College Freshfox

Story by Aries_Hausdorff on SoFurry

Aries_Hausdorff, Arctic Fox, Canine, Dalmatian, Dalminatrix, Faction Asgard, Fox, Welcome to Valhalla, White Fox, Wtv, habitat

#21 of Asgard United Habitats

Part 1 contains the actual shortstory, part 2 contains information about the locality.

Commission for Slushiefoxxx at ukfur.org

The arctic fox Slushie arrives for his college education in New Heidelberg and gets a warm welcome he did not expect.

####

Welcome to Valhalla - Shortstories Series

College Freshfox

Made for Slushiefoxxx @ ukfur.org

written by Aries Hausdorff @ FurAffinity

Contents

Arrival in New Heidelberg 3

Dalmatian professional welcome 3

The Fraternity Mistress 4

Clothing rules 4

Dalminatrix 5

Arrival in New Heidelberg, for real 6

Ressources for the curious 8

New Heidelberg 8

New Heidelberg, the AC 9

New Heidelberg, the society 9

New Heidelberg, the place 10

The Habitat Section 10

The Technical Section 11

The Hangars 11

The Power Deck 11

The Upper Shell, The Reef 12

The Upper Shell, The Ressource Storage 12

Visual References 12

Overall impression 12

City along the rim 12

The light industries and commerce districts heart 12

The River-Ring 12

The forests of the lower bowl 12

Markers / Signs 13

Forest Railroad 13

Inter-Segment Tram 13

Tunnel-Gates 13

Arrival in New Heidelberg

Slush, or Slushiefoxxx, as his friends called him, had arrived late at night.

Or the early morning, 5:00 am. It always was a point of view.

There had been, as he had been told to expect, a helpful team of golden retriever ladies at the

passenger terminal. They had checked his credentials and then handed him a small folded flyer.

A few pleasantries were exchanged, ones shiny fur was commented favourably upon and then he left the terminal.

His claws made not much noise on the soft flooring as he followed the flyers guidance through the static part of New Heidelberg.

When he arrived at the entrance to the central lift room, there was a lone figure leaning beside the cavernous lift and its smaller brethren.

A dalmatian female.

She wore a hip-wide poncho held in place around her waist by a wide belt.

A bulky dataslate was hooked to its side and a small backpack hung from it over her buttocks.

Dalmatian professional welcome

"Hello! Are you Slush Fox?" the dalmatian female asked, putting on cute spectacles and lifting up the dataslate, reading from it.

"Yes, I am! Or Slushie. And you're...?" Slushiefoxx was amazed to see a canine actually smaller than himself.

"Katharina Moskva. I'm your dorm and fraternity mistress."

"Ahh! So you're the liason that the mail said would introduce me?" She nodded.

"That's a great pleasure!"

She offered her paw and he took and shook it heartily.

She huffed amiably and together they entered one of the smaller personnel lifts.

A white arrow appeared on the ceiling and signs along the wall lit up:

"Hold on to rails during transfer."

Below a counter ran, counting down from 45 seconds, whilst the lift moved upwards and sidewards, turning slightly.

Katharina stood with her back to the padded wall, one hand on the recessed handrail, the other holding the dataslate.

"You've never been in New Heidelberg so far?" she inquired, reading the green text on the slates display.

Slushiefoxx shook his head: "It's actually my first time outside of my native habitat.

Aside of, you know, basic training in how to put on an emergency suit and going side.

And a few tours outside in vehicles to learn about the stars and such during school."

The lift gave a slight jolt. Slushie felt pressed into the padding for a moment before another

lurch gave him the feel of rising gravity in the downward direction.

"We transferred to the bowl," Katharina commented and released the handrail when the arrow on the ceiling and the text on the wall vanished.

The Fraternity Mistress

Her tail wagged and she hooked the slate back to her broad belt, then stepped close to Slushiefoxx:

"You read the letter from the fraternity?"

The arctic fox nodded.

"That you'd have to do what the fraternity Mistress asks of you on the first day?"

Again, Slushie nodded.

