Size: Medium
Population Capacity: Heavy, purely because of the large amount of development.
Environment: About 10% land mass, covered with cities and parks. Large underwater networks of robotic farms and mining installations. Cities are standard skyscraper-jungles, often with green areas on the roofs of buildings. Very well-developed transportation network of elevated highways and monorails. Climate is mediterranean near the equator, and north-sea-ish closer to the poles.
Capital City: The Capitol is located on a largish island known simply as "The Capitol" that (like most) is covered completely with construction of some sort.
Notable Planetary Structures: Six Space Elevators that lead to huge space-city-dockyards, on which a great deal of manufacture and trade happens. The dockyard cities are in many ways self-sufficient, it would be impractical to ferry food supplies up the elevator when so much other traffic exists. The elevators themselves are actually quite thick, a cluster of cords and tubes and shafts that can transport a great deal of tonnage. The length of each elevator is protected by shield-nodes and point-defense networks.
Notable Local Organizations: The Capitol contains the government of the Realm. The Realm is primarily capitalistic, so there are no real dominant organizations to speak of, just various corporate headquarters and political organizations.
Notable Satellites: Two moons of minor size that are generally uninhabitable and contain only small mining colonies. The moons are partially responsible for the unpredictable and violent tidal waves. There is usually a sizeable fleet positioned around Zaan for protection; you might say that Zaan is a rallying point around which ships that have nothing better to do gather.
Other: The skyscrapers on Zaan are particularly strong, due to their exposure to the ocean, which frequently sends in massive tidal waves that wash over even large islands. The lower levels of said buildings are generally windowless and reinforced, with concrete buttresses. The upper levels have windows but are still very sturdily constructed to withstand impact of water, and are designed to be sealed easily. Only the uppermost 30% of any given skyscraper fits the traditional mold, with wraparound glass windows and such. When tidal waves come in, the populace is garrisoned inside the various buildings as the wall of water crashes through, and then subsides back into the sea.
All cities on Zaan also have large and well-developed underground systems of tunnels and robotic farms and power generators and manufacturing plants. Basically, the people live in the skyscrapers because of the view and the fresh air, while most of the vital functions of the city are performed underground. Because of the tidal waves, the skyscrapers are very tough, and because of the skyscrapers, the underground systems are especially reinforced, in fact the underground systems are divided into many sections that can be sealed off in the event that water leaks down into the underground. This necessitates renewable air supplies. Though no one planned it that way, the result is that Zaan cities are exeptionally well prepared for nuclear attacks.
The Capitol is a large underground bunker-like structure that can resist even a direct thermonuclear hit. The legislature is trapped inside and put under constant surveillance, and visitors/lobbyists/defendants are allowed in, but only after a thorough search via electronic body scanners. The Capitol is located on a largish island near the equator that also houses one of the Elevators. That particular island is particularly well built-up.
Floating Cities: There are various floating cities that navigate the oceans of Zaan. They are the result of thousands of individual homes or firms that each own a small hexagonal houseboat-thing, or a flotilla of them. They can all be connected into a huge hexagonal grid that can float as one mass, or they can each separate and go their own way. Each hexagon has some form of propulsion, usually a grav-generator that, when called to do so, can lift the entire structure out of the water and over top of the others. This helps when tidal waves form, because the whole city can "hop" over the wave, and also it facilitates development of said city, because dysfunctional plots of real-estate can be easily sold and transferred to a new owner.
This works very well with the whole free-enterprise system on Zaan. When a wave comes, all the individual hexes work their generators to fly above it. Anyone who is not "pulling their weight" so to speak, will simply be detatched by his immediate neighbors and allowed to fall.
Property values are not really a problem because all property on these cities are mobile. There is no need for zoning ordinances or anything like that.
