Akuria
According to the Governor, the stone wall that surrounds the city of Akuria is there to defend from marauding outsiders. According to the whispers of lower-class Akurians, the wall is not to keep attackers out, but to keep them in.
In Akuria, there was no Collapse. Of course, they cannot deny the myriad ecological disasters, the mass information loss of the Shutdown, the century of wars. But according to the city’s official narrative, these were simply moments of turbulence that eventually righted themselves. Old ways persist in Akuria – currency, trade, capital, debt.
The city is split into four class strata. The upper classes, the property owners, are responsible for city governance and ensuring the continued flow of capital. Their lives of relative ease are supported by the middle classes: craftspeople, specialists and small business owners who aspire toward property ownership. They employ the working classes – the labouring masses who live hand-to-mouth, constantly under threat of dropping into the city’s underclass, the Debtors. People who default on loans in Akuria must live as indentured servants, stripped of their liberty and pressed into working off their debt for years. It is said that the engines of Akuria are oiled by the sweat of Debtors. Almost a third of the city’s population are Debtors, few of whom ever successfully work off what they owe.
With so many people suffering from the effects of the Akurian system, the upper classes are in constant fear of a revolution. To counter this, they have invested in a large, well-equipped city military, whose central duty is to prevent Debtor insurrection. Debtors are not allowed to leave the city, and escapees are duly tracked and returned to their Lenders. Most of the soldiers come from the working classes themselves, eager for the comfortable wage and elevated status that comes with joining the city military. This promise of class mobility, along with propaganda targeted to convince the working class that they are morally superior than the Debtors, prevents these two subjugated groups from banding together. For now, at least, the Akurian system remains entrenched.