Davistown

Davistown is a Columbian pioneer platform.

Background

Davistown was once an ordinary mining platform that usually roamed through the forest belts of Eastern Columbia. Its economy relied majorly on the local iron mine, which powered the platform's energy tower, thereby providing heat to its residents during the harsh winter seasons.^[1]^[2] However, similar to other government-sponsored pioneer plates within the state like Deadhorse and Bayswood, Davistown had yet to meet the requirements to be considered a Nomadic City.^[3]^[4]

Things began to go downhill when due to an explosion on the Originium energy plant, the Davistown platform became stranded in the middle of the wilderness. With its main industry paralyzed, Davistown declared bankruptcy, causing all basic services —including schools and law enforcement— to shut down, leaving all residents owing massive sums of money to the corrupt Bank of Davistown.^[5]^[6]^[7] Due to the absence of police officers and judges, crime rates within the residential area became rampant. Furthermore, during last year's bankruptcy liquidation, the municipal government began to cut down most of its departments, and fire the majority of its civil officers. But that wasn't enough to pay off their massive debts, so all remaining government buildings had to be auctioned as well. After the mayor ran away from the plate, all that remained of the local government was his secretary, and a few temporary employees working in the bank's garage for a living.^[5] At the same time, residents had to depend on the caravan that stopped near Davistown every two months to exchange goods, usually using defunct industrial equipment.^[8]

In order to take care of the residents' ever increasing debts, the Bank of Davistown has been offering money loans while at the same time exploiting their dire economic situation, forcing them to abandon their homes and become frontier pioneers, even hiring outlaws and mercenaries as "debt collectors". Meanwhile, the state government already began to figure out how to "dispose" Davistown and other pioneer plates within the state, by allowing megacorporations to be in charge of the plates' redevelopment plans through a laissez-faire relationship, including the implementation of policies such as additional investment, tax exemptions, school admission discounts, and low-interest loans. This has caused a general discontent amongst the residents.^[3] Under request of the Bank of Davistown's president and manager, Blacksteel was tasked to repair the plate so it can continue with its original route. Then, Fort Barron will tow it to the nearest nomadic city for merging and salvaging.^[2]^[7]

In the end, Davistown was completely decommissioned, with all of its remaining residents either moving to other cities, or being transferred to a pioneering zone. On other other hand, Blacksteel has plans to retrofit the plate into a mobile training facility for its operators.^[9]^[10]

Notable residents

The unnamed manager of Davistown's bank who exploits the poor by indebting them with loans, yearning that the debt will soon drive them to poverty and expel them to the pioneers so that she could gentrify Davistown under the state government's order.