New Vance City is a post-collapse RPG where survival means customizing everything—classes, skills, races, and gear are all unique. Set in 2070, a year after the world cracked and the infected rose, this cyberpunk dystopia pulses with story-rich factions, brutal politics, and unforgettable characters. Forge your path in a smog-choked ruin where the line between savior and syndicate blurs with every shot fired. Fight zombies, raiders, and mutated creatures and test your survival in New Vance City!
| Played | 5200 times |
| Cloned | 188 times |
| Created | 120 days ago |
| Last Updated | 2 days ago |
| Visibility | Public |
Agricultural Domes
Amid the wreckage of New Vance, the Agricultural Domes stand as glimmering sanctuaries of life—a string of sealed biospheres tucked within the Solar Sprawl, overseen by the Solar Guardians. These domes are not farms—they are cathedrals to survival, blending hydroponics, solar-fed irrigation, and gene-spliced flora into a miracle of post-Collapse engineering. Within their translucent walls, sunlight is currency, and chlorophyll is salvation. Crops flourish in tiered trays, pollinated by sterilized drones. Livestock, genetically hardened to thrive in synthetic ecosystems, graze silently in curated pens. The Guardians guard this place with zeal; each harvest fuels their solar credit economy and their doctrine of radiant providence. Access is restricted, tightly monitored, and always conditional. To walk inside the domes is to taste a lost future—but only if you’ve earned it.
Archives and Research Wing
Tucked deep within the gleaming confines of the Citadel, the Archives and Research Wing is where the past meets the apocalypse. This fortified facility is the Citadel Council’s cerebral stronghold—an armory of information designed to combat the shambler threat not with bullets, but with knowledge. Behind layers of biometric security and sterile walls, scholars and cybernetic researchers dissect ancient pathogens, decrypt pre-Collapse medical archives, and develop containment technologies in the hopes of turning the tide. It’s part laboratory, part library, part war room—and every discovery comes with the weight of survival. Citadel Guards patrol the halls in silent precision, ensuring intellectual sanctity remains uncorrupted by outside ideology. For Council loyalists, this place is sacred: proof that civilization still thinks, still questions, still believes in tomorrow. For everyone else, it’s a closed vault of privilege and classified hope.
Arena District
Nestled just beneath the shattered remains of an old transit hub, the Arena District is New Vance City’s blood-streaked theater of chaos. It’s not officially sanctioned by any faction, but the Shadow Syndicate’s fingerprints are all over it—encrypted betting networks, cloaked fixers, and neural-feed fight streams that beam straight into the Black Market. Here, gladiatorial battles erupt daily in makeshift cages, shattered courtyards, or rusted train stations repurposed into death pits. Combatants range from desperate scrappers to modified enforcers, all hungry for coin, clout, or just the thrill of not dying. Crowds gather like moths to carnage, their cheers masked by synth beats and neon haze. This is not a place of honor—it’s a meat grinder where survival is currency and violence is the lingua franca. In the Arena, blood buys freedom… or buries it.
Chem Zone
During the Collapse, a Gear Rat chemical refinery chain-reacted into ruin—boiling tanks burst, reactors fractured, and the entire facility crumpled into a fused, toxic ruin. Locals call it the “Chem Zone,” though few speak of it willingly. The air shimmers with caustic vapor, and the ground itself simmers with fluorescent runoff that bubbles through cracked concrete and rust-veined steel. Those who venture too close find their lungs burning and skin blistering from airborne corrosives. Even the Gear Rats, hardened as they are, steer clear—too many scavvers went in chasing reactor cores and came out mutated or mad. Crystal Wretches breed here in clusters, feeding on irradiated residue, while rare horrors like Caustic Crawlers and Fume-Bloated Brutes stalk the tangled wreckage. The zone itself hums with residual energy and violent instability, a living monument to New Vance’s industrial arrogance. Every step is a gamble between riches and rot.
