Santa Barbara

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Santa Barbara
santa_barbara.jpg
Flag of Santa Barbara
Motto: Power is a commodity
Region Wysteria
Capital New State City
Official Language(s) English, Spanish, Spanglish
Leader Chairman of the Trans-National Exchange
Population 3.5 billion
Currency Nondollar 
NS Sunset XML

Overview

Santa Barbara is a massive, capitalist nation whose primary political and social organization is delineated by powerful corporate, and, to a lesser extent, geophysical regions. It is noted for a huge military-industrial base, successful and numerous megacorporations, and a traditionally isolationist foreign policy.

Physical

Covering an entire continental mass, the physiography of Santa Barbara is quite varied, including mountains, valleys, plains, mesas and canyons.

Furthest Points

  • Most Northerly point: Point Welbach Vista, Santa Barbara Main
  • Most Southerly point: Cold Ocean Island, Lompoc
  • Most Westerly point: Coal Oil Point, Santa Barbara Main
  • Most Easterly point: Springfield Falls, Goleta

Highest Points

  • Mt Refugio, 3804 meters above sea level
  • Mt Capitan, 2930 meters above sea level
  • Mt Hendry, 2546 meters above sea level

Climate

Although Koppen-classified biomes are still used in Santa Barbaran ecology, the point is largely academic/historical as unrestrained population growth has pushed the urban sprawl to cover very nearly the entire continent, leaving only a handful of bare patches where natural plant and animal life survives.

Santa Barbara has a semi-arid coastal type of climate. In the central plains and highlands, temperatures range between 100c and 200c during cold and hot seasons. The hottest period spreads between May and August (250c to 310c) while the coldest period occurs between November and February (170c to 200c).

Rainfall

Two rainfall regimes exist over Santa Barbara. One is unimodal (December to April) and the other is bimodal (October-December and March-May). The former is experienced in the central, east, north-east parts of the country, and the latter is found to the south and southern coasts.

Rain in Santa Barbara is heavily polluted and poses a severe health risk to skin contact and nonpurified water sources.

Political

Megacorporate Division

Historically, the corporation arose much earlier in Santa Barbara than in the average nation. As a series of increasingly wealthy colonies under constant threat by highly aggressive natives, the country was as dependent on trade and wealth as on it's militarism. When the native threat was finally subdued in the 17th century, corporations paved the way for early industrialization and commercial development. Though the term "megacorporation" is not an official TNE designation for a business entity, in regards to Santa Barbara, it now generally refers to the following corporations:

  • Cathedral Capital (CC)
  • Ortega Arms Company (OAC)
  • State Company (SCo)
  • Snow Canyon Industries (SCI)
  • Utopia Mining Company (UMC)
  • Milpas Somatic Engineering (MSE)
  • Orbital Industries, Incorporated (OIInc)
  • Orbital Manufacturing Industries (OMI)
  • Jayburg Advanced Aerodynamics Electric (JAAE)
  • Green Cola (GCo)
  • Cold Star MagnetoHydroDynamics (CSMHD)
  • Xavier-Kerry Communications Systems (XKCS)
  • Intelligent Systems, Incorporated (ISI)
  • Kako Habitat Construction (KHC)
  • Vesanto Memetic Engineering (VME)
  • Brown, Berring, Henson Law (BBH)
  • Autonomous Building (AnB)
  • Stevenson Shipbuilding (SSh)
  • Myrtle-Hammerstein Genetech (MHG)
  • Gladburger, Incorporated (GBI)
  • Mechanical Arms Manufacturing (MAM)
  • Shalenet Computing (SNC)
  • Carter, Barry, Michaelson Chemical (CBM)
  • Lace-Tintown Cosmetics (LTC)
  • Lathe Multicorp (LMu)
  • TakagiLevyAlabar Automobile Manufacturing (TLAAM)
  • Groovelico Fashion Electric (GFE)
  • Predatory Systems Technology (PST)
  • Werzen Zilpas, Ltd (WZ)
  • Alcova Technologies (ATs)
  • Disaster Relief, Incorporated (DRI)

Geophysical Division

The traditional land-based territorial subdivisions remain, and continue to dominate the TNE votes due to their larger populations (in comparison to megacorporate direct employees).

