Some fictional cities are backdrops. Ang City is not one of them.
A city built from necessity
By 2098, Ang City stands as one of the defining metropolises of the rebuilt world — a place shaped as much by the catastrophe that came before it as by the ambitions of whoever held power during each stage of its reconstruction. The city organizes itself around what ROAMERS calls its Five Grids: distinct zones, each carrying its own function, its own character, and its own relationship to power, technology, and survival. the five grids are dividing society into class or working populations classifications.
The Golden Ghetto and top tier of its citizens with government leadership and seats of power. The privileged, aspirational face of Ang City: wealth, status, influence, and proximity to power. They are the governing / elite population: the highest-access tier—leadership, institutional power, wealth, and those closest to the mechanisms controlling Ang City.
Water’s Edge, a residential are dedicated to government officials and families and heads of conclaves. The lifeline of the city…” The waterfront population and infrastructure zone—movement, resources, commerce, and the systems that keep Ang City functioning, with the professional / knowledge population: scientists, technologists, educators, administrators, specialists, and other high-value professional functions supporting the city.
CliffTops, the general productive population: “Luxury meets the sky…” Ang City’s elevated enclave of prestige, exclusivity, and high-status living. the broad working and civic population—the largest part of ordinary Ang City society.
ArchWay Pass — “The district of dreamers and revolutionaries.” A more culturally dynamic population—ideas, independence, unconventional thinking, and the seeds of resistance. In a way they represent the constrained people with diminished status, opportunity, mobility, or System access; increasingly removed from the benefits enjoyed by the upper grids.
Emerald Field — “Nature’s last refuge…” The population associated with Ang City’s remaining connection to nature and a different relationship to the intensely engineered urban environment. They are lower-access population: The workers, working the fields or manufacturing facilities, manning the assembly lines when city Vigils or robotics role does not suffice.
The Underground — they are those who refused the implants, and are considered the marginal / outside population: those at the edge of the official social order—people least protected by or least integrated into the System, where resistance, survival, and alternative social structures become more significant.
Why the Grid structure matters
A city built in five distinct grids isn’t just an interesting piece of urban design — it’s a statement about how 2098’s civilization actually works. Access, safety, and opportunity aren’t distributed evenly across a rebuilt world; they’re structured, deliberately, by whoever designed the grids and whoever controls movement between them. For a story about a young woman discovering how much of her life was shaped by systems she never had a say in, a city literally built out of controlled, structured zones is the perfect physical expression of that same idea. The grids are structured by knowledge and implants derive power and better access.
Where the story actually happens
Much of ROAMERS’ central action plays out across Ang City’s grids — from the Institute’s own facilities to the tunnels and chambers beneath the city where Leane makes a discovery that reshapes part of her character and influence the entire back half of the book. The city isn’t static scenery for these scenes; its structure directly shapes what’s possible in each one. A rescue mission works differently depending on which grid it happens in. A confrontation lands differently depending on whose territory it’s staged in. The Conclaves have determination in each of the grids.
A city with room to grow
Ang City is built with enough depth that it can hold more stories than just ROAMERS’ — which matters, because the Newdawn Saga is only getting started. Future entries in the series return to different grids, different corners of the city, with new characters discovering new pieces of what Ang City actually is beneath its surface.
For readers who love a setting that does real work
If part of what draws you into speculative fiction is a world that feels genuinely built rather than sketched — the kind of dense, functional worldbuilding you find in the strongest science-fiction cities — Ang City 2098 is built to reward that attention.
Five Grids. One city. The world of ROAMERS is waiting.
Author: Dominique Luchart