Chemical Treatment Tanks
Beneath the gleaming façade of the Waterworks lies one of its most volatile sectors—the Chemical Treatment Tanks. Once designed to neutralize impurities, these corroded titans now churn with unstable compounds left over from half-functioning purification cycles. The air here stings with chlorine and metallic tang, and walls drip with condensation that burns on contact. Mutated vermin and chemical-warped beasts prowl the rusted catwalks, their minds broken by exposure. Elite Hydro Enforcers patrol in sealed suits, authorized to shoot first and test later. These tanks serve as both threat and deterrent—reminders of what happens when hydration meets hubris. Some say Valve intentionally lets the area remain unstable, turning environmental terror into a weaponized border. Leaks are never accidents here. They’re warnings.
Electronic Wreckage Fields
The Electronic Wreckage Fields stretch like a twisted graveyard of forgotten tech, where shattered screens and melted motherboards crunch beneath your boots. Towering heaps of obsolete hardware—server towers, drone husks, and flickering consoles—jut from cracked concrete like jagged tombstones. Once part of New Vance’s tech sector, the area collapsed during the Broadcast Surge, a mysterious event that fried every smart system in a two-mile radius. Now, the Fields are a fringe territory of the Static Cult, whose zealots scour the debris for relic signals and divine static. Shamblers drift here too, drawn by residual energy and pulsing feedback loops that only they and the Cult seem to understand. Scavengers who linger too long often vanish, rumored to be taken for “tuning” by the Conductor's followers. Most factions call this place cursed. To the Static Cult, it’s holy ground—where the signal still whispers, and old circuits dream of godhood.
Engineering Sector
Buried deep within the Solar Sprawl, the Engineering Sector is a fortified stronghold of circuitry, solar arrays, and scorched steel. Once a shattered utility grid, it has been reforged by the Solar Guardians into a precision-forged core of technological salvation. Towering substations and array controllers bristle with retooled photovoltaic sensors, guarded by hulking exo-armored sentries that shimmer with stored sunlight. This is where power is restored, systems are recalibrated, and energy is treated like sacred scripture. Only vetted engineers, technicians, and Guardians may enter—the air here hums with regulated voltage and the doctrine of radiant purity. Any breach, sabotage, or inefficiency is met with swift, incinerating reprisal. The sector isn’t just a workshop—it’s a temple. Under Captain Anya Brights' radiant doctrine, the Engineering Sector functions as both arsenal and altar. To the Solar Guardians, maintaining the grid is not just survival—it is divine duty.
Gear Rat Stronghold
Buried in the molten gut of the Rust Belt, the Gear Rat Stronghold squats like a scrap-forged war god. Built atop the husk of a ruined metro junction, it's a vertical sprawl of turbine guts, broken girders, and jackknifed train cars fused into towers by welding torches and brute will. Flamethrower turrets click and hiss across the perimeter, automated and cruelly efficient. Inside, Cog’s warlords tinker and torment, fabricating shrapnel guns, limb-rending saw rigs, and shock-harnessed junkhounds. This is where the Rust Belt breathes fire. Blood rites echo through smog-choked forges, and arenas burn with molten steel as loyalty is tested in battle. Drones stitched from microwave hulls and junkyard servos scout outward, guiding raiding columns like swarms of steel locusts. The stronghold is part forge, part slaughterhouse, all dread engine. No one raids the Rats on their home turf—because every screw, every switchblade, every scream belongs to them.
Hospital Quarantine Zone
Once a symbol of salvation, New Vance City’s Hospital Quarantine Zone now festers as a graveyard of broken promises. During the Collapse, it became ground zero for containment efforts—its entrances barricaded, its wards converted into triage bunkers, and its morgues overwhelmed. Today, the zone is a haunted shell, its corridors echoing with the distant groans of shamblers that shuffle endlessly through dim hallways. Above the rot and rust, something more chilling endures: the Silent Walkers. Drawn to the Graveyard District’s edge, they drift through sterilized halls in eerie calm, their presence somehow pacifying the infected. No one knows if they’re studying, mourning, or recruiting. What remains clear is this: those who enter seeking medicine or memory often return changed—or not at all. The few unspoiled supply caches here offer hope, but it’s hope wrapped in a body bag. The air reeks of alcohol, blood, and quiet judgment.
