The Exclave
Introduction
The Exclave (/ˈɛkskleɪv/) is a Novalunar colony of the designation XCL-V. Although not the first of the twenty-seven colonies established on Novaluna since the Arrival, the Exclave is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most important and most prominent of them all.
Founded with the Ad Astra's last onboard colony module, the Exclave was originally designated XCL-V Habitation Facility, the fifth settlement to be created on Novaluna's surface and the first intended to be a primarily civilian, rather than military, facility. As such, the Zygotic Reserve Program and all of its infrastructure was anchored in XCL-V, thus making what would later become the Exclave the population epicentre of Novaluna. With the Exclave now producing 88% and accommodating 52% of Novaluna's new generations, it swiftly outstripped all other colonies in population.
Home to fully half of Novaluna's population of 32 million by 205 PA, the Exclave is the political, economic, and cultural heart of Novaluna One. While the loosely confederate organisation of the Novalunar colonies means each XCL is largely independent and self-governing, the headquarters for Novaluna One Mission Control (N1MC) and several other major global organisations are based in the Exclave, making it the de-facto capital city-colony of Novaluna. Beyond its boundaries, it is also the chair city of the six Prosperity Rim members; as the head of a regional bloc that includes Port Liber, Seraph City, New Aevia, Summereve, and Imperial Square, it coordinates a further four-fifths of Novaluna's population and 82% of its economic output.
As a "Civic Republic", the Exclave governs itself in the manner of a highly internationalised city-state, with a combination of technocratic policy edifices and representative democracy. Civil rights and liberties are extensive and protected by colonial charter, a developed free-market economy generates significant wealth for the Exclave's skilled populace, and the Exclave's Novalunar Open Association (NOA) guarantees a single, integrated market with trade and movement free of restrictions for all member colonies.
Flag and Seal
Location - 45°N 23°E
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Extrasolar Colony Location V (XCL-V) Habitation Facility
The Exclave
Vīvimus et Crēscimus
We Live and We Thrive
Novalunar Standard English
3,184 sq km
2,250 sq km (70.67%)
934 sq km (29.33%)
16,032,479 (1st)
7,126/sq km (1st)
+0.457%
20,006,643 (1st)
8,891/sq km (1st)
+0.221%
Civic Republic
Idha Ri Alzhu
Harmony North
Shevamithast
Unified Sub-Global Republic
Rila Halicom
Sejiste "Sejis" Arran
Pri Malat Tabrec
Creze Ton Camrin
Zuse Endumir
20 PA (5th)
Exclavite
Novalunar novum (𐌍) (NVL)
𐌍1,182.780 billion (1st)
𐌍73,774 (6th)
𐌍1,182.780 billion (1st)
𐌍104,265 (6th)
0.89 (9th)
NST +2
XC-05 EX
Etymology
The Exclave originates as an acronymic pronunciation of the the colony's formal designation tag, XCL-V, meaning Extrasolar Colony Location V, the Roman numeral for 5, as it was the fifth such colony to be established on Novaluna. The meaning of the English word exclave, "a portion of a state or territory separated from the primary sovereign body", was moreover deemed apropos, for the Exclave represented a new fragment of humanity separated from the rest, a refuge of familiarity on an alien world.
History
Despite coming into existence a full 20
solar years after the Arrival, the history of the Exclave is inevitably the story of Novaluna as a whole, so inextricable are the two. Prior to XCL-V receiving its official charter as a colony, however, it existed in several primaeval incarnations for much of the time before then. The task of the first four colonies was not only to explore the vast, marvelous, and dangerous new world humans had set foot upon, but to secure a safe and amenable
location where a civilian populace could grow, develop, and flourish. Five years after the Arrival, the best such location was determined to be a small island in the northern Ituvinus Ocean. With a mild, pleasant climate and native population of organisms (mostly) harmless to humans, this island—dubbed Vistora Nova in honour of the Earth civilisation that contributed the plurality
Geography
of personnel and resources to the mission—was chosen and cleared for colonial establishment. Garrisons from XCL-I SkyFortress and XCL-II Northcom protected the island while scientific and civilian infrastructure was gradually built up around its natural harbour, including the facilities required for the Zygotic Reserve Program. As the proto-colony grew, so did its population, and after 15 slow years of building up to self-sufficiency, the colony received its mission charter and was established as XCL-V.
