Petropolis
Petropolis was the first city established on Terra Nova’s northern plains, and is now part of the NLC. As its name implies, Petropolis is situated atop a mammoth petroleum deposit. The entire city is little more than a giant oil pumping station and refinery owned by Northern Petrochem. It supplies more than half of the petroleum consumed by the CNCS. Pipelines and refineries can be found in any district of the city. This reserve has now been tapped for almost 1500 cycles and is still healthy — a testament to Terra Nova’s rich biological history.
While this vast oil reserve has brought much wealth to Petropolis, it has also exacted a terrible price. The city is constantly enshrouded in thick yellow smog and permeated with a horrid oily stench. Petropolis was rated as being the “Worst Place to Live” by Terra Nova magazine. Arctic Economist magazine, however, reports that Petropolis’ citizens have the Arctic’s “Best Average Income,” a figure slightly skewed by the massive salaries of the corporate executives of Northern Petrochem.
That Petropolis is livable at all is largely due to the efforts of Thor Hutchison, the recently assassinated leader of the Revisionist Church. Petropolis was young Hutchison’s first congregation and he was able to use the church as a rallying point for a powerful reform movement that swept the city in the TN 1870s and TN 1880s. Hutchison’s work here gained him the personal admiration of much of the Norlight working class.
Petrochem is nevertheless under continued pressure to further clean up its act, but the voice of environmentalists and reformers are currently outweighed by the strategic value of the oil reserve. Local petroleum is a valuable and vulnerable resource given the growing certainty of war, so the city-state has recently seen itself reinforced. Norlight Armed Forces and Northern Guard troops are now common in the city-state and massive air defense laser turrets (like those in Kossuth) are popping up. Northern Petrochem has agreed to shoulder some of the budgetary burden of these new defense systems with the understanding that President Adjanni will lay off demands to improve worker conditions or democratize the city-state. The President has reluctantly agreed for the sake of national security.
An upswing in industrial sabotage has only underlined the need for increased security. Norlight Intelligence and Security Agency reports indicate that the Mekong Dominion has targeted Petropolis for covert action and links a so-called Ghost Team of Mekong saboteurs to the destruction in TN 1929 of Petrochem Refinery 15 and the recent destruction of the Pipeline 12, running though Petropolis’ residential and commercial heart.