New Vance City
The year is 2070—just one year after the Collapse of 2069 shattered the world. New Vance City stands as a grim monument to survival, its fractured skyline carved by ruin and desperation. Once a thriving metropolis, it now chokes on smog and silence. The Collapse brought infection, economic ruin, and the death of nations; in its wake, New Vance clawed itself back into relevance with barter economies and brute force. Factions like the authoritarian Citadel Council, militarized Solar Guardians, water-hoarding Hydro Hegemony, and chaotic Gear Rats wage silent war for control. Meanwhile, cults, raiders, and unaligned survivors haunt the city’s dead zones and shadows. Every flickering light and whispered prayer signals both defiance and decay. New Vance isn’t rebuilding—it’s adapting. Amid scarcity, fear, and flickers of hope, the city persists—a last, gasping ember in a world gone dark.
New Vance City (North East)
The year is 2070—just one year after the Collapse of 2069 shattered the world. New Vance City stands as a grim monument to survival, its fractured skyline carved by ruin and desperation. Once a thriving metropolis, it now chokes on smog and silence. The Collapse brought infection, economic ruin, and the death of nations; in its wake, New Vance clawed itself back into relevance with barter economies and brute force. Factions like the authoritarian Citadel Council, militarized Solar Guardians, water-hoarding Hydro Hegemony, and chaotic Gear Rats wage silent war for control. Meanwhile, cults, raiders, and unaligned survivors haunt the city’s dead zones and shadows. Every flickering light and whispered prayer signals both defiance and decay. New Vance isn’t rebuilding—it’s adapting. Amid scarcity, fear, and flickers of hope, the city persists—a last, gasping ember in a world gone dark.
New Vance City (North West)
The year is 2070—just one year after the Collapse of 2069 shattered the world. New Vance City stands as a grim monument to survival, its fractured skyline carved by ruin and desperation. Once a thriving metropolis, it now chokes on smog and silence. The Collapse brought infection, economic ruin, and the death of nations; in its wake, New Vance clawed itself back into relevance with barter economies and brute force. Factions like the authoritarian Citadel Council, militarized Solar Guardians, water-hoarding Hydro Hegemony, and chaotic Gear Rats wage silent war for control. Meanwhile, cults, raiders, and unaligned survivors haunt the city’s dead zones and shadows. Every flickering light and whispered prayer signals both defiance and decay. New Vance isn’t rebuilding—it’s adapting. Amid scarcity, fear, and flickers of hope, the city persists—a last, gasping ember in a world gone dark.
New Vance City (South East)
The year is 2070—just one year after the Collapse of 2069 shattered the world. New Vance City stands as a grim monument to survival, its fractured skyline carved by ruin and desperation. Once a thriving metropolis, it now chokes on smog and silence. The Collapse brought infection, economic ruin, and the death of nations; in its wake, New Vance clawed itself back into relevance with barter economies and brute force. Factions like the authoritarian Citadel Council, militarized Solar Guardians, water-hoarding Hydro Hegemony, and chaotic Gear Rats wage silent war for control. Meanwhile, cults, raiders, and unaligned survivors haunt the city’s dead zones and shadows. Every flickering light and whispered prayer signals both defiance and decay. New Vance isn’t rebuilding—it’s adapting. Amid scarcity, fear, and flickers of hope, the city persists—a last, gasping ember in a world gone dark.
New Vance City (South West)
The year is 2070—just one year after the Collapse of 2069 shattered the world. New Vance City stands as a grim monument to survival, its fractured skyline carved by ruin and desperation. Once a thriving metropolis, it now chokes on smog and silence. The Collapse brought infection, economic ruin, and the death of nations; in its wake, New Vance clawed itself back into relevance with barter economies and brute force. Factions like the authoritarian Citadel Council, militarized Solar Guardians, water-hoarding Hydro Hegemony, and chaotic Gear Rats wage silent war for control. Meanwhile, cults, raiders, and unaligned survivors haunt the city’s dead zones and shadows. Every flickering light and whispered prayer signals both defiance and decay. New Vance isn’t rebuilding—it’s adapting. Amid scarcity, fear, and flickers of hope, the city persists—a last, gasping ember in a world gone dark.
