Hogsmeade

From FenWiki
Revision as of 13:31, 11 March 2014 by Robkelk (Talk | contribs) (Neighbourhoods and outlying communities)

(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search
Fenwiki stub.pngThis Fenspace article is a stub. You can help FenWiki by expanding it.


Warning: Work in Progress

Located on 10 Hygiea, in the Main Belt, Hogsmeade is the capital and largest city of The Wizarding World.

History

To be written.

Geography

To be written.

Neighbourhoods and outlying communities

"Embassy Row" is near the Ministry, comprised of Cresswell Place and Mockridge Road. The entire area is surrounded by little islands of supporting populations from the various factions -- these are too small to be properly called "neighbourhoods", as they are often cheek-and-jowl with each other. In some cases only the fact that they are diplomatic staff keeps interfaction fights from breaking out in the streets.

The High Street is where most of the tourist traps, ahem, landmark shops are located: Honeyduke's, Zonko's, Weasley Wizard Wheezes, Madame Puddifoot's, The Three Broomsticks and the Hog's Head Inn, among many others. At one end of the High Street is the Ministry; at the other is Hogsmeade Station, which in addition to a short-run commuter service to Hogwarts also provides a sightseeing loop around Hogsmeade. Hogsmeade doesn't normally get enough tourists to run the sightseeing line continuously; it's essentially a charter service, usually booked in advance. Although on slow days they have been known to roll it out for random visitors who've strolled up to ask about it.

The Hogwarts Express
The Hogwarts Express -- which is the only train on the Hogsmeade/Hogwarts rail system, actually, but it's called that even when it's not doing the commuter run -- looks (and steams) like a traditional steam train, but operates just fine in vacuum. And it's airtight even though it doesn't look it -- some kind of field effect extends a meter or so out on all sides, holding in air and heat, allowing passengers to open windows and stick various body parts out without losing them to decompression or freezing.

How does it do this? Magic, of course.

More to be written: residential districts, a non-touristy business zone, and maybe even an industrial/warehouse area -- all of which, of course, have at least façades built in typical wizarding "Dickens on LSD" fashion.

Cityscape and infrastructure

The city spaceport, Chudley Aerospace Port, is just outside the main dome.

More to be written.

Demographics

To be written.

Local government and politics

To be written.

Education

Hogwarts, the Wizarding World's preeminent educational facility, is just outside Hogsmeade.

The Vesta Institute of Robotics has a small satellite campus at Hogsmeade. This campus researches computer daemon summoning and other technomagical fields, and is considered by the rest of the VIR to be where the crackpots hang out.

Economy

To be written. Needs a mention of Gringotts -- but we need to establish how they dovetail into the greater Fenspace economy (if they do at all -- they may be a completely local bank). Wizarding currency is per the books, which infuriates everyone but the Wizards. Also, galleons are not pure gold; while sufficient gold is available in the Belt to supply a bullion currency, the disparity in buying power between real gold and the fictional galleons made solid-gold coins effectively unusable. (Plus there was the anticipated problem with visitors just taking off with them, causing money supply problems in the long run that Wizard economists didn't want to deal with.) Thus galleons are much smaller than as described in the books and actually something like a 5-karat alloy -- enough gold to be "gold", but not enough to make it worth walking off with them. Gringotts is the mint as well as the bank.

Culture

Hogsmeade is home to three quidditch teams, including the Chudley Cannons.

More to be written.

Interfactional relations

As the Wizarding World is on generally good terms with the Technomage subfaction of the Fivers, it is not surprising that there is a very visible Technomage presence in Hogsmeade, estimated at anywhere from 15% to 25% of the population. However, rather than establishing their own "neighborhood" or district, the Technomages are thoroughly intermixed with the Wizards on all levels: social, economic and even political -- two of the last five mayors of Hogsmeade have been Technomages. The two groups are so thoroughly blended that it is sometimes hard to see where the Wizards end and the Technomages begin, and that's the way they like it. Consequently, there is a blending of their two styles of "magic" -- Technomage-Wizard collaborations in Hogsmeade-based shops and labs are where many of the recent innovations in this field have been born, and outside observers like to note that pretty much the only thing that differentiates them are the "skins" laid over the core functionality.

In addition to the local Technomages, there are of course the requisite populations of other factions orbiting the various embassies located on Cresswell Place and Mockridge Road, near the main Ministry buildings. Compared to the Fiver subfaction, these groups are both rather tiny and very distinct. In general, though, their relations with the population of Hogsmeade tends to be good, especially for those factions who came to the rescue of the Wizards during the Boskone War. Still, nothing is ever perfect; "anti-Muggle" groups have been known to protest in front of some embassies.