Mombasa

Mombasa was a large coastal megacity located in the Earth nation of Kenya, part of the East African Protectorate. Originally established around 900 A.D., it was one of the longest, continuously-inhabited cities in East Africa and easily the largest by population until the Covenant invasion of Earth in 2552. At the peak of human residency on Earth, Mombasa boasted a population of over 120 million people across multiple municipalities including Mombasa Island. The city was depopulated in the wake of the initial Covenant assault and glassed during the unearthing of the Voi Portal megastructure. Since the conflict's resolution, the United Nations Space Command established a massive exclusion zone around the portal site, including Mombasa, leading to the city becoming abandoned and falling into disrepair.

Mombasa was a major port city, originally defined by an industry of tourism and maritime commerce. Heavily damaged during the late-21st and 22nd-century conflicts and rebuilt through the 23rd century, Mombasa became the undisputed global trade hub eventually hosting the first commercial space tether on Earth. The city was often split denominally between the financial center, "New Mombasa," and the surrounding municipalities, known collectively as "Old Mombasa." In present times, the single populated fixture of Mombasa is the Mombasa Annex, a large military security installation established over the former Mombasa Tether site.

Geography
Mombasa has historically centered on Mombasa Island, at the mouth of two shallow bays and the Indian Ocean. The northern bay is split into Mombasa Harbor and Tudor Creek; the southern bay is similarly split into Port Kilindini and Port Reitz. During the period of rapid climate change at the turn of the second A.D. millennium, sea levels worldwide increased by unprecedented increments and complex coastal management systems were eventually put in place. The bays expanded, however, extending further inland by almost four miles and required further earthworks and seawalls to retain the coastline's general shape. Nonetheless, Mombasa and the surrounding land continue to be characterized as relatively flat, especially after nearby hills were excavated as part of city reconstruction efforts.

To the north and west of Mombasa, both outside and within city limits, a series of artificial lakes and canals snaked their way up to Voi and then further north towards Nairobi. Part of several major public works initiatives beginning in the mid-21st century, subsequent programs widened existing rivers and constructed new lakes to expand a growing network of irrigation and commercial corridors. The expansions were first motivated by the threat of encroaching desertification by the Sahara Deseret to the north, however, the rise of overpopulation on the African continent presented further issues including starvation and lack of available drinking water. Until 2552 and the excavation of the Voi Portal, the series of lakes, rivers, and canals extended from the Port Reitz and Tudor Creek towards the northwest and Voi. From Voi, the waterways spidered off in different directions, some north towards Nairobi and others west toward Lake Viktoria and around Mount Kilimanjaro. Great swaths of land incorporated into Mombasa County transitioned between urban and agricultural development over the centuries to fulfill the needs of the varying scale in the local population and later the Covenant War effort. Much of these many decades-long transitions came at the cost of established wildlife preserves.

Due to a nuclear attack in the city's middling history, much of the contemporary layout differs from developments a century before. The western, inland municipality of Magongo was at the attack's epicenter, eventually being radioactively treated and then flattened to buildup the flooded Mombasa Island and Likoni. Much of Magongo became unstable ground after, compromised by salt marsh formation and erosion of the undersea bedrock. While soil has been revitalized to a fertile state, the geological contents beneath Mombasa are mostly granite and basalt proving very stable to build upon. However, centuries-old fissures formed there would eventually give way to revealing the hidden Voi Portal megastructure during the Covenant military's excavation of the region. With the portal site exposed, Magongo and other western municipalities have disappeared. Much of the city's residential areas were melted away or swallowed by encroaching water when the Covenant-built earthworks gave way to the Indian Ocean, partially-filling the crater. In the time after the Covenant War, UNSC-sponsored engineering megacorporations and military engineers have worked to build further earthwork projects in hopes of draining the Voi Portal basin of saltwater.