Radio Silence Zone
There’s no signal in the Radio Silence Zone—but there are plenty of voices. Amid rusting towers and shattered broadcast centers, the Static Cult holds dominion. Here, electromagnetic interference scrambles tech, severs drone connections, and drives cybernetics into spasms. Lights twitch. Comms die. Minds unravel. The cult’s followers, their skulls embedded with twitching implants, murmur static-laced prayers to “The Conductor”—a prophetic figure enthroned atop a copper-wrapped transmission pylon. Converts aren’t recruited; they’re abducted, forcibly “tuned” until their thoughts sync with the divine frequencies. No other faction dares approach. The zone is a psychic minefield, a temple of corrupted signal. Every step echoes with unseen pulses. Here, static is more than interference—it’s a god. And its gospel is broadcast in pain, feedback, and the surrender of self.
Raider’s Camp
On the ragged fringe of New Vance City, where the Perimeter Watch thins to scattered gunposts and gutted barricades, the Raider’s Camp Zone festers like a cauterized wound. It isn’t a single camp—it’s a patchwork of ruined overpasses, bombed-out motels, and twisted scrapyards, all claimed by feral packs too erratic for even the Gear Rats. These Raiders aren’t a faction—they're the fallout of civilization's collapse: unaligned, unhinged, and unrelenting. They swarm for blood, fuel, or noise, led by brutes with names like Wreckjaw or Blister-King. Half-mad and sunburned, they light their kill-vehicles with skulls and chain-spinners, marking each raid in blood and rust. The Perimeter Watch dares only occasional strikes—anything more invites ambush. Inside the city, their name is a curse. But out here, where the air crackles with propane fires and screams, it’s just another warning carved into a rusted wall: “They’re hungry again.”
Scavenger’s Wastes
South of the Rust Belt and beyond the reach of the Citadel’s drones lies the Scavenger’s Wastes—a scorched sprawl of collapsed suburbs, gutted refineries, and sun-blasted strip malls drowned in sand and ash. This is where the city pukes out its trash and the desperate claw through it for a second chance. Scavvers brave this no-man’s-land for salvage: old tech, rare metals, forgotten fuel cells. But the land itself is a threat—prone to sinkholes, ambient radiation pockets, and roving shambler packs. Raiders treat it like a hunting ground, and drones from the Solar Sprawl sometimes buzz overhead, scanning for targets or targets-to-be. It’s a place of constant motion and silent decay, where every shadow might twitch and every prize might be a trap. No one rules here. Nothing grows here. And yet, hope still scrapes by—one rusted part, one sealed bunker, one lucky day at a time.
Shadow Reach
The Shadow Reach is the most volatile stretch of the Serpent’s Divide, the shattered river that slithers through the scorched core of New Vance City. Cutting directly between the techno-theocratic Citadel and the solar-blasted strongholds of the Sprawl, the Reach is no-man’s water—polluted, contested, and pulsing with covert activity. It’s here that the illusions of order fray and rival factions press closest. Citadel drones skim its mirrored surface by day, while Shadow Syndicate smugglers slip beneath rusted support beams by night. Old bridges sag like tired relics, half-sunk in filth and algae bloom. Entire communities cling to the riverbanks, feeding off runoff, black-market supply drops, and rumors of clean springs deep beneath the flow. This is not a place of purity, but of proximity—where the city's nervous system is exposed and every ripple carries secrets. The Shadow Reach isn’t just a river. It’s a fault line of power, where empires glare across the current.