His dad had told him that New Heidelberg fraternities prided themselves with their devotion to their mistresses.

Well, Katharina was quite the sight for a short furred canine, so that should be easy.

"Gooooood," Katharina purred like a feline and then reached into her small backpack, pulling a cloth bag from it:

"Get out of your loincloth. we're all furred here and it'll be more than warm enough. This is not an arctic habitat.

Also," she chuckled," you don't want to hide the view of that luxurious fur of yours from all your new friends, don't you?"

Clothing rules

Slushie thought a moment, but the suggestion made sense. He had seriously forgotten to check the local season and hadn't clipped his fur.

Only when the dalmy snagged his loincloth did the thought occur to him that his overall body temperature would not really be affected by a mere loincloth.

When he lifted his hand to state the result of his train of thought, the dalmatian was already pulling off her poncho.

Whilst she wasn't nude underneath, Slushies mind put the idea of stating the uselessness of undoing his loincloth into a little used corner in his mind and soon forgot about it.

Shimmering pearlescent white rubber shaped the dalmys waist and pushed her bosom up and forward.

Like if they were staring at him and demanding his attention.

Full attention!

Dalminatrix

Her knee pressed to his groin, rubbing gently.

"You see, we don't have much rules regarding clothes outside of lessons and labwork.

And isn't that a good thing?"

"hrmmblyeeees." Slushie gulped, but then regained his cool. Bold girls he knew!

"When you're the fraternity mistress, does that mean you are the mistress... for the whole fraternity?"

"Ahwww, shucks, nooo!" she laughed and gave her knee just a little bit more pressure toward his groin.

"I'm just one of the students nearly finished with my studies to be come a dalminatrix..."

Slushies heart made a jump! Dalminatrixes were the doggygirls - literally mostly of dalmatian stock - that learned all the secrets of pleasure combined with good deals of psychology and medicine.

On the ceiling a circle of lights went on, and in a steady rythm the lights flicked off in a countdown to the destination point.

"Can I invite you to a drink perhaps? I heard they have great beer here in Heidelbear..."

"Heidelberg, like mountain," she corrected him, and then added "when you would turn around for a moment, well, yes!"

Slushie beamed and turned around.

This was easier than expected! Already on his first day he had a date with a hot chick!

Then, things went slightly different from what he had expected.

The dalmygirls slender fingers slipped through between his legs and grabbed his ballsack, pulling it through between his legs.

In a first reflex to avoid pain, the arctic fox bent down.

Then he yelped, for some smooth cold metal grabbed his ballsacks base firmly instead of the warm fingers of the dalmatian.

He wanted to stand up and turn around to ask her for her reasons to touch him like that.

However, when his torso rose, his ballsack was painfully pulled backward and he felt metal press against the back of his upper tighs.

Trying to stand up hurt, it was like somebody was pulling his balls down forcefully.

His tail curled between his legs, but when she produced a a riding crop from between her breasts, he learned that his tail offered no protection.

She easily slipped behind him again and let the crop dance over his trapped balls:

"Eyes Ahead!" she huffed. And the pain of the crops dance yielded no discussion.

The door opened and the dalmy easily jumped upon his back, a riding crop in her hand.

And then, less tha nan eyeblink later, she slapped his pulled-back ballsack with a riding crop:

"Wohoo my pony, hop, hop!"

Her legs were wrapped around his waist and her left arm was slung around his neck.

Whenever he tried to reach for her, the crop descended painfully on his nuts.

"Now, my cuddly one, carry your mistress to her watering hole. And when you do good and make me proud, I'll invite you for a drink."

Slushie carefully stepped out of the lift, and into a warm sunrise.

The lift had deposited them in the gatehouse of a wide bridge crossing a sluggish river.

The sun, just a projection on the haitats walls, but still a damn fine effect, rose over the horizon.

Slushie wanted to protest, but light taps to where it hurt made him go quiet.

He followed her guidance, carrying her over the bridge into the city beyond.

Arrival in New Heidelberg, for real

"Oh shit," he mumbled.

He was proud of his strength. Not many foxes were strong enough to carry a canine on their back.

