Lower March, situated in the province of Sparta at the confluence of the Crease and the Rafter, is the centre of engineering (machine tools, factory robotics, electric motors) and is famous for its Dynamo Institute of Technology (DRIT). Upper March is famous for its ceramic and glass industries, using local clay and sand, while Top March specializes in high quality clockwork, camera and other optical equipment. ‘Wicket’ watches are prized throughout the country, while ‘Top March’ digital cameras are an important export. Significant dying and chemical industries are established at Lower March, using the abundant waters of the converging tributaries of the Crease and the local potash deposits. Hydroelectric stations towards the headwaters of these tributaries provide the energy to power not only the region’s industry but also the bulk of the country’s electric train system. The three Marches are known for their fierce rivalry in the sport of rugby: the winner of the annual championship (in which teams from Cliveden, Rugby, New Dublin and Philadelpho also compete) carries off the famous Rugby Pine trophy, a silver cup decorated with the provinces symbol, the cone of the rugby pine.

Situated in the province of Velox, a little north of Dynamo’s capital city Veloxeter, Georgia is a seaside town, known for its bracing air and its elegant architecture. A fashionable resort since the 18^th century, it remains the fashion capital of Dynamo, known in particular for clothing made under the Orrissa label that specializes in beautiful and yet practical waterproof apparel for cycling, riding and sailing. Fashion week in Georgia is in the third week of April and attracts visitors from all over the world.

Rugby is the capital of Sparta, the largest province of Dynamo Island and the most intensively industrialised. The region between Rugby, on the River Pitch, and Top March, Upper March and Lower March on the River Wicket, is the most densely populated part of the country with a wide range of manufacturing and processing industries. The existence of large iron ore deposits, and some coal, in the limestone escarpments and of lead, zinc, copper and gold in the Handlebar Mountains, led from the late 18^th century to an important metallurgical industry, one that with modernisation and refinement has continued to thrive until today. Rugby’s city centre is still an attractive jumble of late 18^th– and early 19^th-century metal workshops, many of which are still active, and is criss-crossed by an old narrow-gauge railway that continues to provide essential transport for raw materials and finished products between the various workshops and depots of the city. Rugby from the beginning of the railway age in the early 19^th century became the country’s leading producer of steel rails, bridging, cranes and dockland winches.

Situated strategically on the southern coast of Maurice Island, the southern-most point of Dynamo, Quinnport’s position meant that it became an important naval centre, the home of the Dynamoan fleet, and an important docking and re-fueling station. It was also the home of the merchant marine, whose college complements that of the Dynamoan naval academy at Hadrianopolis. The port is also the starting point of a number of famous yacht races: the annual Round-Mauritius Cup, the Dynamo Circuit, and the biennial Quinnport to Southampton and Quinnport to Nantucket races. The maritime situation and outstanding natural beauty of Maurice Island means that Quinnport is an important holiday destination, in particular as a setting-off point for hikers and bird-watchers.

Situated at the edge of a beautiful lake, in a natural arena at the foot of the Handlebar range, Odessa is the capital of the province of Olympia. Drawing on the gold, silver and other valuable metals mined in the Handlebars, Odessa has developed important specialised industries, including precision engineering and jewellery. The city is also the site of a number of spas that were developed from Roman times on the basis of mineral springs that rose from the foothills of the Handlebar mountains. In the eighteenth century, Odessa was therefore the Bath or Buxton of Dynamo, sharing with those cities an elegant neo-classical architectural style that was adapted to street-planning, often in the form of circuses, crescents as well as to the principal municipal buildings and fashionable centres of entertainment such as the Assembly Rooms, the Opera and the Theatre. The honey-coloured local stone was widely used and indeed, to this day, predominates as a building material in the centre of the city, though some major recent architectural projects provide a contrast with their gleaming white ceramic façades. The most famous of these is the Odessa Opera House: situated at the edge of the lake, the four majestic sail-like motifs that decorate its skyline, resemble the profile of traditional Olympian watercraft.