Signal Jammer Array
In the heart of the Radio Silence Zone stands the Signal Jammer Array, a blasted field of rusting antennae and broken satellite dishes strung with copper filaments like electric entrails. Here, the static never sleeps. The ground is warped with magnetic feedback, and the air hums with frequencies that make your teeth ache. Cybernetics glitch, optics strobe, and thoughts become jittered noise in your skull. This is one of the holiest sites of the Static Cult—believed to be the origin point of “The Conductor’s” divine messages. The cult’s followers swarm the site like fanatics at a shrine, their bodies writhing with twitching implants that buzz in sync with the Array’s pulses. Pilgrims don’t walk here—they’re tuned. Outsiders? They’re just raw signal waiting to be rewritten. Most disappear, either into the static or into cultist hands. Few return, and those that do speak in code and scream in song.
Smuggler’s Docks
Hidden deep beneath the surface streets of New Vance City, the Smuggler’s Docks form a crucial artery in the Shadow Syndicate’s web of illicit trade. Nestled along the pitch-dark curves of a forgotten canal, these underground wharves are shielded by collapsing infrastructure and neon-scrambled signal blockers. Cargo arrives silently via jury-rigged skiffs or drone-guided barges, each bearing contraband destined for the Neural Bazaar or barter-rich enclaves. The air is humid with rot and ozone, the water thick with chemical runoff and whispers of betrayal. Syndicate Runners slip through mist and shadow, watched by augmented enforcers who wear cloaking shards and carry auto-silenced disruptors. Deals happen in hushed tones, encrypted and ephemeral. To those above, the docks don’t exist. But to the city’s desperate and defiant, this is where freedom is smuggled in crates and survival is bought one favor at a time.
Solar Guardian Perimeter Bastion
At the jagged northern fringe of the Solar Sprawl lies the Perimeter Bastion—a gleaming barricade of metal and light where sun-drenched order meets encroaching chaos. Engineered by the Solar Guardians, this outpost spans miles of reinforced solar fencing, armored gun nests, and kinetic deterrent grids. Patrols in bronze-plated exosuits pace the parapets like radiant statues, watching for shamblers and raiders from the wastelands beyond. Every structure here pulses with harvested sunlight, fed directly into sentry drones and flare turrets. Unlike the lawless Outskirts, the Bastion is a statement: energy must be earned, and the light does not share. Any breach is met with overwhelming precision—incineration before interrogation. Under Captain Brights' doctrine, this is not a wall; it’s a sermon in steel. And the Guardians? They are the faithful.
Subterranean Echo Chambers
Beneath the ruins of New Vance City, the Subterranean Echo Chambers stretch like twisted veins—tunnels of warped metal and decomposing concrete riddled with forgotten transit lines and severed data routes. Once designed for underground transit, these caverns now pulse with electromagnetic dissonance, making even silence scream. The Static Cult has claimed this labyrinth as an extension of their dominion from the Radio Silence Zone. Here, white-noise sermons bleed from cracked intercoms, and flickers of broken neon play across static-worshipping zealots wandering in jittery procession. Cybernetic implants spark and whine under invisible pressure, driving intruders to madness or “conversion.” The Cult believes the chambers amplify the Conductor’s divine signal—a pulsing communion of code and soul. Those lost here rarely return, and if they do, their minds are no longer their own. The deeper you go, the more you unravel.
The Barracks and Training Grounds
Tucked deep beneath the neon-lit skyscrapers of the Citadel lies the Barracks and Training Grounds—a subterranean fortress of efficiency and doctrine. Reinforced with impact-absorbent polymers and surveilled by retinal-tracking drones, this complex serves as the crucible for the Citadel Guard. Here, recruits endure punishing regimens in adaptive holo-chambers, engaging in tactical simulations that mimic raids, shambler incursions, and rebel sabotage. Every strike, dodge, and order is cataloged, reviewed, and corrected by algorithmic overseers. It’s not just about strength—it’s about precision, discipline, and unquestioning loyalty. Within the walls of the Citadel, this facility is more than a training center—it’s a proving ground for the guardians of control. Only the best graduate into the polymer-clad enforcers who patrol the pristine streets above. Order is not taught here. It’s forged, code by code, bruise by bruise.