  • Castillo

Castillo was the 7th territory to be claimed by the Spanish colonists, and because of it's geographic isolation in the Bishop Martinez Mts to the north, remained small and generally clustered along open ports in the southwest. Today, this thriving economic zone features New State City and La Cumbre, two important mega-cities. The average GDP per capita in Castillo was (in 66) $74,500.

  • Cabrillo

Cabrillo was the third territory of this new land, claimed in 1538 during the return voyages of the explorer, Refugio Carvajal. This rich coastal valley area has a high population density (as does most of the Santa Barbaran Mainland, only more so) and features the Las Marias Megacity, which spans the entire territory.

  • Carvajal

The first landings of Carvajal were at the north, a place called St. Barbara point. The sighting of land was made by a gunner's mate, whose name is unknown to history, who named it, naturally, after the patron saint of ordinance.

Today, Carvajal is a vague distribution of large, sprawling and mixing cities, with the usual distinctions according to the dominant megacorp in the area, dotted with ITDO installations, airbases, spaceports, sea ports. St. Barbara Point is still open to tourists.

  • South Carvajal

A large body of land purchased by the expanding colonial governments, and quickly found to have rich gold deposits. The city of Goldplain today was first constructed during this time, the mid 1580's, as a gold boom town. The war with the horrifying native population(s) ended up in many massacres of settlers and colonists as fortifications were overrun by the relentless waves. After the war was won, South Carvajal was irrigated and became a wealthy agricultural and mining territory, leading the way in both the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution later on.

  • Goleta

The landlocked area between Lompoc to the east and Winchester to the west was originally once all part of Punta Diablos, but during the 18th century and the Island Civil Wars, Goleta broke free to manage itself. The geography of the area has never supported large populations, and the Goletan Plains are some of the least profitable badlands in the world. It's been a classic victim of desertification, of the type seen in the Middle East, over the past 6000 years. The reasons for this are not entirely known since no colonial farmers made it there except within the last 800 years. Today, it is one of the most rural areas governed by the CoFedCo.

  • Winchester

The entrepeneur Jameson Winchester first discovered Coal Oil Point's real worth in 1835, and quickly exploited the rich sources of oil, natural gas, coal, bauxite and timber to become the virtual king of that land, which was then a part of Castillo. He had at one time all the governors in his pocket (or so it was rumored), and they renamed the territory in his honor after a particularly large donation was made during the sudden attack by National soldiers from Castillo, and the ensuing brief civil war would have been lost if not for this donation.

  • Punta Diablos

This quiet southern tip of the continent was home to a few fishing towns, port cities, lumber mills, but not much else for the first two hundred years of it's existence. When the islands of Quela, Perez, El Toro and San Juan grew in population and the corrupt, oppressive local governor of Punta Diablos was faced with rebellion, he reacted with force, sparking the Island Civil Wars of 1746-1750. The territory lost power and authority at that, which the island city-states saw rightfully as a victory for the Decentralizationists. Today, the Diablo Valley City straddles three intersecting major rivers, and has for the past few centuries been a thriving center of industry.

  • Lompoc

The many ports along the twisting and long rivers served as shipment points for the Steerwell Mountains mining products. This area was not colonized at all except for the Southern Ocean coasts, until 1703.

  • Summerland

The aptly named Summerland's geological formations are soft, weathered; this gives an overall rounded and pleasant aesthetic. In addition, the weather is particularly warm and temperate here. It's been consistently xenophobic in it's treatment of real estate, keeping a low population density and managing to maintain a pleasant, tourist-friendly environment. In recent years, though, this has been increasingly failing as air pollution rises.

  • Montecito
  • Perdido

This island off the coast of Montecito was given to the government of Angelus in exchange for certain technologies, and has been used as a mining colony ever since. The island's history includes being the site of a nuclear accident that contaminated the land, rendering it difficult and unsafe for humans to work in for 167 years (33 left to go).

  • Isla Vista

Isla Vista includes not only the island of Isla Vista, but the subcontinent to the north. Muy Vista was the first territory there to be colonized, named after an English sailor on a Spanish merchantman with apparently none too good Spanish speaking skills.

Isla Vista was conquered by the USSSB during the early years of the Pratt rulership. The left-leaning, sleepy college state to the north had been tolerated until violent revolution spawned the People's Republic (PRIV), which sought to arm Isla Vista and assert it's power in international politics.

