Editing Setting:Nutopia/Locations (section)

===Babel, City of Tides===

During the events the brought the last age, the Mega Corp Light-Core was confronted with a problem. A second rate shipping company, it found itself unable to compete with the giants of it's day. It set out with a project, shackling its fate to the communication and solar generating satellites in the sky above. It began to build the world's first space elevator; a tremendously tall tower, stretching to the heaven's above, able to quickly and cheaply catapult cargo into low orbit, from which it could easily corner the market on satellite technology. The project started, building proceeded smoothly, and then the end of the world came.

One of the first targets was the near-completed tower, though none alive know who fired at it. Though constructed on the Indian Subcontinent, it's towering primary spire, which soon earned the mocking nickname of Babel by the more powerful corporations in the world, could be faintly seen from much of the Eastern Hemisphere. A weapon, some say a nuclear in nature, while others claim rail guns, nanites, or perhaps even a suicide run from an aerial craft, brought the elevator down. The lower levels were destroyed instantly, but the upper levels, caught in lower gravity above and the forces rippling up the superstructure from below, drifted out into the Indian Ocean, before crashing with a tremendous tidal wave.

The tower, built for the high stresses of planetary momentum and wind shear, somehow survived. Part of the substructure crashed into the bottom of the sea, while the upper portions jut above. The tower has been since been found, and has become something of a bustling sea center, it's surface extending over miles of the Indian Ocean. Known as Babel, City of Tides, it takes on travelers, traders, and sailors of all sorts from Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Southern Asia, and Australia, becoming an important sea based oasis.

Babel is powered primarily by a solar furnace; collection of solar connection rigs, still wirelessly connected to the dedicated solar satellites that it was intended to service in the first place. This, on top of expressing it's dominance on a the few nearby deep-sea oil drilling rigs in the seas around it, provided Babel with enough power to last well through the coming nights.

Babel is serviced by a vast shipping fleet, known collectively as Etemenanki . They serve as it's chief limbs, eyes, and mouth, projecting the will of Babel into much of the Indian Ocean. A collection of yachts and cruise liners to shipping frigates and once modern ships of war comprise the Etemenanki, endlessly questing the high seas for freight, personnel, and fuel. There are six main task forces of the Etemenanki, and each roam separately, under the command of an Admiral. These six, combined with the Tower Admiral of the Babel proper, form the primary administrative body of Babel, the League of Tides.

Babel's biggest problem is perhaps projection of power. Though each task force of the Etemenanki is more then able to hold it's own, with battleships, cruisers, and even a carrier or two, the physical space in the ocean is vast. Slavers, raiders, and rival warlords feature one of the primary plot hooks of Babel; piracy. Vast tracks of sea are no man's land, and the area has become a haven for those you want to hide on the run. Smaller islands, scattered from the eastern Indian chain, to man-made ones floating on debris, built into abandoned oil derricks, and carved from coral atolls, are hung onto desperately, with the survivors doing whatever dark and sometimes twisted efforts are required to stay alive. These ocean born frontier towns are armed to the teeth, and will normally trade with the ships of the Etemenanki, but when left to their own devices for too long, or prodded once too many times by raider, will sometimes up a mobilize, setting off across the open sea in a near mindless wave of killing and looting.

As dangerous and unpredictable as the frontier towns may seem, they hold the key to many of the great treasures in these waters. For just under the waves lie untold treasures, from pieces fallen from Babel in it's crash, satellites plunged into the waters as they lost power, and oil and mineral veins deep on the ocean floor to be pillaged. Many of these small flotilla's are built on existing constructions, allowing a quick, if perhaps dangerous, path to the secrets on the floor. Babel itself has established a number of these routes, with it's undersea superstructure and original cargo hauling capabilities helping in this effort. It is through this exploration of the ocean floor that one of the great mysteries of the entire Indian Ocean was found. The code name Atlantis Project.