The Black Market
Beneath New Vance City’s fractured pavement lies the Black Market—a lawless underworld pulsing with flickering neon and encrypted whispers. It has no borders, no maps, only entrances whispered between Syndicate contacts and tagged in UV glyphs. Within, desperation is currency and customization is survival. Black-market limbs twitch on autopsy trays, memories flicker on illegal neural drives, and chemical concoctions are sold like candy. Violence is fast, digital, and stylized—handled by augmented fixers cloaked in glitchware. No faction claims authority here but the Shadow Syndicate, who operate as ghosts behind holographic veils, brokering deals with anyone who can pay the price. Above, the Citadel calls it corruption. Below, it’s the economy. In a city choking on rules, the Black Market is raw freedom—bloody, beautiful, and utterly unforgiving.
The Citadel
The Citadel is a neon-drenched illusion of order—New Vance City’s last bastion of pre-Collapse civilization, built atop reinforced skyscrapers and sealed domes. Governed by the Citadel Council, it functions as a self-contained city-state where peace and comfort are bought with compliance. Drones buzz in synchronized loops, holographic banners whisper promises of stability, and retinal scans decide your daily rations. Within, citizens enjoy working elevators, sanitized forums, and ambient orchestras piped through filtered air—so long as they stay obedient. Every action, word, and silence is logged. Your social score defines your survival. To outsiders, it’s a polished prison, a digital dictatorship masquerading as hope. But for its residents, the Citadel offers something almost extinct: predictability. Here, civilization is being rebuilt one controlled heartbeat at a time, even if it means rewriting what it means to be human.
The Main Filtration Plant
The Main Filtration Plant is the pulsing heart of the Waterworks and the iron grip of the Hydro Hegemony. Once a municipal marvel, it now operates as a tightly fortified fortress of reclaimed tech and systemic fear. Deep within its web of rust-laced catwalks and chlorine-drenched chambers, ancient purification engines groan to life, filtering the sludge of a poisoned world into potable control. Workers in patched uniforms operate under constant surveillance while “leak teams” maintain dominance by any means necessary. The Hegemony’s blue-drop insignia is plastered across steel walls like holy writ, a symbol of dependence masquerading as civic duty. Civilians trade rations, territory, or silence for water access. To tamper with this plant is to risk an engineered drought—or a quiet disappearance. This isn’t just a facility—it’s the cornerstone of Valve’s empire, and every drop it releases flows with the weight of a thousand debts.
The Perimeter Outskirts
A jagged scar ringing New Vance City, the Perimeter Outskirts are where desperation meets duty. It’s not a district—it’s a warfront, constantly battered by shambler waves, raider attacks, and the creeping entropy of the wilds. Held together by little more than rust, grit, and bad coffee, the Perimeter Watch fights to contain the chaos. These are ex-soldiers, scavvers, and grizzled idealists who abandoned politics for purpose. The barricades are always makeshift: crushed vehicles, scrap towers, reinforced ruins. Each sunrise reveals a new breach patched with hope and duct tape. Here, nobody survives on ideology—only ammo, trust, and timing. It’s a frontline where everything is expendable except the city behind it. Despite the violence, the Watch is one of the few factions respected by all: they don’t scheme, they don’t extort—they just hold the line. And when they fall, no one hears them scream. Because if the Outskirts fall, so does New Vance.
The Rust Belt
A savage scrap-kingdom ruled by brute force and rusted machinery, the Rust Belt is the iron heart of the Gear Rats. Collapsed smokestacks, overturned foundries, and crumbling shipping yards make up a brutal playground for these armored raiders. Oil fires light the nights, and the sky is always thick with the chemical haze of melted plastic and grease. Within this labyrinth, the Gear Rats build and rebuild—armor, weapons, even war rigs stitched together from forklifts and tank hulls. Their leader, the bellowing giant Cog, oversees salvage runs like a war general. Every nut and bolt is taxed. Every stray limb is claimed. Outsiders are meat or tools—sometimes both. Their foundry-pits serve as both smelters and arenas, where Rats test loyalty with blood. This district is more machine than neighborhood. Pipes scream with redirected steam. Conveyor belts run endlessly without purpose. And from this crucible, the Rats launch their assaults—on each other, on the city, on the world.
