>>5669955Following the Lunar Accord of 2039, derisively termed the "Lunar Rabbit Preserve Act" by its detractors, settlement and development of the earthward surface of the Moon was banned in order to preserve the Moon's appearance as a monument of global human heritage. Only the fledgling port of New Zarahemla, which due to the Moon's libration occasionally "disappeared" to its far-side (and therefore not falling within the technical definition of a near-side settlement), was permitted to remain. By 2120, this small religious colony has grown into the largest and most diverse settlement on the Moon, holding sway over many of the lesser colonies peppering the dark side. It is governed as a condominium between the UN Space Authority, various industrial factors, and the Mormocatholic Patriarch of Luna. From orbit, the city seems to be a strange jumble of shipyards, warehouses, and towering temple-basilicas -- but underneath this all is a sprawling vacuum-sealed city carved into the lunar regolith beneath.
Though it survived the UN's Lunar Accords on a mere technicality, New Zarahemla has ironically now become one of the few places where the UN still retains some of its old authority. Even so, real power here is brokered between the Patriarchate and the lunar-industrial syndicates. From the dominance of this city in the industry of solar travel and exploitation, the character of space exploration has become one of both balance and conflict between these two groups: the transhumanist spiritualism of the Patriarchate on one hand, and the materialist singularitarianism of the syndicates on the other.
The city has not been without conflict. The Memetic Plague of 2073 (which is estimated to have wiped out up to 13% of the cybernetically-augmented population at the time) is believed to have been originally developed by the lunar syndicates as a tool of industrial espionage before it mutated and escaped containment, while the ostensibly spontaneous Lagrange-Point Crusade is well-known to have been spurred on by the rhetoric of the previous Patriarch of Luna. Regardless of such scandals New Zarahemla remains the keystone of humanity's hope of expanding into the stars, citizens and corporations from nearly every nation on earth crowding its bustling corridors, while its orbital warehouses direct a controlling share of extraterrestrial commerce.
Rumors abound of research facilities deep under the surface of the Moon: singulitarianist corporations devise molecular machines to convert living flesh into compliant circuit; Patriarchate priests attempt to decode the hidden name of God, guided by the gestalt digital mind termed the "Communion of Saints"; and heretics who believe the transhumanism of the Mormocatholic church doesn't go far enough abduct rabble off the street, to be thrown into the monstrous vats in which they grow the beautiful blasphemies they call "angels".
