The Heights
Pre-Collapse Identity
Pacific Heights was San Francisco's wealthiest neighborhood — Edwardian mansions, old money, and views that cost more per square foot than entire houses elsewhere. The Marina was upscale waterfront living, and the Presidio was military land turned parkland, a green buffer between wealth and the sea.
Current Character
The most prestigious address in the Sprawl. The Rothwell Foundation didn't move into Pacific Heights after the Cascade — they were already here, their estate consuming an entire city block of annexed Victorians with three underground levels beneath understated old-money grandeur. From the Rim's edge, the city's ruling class looks down on the Dregs sixty feet below. The view is the point. It has always been the point. The Heights exists to remind everyone else where they stand.
Terrain & Atmosphere
The Pacific Heights ridgeline sits at approximately 75 meters, commanding unobstructed sightlines across the bay floor canyon to the East Bay hills. The air is cleaner here than anywhere in the Sprawl — filtration systems maintain breathable atmosphere to standards the Dregs haven't known in decades. Maintained gardens still bloom along the ridge, green and manicured, a calculated insult to the gray world below. Wind carries Pacific salt from beyond the dam, a reminder that the ocean is minutes away if the engineering fails.
Corporate Presence
The Rothwell Foundation's direct territorial footprint is small — one elite neighborhood — but their reach extends through six subsidiary corporations operating across the Bay. Inspire, the Rothwell media arm, operates from The Muse, a converted theater complex at the intersection of Pacific Heights wealth and Fillmore District culture. The Foundation's security is old-money discretion: no uniforms, no logos, just household staff who become something else entirely when required.
Key Locations
The Rothwell Estate (Foundation HQ — restored Edwardian mansion, three sub-levels), The Muse (Inspire HQ — media production disguised as community arts), the Rim Overlook (where the Heights' edge drops to the Dregs below).
Sensory Detail
Silence is the luxury here. The ambient corporate tones of Sector 1 give way to curated quiet — birdsong from the maintained gardens, the distant crash of the Pacific against the dam, the whisper of private security drones so discreet you mistake them for hummingbirds. The light is natural, unfiltered, golden in the afternoon. You can see the sky.
Daily Life
The people who live here decide how the people who don't will spend their lives — and they do it over breakfast with a view.