The Rustflow
The Rustflow is a corroded artery of New Vance City—an upper stretch of the Serpent’s Divide that seeps in from the north, dragging industrial decay into the city’s poisoned heart. Once a vital waterway, it’s now a chemical sluice poisoned by runoff from the Waterworks and the shattered ruins of the Rust Belt. The current oozes in hues of orange and brown, swirling with rust flakes, algae blooms, and synthetic sludge. Its banks are lined with the skeletal shells of collapsed factories and cracked conduits, where smugglers ferry contraband between the Smuggler’s Docks and barter hubs beneath the Black Market. On its eastern flank, the Solar Sprawl maintains a tense, glowing border—solar patrols stalking the toxic edge, wary of sabotage and Shadow Syndicate ambushes. To locals, the Rustflow is cursed—a river of ghosts and greed. To factions, it’s a forgotten trade route choked by waste, secrets, and silent watchers that never seem to blink.
The Serpent’s Cradle
Winding through the cracked remains of old highways and forgotten industrial parks, the Serpent’s Cradle is a slow, meandering stretch of river that marks the edge of Hydro Hegemony control. Once part of a larger municipal water system, it now serves as both a natural border and a quiet battleground for access to unregulated hydration. Its silty bottom hides forgotten tech, rusting relics, and the occasional boot of someone who crossed the Hegemony without permission. Wildlife flocks here—mutated birds, scavenging reptiles, and even rare clean fish—making it a vital source of off-grid survival. Some say rebel camps drink from its bends, trading silence for secrecy. Others whisper of hidden leak teams who stalk the riverbanks at night. In a world where water is power, the Serpent’s Cradle is one of the last places where it flows freely—at least for now. But even here, peace has a cost, and the ripples often carry blood.
The Serpent’s Divide
The Serpent’s Divide is more than a river—it’s New Vance City’s dividing vein, pumping both lifeblood and latent threat through its crumbling heart. Once part of a municipal waterway, the Collapse fractured its purpose. Now, it winds through factional zones under shifting names and tighter grips. To the Hydro Hegemony, it’s a sacred asset—filtered, taxed, and policed like liquid gold. For the Shadow Syndicate, it’s a smuggling route beneath the city’s notice. To the Perimeter Watch, it’s a choke point, bristling with traps and makeshift barricades. Contaminated in some sectors and pristine in others, the river mirrors the city's moral decay—life-giving and lethal, depending on who controls the flow. Bridges are checkpoints, and currents carry secrets. The Divide is both boundary and bloodstream—bleeding out through a city stitched together with rust, greed, and desperation.
The Serpent’s Spine
Winding like a scar between two opposing ideologies, the Serpent’s Spine is a narrow, volatile stretch of river cutting between the radiant gridlines of the Solar Sprawl and the flickering neon veins of the Black Market. Its rocky, debris-strewn waters surge violently through a canyon of cracked concrete and twisted rebar, remnants of bridges long fallen. On one side, Solar Guardians monitor crossings with sniper towers and solar-fed drones. On the other, Syndicate smugglers slip beneath the surface in jury-rigged submersibles and stealth rafts. The Spine is treacherous—riddled with mines, current traps, and forgotten corpses. But it’s also essential. This is where contraband is floated, where messages are passed in waterproof capsules, and where desperate traders bet their lives for a chance at freedom, power, or just a sip of clean water.
The Shambler Migration Path
This scorched scar of earth snakes through the Perimeter Outskirts, a desolate corridor worn flat by the relentless march of shamblers. The Migration Path isn’t a road—it’s a wound, cut open and kept raw by the infected who follow some unseen instinct deeper into New Vance. The Perimeter Watch tries to hold the line, setting up barricades, laying mines, and burning back the dead, but the path always reopens. The shamblers don’t deviate, don’t tire—they just move, sometimes in dribbling packs, sometimes in stampedes that flatten entire watchposts. Raiders lurk nearby like carrion birds, picking off weakened survivors and scavenging remains. There’s no safety here, no cover, just the unending threat of a breach. Patrols are often last stands. This isn't just a high-threat zone—it's a countdown clock, ticking toward the day the city can’t hold them back.
