Babel Twilight

Babel was named for one of the semi-legendary capitals of ancient humanity, a city of unrivaled splendor, decadence, and corruption. It's also apparently Hebrew for 'confusion' and English for 'incoherent chattering,' all of which describe the Traitor's Capital perfectly.


Sunset over Babel, Capital of the Republic of Shinar and second largest city on the planet in terms of population and area. Though smaller than the Federation capital Galt and about three million shy of its counterpart's population, Babel is the most densely populated city in Fibonacci, holding more than a third of the population of the Republic of Shinar. The densely packed city is covered almost completely in skyscrapers and is inhabited by more 24 million people who reside from penthouses and top-floor shacks to basement apartments and capsule hotels imported from Galt.

Despite the city's fabled wealth and high standard of living, there exists a stark divide between rich and poor. As many as 3 million people are homeless, and another 5 million live in substandard residential areas. Said capsule hotels, a venture brought in by Federationite entrepreneurs, are a step upwards for many of the citizens in the so-called City of Confusion.

The city is known for its tallest building, the House of Administrative Leadership and Public Services (colloquially known as the Administration Ziggurat or "The Big One"), the tallest building in the world and home to both the Shinarian Republican Government (including the reichstag), embassies of the world's nations save for Meridian, and various government, educational, and private lobbies and trade organizations.

The city is a mix of both the neo-Victorian, Palladian, and other revivalist architectural styles favored by its Meridian builders and Art Deco, which was nationalized by the separatist Shinarians. Art deco buildings and themes remain the dominant aesthetic for most of the affluent and newer portions of the city. A riotous "neon-abstract" aesthetic prevails in the underground and lower levels of the city.

Due to crowding, the city has been de facto layered according to social classes. Many of the respective citizens barely have to go up or down their preferred layers due to the city being covered in a maze of elevated and underground footpaths and autobahns. Hardly anything has been done to allay the poverty of the underclasses in the city due to the government's tolerance for inequality, though political organizations like the Shinarian Democratic League and social ones like the Mapotherian Church have called for both more egalitarian policies and have provided poverty relief in many forms.

Likewise, the musical tastes indicate the cultural upbringings of the Shinarian inhabitants. Jazz is the primary musical genre of the upper and middle classes, while the lower middle and underclasses veer toward synthpop and new wave. Babelese music influenced that of the Republic itself, creating a fusion of the two styles that have become very popular in all segments of Babelese and Republican Shinarian society.


Meta Stuff

May need some more work, as I intended it to be completely in silhouette since these things are more like establishing background panels for comic pages rather than full on paintings.  Also, only the top of the buildings can be seen as PS brushes can only do so much on their own. A fuller image will likely be partially hand-drawn.

If you would care to notice, Shinar has an "elevated city" (paths and walkways forming a community where anyone can spend much of their day without touching the ground) and an "underground city." The elevated part was inspired by the many elevated pedestrian walkways in town I used to work in, which connect to multistorey parking lots (which later opened up small restaurants next to the paths) and to malls and skyscrapers. The underground city is common in real life and appears first in Fibonacci in the Galt Catacombs, which is its own city district and, much like Babel, has a distinct culture.

The idea of a stratified metropolis where rich people and poor people live in different floors is taken from many sources, including Coruscant in Star Wars and Metropolis from the eponymous silent film. I'm thinking of adding a gag where the elevated autobahns of Shinar actually empty into elevated skyscraper parking spaces so no one who already lives up even has to drive down. To give an idea of how different the cultures are, the overclass Babelese have a 1920s Great Gastby atmosphere (in addition to Wilhelmine Germany) while the underclass is more of an underground, quasi-cyberpunkish 1980s appearance.