OK, so I figure it's world building/ context time. For those of you who don't know me, hi!These are just brief overviews of the new locations I've added in my fic Damn Tourists; you don't need to read them for the story, but the info's here if you're interested. I am working on the next chapter as we speak. As always, please review. Too much? Too little? Too garbled? Thanks!

THE NOX (NOCTURNAL DISTRICT)

THE TRASH HEAP OF TOMORROW

The Nox, or Nocturnal District, to give it its full name, has a short but troubled history characterised by political strife. It is essentially one massive cave underneath Downtown (it is often nicknamed the Down Town), with simulation trees, acting as pillars, reaching down to the floor. Open water pipes dot the cave walls and empty out into a moat ringing the disrtict. The only point of ingress or egress is a single tunnel that branches out to exits in Tundra Town, Sahara Square, Savannah Central, the Medowlands and the Rainforest District.

The most interesting architectural feature of the district is its upsidedown villages, hanging from the ceiling like stalectites. These homes, long abandoned today, were designed to accomodate bats. The simulation tree pillars were not originally intended as housing, but as the districts' population has grown in the last thirty or so years, more and more blocks have been added on top of the apartment buildings at thier bases. The trees are now the structural backbone of a jenga tower of apartments. A now defunct monorail connects each tree in the dead centre of thier trunks. The only way of telling night from day is through a giant mechanical clock face bolted to the wall above the entrance tunnel. it was vandalised in the Wing Riots of 1978 as an act of defiance to City Hall, and has yet to be fixed.

The Nox's 'ceiling' is hidden by a network of piping; this is part of the city's Climate Control Hub, which the disrtict is directly below.

EARLY HISTORY: MONSTERS OF THE NIGHT

The Nox is one of Zootopia's more comparatively modern districts. Unlike the rest of the city, which spread from a watering hole during the early revolutionary period and eventually intersected with what is now Little Rodentia, the Nox was constructed during the early 20th century to accomodate the city's growing population of nocturnal imigrants. The reason for such a massive upsurge in immigration was simple; during the Boom period of the 1920s employers had an extended love affair with this newly emergant workforce, who gladly worked all the ungodly hours day-walking mamals had to be coerced into putting up with. Thus employers began doing all they could to attract them. The clock previously mentioned was even built with special alarms for when shifts started and ended to 'encourage' workers.

Many mammals did not apreciate these little-seen creatures of the night waltzing in and taking what they saw as thier jobs. This, combined with the Nocturnals' 'shifty' tendancy to keep to the shadows, and the frankly odd appearance of many of them, led to tension between Nox residents and the rest of Zootopia.

Predators took advantage of the district's natural seclusion and plethora of hidey-holes, using it as a base for the Uncollared movement. Indeed, it was in the dark alleys of the Nox that the first successsful amateur collar removals took place. As a result the Nox was the site of a kind of Cold War between the ZPD and the Uncollared movement; the prior swamping the district with extra patrols and even building two new (now abandoned) precincts - 12a and 12b - just for the district. Although niether the Nocturnals, nor the Uncollared movement, ever did anything the validate a connection between them (in fact the violent crimes its more extreme, anarchist factions committed made the Uncollared movement unpopular in the Nox), rumors persisted, giving Zootopia's prey community another reason to mistrust the disrict. Some outspoken individuals even suggested the Nocturnal workers were 'scouts', and precursors to an anti-prey revolution.

Crime figures of the time show a spike in workplace disturbances during evening shift changes, as the day shifts clashed with the night. The ZPD, moral credibility already in tatters after the corruption of the bootlegging era, spared the Nocturnals little sympathy. By 1935, the middle of the Great Depression (which the Nox was relatively unaffected by, provoking more resentment), the ZPD had a special hotline for Nox-related incidents. Many officers filed official complaints about the extended shifts and unpaid overtime employed to fight the problem.

WW2

During the Second World War, the Nocturnals did thier country proud. Many went to work at munitions factories, adopting the now famous 'Tag-Team' tecnique while working with day-walkers: As the demand for weapons got worse, workers created improvised barracks in the factories. Each day-walker was allocated a nocturnal partner. During week long 'bullet rushes' the workers slept in the factories. The system was for the daywalker to complete his shift, then to wake his nocturnal partner from the barrcks so he could be replaced. They alternated sleeping and working like so. This extended, close-quarters interaction broke down many barriers, and is largely credited with the cooling of racial tension between the two groups after the war ended.

The Nocturnals who went to fight were not placed in the standard army. Rather, they became members of the airforce (mainly bats) or were assigned to special branch of black ops. Nocturnals gained a reputation as being sneaky and dishonest; many soldiers didn't approve of the 'coward's' tactics the black ops employed, and the Nocturnals' segregation from the regular ranks gave them no opportunity to argue the point. After the war many of the Black ops members were recognised with honours and medals, but the general mood amongst them was negative. Many hated that they'd been forced to do the government's 'dirty work' instead of being honest soldiers because of thier species.