Odessa is also the home of one of Dynamo’s most famous universities, George Hagel College (named in the honour of the province’s greatest philosopher), situated in a former 18^th-century mansion in a splendid setting just outside the city. Its government and industry funding make it one of the country’s leading research institutions, with many important specialised high-tech industrial developments situated around it. The city is also home to the country’s leading sports college, Ashford Forum, which plays an important role in making the country one of the leaders in athletics (track and field) in the European community. Ash-keys are the province’s symbol and figure prominently in the College’s badge.

Capital of the province Spokane, Oarhouse is a major industrial town, specialising in electric locomotives and boat-building. Surrounded by rich pine and deciduous forests, it is also the centre of the country’s paper-milling and furniture industries, with an important college of industrial design. It is also a pioneer in the re-cycling industry, managing to maintain an 80% re-use rate of discarded materials. Situated at the confluence of the Oar and the Rafter, Oarhouse is one of the most elegantly planned of Dynamo’s capital cities. Devastated by a fire in 1950 that started in a bakery and then swept through the city burning many of its traditional wooden houses, the corporation rebuilt the city in such a way as to maximize the harmonious juxtaposition of industrial activity and civic and residential amenities. Luckily, some of the old brick warehouses that line the rivers Oar and Rafter escaped destruction and now provide an attractive façade to the many modern timber-working, paper-making, engineering and construction factories cited on the broad alluvial plain at the rivers’ confluence.

On the northern bank of the Oar, these old warehouses provide an attractive contrast with the many modern glass and steel offices and residential buildings situated among the old civic buildings (town hall, concert house, cathedral) that also survived the 1950 blaze. Since almost the entire city is pedestrianized (along with tram and cycle ways), it has been possible to space buildings in such a way as to minimize the risk of future possible fire damage while enhancing the cityscape with public squares and other small green spaces.

At the confluence of the River Pitch and the River Crease, at the highest navigation point of the latter, and marking the site where the eight provinces of Dynamo meet, Hubcaster is the country’s central city. Its industries (milling, brewing, agricultural and railway engineering, wool and linen) also make it the second largest manufacturing town. Until the eighteenth century the country’s capital city and centre of the profitable wool-trade, Hubcaster has long been an important cultural centre with the finest medieval town centre in the country.

The city’s situation where the limestone plateaux of the west pass underneath a stratum of chalk, mean that flint (associated with calcareous deposits) was always plentiful, leading both to the surrounding area’s importance in Stone-Age times and also, from the Middle Ages, assuring a plentiful supply of flint for building. Hubcaster’s cityscape is therefore a maze of brick-and-flint buildings, from the old Guild Hall, to the Mansion House and the former Parliament building, now the regional assembly house of the province of Arcadia. The confluence of the rivers, together with the importance of river transport (for grain, wool, timber and other building materials), together with many local interconnecting creeks and cannels, mean that the city seems like one built on water, with many of the old red-brick mills and warehouses backing onto the waterways that supplied them with raw materials.

The famous Hubcaster School of Painting, with its masters such as John Chrome and John Spell provides a picturesque record of the cityscape of the late 18^th– and early 19^th-century golden age, with their paintings of the city gates, the timber-yards and warehouses, the old sun-warmed brick walls of the mill-yards, whose bases are lapped by the waters of the Pitch or the Crease and where working men, breeches and shirt-sleeves rolled, fished or waded in the warm shallows. The historic market place, framed by the Guild Hall, the Mansion House, the old Parliament Building and St Peter’s church, has for centuries provided the focus of the city’s trade and commerce, offering for sale produce and manufactures from the eight province of Dynamo. The 12^th-century Cathedral, with its tall and graceful spire, is the landmark of the lower reaches of the city, its elegant Close surrounded by the willows and water-meadows that characterise the Crease from this point downstream, a landscape also lovingly explored by painters of the Hubcaster School.