The military operations to conquer Isla Vista took just 9 hours, during which Trigo itself was captured and the rest of it's armed forces were overpowered. It was called the Nine Hour War, but apart from the capital, it was a nearly bloodless change. The new order, overseen by the PCC, reversed the socialist policies of the past, rebuilt Trigo, and saw the Isla Vistans rise to become what would be a major power in their own right, if not for the continued control by Santa Barbara.

  • Trigo

Trigo is the capital of Isla Vista, and is used to refer to that island itself as well, since the city occupies all of the island's 159 thousand square kilometers. A fluid, advanced and hip megacity. Trigo University has one of the best reps in the CoFedCo, and is known for the Pink Elephant school mascot, which tends to be seen in commercial advertising a lot.

  • La Plata

La Plata and the island of Veracruz make up two profitable centers of trade and urban productivity for Castillo, and both are connected to New State City on the mainland via massive underwater magtube systems.

  • Carvajal Shelf

Tyrone B is just one of hundreds of underwater cities that exist off the coast of Santa Barbara, Isla Vista, Montecito, and most densely on the Carvajal Shelf to Trigo, which is now almost one uninterrupted city. Tyrone B is neighbored by Tyrone A to the south, Lamaya to the north, Blocono to the east and nothing to the west but deeper water.

  • Orbital Colonies

The orbital colonies include several OMF Cities, modular constructions of Orbital Manufacturing Facilities constructed early in Santa Barbaran space exploitation, now used to house small, usually specialized populations, and tend to orbital vessel maintenance, repair and operations.

  • Lunar Colonies

Several colonies have long been established on Earth's moon. The megacorps most invested in Luna are Utopia Mining Company, GladBurger, Kako Habitat Construction, Cathedral Capital and Lace Tintown Cosmetics. The colonies are centered around mining operations, agriculture, or shuttle trade with other Luna colonies.

Government

Current Government

The current governing body has styled itself the United Corporate Republics, and consists of all polities (in theory) of the former Trans-National Exchange. After a period of chaos and anarchy, the multinationally owned MHG lead the way towards rebuilding the nation, levvying an unpopular high income tax to replace the corporate sales tax which funded previous governments. Despite paying lip service to the principles of the free market, the UCR is a highly militarized and authoritarian government, and isn't shy to employ the judicious use of armed force to ensure political unity.

Past Governments

(in chronological order)

  • The United Socialist State Council
  • The PrattCo Conglomerate
  • The Federal Government
  • The Corporate Federal Conglomerate

The Corporate Federal Conglomerate or CoFedCo was, in theory, a loose democratic confederation of corporations and geographic territories, though the political reality is closer to plutocracy. It's total territories encompassed the entire continent of Santa Barbara and nearby islands and extending, in places, up to 300 kilometers offshore. Offworld holdings included large stretches of Noachia, Mars, and space colonies orbiting Mars, Earth and Luna.

It collapsed after a period in which a virulent plague wiped out about two billion people. Government today consists of a mix of local warlords, corporate blocs and foreign powers.

Economy and Business

A great man once said, "the business of Santa Barbara is business."

Forms of Business Ownership

Although it's possible to start a sole propietorship, limited, or general partnership, it's far more common to be a franchisee or megacorporate employee. Competition is extremely fierce from established organizations in their niches, and is carried out on multiple levels, again organized by the powerful computers crunching financial and social data alike. The monopolistic market is brutal on newcomers who lack capital, and more than 86% of new businesses fail within the first year.

Foreign trade thrives, though foreign corporations find it nearly impossible to even set up factories or ventures that compete with any of the megacorps.

The 'average' megacorp has a line/staff organizational structure with a high degree of centralization, but with 'nodes' of cross-functional teams and other variances in structure.

Business is Society

Corporations are generally ingrained into society, and have become an extended family, wealthy uncle, landlord and boss all in one to their employees. Loyalty to a corporation one works for is highly valued, and while getting laid off is generally not a crippling thing (assuming one can always work at another outlet, another subcorp), getting fired is a critical blow to one's chances of economic and social success.

International Relations

Formerly member of:

Related articles

Roleplays

This list is not comprehensive.

External Links

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