Aristide Station⌗

Aristide Station is part of the Metroplex, a group of settlements in the centre of the Devil’s Hole. Aristide is the biggest station in The Hole and considered to be its unofficial capital — even though that loose confederation of stations has no capital per se. Everyone who thinks of themselves as part of the upper echelons of society lives here or at least maintains a second home on the station or in the surrounding housing projects. Almost every single company and organisation that does business in The Hole has an office on the station. “If you’re not on Aristide, you’re nobody”, a popular saying in The Hole goes.

Aristide Station is named after Aristide Briand.

The Devil’s Hole / The Metroplex⌗

The Devil’s Hole is a group of deep sea trenches in the North Sea. It is located about 200 km east of what was once Dundee, Scotland. The seabed surrounding the formation lies at a depth of between 80 and 90 metres, but the trenches are as deep as 250 m. The trenches run in a north-south direction and are, on average, between 1 and 2 km in width and 20 to 30 km long. The gradient of the trench sides in the Devil’s Hole is up to 10° in places.

The features, which were first charted by HMS Fitzroy, were officially recorded in the Royal Geographical Society’s Geographical Journal in 1931. Historically, fishermen have known about the Devil’s Hole for generations before this, because they have often lost trawl nets on the trenches’ steep sides. It is for this reason that the area took its name.

By 2304, the Devil’s Hole has been populated with a number of independent stations loosely associated in a federated government. This municipality is one of the biggest settlements in the North Sea, covering quite a large area. The largest population centre in “The Hole”, as the area is colloquially known, is the Metroplex, a group of stations that includes Aristide.

The economy in the Devil’s Hole is largely driven by trench mining and sediment farming in the outlying regions. It also includes quite a large boatbuilding industry, a number of manufacturing plants, food processing and a sizeable service sector located throughout the Metroplex.

Humboldt Station⌗

A small station in an outlying region of The Devil’s Hole, named after Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Its economy was mostly based on mining until the deposits in the surrounding trench turned out to be far less profitable than projected. Since then, the station has been in decline. The surviving sectors of the economy are mostly based around the station’s large industrial harbour and are concerned with shipping and shipping-related industries.