But somehow, he could have done without this showing of his strength.

Again, the crop came down and his ears wilted back.

His hindpaws stepped of the bridge and into the township proper.

In a way, Katharina had told the truth: Clothes were highly optional.

None of the huskies or snowleopards wore anything beyond a loincloth, the thin furred dalmatians wore frilly laceworks.

The few humans he saw were literally overdressed with shorts and t-shirts.

Her left hand never slipped from around his neck, though her hand settled on his chestfur and ruffled it:

"Dear students, I bring you a new freshman, the freshfox Slushiefoxx!"

Slushie winced and closed his eyes, his ears folding backward against his head.

In case anyone on the riverside road had so far not been aware of him, well, now they were.

He panted, carrying the lithe canine was harder than he wanted to admit to himself.

"Look at his shiny fangs, his rich for and just wait until we can inspect his genitals in all their beauty this weekend!"

Katharina happily barked. The females along the road barked, yipped, whinnied and purred.

A big number of the males made knowing grimaces and chuckled, showing him the "Thumbs Up" sign the humans had brought along.

Ressources for the curious

You like the basic location? You would like to know more about it?

You've looked for a place to place your canine, vulpine, feline, human or equine ( 99% Zebra ) character in, as a normal student or university personnel?

In a setting combining almost medieval townships and sprawling forests with with a moonbased, subsurface spacestation?

In a setting with space technology like we have these days, maybe a decade advanced, but in many cases actually even more primitive, yet, too, with artificial consciousnesses, ACs, that think of themselves as motherly beings in the shape of multi-kilometer sized tincans?

Well, then be welcome to read on and learn about the place of this shortstory:

The space habitat „New Heidelberg" on the moon Asgard, which circles the planet Midgard, which in turn circles the sun Tau Ceti. New Heidelberg is a habitat who's controlling AC is very much into learning and education. As such, it came to be the most important university amongst the multitude of habitats.

Because, remember, it is just one of many places in the universe of „Welcome to Valhalla".

Valhalla, or rathe,r the Tau Ceti star system, is just a single solar system, but it has several thousand spacestations, from small places comparable to a gas station to sprawling giants that rival the larger countries of earth. There is every climate, every biome present, and additionally there are those places that are just impossible, like floating forests with flying fish.

It is a future that we can already build, by the way.

Except maybe for the people.

New Heidelberg

New Heidelberg was named by an exploring group of humans and canines for its resemblance by climate and landscape to the region in which Heidelberg in Germany is located. Or how the humans imagine the area around Heidelberg must've looked before settling.

The Habitat is deviating from the standard template by having actual townlets at its habitat bowls rim, with separate, static buildings and roads open to the sky. The default is usually a large, rim-encompassing structure like a horizontal skyscraper with two to four levels.

It belongs to the class of the largest standard planetoid-bound habitats with a bowl nearly 5 km in diameter. The titanic bowl is rotating very slowly and is resting fully on a water cushion. Otherwise such a giant structure would be impossible with normal steel and concrete.

Designated a population center, it is dug deeper under the moon Asgards surface than dedicated industrial habitats are. Almost a hundred meter of regolith cover the outer shells top.

With a surface on its habitation bowl of about 25 square kilometers, its was designated for a population of 100000 people. This compares to a population density like Vienna or Zurich has. The habitation bowl is mostly for actual living. Work, for a big part, takes place in the static, low gravity areas of the station. Thus, with the smaller quarters the orange tigers considered just fine, the large wild forests of the inner bowl area are possible.

New Heidelberg, the AC

New Heidelbergs AC is a "by the book" model for a Habitat AC. It stays mostly silent, talking only with the habitats ruling body regularly. However, NH AC is like all ACs an individuum. As such it cultivates curiosity, and many a promising student will find a slip in his or her physical main inbox suggesting further reading to help with perceived weaknesses or grants to manufacturing time on the light and heavy industrial modules as well as adequate ressources.