Natural Features
The Exclave was built upon an island in the Sea of Prosperity's northern chain called Vistora Nova. It partially surrounds a large, natural bay harbour named Volar Harbour, after the native populations of ambivolar zoomorphs inhabiting the bay and its surrounding coastline. Opposite the bay, an enormous, steep-faced, monolithic inselberg known as Ascension Rock forms the inland boundary of the Exclave's border; rising from the landscape up to a peak elevation of over 800 metres, it towers prominently over the city and dwarfs all but its tallest spires. Most of the Exclave and its immediate surroundings, as well as the rest of Vistora Nova, is moderately hilly and covered in North Prosperity forests, a subset of the Moon Forest biome type; the southern tip of Vistora Nova, however, is host to a terrestrial pansarcid colony large enough to qualify as its own biome, albeit a small one by global comparisons.
Cityscape
As a result of its surrounding geography, the need to segregate urban development from surrounding native wildlands, and to reduce colony geographic footprint, the Exclave has long needed to make economical use of what little space it has relative to its immense population. As a result, the Exclave takes the form of a hyper-urban, incredibly vertical city with a prevalence of high-rise buildings and skyscrapers, all to comfortably accommodate its very high population density.
Necessitated by its population and internal variety, the Exclave is divided up into eight statistical subdivisions known as sectors, each with their own separate residency and fiscal program rolls and a degree of
autonomous authority over each. The sectors are defined along semi-permanent geographic boundaries and vary widely in population and density as a result. Each sector, meanwhile, is further subdivided into districts of roughly 200,000 people each; as districts exist almost purely for the purposes of record-keeping and location identification, their total and per-sector numbers and boundaries are potentially fluid and subject to yearly updates.
Climate
The Exclave lies on the boundary between a warm arid-summer climate (Csb) and a warm oceanic climate (Cfb), and while it is typically classified as the latter it shares characteristics of both. While seasonal variation in temperature and precipitation is apparent, it is nevertheless relatively slight; summers are warm and moderately dry with frequent clear skies, while winters are cool and wet with persistent overcast cloudcover. Furthermore, hibernal weather patterns predominate, accounting for approximately 60% of the year versus 40% for aestival patterns. Extreme weather phenomena are extremely uncommon in the Exclave, with the most frequent and regular such occurrence being wintertime cold spells, during which both the average temperature and humidity drop precipitously for the span of several days.
Demograpics
By population, the Exclave is the largest on Novaluna by a very wide margin. As of the 205 PA Census, the Exclave has 16,232,479 Novalunar citizens registered under its residency system, and 16,788,014 enrolled under its tax and benefits regime; in both cases, this represents over 50% of Novaluna's entire population.
Birth Origin
While Zygotic Reserve Program progeneration centres exist elsewhere on Novaluna, the vast bulk of ZRP infrastructure for birthing and raising children in the Program is located in the Exclave, accounting for a full 92% of all Zygotic Reservists born on Novaluna. Prior to the ZRP's scheduled wind-down concluding in 200 PA, since 50 PA the Exclave accounted for 88% of all new children born on Novaluna, including both the biologically conceived and reserve-born.
Migration
Due to the Exclave accounting for a vastly disproportionate share of Novaluna's population growth while the Zygotic Reserve Program was in full effect, it has long been customary for a very large percentage of new generations born in the Exclave to move elsewhere; many Reservist infants born in the Exclave are raised in one of the four other Prosperity Rim colonies, typically XCL-XI New Aevia or XCL-XII Imperial Square, while the other colonies experience a greater influx of older children and adults. As a result, before the Program was slowed the Exclave was the only colony on Novaluna with a net negative migration rate, although its immense technical birth rate kept its resident population growth roughly in line with the Novalunar average.
Culture
Given its superlative population, it is unsurprising that the Exclave is the primary cultural epicentre for much of Novaluna; as the veritable "core" of Novalunar society and a highly global hub for migration and transit, the Exclave is in a constant flux of internal cultural innovation and external cultural influence, synthesising these two vast inputs and producing a shifting melange of cultural diversity unmatched in global importance. An important factor in the Exclave's cultural makeup is its size and urban character, as well as concentration of capital; most big-budget media productions are in some way, shape, or form affiliated with Exclavite entities.
