City Layout
Celeste 7 grew from disparate lunar colonies with competing histories and stories over their unification. From the surface or space, it still looks much like that, most of the city resembles small clusters of buildings that dot the surface of Mare Humorum. What the city shares internally are various districts, nominally totaling seven, that extend far below the surface, and underground in the lava tubes between them. Man-made tunnels form other passages between different surface buildings and outposts, connecting lava tubes by sprawling tram system. Notable features include a sprawling circle of surface spires around the central district, and a large drilling operation for a mohole at one end of the city that contains the deepest district.
Quick Reference
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Pioneer District (Puiseux Crater floor)
- Artemis Landing — legacy industrial sector; oldest manufacturing plants
- Helios Circuit — arts, theatres, cultural venues
- Apollo Lodges — scientific institutions and research prestige
- Central Spaceport — dust-deflecting landing pads
- Gentrified Commercial/Residential Zones — mixed-use blocks
- Corporate Headquarters Cluster — low-rise offices
- Subsurface Infrastructure Caverns — critical systems accessed via elevators
- Surface Network — roads, skyways, tunnels interlinking sectors.
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Crown District (Puiseux Rim)
- High-Rise Spire Zone — concrete/steel towers for elite residents and MegaCorp leadership
- Rover/Tractor Arterials — heavy-vehicle roads for luxury transit and logistics
- Rim Megadome Skeleton — incomplete dome frame encircling crater interior
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Lava Tubes (Underground)
- Connected by central transit hub below Pioneer District
- Pressurized with atmosphere just below Earth sea level
- Inner tubes - suburbs with cleaner air, higher-status residences
- Outer tubes - new excavations with lower oxygen, laborer residences
- Trams and Mag-lev Trains link tubes
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District 3 (Doppelmayer Crater)
- Research complexes - cutting-edge scientific and engineering installations
- Private Compounds - enclaves of extremely wealthy individuals
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District 5 (Lee Crater)
- High-security prison - housing lunar and off-world inmates
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District 1 (Vitello Mohole)
- Pit district - descending infrastructure rings around excavation shaft
- Lower depth - perpetual darkness, houses poorest residents in low-oxygen labor zones
City Features
Celeste 7’s Pioneer District, the central region of the lunar megacity, is built around the Puiseux crater at the southern end of Mare Humorum on the moon. The floor of the crater is built on top of its early colony days, with sectors such as Artemis Landing, an industrial region with some of the oldest manufacturing plants, Helios Circuit, now known for its arts and theatres, and Apollo Lodges, which still boasts much of the scientific prestige of the city. These ring around a central spaceport, with landing pads shaped to blow dust up away from its city neighbors. Scattered in the midst are gentrified commercial and residential areas, headquarters offices for lunar businesses, many of them still low-standing buildings constructed of composites and durable vacuum-resistant fabrics while others are newer materials fabricated from the lunar regolith. Elevators in open shafts, some of them former mines, service lower levels which were built into caverns discovered below the surface to safeguard critical infrastructure for the district, while on the surface a network of roads, skyways, and tunnels keep the district interwoven.
Around the rim of the Puiseux crater is the elevated Crown District, towering above anything else on the lunar landscape. Built of towering spires of concrete and steel that grant views of a long horizon and a vantage point to look down at the visible city below, many of the buildings are monuments to the wealth and prosperity that rings a constant clarion call in this district. Lunar tractors and sophisticated rovers prowl the roads of the district, delivering goods that cannot be hand-carted or passengers with the wealth and desire to travel in style. That remains an important fixture in the wealthiest district, those who work and live in the district are among the city’s elites, running the Megacorps that dominate life in Celeste 7, or doing their bidding. The district largely represents an excess, in heights, hubris, services, and the manner of its residents, many of whom are known to behave larger than life. The inner edge of the rim serves as a testament to this hubris, with the skeletal ribs of a large dome starting to take form, someday to enclose the crater below.
Below the Pioneer District is the central hub of Celeste 7, using tunnels built of long efforts to connect the city to its far-flung regions in the Doppelmayer, Vitello, and Lee craters, and the sealed lava tubes which form its pressurized suburban neighborhoods. Within the tubes pulse the lifeblood of Celeste 7’s city, where the majority of its residents live, and work, and play. Far below the opulent arts sector of Helios Circuit, neon clubs and VR theatres live alongside shopping districts stuffed with lunar-made products of the latest designs. Advertisements are never far from the pedestrian-filled streets, and the typical residence or workplace is never far from a vending machine with a loud, eye-catching design. Trams operate within the tubes to facilitate traffic, with maglev stations to shuttle between them. Farther out from the Pioneer District, there are newer tubes being excavated and built up, where industry is encouraged to move its operations so exhaust gasses can pressurize those tubes. These farther tubes are home to more day laborers, those of less wealth or repute, and sometimes toxins from pollutants in the thinner, low-oxygen air. The air is cleaner in the closer suburbs, pressurized slightly lower than Earth sea level, and residents of various strata choose to live within the tubes for this reason.
Several outlying districts make neighboring craters their home, remnants of the original disconnected Celeste Sites. Gravity-Vacuum technology makes transit to these locations as quick as between closer districts, keeping them tightly connected to the city center. Here, the spirit of the original Celeste 7 lives on, complexes devoted to cutting-edge projects and research, private compounds for those of extreme wealth, a prison to house the city’s worst elements —and some of Earth’s, for a steep fee— and further unbridled extremes. In a small section of the Vitello crater lies the mohole, the Moonhole or Vulcan’s Forge, where the spiraling district wraps around the edges of a large pit dug in hopes to excavate precious minerals from deep inside the lunar soil. None but the very upper levels catch any sunlight at all, pitching the entire district in a natural eternal darkness, where the poorest and worst of the city toil in a low-oxygen environment.