Octant 7 - Demeter (dih-MEE-ter)
Without much room to sprawl out, Demeter has had little choice but to go up. The inner corner of the octant is filled with vertical farms, leaving as much of the outer rim as is feasible open for pasture and grazing of farm animals. Any residential apartments/homes are populated by farm families and their most trusted hands. A large number of workers commute in from the boroughs, but especially on the animal husbandry farms, 24/7 proximity to your flock is critical.
Local Culture
Classical stoicism - calmness, wisdom, fortitude. The land is going to do what the land is going to do. New ideas and technologies are not inherently bad or good; they’re greeted with a “trust but verify” skepticism until they have survived the test of multiple years, sometimes even multiple generations.
Demographics
Mixed. Personal biases exist and sometimes run deep enough to lead to conflict, but in general, the work has to get done, and hands are hands.
Defences
Minimal. Livestock rustling isn’t particularly common - there’s nowhere else for it to go. Outright killing of farm animals is a serious offense, but minor crop theft is rarely, if ever, reported to the Oracles. The unwritten creed is that, if a person is desperate enough to steal food from Demeter itself, what they really need is shelter and steady work, not punishment for wanting to eat. Those with a track record of calling authority down on the desperate tend to find themselves ostracized, with less business and less social sway.
Industry & Trade
Demeter exports food and animal products at various levels of refinement - primarily to Aphrodite (for toiletries and textiles) and Dionysus (for conversion from bulk product to foodstuffs). It also exports farming techniques that they've learned to Apollo for further research and documentation.
Demeter and Apollo work together to develop medical techniques to take care of animals, as disease (both animal and plant) can spread quickly though an Octant if not resolved. Gatewardens, Ark Runners, and other Wilds travellers will also occasionally come back with new strains of crops from outside the city to experiment with.
It imports farming technology from Hephaestus and, rarely, unearthed information on techniques from Apollo.
Infrastructure
By necessity, Demeter is one of the most well-plumbed octants. Electricity is more common in the inner quadrant, where water must be pumped upward to feed the vertical farms, but grows far less common wallside. These vertical farms are mostly built in and around the original Olympian prefab towers.
Districts
Boroughs located near Demeter.
Guilds and Factions
Demeter’s major farming and ranching families tend to be insular. They work together by necessity, but friendships and rivalries both run deep roots. In particular, families who embrace new tech to increase farm efficiency and output clash with families who trust the land and the land only.
History
Demeter was one of the first octants constructed in all of Olympia, along with its sibling, Zeus. While the University of Apollo's historians still argue which was truly born before the other, they tend to agree that without a system of laws to unite them and food to feed them, the tribes that would someday raise Olympia would never have been able to support themselves.
Points of interest
The Hanging Gardens
A series of terraced gardens that run along the wall that borders Demeter and Hephaestus and are co-owned by both octants. The herbs and flowers used by Aphrodite craftsmen for bouquets, visual arrangements, perfumes, etc, are cultivated and harvested in these gardens. Their popularity as an inter-octant tourism destination is a reluctantly-accepted evil. Guests are strictly forbidden from interrupting workers or, a rarity for Demeter, from taking anything from the Gardens for themselves.
The Cheeky Goat
A ranch near the outer rim. This ranch specializes in the breeding of horses, goats, and chickens. Its owner runs a shop by the same name in Aphrodite which specializes in artisanal goat’s-milk soaps. The ranch is most well-known for the publication of a regular educational newsletter, in which its owners speak frankly about the struggles of daily life running the ranch and handling animals.
Architecture
Primarily styled in art nouveau and solarpunk.