Religion
Like the rest of Novaluna, the Exclave features very little religious continuity with Old Earth; traditional religions such as the major Abrahamic, Dharmic, or Tao faiths are absent in all but the most marginal of religious communities. Furthermore, religion as a whole is uncommon on Novaluna in general and in the Exclave especially, even when defined broadly to encompass spiritualism, sacred philosophy, and variously non-naturalist beliefs. Irreligion, apatheism, agnosticism, and atheism are all common stances taken by Exclavites, while secular humanism is the widely held basis for ethical reasoning among Novaluna's philosophical cognoscenti.
However, while the majority of Exclavites are ambivalent at best about religion, the colony's uniquely kaleidoscopic churn of folk philosophies has conversely led to a surprising prevalence of niche religious and spiritualist movements among small pockets of society. As many of these movements feature social isolationism, personalist or messianic leaders, and idiosyncratic to extreme beliefs and ideologies, many have such been derided as cultish or cabalistic by mainstream society. The actual harm they pose, however, varies significantly from group to group, ranging from the bizarrely ritualistic yet entirely benign Greysense movement, to the Ulterior Pact, an infamously violent and belligerent terrorist cult. Although they vary in size, no single such group has ever wholly dominated the Exclavite alternative religion and spirituality scene or progressed much beyond the fringe.
Mythology
Separate from any actual religion, however, is the common "mythology" of the Novalunar people known as the Novalunar Neo-Mythos, of which the Exclave is the natural locus. Broadly synonymous with the concept of a cultural canon, the Neo-Mythos is the amorphous collation of all cultural influences prominent on Novaluna, a sort of modern equivalent to historical folklore. While most of the Neo-Mythos is taken to be figurative and not a literal description of reality (except for in the case of historically attested events), its influence on Novalunar and Exclavite culture is still profound. A prominent example is the concept of New Aevia. Prior to its adoption by XCL-XI as its official colony name, it was a common metaphor in Novalunar society akin to that of Shangri-La or a "City upon a Hill", its origin being in a series of speculative-fiction novels written by Aul Vaiza, an influential anthropologist and one of the original crewmembers of the Ad Astra.
Symbolism
Many symbols, both physical and otherwise, are considered integral to the Exclavite ethos. Ascension Rock, for instance, is the most prominent and distinctive natural landmark in close proximity to the Exclave, and thus the two are closely associated; the former is considered heavily emblematic of the latter, and most distinctive renditions of the Exclave's skyline include it. Ambivolars, particularly the Jetstream Ambivolar (Ambivolatus auster), are considered the representative zoomorphs of the Exclave, while the official civic pseudophyte is the Black Bulblight (Lucifer piceus), a species of bioluminescent herboid known for emitting violet and long-wave ultraviolet light, giving it the notional appearance of a blacklight.
Art & Media
In relation to its Prosperity Rim cousins, the Exclave is typically seen as the primary focus of major commercial-production artistic media; traditional art is seen moreso as the specialty of Imperial Square and New Aevia, while radical and bohemian artistic expression the province of Port Liber. The Exclave is where everything artistic is vast; in scope, quantity, production, revenue, and exhibition. Exclavite cinema is famously superlative in the production budgets it commands and the profits it pulls in; very few production entities beyond the Exclave are able to shift the capital required for such films or series without an Exclave affiliate. On a more individual level, the Exclave is the source of a huge market for commercial, platform-facilitated freelance visual art, literature, and music, with most of Novaluna's mass-market artistic works coming from Exclavite artists, authors, and musicians.
Cuisine
As with the rest of Novaluna during the mission's early years, the people of the Exclave primarily subsisted on various reconstituted-nutrient foods derived from algae, fungus, insects, and other Earth-originated sources with very high feedstock efficiencies that could be cultivated in close confinement. Although mild success was had in processing these products in a way that mirrored culinary and nutritional diversity, and plant and in-vitro animal foods were available as well, cost considerations meant most staple foods tended to be unremarkable at best and unappealing at worst.
