Talaris is “a luminous city-state” on an island in the eastern South China Sea, west of Palawan but still on the Palawan continental shelf. Its “skyline is a crown of neon and glass pressed between steep tropical mountains and an engineered deep-water harbor.”
Geography
The island covers roughly 380 to 400 km², about a quarter the size of Oʻahu, running some 35 to 40 km north to south and 10 to 12 km wide. It sits around 90 km west of Palawan and 600 km south-southwest of Manila, the exposed peak of the Talaris Ridge on the Palawan block, with a central mountain spine (“the Spine”) crowned by Mount Auron. The climate is tropical monsoon, and hazards include typhoons, landslides, and earthquakes.
History
Talaris began as a US-Philippine “special zone” under the Talaris Joint Development Compact (TJDC) in 1973, during the Marcos era. Marcos was relocated there in 1986, in what became known as the “Golden Cage Deal.” In the 1990s it became the Autonomous City-State of Talaris under the Talaris Basic Law, with US-guaranteed defense. Its “hyper-liberal economic system” of near-zero corporate taxes, banking secrecy, and fast-track R&D approvals is the environment that let Foxite and Varyon technology deploy quickly with weak safety oversight.
Powered by PWRCORE-1 and governed in part by Vulpine Dynamics, its dense core is The JD Strip.