Nexra - Some Finishing Touches

There were two political divisions of the humex empire – the first division included the island of Nexra itself, the Great Sea Valley, the sea's surrounding plateau, and the eventual annexation of Interlaaken Camp to the east.  The second division included the trail, the outposts and the camps from The Grove to Interlaaken. Within its western portion there were two distinct elevations - Nexra itself, along with an average fifty mile wide plateau surrounding the Great Sea and its Great Sea Valley and rose four-hundred feet above the Great Sea and its valley.  This severe elevation difference presented a serious problem with transportation of goods and humex to and from Nexra from Great Sea Valley locations which number were increasing inexorably. There were a few traversable canyons some hundred miles north of Nexra from the valley, but the time it took for that route to be travelled was simply unacceptable – especially as trade commerce grew between the elevations.

There appeared to be no way to construct a road up the steep side of the mountain that was Nexra because of the conspiration of gravity and the unstable ground on that side of the island. The problem was becoming unbearable when an engineer, in response to a contest, came up with a brilliant approach – a tunnel. The tunnel would zig-zag up to the upper level inside the mountain where the ground was stable and then would reappear some four hundred feet above its mouth to the base of Nexra's urban center.  The tunnel, from start to finish, took the humex some six years to build. It included a hand operated bellows system to supply fresh air to the eight mile long tunnel aided by windmills set to extract poor air out of the system. A small town was built to handle the needs of all the workers and their families. Brick factories were constructed and ran day and night. At its completion, the tunnel was one of the top wonders of the humex empire, along with the 8,500 mile trail and its bridges.

Once the tunnel was completed, a Great Sea port, at the lower base of Nexra was built and the ship building industry came to Nexra, and in time rivaled its commercial contemporary, Prairie Lakes Outpost. The Port of Nexra utilized the town built for the tunnel builders and expanded it, and humex commerce took another giant leap forward.

The final great public works project undertaken by the humex was to build a port solely for ship building on the upper waterway isolating Nexra on its southern shore. The humex had decided long ago not to venture any farther south or west, rather they would concentrate on consolidating their influence over the Great Sea Valley and its accompanying plateau to the north. In early explorations to the south and west, the humex found human tribes increasingly hostile. Now with the next Xran descent slated to arrive on the other side of the planet, the humex decided to build an armada to rescue them. It would be a long and dangerous voyage.