• New Trenchtown

A mostly pony-populated city-state SAR of Harmonia located between Chime Pond and the Southern Yore Mountains in the Eastern Lowlands of the Isle of Yore. New Trenchtown was built around the Tower of Chimes, starting as a colony but quickly being planned as the site of the new city in anticipation of the oceans rising and eventually submerging Old Trenchtown under hundreds of meters of water. It was officially founded as New Trenchtown in 3340, on the day when Trenchtown's post-revolutionary history became longer than its pre-revolutionary history.

The economy is approximately based on agriculture of various food and industrial crops (45%), industry (36%), trade (9%) and services (10%).

The Premier of Trenchtown, the head of government, is Cherry Bit (Harmonic Ponyist Party), an earth pony stallion.

New Trenchtown, as an independent city-state, originally directly continued Old Trenchtown's government, with some modifications over time but the basic structure left intact. This worked well enough to last nearly a hundred years, but in the early 35th century, a combination of increasing tensions over the Progressive Ponyist Party's policies, which increasingly many believed outdated, a rising desire to join Harmonia among the populace vs. the government's continued commitment to independence, and economic and diplomatic friction with Harmonia, which had long since fully surrounded New Trenchtown, finally came to a head: the government, having realized it wasn't going to win and so might as well lose peacefully and neatly announced that it would be undergoing major reforms and seeking to join Harmonia. This move did meet with opposition from some citizens still, but by and large it was a positive one.

The modern government is, to simplify, a multiparty parliamentary democracy using proportional representation to allocate seats and having the premier and other ministers chosen by parliament from among their number; regular elections are held every six years with recall referenda available to the populace at any time, if they have enough support.

The head of state is the Guide of the Revolution, whose legal powers are almost entirely ceremonial and who is chosen by the semi-non-governmental Trenchtown Ponyism Council at their will. The person holding the office of Guide of the Revolution is not prohibited from simultaneously holding other offices, however, and may run for parliament as an individual, and legally the populace may vote to install the Guide directly as Premier, bypassing parliament; so far, however, this has not come close to being used, nor have any Guides been selected as Premier in the normal way (Some have, however, been elected to terms in parliament for various parties and appointed to lower ministerial positions, and one election saw a Guide elected individually).

The current Guide of the Revolution is Beryl Belle, a zebra mare.

The Trenchtown Ponyism Council has very few inherent legal powers but owns much of the city and has significant influence as a result. When the government and economy were opened up as part of the treaty with Harmonia and the domestic reforms involved, the TPC was insisted on as a way to "Carry the spirit of Ponyism forward and ensure that the people of Trenchtown will always have its protection and guidance". The same agreements that allowed its existence allow for the confiscation of its assets (The Council must exist, but nothing in the law says that it has to have so much as one bit of property or receive any funding from anyone.) by New Trenchtown's parliament or the relevant authorities of Harmonia if the TPC is judged to be abusing its power or, even with benevolent intentions, interfering in New Trenchtown's elections, but so far no evidence of this has been found, and the TPC remains broadly, though not universally, popular with the citizenry. The TPC may invite any New Trenchtown citizen to join it and may eject members if it deems such necessary, and members may quit at any time; the membership rolls of the TPC are publicly available. It is widely known and not hidden in New Trenchtown that the TPC is de facto run by the city's major changeling hive, which has a long history of working with the government, to the extent of generally being more of an advisory group for it than the other way around, with the non-changeling members of the Council usually deferring to the hive; this is believed to be a major contributor to the TPC's low levels of corruption. The TPC mostly abstains from politics, save for keeping a suitable Guide of the Revolution in office, and concerns itself mostly with the security of New Trenchtown and its people, partly through building defensive facilities but mostly through providing a final safety net so that every citizen of Trenchtown can still get sufficient and not unpleasant nutrition, safe and basically comfortable living space, necessary healthcare, and other such things even if parliament or higher-up levels of Harmonia's government break the market economy.

Each individual adult citizen of New Trenchtown has one vote to cast in the city-state's elections; changeling hives (or equivalent groups) granted citizenship receive one vote per hive (or equivalent group).

In the present day, most of the land area within the SAR's borders has been urbanized; while multiple parks and small gardens, particularly rooftop gardens, exist, little surface land remains available for agriculture. Some farming is done by New Trenchtown citizens outside the SAR's boundaries, but most of it takes place in artificially lighted and climate-controlled underground facilities. New Trenchtown has extensive underground infrastructure, including also a subway system, industrial facilities (again, most of the city's, though many of these are rented out), storehouses, and emergency shelters. The underground portions of the city are mostly owned by the TPC and are most of what the TPC owns, with the predominately residential and commercial structures on the surface being owned by other groups or individuals; the main changeling hive's living areas, for those who don't live with non-changelings on the surface, are also located beneath the city.

CategorySettlements CategoryLocations CategoryPRPG3