PARTY ALL NIGHT MEANS AS LONG AS YOU WANT

After the war, the Nox experienced an economic Boom and a burst of popularity as a nightlife hotspot. Collars finally becoming outlawed in the late 1940s dissolved the pred/prey tension too, though we know now some of the more violent gangs only went into a state of hybernation. As a result of this apparent peace, auxilliary precint 12a was shut down to releave stress on ZPD mammalpower.

Zootopians could finally explore and get to know this part of the city in peace. Here was a place where partying all night long meant as long as you wanted, with a population that now provoked more curiosity than hatered. The sexual revolution of the 1960s bolstered this popularity; to the rebellious rock-n'-roll generation the Nox, with its natural seclusion and air of mystery, was a gift they cherished. This may have been when the seeds of the Nox's infamous sex trade were sown, by the officially 'dormant' gangs, to tempt this new, untouched audience.

I PREDICT A RIOT

No exact cause of the now infamous 1978 Wing Riots has been found, but we can identify several contributory factors. The explosion of bird-centred gang violence in Brazil made headlines worldwide, and this, combined with the penguins essentially forcing settlers out of the North Pole for environmental reasons, rekindled predjudices against winged creatiures. Unfortunately, a large portion of the Nox's population were bats.

Bats had always recived the worst of Nocturnal victimisation; at the time of the Nox's construction the Avaries of Brazil were half believed fantasies for most Zootopians, and the Penguin colonies at the North Pole had only been discovered by the Western world at the turn of the last century. This meant the bats (the largest group of nocturnals) were the first winged creatures many Zootopians had met (birds didn't start immigrating to Zootopia until the 1970s). This, combined with bats' prominence as monsters in the 19th century literature many citizens were read as kits, leant them a demonic reputation. The bats were caught up in the resentment against the newly arriving birds in the 70s, who were fleeing the violence in Rio, because of thier wings.

The second reason for the Wing Riots was a war veteran called Lasirus Wayne, still bitter about his treatment during the war, A respected figure in the community because of his heroism, Wayne galvinised the bats and pushed for active protest against this new wave of discrimination. Nearly a thousand bats gathered on the steps of ZPD precinct 12b. The ZPD's attempts to molify the crowd failed, and they were forced to use force. Unbeknownst to the population of the Nox, then-Mayor Groalar had comissioned an ultrasonic riot supression weapon tailored specifically to fight the massive bat population. Unfortunately the officers had never used the weapon before, and instead of incapacitating the bats, the ultrasonic pulses whipped them into a blind fury. Imagine one thousand bats swarming a building at once; windows imploded under the sheer weight of bodies. The police, unused to fighting flying emenies, were ill-equipped to fight back. The subsequent skirmish lasted almost an hour, with police reinforcements being called in and many land-dwelling Nocturnals joining the bats' fight against them. The riot spread, and by the end of the night an offical state of emergency was declared.

The fallout of the Wing Riots was catastrophic and Mayor Gloalar faced a public inquiry about authorising the creation of the ultrasonic weapon without notifying the public. Today the trial is considered a mockery of the justice system; Groalar got off scott free and even managed to convince the jury that the weapon, and other, further measures, were absolutely necessary by using the riots as evidence.

Meanwhile, in the Nox things were going from bad to worse. The 'hybernating' predator based gangs saw the perfect opportunity to strike, using the chaos in the aftermath of the riots to try and sieze power. Thus began a bloody gang war. Some argue this is the same war that simmers under the surface today, and it may well be true; since the early 1980s there have been no real times of peace in the Nox, the fighting just ebs and flows like the tide. Occasionally there will be a quiet moment, only for things to flame up again, worse than before.

The bats, dismayed to hear Groalar was victorious, took the hint they weren't wanted and abandoned Zootopia for greener pastures. To put that into perspective, almost 40% of the district's poulation abandoned it within a week. Unsurprisingly, its economy crashed.

ITS OWN BEAST

Precinct 12b remains derilict and abandoned to this day; ZPD power is centred in Precinct 12, located not far from the exit tunnel. The cops of Precinct 12 have a reputation for being dirty and overzealous, and rumors circle about possible 'agreements' between the Precinct and several powerful gangs, but the mayors following Groalar have learnt to leave them alone. As the saying goes, the Nox is its own beast.

Today the Nox serves as a refuge for those who have nowhere else to go, and its population consists mainly of the homeless and unemployed, relying on state benifits and whatever they can scrounge to get by. The Nox is a last resort; you can find shelter there, but going down is generally recognised as a one-way trip; employers don't care for those who have spent time in the 'Trash Heap of Tomorrow'.

The sex trade thrives as always, and the Nox has become a kind of safe-haven for the odd and the shunned of the city above. Interspecies bars outnumber the regular kind three to one down there, and many couples risk the dangers to be free in public for a while. Some, especially the young and foolish who don't now any better, see visiting the Nox as a cheap thrill. They do not understand the hold the gangs have over every aspect of life there; protection rackets and drug trafficking abound.

The Nox has no fixed climate; because it lies directly below the main Climate Control Hub a disorienting blend of Zootopia's biomes comes through. It can start one day burning hot as in Sahara Square, and end it so cold the moisture running off the stalegtites freezes solid. Originally the climate was regulated by the Nox's own dedicated system, but with no-one to maintain it it broke down years ago.