Started working on this shortly after writing the second part of the "Coming Storm" series. Stopped working on it and let it sit until I recently dusted it off and finished to a point where I am somewhat happy with it.
As I said before, I am not sure where if anywhere New Sentinel fits in with the canon timeline for the Sentinel/Silicon City universe. It's very likely this entire city will end up scrapped except for Neptune Maximum Security Prison... I'm actually kind of proud of Neptune to be honest. It could still use elaboration but I guess I must be a bit of a sadist to like the basic idea.

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New Sentinel is set in the world of Silicon/Sentinel City, © Psion 2009-2011
All rights reserved by the respective party. Do not repost or use any portion of this document without the author's express permission.
The cyborg ninjas are watching...

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New Sentinel
By Psion
A Silicon/Sentinel City Document
All Rights Reserved


Overview: A fledgling nation formed on Silicon Earth, founded by human refugees from Sentinel Earth.

Topography: A small island no larger then the state of Rhode Island roughly shaped like a crescent moon and just off the coast of Northern California, Sanctuary is a mountainous landscape predominately defined by steep peaks, high plateaus, and deep canyons. Thick evergreen forests blanket the higher elevations while vast grassy plains line the lowlands.
Most of the human settlement is concentrated in a small network of interconnected sea-level canyons with most of the urbanization occurring in and around New Sentinel’s harbor and becoming more sparse the further away one gets from the bay. Construction on the higher elevations is given over to agriculture and wind farms, providing the lowlands with food and electricity.

History: New Sentinel resides on the island of Sanctuary, an artificial island raised out of the ocean by an earth-controller trying to establish a metabeing sanctum off the western coast of the United States. While the sanctuary dissolved due to infighting, the island remained and was left to grow wild when the inhabitants returned to the mainland. Lacking any significant natural resources or strategic interest, the island fell into obscurity until the Portal Wars came to Silicon Earth.
With the threat of alien invaders looming (and the leaders of Silicon eager to obtain alien technology,) the island was looked at once again as a location for permanent settlement. Seeing nothing about the land they would convert for themselves, the nations of Silicon gave the island to the humans. Politicians in North America and Europe assumed that the humans would build a city that would ultimately become dependent on trade with NATO and Pacific Rim countries. In exchange for raw materials and fuels, the humans would make the fruit of their weapon research programs available to their anthro hosts. These new technologies would in turn continue the elaborate dance of military posturing that the world had been doing since the beginning of the Metabeing Age.
Assumptions began to break down once it became clear that the furless aliens were neither stupid nor desperate enough to get themselves significantly entangled in local politics. Politicians became further agitated when images of New Sentinel began to appear on the Internet. Pictures of small villages nestled in picturesque forests riled up Green Party activists while rumors of the main city reducing the impact of their heavy industries with the green engineering techniques of “Old Sentinel” added further fuel to the fire.
When New Sentinel unveiled the Neptune Maximum Security Prison and openly began to deal with the Cetacean Monarchy and elements of the metabeing labor movement Artifice, matters finally came to a head with the mainland; leading to where the New Sentinels presently are. Power blocs within the UN came together and passed a vote that the humans be “requested” to sign a registration treaty. Rumors of an US/Australian metabeing team that would be assigned to ensure compliance are unconfirmed. The results are a situation created by bureaucrats where no one is satisfied with the end solution.

Natural Resources & Industry: While the island is fertile and rich in timber, the mountain range that runs the entire length of the crescent is devoid of mineral deposits. Geologists both contracted from the mainland and brought in from Sentinel Earth had scoured the formation to catalog anything the humans could develop to fund their war efforts. What the specialists found was that the mountains were a rich source of building stone like granite and marble but nothing else. There was no evidence of any significant resource veins in the rock and despite being on to the Pacific Ring of Fire, the entire island was geologically inert, ruling out the possibility of significant geothermal power.
At present New Sentinel has managed to become an energy independent nation, if only barely, by using a myriad of non-carbon based energy sources. Local industries have managed to generate a small trade surplus with the export of timber products and consumer goods. Trade pacts with the Cetacean Monarchy provide a steady stream of plastics for New Sentinel’s factories, restricting mainland imports to the supply of metals for the city’s small munitions industry. Despite the Monarchy significantly reducing operating costs for their human friends, the island’s GDP is still relatively meager; its export industries employing only a fraction of New Sentinel’s population compared to research, defense, and growing food for the native population.