As such, NH AC itself is the basic carrier of the university, providing a decent payment for the basic educational staff, trading highly educated citizens against skilled educators with other habitats - or so it looks at least from the habitats side of things. For the Asgardians, promising students get stipends by NH AC, though the definition of "promising" is rather flexible from a humans point of view. A mentally impaired person might get a stipend to New Heidelberg - for their gardening skills. NH AC learned not to write any explanations on its stipends, as its motivations are usually confusing for most young people. 1/3 of each years places are covered by stipends the Habitat ACs give out - called the "Big Lottery" - one third stipends is handed out by the faculty members of the University in cooperation with the Asgardian Board of education, and the remaining 1/3 - though this number can actually fluctuate - is granted to the best student of each Habitat.

"Best" is again a flexible term, defined by each habitats society themselves.

New Heidelberg, the society

New Heidelberg has a rather small residential population of about 500 people. Being a country class habitat, it was designed for populations of up to 100.000 people. Its average population clocks in at about 10.000 people. The residential population are the permanently resident teachers, professors, medical staff, and other essential personnel. The vast majority of people living in New Heidelberg are, however, students. With the two residential quarters and most of the light industry quarter inhabited by students, there is a very busy night- and partylife. With an average study term being around 3 years, there is about 9000 regular students, and then another 500 to 1000 students that needed longer, or are on enhanced classes. Every month one of the universities faculties throws a big party, presenting itself to visitors from other habitats. Every weekend, the various student associations, interest groups and such have their parties, meetings and such. The historical enactment group created a proper Ting place in the forest, the mountaineering interest group created their "Crows nest" in one of the steepest hill flanks. Admittedly, after they proven they could do it by chipping off the decor and handling the heavy tools on the cliff face for about an hour, a Scorpio Constructor came and melted the rest of the cave into the massive steel of the fake mountain, but the cooperation afterward with the interior designers making the freshly made steel cavity into a natural looking cave was considered well worth the effort.

There is a cheerful competition between the different groupings on who makes the most weirdest, most fun shenanigans. As sometimes even the teachers and professors participate, the shenanigans are reported upon with as much detail and enthusiasm as the universities sports teams exploits.

The ruling body is formed by the head professors of each faculty as well as the masters of each workshop. These form the Senate. One memeber of the senate is elected every two years as the Dean of the station, taking over the rule as station commander and thus the representant of the station in the Asgardian assembly. For the internal rules, there are two tribunes elected by the students each year. When they agree, they can veto decisions of the senate. They can each submit pleas to the senate which this body needs to discuss in open session.

New Heidelberg AC has the right to add its vote in public discussions. Whilst it cannot veto the tribunes veto, it can delay a Veto for 3 months as to allow the senate to show an idea of theirs works out.

New Heidelberg, the place

The Habitat Section

A habitat station, one of about 1000 on the moon Asgard. Country-Class, 5km diameter rotating bowl shaped artifical gravity habitation section. Access to thew rotating bowl is via a central spindle lift of about 10m diameter.

Gravity lowers toward the spindle due to reducing diameter at constant spin. The central spindle appear visually to be strong "uphill" whilst the bowl shape and the spin gravity result in it being a near flat walk to the spindle.

The living quarters are at the "rim" of the bowl, made to look like a little town backed against steep hills. The hills are the inward-bent rim of the rotating bowl. Who would crawl up those hills would suddenly look down a 50m drop agaisnt the by-running wall of the habitats stationary shell. The shell is painted a matte white, but colored lights on the bowls rim project blue sky and clouds there, whilst from the spindle a mirror system projects an image of the sun agaisnt the shells inside. Water vapor ensures a reduced visibility of about 1km in New Heidelberg, meaning you cant see the opposite side of the bowl. Standing at any point in the bowl gives you the feel standing in a deep valley.

Whilst the inner section of the bowl is mimicking forests and light hills with little rivers running through there ( compare satellite view of the area around Heidelberg, Germany ) turning into meadows toward the rim ( standing there means one os de-facto standing nearly horizontally toward the moons surface, i.e. ones back is parallel to the real surface ), the living quarters were redesigned by the humans to resemble a quaint, almost medieval city. The rim is separated into four equally sized "settlements", each separated from the next by about 500 meters of hill and forest. There are two residential sections, or 'quarters', opposite of each other, each made up of mazelike townships with about four parallel rows of buidlings - if they wuld be placed in neat rows, which they arent.

