National Keep

The National Keep was the most commonly known portion of Dominus Columbia, because it was the portion that existed above ground. A walled district of stark stone and steel construction, it housed the public markets, family residences called Keeps, stone-lined gardens of elm and maple, and the governing halls that directed the course of the entire territory. Heartier metals and thick slabs of hard stone made up the buildings. Decoration, where it existed, was rendered in enduring mediums: stone mosaic works, stone and metal sculptures, and paintings kept out of direct sunlight. A plaque in one of the first gardens read: "Things are kept simple here so that our minds are not cluttered with distractions." Written over many archways at the entrance was the settlement's guiding principle: "In necessary things, unity, in doubtful things, liberty, in all things, kindness."
  To enter, one passed through the Repository of Humanity's Folly, an incredibly long hallway of stone reinforced with iron that served as the primary entrance, exit, and processing area. Bathhouses flanked both sides. Every visitor was required to shower and wash their clothes, a measure that reduced fleas, bedbugs, and other pests while allowing guards to observe what amounted to a strip search without singling anyone out. Unloading goods for cleaning made it easier for the standing military to watch for items warranting closer inspection. After processing, entrants walked the length of the hallway, its walls and ceiling covered in an extensive timeline mural considered the best recorded history assembled for the pre-fall of humanity and the rise of modern Strains. The mural depicted major eras from Before History through the Collapse, the Loss of Humanity, and the Rising period up to the modern day.
  Among the larger complexes within the Keep was the network of four buildings belonging to the Lords of Smithson, arranged in a single line. The smallest building served as the family household for five matriarchs, eight husbands, and twenty-seven children. The three massive public buildings functioned as a museum of pre-fall artifacts. The first contained hundreds of thousands of images and artworks. The second was a circular barracks housing a few hundred highly trained soldiers of the Standing Army, living among art and historic reliquary. The third held non-functioning pre-fall vehicles for land, sea, and air, a collection considered holy ground by Diesel Jock families across the territory. Nearby, the Senatorial Repository stood as a massive building of white stone and white painted lumber, surrounded by elite guards and a floral garden, housing a single great lecture hall where as few as a couple dozen and as many as a few hundred Senators gathered to make decisions.
  Scattered across the landscape of the National Keep were the Federation Complex Gates: small cube buildings of stone banded with reinforced metal, solid on three sides with thick metal gates on the fourth. No windows. No decoration. Each gate was a locking entranceway housing stairs that descended beneath the National Keep into the Complex underground. Guards stood outside each entrance, and a second set of guards opened them from the inside. These gates also housed the ventilation shafts and bellows systems that kept air moving through the tunnels below. The laws posted at every approach were plain and enforced without exception: Psions found attempting entry were executed; violence was forbidden outside designated training areas; theft of research materials was punishable by death; trespassers were killed. Only Senators and those granted explicit access were permitted within.