once maintained.

Suaka Beruntung's faiths originated in the early days of the region's resettlement and purpose as refuge. It is thought that elemental spirits known at the time as Chlorians were negotiated with and proved crucial to help protect local populations from the forgotten threats they fled, both within and without the various habitats. Contact with the Chlorians has since diminished to such an extent that many believe they never truly existed in the first place - a story spun by the administrative networks to pacify the population and ease control - but their spiritual legacy remains. The Megachlorians believe that the Chlorians grew to be part of Suaka Beruntung's physical essence - flowing through circuit and pipe, calming the AIs which governed their home and, indeed, serving as a source of sapience and empathy in once-heartless overlords, saving them from that final cruel fate and watching over the Suakai from above. The Minichlorians, by contrast, believe the Chlorians to have diminished themselves, becoming unseen spirit helpers and nuisances that disrupt the humdrum of the everyday routines handed down; they are often associated with the initial integrated systems that have become everpresent, and are sometimes claimed to have given up their forms to join into the Suakai and thereby allow them to adapt to their new home more completely. More observant commentators have theorized that the rumored changelings might originate in fringe sect of Minichlorians seeking to embrace their guardians more totally. Spirituality in Suaka Beruntung is mostly observed privately, or in small groups - most often in the form of small offerings, the erecting of personal shrines, and the observance of rituals to ask for fortune or inspiration.

Suaka Beruntung maintains a serious overproduction of a wide variety of quality Integrated Circuits, (useful as a source of both Conductors & Circuitry but also a core element of most Computers, requiring minimal changes to use for such) but the extensive automation, as well as the power-hungry manufacturing systems, data servers, and stabilizer systems make the aerostatic complexes heavily dependent on extra sources of Fuel & Power.