The slow revolution in Novalunar cuisine occurred when the first pseudophyte species were genetically engineered for human consumption (and when the ZRP began incorporating coding sequences for Novalunar digestive enzymes as standard-issue). As the list of comestible native organisms swelled, so did the variety of foods available to Novaluna's arrivals. Regional diversity began to bloom as well as different colonies primarily sourced organisms that could be cultivated locally, and the Exclave was no exception.
The moon forests of Vistora Nova provide a wide range of edible native species from which Exclavite cuisine is derived, chief among which are the visciplex species that became major staples of the general Novalunar diet. The starchy, mildly sweet flesh of the Common Gorefruit (Visciplexa dulcis) is an especially important component in Exclavite cooking, products and derivatives of which are akin to that of wheat or potatoes on Earth, such is its prevalence. The thick, soft fibres of the so-called Babylon Bloom (Hortus pensus) aedis hospitum, renowned for their complex, savoury character, are another common ingredient in Exclavite cuisine. Furthermore, the in-vitro cultivated meat of the Raketongue Pino (Pino xyoglossa) is one of the most popular zoomorph-derived foods on Novaluna, far outstripping animal products of Old Earth in terms of demand.
Sport
In spite of the cultural influence held by such Old-Earth sporting behemoths as hyperspeed racing, arena games, and association football, scarce resources and dense accommodations made incorporating these more traditional sports difficult; as such, the Exclave's sports scene instead grew out of a need to make do with what space was available, giving birth to an entire class of low-footprint "vertical" sports that evolved amidst the city's high-rises. Ricochet, a team-based ball-goal game played in a climbable tower-shaped arena, and blackout, an arena-inspired physical combat simulation, are two highly popular sports with large, professional leagues spectated by many. Court games from Earth, like tennis, basketball, and volleyball also developed fair followings amongst Exclavites, while in the later years of Novaluna One more expansive sports began to take root in the Exclave, usually after they had done so in other colonies with fewer land restrictions.
Philosophy
As one of Novaluna's foremost academic hubs, one eclipsed not even by purpose-built XCL-XXIV Zenith Point in the volume of scholarly research produced, the Exclave is thus even for its population a heavyweight in philosophical thought. While the Exclave's philosophical corpus is quite diverse, dominant Exclavite schools of thought are largely heir to the Anglosphere philosophical tradition, with liberalism and consequentialism considered almost axiomatic among ethical scholars and naturalism a basic assumption held by nearly all science philosophers.
Science & Technology
Whereas many of Novalunar's other colonies dominate in the various fields of pure research and field observation, the Exclave is Novaluna's humming engine of productive application; its vibrant high-tech business sector is especially active in collating scientific knowledge both public and private and using it to innovate in a vast variety of fields, and it is the home to many agencies and organisations besides constantly seeking to turn Novaluna's impressive scientific pedigree into things of tangible benefit to humanity. While its per-capita production of academic ephemera and proportion of dedicated scholars are relatively low in comparison to the global average, commercial R&D as a percentage of total investment eclipses all other colonies save for Seraph City, such is the pace of invention in the Exclave.
Furthermore, it is in the fields of biotechnology and psionics that the Exclave is particularly dominant, both for readily identifiable reasons. For instance, the relative strength of the Exclave's biotechnology sector is due primarily to the Zygotic Reserve Program, the vast majority of physical infrastructure of which resides in the Exclave. The controversial opening up of the ZRP to "seeding", which involves genetically and epigenetically predisposing cohorts of future people to—with program approval and their express consent—further modification and experimentation, was a major boon to Exclavite research companies and organisations oriented towards "human-facing" segments of the biotech industry, such as medicine, augmentation, and advanced biointerfacing. This relative strength also had the knock-on effect of increasing Exclavite prominence in other biotech fields, such as agriculture and industry, by bolstering the profits and thus available investment capital of the Exclave's biotech companies. Though the ZRP seeding is always of equal availability to all Novalunar entities, its physical nature nevertheless still provides an advantage to locality.
