Sunday Afternoon Sneak Peek: Mashiva Map (Patreon)

I've been working on a proper large scale map of the City of Mashiva and it's immediate environment on and off for ages, in one form or another, ever since I included that little MashiTran map in my pixel art of University Station. After more than a few false starts, this is the version I've chosen to fully develop. It's as much a creative thing to work on when my brain just isn't in the creative mood as it is something of a labor of love, so progress is slow. It has at least gotten to a point now where many of the main city features seen in my stories and art are present, so I can now offer this "sneak peek" in a form that will at least make sense in relation to my previous work. This supersedes the map previously published as part of the old Mashiva world guide article.

And yes, before you ask, crazy cheetah is indeed crazy. >.>

Capital letter labels are main features, districts, and significant geographical features. Other labels are places of note, including some from prior work. Of particular note is the base of operations for Destiny Omega and the Gelitech stories on west side of the spaceport, Vixanti 3/Old 3, the Gelitech Gelarium, and Anwae Arena.

While the area around the spaceport just needs some details finished up, and Old South City needs its buildings populated, I've only just begun laying out parts of the Old City, and the newer city blocks to the north are complete in general layout of the ground level streets only. This area, unlike the other zones, are far more vertical in nature, and are going to require an awful lot of thinking to get laid out properly.

The primary considerations for the changes to this map compared to the previous one are mainly related to creating a more accurate and realistic representation of the city's historical development which, to be totally honest, is extremely summarized in the world guide article.

A brief summary of development is as follows:

Development of the Old City of Mashiva begins as a result of two factors: Construction of the massive Mashiva Hydroelectric Dam to provide power to other cities around the region, and a concurrent expansion of mining activity in the mountains to the north of the Mashiva Valley.

The Old City of Mashiva develops to cover the raised bluffs to the east of the dam, and serves as both an ore milling center, minerals depot, and railroad yard. Corruption soon follows, and with it organized crime.

The South City of Mashiva develops second, motivated by expatriates from the Old City who've tired of its corruption, and intend to compete with it by development of a large spaceport.

South City and spaceport development are soon taken over by the Imperial Navy to act as cover for the secret Macharri Naval Base and Shipyard to be built deep beneath the area, its hangars built into the massive cliff atop which South City stands.

A miner's strike between laborers in the mines to the north and the corrupt agencies who run the mines from the Old City turns into an outright war not long after Macharri Naval Base is completed. Miners take up positions around Key'von rock to block gangs of thugs trying to head up the Yu'min valley to retake the biggest and most profitable of the mines.

As the strike threatens to reveal the location of the secret naval base, Marines are sent in to take control of the Old City under the guise of the local Spaceport and Shipyard Worker's Unions, an act facilitated by the fact that all of the actual union members are already on the government payroll and sworn to secrecy about Macharri.

In the wake of the Old City battle, a decision is made to take control under the guise of the annexation of both the Old and South City regions by a new metropolitan area to the east of the Old City, right across the river from the spaceport. This new city will come to serve as a seat of government for both the whole of the planet of Maria, as well as the whole of the Marian Drift Prefecture.

The new metropolitan zone will be expanded to the east, right up to the cliff north of the Mashiva river to accommodate the business interests who flock to the new capital.

Having run out of room to the east, a new city called Runai is established to the west of the Mashiva Reservoir, largely for residential and commercial occupants, while much of the city's heavy industry is moved into a dedicated industrial zone to the south west.

By this time mining in the Yu'min valley has come to a halt, and many of the ore mills and mineral processing plants in the Old City are abandoned. While some of the lands is reclaimed for other uses, a significant portion is preserved as an industrial heritage site, standing alongside a few mills that remain active, serving a relatively small collection of still active mines to both the north and south of the Mashiva Valley.