The City of Midlothian (colloquially “Midlothian”) is the southernmost city on the planet Republic, located in Sector 00 South at 64°48′S 68°18′W. It is populated by approximately 800,000 inhabitants; making it the smallest of Republic’s 149 cities and the only settlement of less than 1,000,000 persons to qualify as a city. It is the only urban center in Sector 00 South.
The City of Midlothian is a center for energy production and climate modification in the planet’s southern hemisphere; harvesting geothermal energy and interior gases from the planet’s interior. It is also the location of a large Ministry of Defense facility and a high security confinement and rehabilitation facility operated by the Ministry of Public Order.
The City of Midlothian is also reputedly a place of exile for citizens of Republic who have failed in their societal obligations. While it is no longer the official policy of the Government of Republic to exile people to Midlothian, citizens will very often relocate to that city voluntarily after receiving civil penalties or state demerits. The City of Midlothian was the original home of Matthew and Kayliegh Driver, whose parents – descendants of a group of settlers who left Sapphire roughly a century after that world and Republic had resumed contact – chose self-exile to Midlothian because of their father’s involvement with the development of a faulty medical device.
Most of the city is built underground, tunneled into the rock face of the Grand Southern Escarpment, similar in some respects to the city of Mountain Home on the planet Rainier III, but carved into the mountain rather than out of it. Like Mountain Home, the city was built into the rock to protect its inhabitants from climate extremes. At Midlothian’s latitude, the temperature can drop to the point where the atmosphere liquefies. More common are storms of carbon-dioxide ice. Like most of Republic, Midlothian is under perpetual cloud cover, but due to atmospheric conditions and the extreme latitude, the city can go through periods of perpetual darkness lasting for tens of days.
While some structures have been constructed above ground in the last two centuries, most of the city exists as tunnels and chambers that stretch under the TransAustralArctic Plateau for hundreds of kilometers. The city is connected directly to three larger southern cities (City of Determination, City of Vigilance, City of Endurance) through long tunnels that stretch for thousands of kilometers above and below the planet’s surface; providing MagLev transportation connections and pipelines for the transmission of chemicals and energy. These networks branch out from the three cities to other cities across the Southeast Quadrant. The City is also connected to a network of Climate Modification Towers as part of Republic’s ongoing terraforming efforts. (Paradoxically, the processes that have moderated Republic’s climate in the mid-latitudes have caused even more extreme climate events in the southern polar region.)
History[]
As with most of Republic’s cities, the City of Midlothian began as an Extraction Station during the Commonwealth Era. It was established by a commercial entity known as the Midlothian Consortium as Outpost MC-17 in the 49th Solar Century. Deposits of diamond and other minerals in the area were exploited for commercial and industrial use. Because of its remote location, the Midlothian Outpost was equipped to be self-sustaining; with geothermal heat extractors, starship-quality life support systems, and hydroponic food production facilities.
At the time of the collapse of the Human Galactic Commonwealth in the 54th Solar Century, there were an estimated 6,600 people living in the MC-17 outpost. Its remoteness and isolation allowed it to remain outside of the Process of Unification, though it was loosely affiliated with the Southern Constellation; a loose confederation of outposts in the remote regions of the planet’s southern hemisphere. When the Unified Republic Government began reordering the planet’s population centers in the 63rd Republic Century, Midlothian was slated to receive its new name, City of Geothermal Energy Production.
While this was the official name for nearly 200 years, it was never embraced by the city’s inhabitants. In APR 6385 the name was officially changed to City of Midlothian in respect to its history. In the period APR 6100 – 6400, the Unified Government of Republic established rehabilitation facilities in and around Midlothian for the re-education and redirection of individuals identified as hazardous to public safety and order or otherwise anti-social. Many of these individuals and their families chose to remain in the City of Midlothian following the completion of their rehabilitation processes. The city grew from 11,000 inhabitants at the start of APR 6000 to over half a million inhabitants by APR 6400. Most of the facilities were repurposed under the Reform Governments of the 66th Century APR. The Ministry of Public Order maintains one major rehabilitation city in the City of Midlothian, colloquially known as Facility Zed, for the most incorrigible of the planet’s anti-social elements.
The city experienced a new wave of growth beginning around APR 6600 when new technology coupled with new efforts to terraform the climate of Republic made the city’s proximity to sources of geothermal energy and the sub-tectonic resources of the Southern Volcanic Region highly valuable. Much of the new technology was developed in cooperation with enterprises of the planet Sapphire, which resulted in an influx of Sapphirean expatriates, numbering some 16,000. The presence of Sapphireans influenced the development of above-ground structures built on the plateau and plain adjacent to the face of the cliff into which the city had been built. During the late 6600’s, new transport tunnels were built to connect Midlothian to other cities; helping to ease the city’s isolation.
Since the founding of the New Galactic Commonwealth, Midlothian has continued to prosper and has become a galactic center of expertise for its knowledge of geothermal processes and tectonic resource development. It also services remote climate modification and resource extraction facilities throughout Sector 00 South. It has become a sister city to both Mountain Home (Rainier III) and Volt (Loki). The city is also the location of the Southeast Quadrant Tertiary Command Base of the Ministry of Defense, which hosts a detachment of the Republic Defense Forces charged with training, search and rescue, logistical support, and planetary defense. The detachment services the orbital monitoring and communication relay station at the planet’s southern pole.
City Government[]
Midlothian is governed by an elected municipal council of 40 officials elected at-large, led by a Chief Administrator elected at large. As the seat of Government for Sector 00 South, the city also hosts the Sectorial Assembly (80 legislators elected at-large) and the Sector Administrative Council (20 Administrators elected at-large).
Until 6520, Sector 00 South was administrated by a board appointed by the central planetary government. Under a reform measure, the Sector was allocated seats in the Parliamentary Assembly and Senate. Subsequently, the Sector has always been represented in each house of the Republic planetary government. As virtually the entire population of Sector 00 South resides in Midlothian, the sector’s entire delegation proceeds from the city.