The third quarter is the Campus, with laboratories, lecture rooms, classrooms, a hospital and a library, whilst the fourth quarter opposite the campus is mixed living quarters, a few select lecture halls, light industries and services, such as a tailor, bakery, a machine shop, and more education & training focused workshops for wood, stone and metal working.

There is a small railway running around the rim, connecting all quarters. Every 15 minutes a train passes, lovingly mocked to look like a small steam train. It is actually fully functional steamengines, built by the first class of mechanics trained in New Heidelberg and then replicated by the habitats robots, but they are powered by electric motors for normal operation. At a maximum speed of 45km/h, the trains would need a about 20 minutes for the entire bowls circumference of 15,7km. With three stops per sections , each Quarter about 3km, they take roughly an hour for a full circle. Running in both directions, there are 8 trains serving the rim. For heavy loads coming up the central lift, there is one track meandering parallel to one small river from the 4th, the light industry quarter.

The Technical Section

Below the rotating bowl, the habitat section, begins the technical sections. First light industries, stuff like food processing, logistics, but also workshops where low-G environments are advantageous.

Below the light industry section comes the heavy industry section, where the habitat manufactures its spare parts, robots, vehicles, containers and such.

Below that is the logistics hub, where the intra-habitat tube trains arrive and leave, where freight and passenger traffic is handled, and from where the corridors to the external vehicle hangars outside of the actual habitat start.

The Hangars

Those hangars are connected by escalators and large moving platforms. The latter pass through traditional airlocks as well as the habitats preferred siphon-airlocks, which is why all vehicles are not only vacuum tight but actually watertight. The water is covered by oil preventing evaporation in case a vacuum should occur. The hangars distributed in a ring about 1km away from the outer shell of the habitat. Each hangar has two parts: The inner hangar, for maintenance and repairs, a few meters under ground, and then, connected via a siphon airlock, the outer hangar, unpressurized, shielded under a dome like steel shell, where freight can be loaded and unloaded from vehicles, and nuclear power pack can be laoded into long range vehicles as opposed to hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cells of the short range vehicles.

Sometimes considered scary, the outer hangars harbour also a triplet of Scorpio Constructor robots each, which sit , folded up, on their docking connectors, waiting for an emergency to awaken them with either a fuelcell for power, like for for maintenance, or a nuclear powerplant in case of dire emergencies.

The Power Deck

Below the logistics hub is the power deck, where both the capacitor storages are located that are powered from the solar powerplants on the surface, as well as the two emergency backup fusion plants, one placed centrally and the other on the rim of the deck. From the power deck branch off large corridors dug into the moon rock, the hydroponics and the "backup gardens". All plantlife and most animal life exists in duplicate in those tunnels, which can be sealed off agaisnt the power deck, each equipped with with its own nuclear RTG as an emergency powerplant and shielded by meter-thick blast shutters agaisnt the power deck.

Below the power deck is the Core, a small fusion power plant, a small capacitor storage and the vast computer banks including their maintenance and manufacturing units that form the seed and brain of the station.

The Upper Shell, The Reef

Around and above the habitat bowl is the upper shell. The upper shell contains a 200m "Reef" element, a saltwater section, artificially lighted and fully covering the bowl shaped habitat section. The Reef provides water and waste processing as well as aquatic farming space, and serves as hard radiation shield for the Habitat.

The Upper Shell, The Ressource Storage

Around and above the reef is the "Ressource Storage", where the habitat stores processed materials and raw materials in containers. This area is under minimal pressure and a pure nitrogen athmosphere. Around that is the 3 meter thick reinforced pseudo-granite outer shell. Whatever impacts on a habitats roof first has to penetrate the outer shell, then the 20m or so of steel containers with varying contents, then another 3m of pseudo granite, then 200m of water and then, again, another 3m of pseudo granite before it gets to the actual habitat section.