Contemporary Mombasa Island is defined by sharp, mile-high skyscrapers rising from within the confines of slanted sea walls. The large coral extents that originally formed Mombasa Island and ran along the coastlines have long since dried out from increased ocean traffic while relocation projects established more vibrant, artificial reefs and fisheries further out to sea. After the construction of the Mombasa Tether in Mombasa Harbor, further construction developments along Mombasa Island's southern waterfront and north Mombasa waterfront provide compensative protection in the event of a substantial disaster, particularly storm flooding or the possible collapse of the space elevator. These developments are referred to as numeric sectors and covered by circle-shaped, encompassing retainer walls. Access between megaplexes is managed through extensive security locks apparatuses, potentially isolating the mini-districts from one another in event of an emergency.

The surviving seaside municipalities are covered in mixed urban sprawl, featuring architecture from several eras and of varying construction quality. While abandoned, plasma bombardment failed to destroy much of these residential and harbor areas, leaving them as a stark, though partially-submerged, reminder of what once existed in Old Mombasa. The large toppled skyscrapers of inland Mombasa now match the color and disrepair of even Old Mombasa's massive industrial park in the north, long since abandoned with a mass exodus to extrasolar colonies two centuries earlier. Only the seaside municipalities and Mombasa Island remain relatively unscathed, a testament to the city's robust engineering works. During the Battle of Earth, the Covenant assault carrier Solemn Penance escaped the city through a Slipspace portal, compromising the Mombasa Tether, eventually collapsing. The skeletal remains of the Mombasa Tether stretch hundreds of miles inland after security protocols failed to control the tether's descent. Still, the Mombasa Tether base remains occupied by a token UNSC security detachment, serving as a military cargo port, depot, and monitoring installation for the surrounding East African Exclusion Zone. Much of the land and ocean in and around Mombasa are covered in radioactive, molten dust left by the use of glassing beams. Due to extensive ecological damage born from the Covenant invasion, Mombasa and the surrounding East African Exclusion Zone is often dubbed the "Kenyan Badlands."

Pre-Spaceflight
Mombasa began as a Swahili settlement on Mombasa Island known as "Kongowea" in ancient times, founded in legend by the pre-Islamic queen Mwana Mkisi and her people, the "Thenashara Tafia," or Twelve Nations. Whereas the Islamic ruler preceding Mkisi's dynasty, Shehe Mvita supposedly established the first permanent stone mosque on Mombasa Island. In contemporary times, the descendants of the original settlers continue to recount their ancient history and remain, keepers of the local Swahili traditions, even as cultures have changed from globalization and age.

Much of Mombasa's early written history rather began with the arrival of explorers and scholars from Eurasia and North Africa through the 12th century. Mombasa historians based on these early recordings established that the settlement was likely founded somewhere around 900 A.D. and taught in the local school system as such; records also showed evidence of ancient Swahili stonecutting techniques and architecture with some parts of contemporary Mombasa built to reflect the lineage in spirit. As an important trading port in the ancient world, Mombasa was recognized as a place to trade spices, gold, and ivory among other sought-after commodities coming from inland, and from China and India by sea. During the pre-modern era, the important Indian Ocean trade network diversified Mombasa's specialties to also include millet, sesamum, and coconuts.

Two years after its discovery by Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama, the port city was sacked by a Portuguese fleet, becoming a vassal to the growing Portuguese Empire. Mombasa was subsequently liberated by local Islamic and Afrikan states only to be recaptured on several occasions. The Portuguese dominated the East African East Coast for a little over two centuries, maintaining a presence in Kenya from 1498 to 1730. Mombasa eventually came into the possession of the Sultanate of Oman from 1698 to 1826 after forcing out the Portuguese and only returning to their claim briefly from 1728 to 1729. During the reign of the Omani, a slave economy arose in Mombasa though the city's importance to the overall global African slave trade remains disputed by historians. The city was later placed under the control of the British East African Company in 1887, incorporated into British administration in 1895, becoming the capital of the British East African Protectorate and the sea terminal for the Uganda Railway. An influx of workers from British India were brought into Mombasa at the time to work on British modernization projects. During its time as a British colony, Mombasa was designated as the capital of the Kenyan Protectorate before being moved to Nairobi after health concerns were brought to London administrators regarding the town's locale potentially cultivating a variety of swamp-born diseases. The capital was then moved to Nairobi, later becoming the official capital of Kenya upon release from British colonial rule in 1963 and formally became the Republic of Kenya in December 1964.