The Exclave's prominence in psionics is slightly more arbitrary in origin, but still easily traceable with reason to believe causation. The origin of the science itself lies in the well-publicised discovery of Cowl of Grey (Pallium psionum), a species of simple, multicellular marine organism broadly similar to Terran macroalgae. Initial discovery of Pallium psionum in 151 PA actually took place in the cold neritic waters off the coast of the far-southern island of Tranquility, far from the Exclave and indeed any colonies equipped for research; investigation of tissue samples taken from them, and subsequent discovery of their psionaria organelles, however, occurred in N1MC-owned Exclavite laboratories. The watershed arrived when one of the laboratory employees, a young research assistant named Tiuru Mithra (born Tiuru Mei Dira), quit his job to found Mithra Research, an Exclavite company now famous for its pioneering research into psionics and credited with unlocking its profound potential. Even after Mithra Research was acquired as a prestige subsidiary of the (then) also Exclave-based Mirum Psionics corporation, with the latter then relocating to its purpose-created colony of XCL-XXVII Mirum Coast, the Exclave retained most of the infrastructure of both companies, their Exclavite competitors notwithstanding, and thus its role as a global leader in psionics-related innovation. Had it not been for the Exclave's vigorous startup scene and the abundance of venture capital that came with it, Tiuru's leap indeed may have happened later, elsewhere, or never.
Economy
The Exclave's economy is by far the largest of all 27 colonies on Novaluna; of the 𐌍1.728 trillion of economic output produced by the entirety of Novaluna per solar year, the Exclave alone accounts for nearly 60% of the total, its absolute value a consequence of its massive population, and its relative potency—at 𐌍63,774 per head it is 5th among all colonies—the result of its free and vibrant economy born of much wonkish technocratic policymaking.
Industries
Especially in comparison to many of its colonial kin, the Exclave has a uniquely well-diversified economic makeup, with no one industry or sector dominating production. This is due to the Exclave's role as Novaluna's prime, general population centre and de-facto capital; historically, many important ancillary industries such as agriculture and manufacturing were located almost exclusively in the Exclave, since many of the early colonies reserved land area and mission capital for scientific or military ventures. While later specialist colonies dedicated specifically to these purposes arose and thenceforth garnered a much larger share of the moon's market for these primary and secondary sectors of production, the Exclave's established infrastructure and amenable policies meant it retained its appeal for higher value-added, less narrowly-focused segments of these industries. Its status as the most generalist of all colonies is favourable to more advanced industries as well; its adventurous capital markets and vast pool of highly-skilled talent to draw from, as well as freedom from any particular ethos of mission "specificity" make it a uniquely clement place for breakout startups in radical sectors.
Policy
With economic policy generally the purview of the Exclave's semi-independent civil bureaucracy, administration, regulation, and legislation is highly technocratic in origin and nature, with formative processes being particularly pragmatic, data-oriented, and objective-based. Following a relatively orthodox strand of the Alephian school of thought, Exclavite policies focus on generating wealth through a highly productive and lightly regulated private sector, sustaining a flexible labour market, using progressive taxation to redress insecurity and provide opportunity through benefits programs, and minimising all barriers to international trade, travel, and exchange.
Most regulation is accomplished through targeted taxation and market structuring, with environmental levies the strictest, broadest, and least conditional, and most other regulatory laws focusing on promoting competition and ensuring a degree of workplace quality standards. Elsewise, labour regulation is relatively mild, aiming chiefly to empower individual workers through sustaining high labour demand and providing unemployment benefits rather than directly regulating wages and contracts or promoting collective bargaining.
Tax revenues in the Exclave are generated from three main sources. The first and foremost is a land-value tax particularly valued for its utility in the high-population, capital-rich, and land-poor Exclave. The second is a progressive income tax that includes most forms of capital gains, with carve-outs for investment. The third consists of the various incentivising taxes the Exclave government uses to nudge market and agent behaviour, prominently its environmental-cost levy system as well as other social-cost fees and some Pigouvian taxes on consumers.
Unconditional commitment to the free and unfettered movement of products, capital, and labour is one of the most deeply entrenched policies in the Exclave's political edifices, and the least subject to departure or adjustment. The Exclave imposes no duties or tariffs on cross-incorporation trade and is the progenitor and promulgator of most of Novaluna's major free-trade areas, common market agreements, and economic unions, including the Prosperity Rim group accounting for some 90% of Novalunar economic output.