Neptune Maximum Security Prison: Constructed entirely by human labor (considered the only way it would have been built at all) and a constant source of controversy with the mainland, NMSP is New Sentinel’s co-ed “supervillain” prison. Built in the harbor and suspended above the ocean by three pillars, Neptune was designed from inception to be difficult if not fatally impossible to escape from as each column supports a mechanical track that allows Neptune to be raised or lowered at the warden’s discretion.
In the event of a jailbreak or prison riot, the compound’s mechanical drawbridge is raised up and the building sinks into the ocean. Airlocks and bulkheads connect all the major areas together, allowing areas to be sealed off and opened to the briny waters of the Pacific as needed. In particularly dire situations, the warden or one of his immediate subordinates can give the order to activate “Neptune’s Fury,” flooding the entire building and drown the prisoners. Thankfully, no senior administrator has had to give such an order since the prison was opened…
Security forces for NMSP are similarly “over the top” due to the nature of the criminals they keep locked up. Guards are recruited from the highest caliber of individual the local population can provide and are all equipped with “ASCUBA” military body armor and a considerable arsenal of “less then lethal” weaponry. If the prison faces a large-scale riot or a concentrated attack from the outside, regular security officers can count on the warden’s “Tantrum Dquad.” Armored in amphibious battlesuits and issued menacing shock pikes, the men and women of this particular unit are normally assigned individually to “trouble areas” within the complex, only operating in concert when the situation is extremely dire.

Diplomatic Impressions: By the numbers, the various political groups of Silicon Earth weigh in on their new neighbors.
Environmentalists: “They’ve shown us they know how to live a life that’s in balance with the world around them, so why must they repeatedly compromise with the corporate machine?”
Industrialists: “They’re a game-changer, I’ll give them that much. Those of us in the oil business hate their guts but as far as the rest of us are concerned the jury’s still out on them. Now if only we could get them to deal with us instead of eco-nuts like the Cetaceans more often…
Pro-Registration: “Why won’t they sign the Registration Treaty? The longer they wait and ‘discuss things,’ the more time dangerous vigilantes, criminals, and others have to turn the island into a haven for the unregistered.”
Anti-Registration: “They want the ability to decide for themselves, we have to respect that no matter what their ultimate decision is.”
Artifice: “Yeah, yeah, it’s indeed a great tragedy that they lost their homeworld and it’s terrifying to know the same thing is very likely to happen to us. But you have no idea what it’s like being a metabeing trying to opt out of that cops and robbers garbage, we need the work and they need guys like us to help them step things up. So long as that doesn’t change and they keep launching ad campaigns like ‘Are You Hungry?’ we’ll keep coming.”
Anti-Metas: “The only thing worse then a space alien is a freak-loving space alien. Don’t know why they haven’t shut their doors and kicked out all the cape-wearing mutants yet…”
Cetacean Monarchy: “Their recent past and experiences make them different yet very similar to us, strangers in a world they don’t quite understand. Their goals require them to develop new technologies and broaden their understanding of environmental sciences, developments that so far been to our benefit as well as theirs…”
Criminal Agencies: “A golden opportunity that looks deceptively easy. Not having any real metas of their own makes them appear weak but appearances can be misleading, these furless monkeys not only have prior experience fighting super villains but are clever… very clever indeed; having effectively adopted the Israeli and Japanese battlesuit programs for their own police and military forces. Their island and city would make an excellent safe haven for staging operations in North America, it’s just a matter of cracking their defenses…”