Octant 4 - Apollo (ah-POL-lo)

Apollo strives to be as diverse as possible. Students of similar background tend to knot together, leading to microcosms of specific boroughs and subcultures scattered throughout Apollo's residential districts.

Along with the standard Oracle presence, the University hosts a contingent of campus police, known as Pythons. While Oracle Academy resides in Ares, Pythons are often alumni of the University of Apollo as well. These officers are fully trained and sworn Oracles themselves, but their jurisdiction is restricted to University grounds. They receive additional training in de-escalation, especially when dealing with young, stupid college kids.

Apollo's primary industry is information. Engineers, scientists, and archivists generate new ideas to spread to other octants and record what others learn. University-owned medical complexes are common throughout other octants and even some of the richer boroughs, but the most top-of-the-line facilities reside within the walls of Apollo itself.   The University is also single-handedly in charge of the logistics, management, and record-keeping for Ark explorations. This responsibility has put them in endless conflict with both Zeus and Ares. Zeus has long sought more oversight and involvement in the Ark discovery process, while Ares wants more enforcement power against unauthorized Ark runs and black-market artifact trade within Apollo itself.

Apollo's first priority is to keep its own facilities in good repair. Administrative offices, classrooms, university-owned hospitals, and research labs and equipment sit at the top of this list. By extension, this means that student and teacher residences closer to the center of Apollo's administrative sprawl are kept in the best repair. Apollo’s robust public transit system is its second priority - it consists primarily of elevated trains and streetcars. The further one goes from a university-owned node, the more likely one is to find privately-owned housing and buildings. These are kept in as good repair as the owners can manage or care to bother with. While the Octant has strict rules about resident safety and housing upkeep, its ability to enforce these rules is limited by a resident’s willingness to report wrongdoing.

Boroughs located near Apollo.

Many of the factions that inhabit other octants and boroughs have small chapters in Apollo, official or otherwise. Student clubs are hugely popular and have their own internal rivalries. Even certain colleges within the University of Apollo have friendly rivalries with each other, competing in departmental displays, testing scores, and any other metric they can think of.

What would eventually become the University of Apollo was initially birthed out of the need to keep records. In the earliest days of Olympia’s founding, archivists collected and collated the history of the founding tribes, primarily via oral tradition. Once the Ark was breached and technologies for paper-making and bookbinding were recovered, those traditions were supplemented by burgeoning libraries. Early chroniclers spent decades recording both their histories and every new piece of information they gleaned from the Ark explorations. As more and more people emigrated into Olympia and more and more artifacts and information were unearthed, so, too, did Apollo's population of scholars expand. The octant, originally meant only to be a library complex and repository of Ark discoveries, now stands as a beacon of education and a bastion of memory, keeping the histories of its people and unearthing the histories of the people who came before.

University of Apollo
The University of Apollo is a sprawling complex that takes up most of its octant. Shining laboratories made for the bleeding-edge research of LOSTech stand side by side with concrete library buildings and residential student brownstones. All the amenities necessary for student life and teacher sanity can be found somewhere on its rambling campus - you'll just need a map, a bus pass, and a prayer to the Twins of Hyperborea that you don't get lost on one of its many sidewalks or footpaths.   Paean Tower
A massive carillon rising from the Tower Green, the park at the center of the administrative complex. One of Apollo’s most impressive feats of engineering, built in partnership with Hephaestus. The carillon itself can only be heard for a mile or two; however, Hephaestus engineers have installed a clever network of relay towers across the whole of the octant. While Paean itself is the only proper carillon in the network, the auxiliary bell towers keep the hour in time with their elder sibling. Holiday concerts are often held on the Tower Green. The application process for the carillonneur course is cut-throat competitive.   Hyperborea
The umbrella term for the vast network of interconnected commons, greens, and pocket parks that loop around the octant. The University has mapped out an official walking trail/tour, but local legend claims that one can circumnavigate the entire octant without ever setting foot in the same park twice. The story goes that any student who successfully completes this trial will be granted one wish by the Twin Archers, the mythical spirits that protect the University and its students from harm (though the existence of these spirits has never been confirmed by the University itself).