Echo Sprawl

Overview

Echo Sprawl is a corporate-controlled arcology and one of the last functioning refuges on post-The Blaze Earth. Originally constructed by Citadel Corporation as a hyper-optimized labor extraction facility, it has evolved into a self-contained city-state where survival comes at the cost of freedom. The sprawl represents the ultimate consequence of unchecked corporate power in the wake of humanity's collapse from its zenith during Landfall-530 - Noble Blood.

History

During humanity's golden age, great powers like The Second Lilaris Empire, Starspire, New Ides, and the Mirage Concord flourished under the guidance of the Divinets—AI gods linked to genetically attuned humans. When The Blaze destroyed this civilization, the corporations that built Echo Sprawl filled the power vacuum, transforming their industrial complex into humanity's refuge-turned-prison.

Citadel Corporation initiated the sprawl's construction, with Oki Engineering and Goldworks later buying in to develop their own towers within the complex. What began as competing corporate interests merged into a unified system of control when traditional governance collapsed.

Structure and Stratification

The Penthouses

Above the smogline, the corporate elite inhabit pristine towers with white walls and wellness-retreat aesthetics. Here, natural sunlight still reaches, and the air remains breathable without filtration. The executive levels of Citadel, Oki, and Goldworks towers compete for height and luxury.

The Middle Rings

Working-class apartments form a gray circle of concrete and glass, their windows deliberately angled downward into the slums below: a constant reminder of worse fates. These cramped, colorless units house those maintaining employment in the luxury towers. Residents often prefer their office cubicles to their homes, dreading the daily descent.

The bridges just below these apartments have become notorious suicide spots, as workers crack under the psychological weight of witnessing unattainable luxury daily while returning to their gray existence.

The Shaft (The Slums)

The sprawl's cargo and machinery bays were hastily converted after The Blaze, with makeshift homes now precariously balanced on industrial forklift pallets welded to support beams. This lightless warren houses the majority of Echo Sprawl's population, generations who live and die without seeing natural sunlight.

The acoustics of the turbines create endless sonic assault, while dubious liquids drip from above. Market stalls cling to terraces between megastructures as propaganda drones circle endlessly, their speakers crackling with messages of obedience.

The Turbine System

Four massive turbines once powered Echo Sprawl by channeling water into shafts reaching the upper mantle, instantly vaporizing it for steam power. This system consumed all regional water over decades, creating the vast desert surrounding the sprawl and leaving the turbines operating at minimal capacity. Water scarcity has become another tool of corporate control, with Citadel, Oki, and Goldworks jointly managing what remains.

Life Under Corporate Rule

The three megacorps have eliminated currency, replacing it with labor-for-subsistence contracts. Citizens learn from birth that work is purpose and survival is nobility. The corporations provide shelter, synthetic food, and protection from the wasteland, but only through absolute compliance.

Those who question the system become cautionary tales in fear campaigns. Despite the propaganda, whispers persist of life beyond the sprawl. Trailblazers still vanish into the shadows, slipping through cracks in Echo Sprawl's concrete shell. For now, travel remains technically unrestricted—the corporations confident that their citizens are too broken or terrified to leave.

The Corporate Trinity

Citadel Corporation maintains the sprawl's infrastructure and security systems. Oki Engineering manages the failing turbines and rationed utilities. Goldworks controls food production and distribution. Together, they form an unbreakable monopoly on survival itself, each dependent on the others, yet competing for dominance within their shared domain.

Cultural Decay

Echo Sprawl exists as civilization's hollow echo, where human dignity has been traded for efficiency. The endless cycle of labor and subsistence has created a society where hope itself has become contraband.

With no government to regulate them and no competition to challenge them, the three corporations have achieved the ultimate market monopoly—not just on goods or services, but on existence itself. The sprawl stands as a monument to what happens when profit margins become more important than people, when efficiency trumps empathy, and when the invisible hand of the market is the only hand left to guide humanity.

Yet even in humanity's most perfectly constructed cage, the myth of something better refuses to die completely.

Attribution

Concept and worldbuilding developed in collaboration with the wonderful Antares BT, whom Landfall commissioned for the final Minecraft structure.