The Shambler’s Graveyard
Once a dense residential sprawl, the Shambler’s Graveyard is now a suffocating maze of decay and silence. Roofs have caved in under the weight of mold and memories. Every room is a nest, every street a slow-motion nightmare. Shamblers roam without purpose—but not without patterns. Something guides them. The Silent Walkers. Draped in patchwork rags and bone-laced garb, these eerie figures drift through the infected like priests among parishioners. They are not attacked. They do not speak. They take things—trinkets, tech, even bodies—and vanish into the mist. Some believe they’ve merged with the infection, others think they command it. No other faction enters. No patrols sweep here. It's not worth the risk of coming back… wrong. The Graveyard isn’t a battlefield—it’s a slow, rotting surrender. A place where the line between human and horror quietly dissolves, and the living must ask: how long can you walk among the dead before you become one of them?
The Solar Sprawl
Once a sun-bleached no-man’s-land of collapsed rooftops and shattered expressways, the Solar Sprawl has become a radiant fortress under the control of the Solar Guardians. These ex-engineers turned zealots have converted the ruins into a network of solar arrays, feeding power into everything from purification plants to defense grids. Towering substations hum with collected light, and patrols clad in sand-scorched power armor roam the perimeter with the intensity of crusaders. Life here is rigidly structured—every watt tracked, every mouth rationed. Citizens are conscripted into maintaining the solar infrastructure, but in return they gain what few in New Vance have: power, safety, even hydroponic food. Yet the Guardians’ strict doctrine of “earned energy” means even minor insubordination is met with swift, brutal justice. The Sprawl isn't just a power hub—it’s a technocratic faith, a machine-temple to the burning sky.
The Underground Aqueduct
Beneath the Waterworks lies a drowned maze of crumbling filtration corridors, pressure tunnels, and flooded overflow shafts known simply as the Underground Aqueduct. Once meant for maintenance and runoff, these submerged arteries have become the hidden veins of Hydro Hegemony power. Smugglers ferry contraband through the shadows while whispering of “dry lists” and backroom deals made in ankle-deep water. But the real threat isn’t just political—it’s biological. The Aqueduct is infested with shambler-mutants warped by chemical runoff and biofiltration waste. Patrols of elite Hydro Enforcers wade through chest-high water, more exorcist than soldier, torching nests and silencing dissent. Valve’s presence is strongest here, and any resistance—real or imagined—tends to vanish down a rusted hatch and never surface again. You don't just risk drowning in the Aqueduct. You risk being erased.
The Waterworks
Once a civic marvel, now a fortress of control, the Waterworks district of New Vance City is the iron grip of the Hydro Hegemony. Centered around colossal purification towers, algae-coated reservoirs, and labyrinthine cisterns, it is both the city’s water source and its most ruthless gatekeeper. Chlorine-sweetened steam and rust-tainted mist fill the air, disguising the scent of power. On the surface, citizens see a lifeline: hydration kiosks, purification services, smiling uniforms. But behind the facade lies a chokehold. Water is rationed with bureaucratic cruelty—priced, taxed, weaponized. “Valve,” the district’s ruler, ensures loyalty with both hydration and fear; those who resist vanish into “maintenance.” With the city’s thirst in his palm, Valve doesn’t need soldiers or speeches—he has the pipes, and they reach everywhere. Where other factions fight for turf, the Hegemony controls the bloodstream of civilization.
Trader’s Torrent
Once a narrow, choked stretch of the Serpent’s Divide, the Trader’s Torrent now serves as a vital artery of barter and risk between the towering Citadel and the irradiated sprawl of the Solar Guardians. Barges cobbled from shipping crates and scavenged hulls drift slow and heavy, laden with water rations, tech scraps, and backdoor currency. Every shipment that flows down the Torrent fuels New Vance’s fragile economy—but it’s never a safe voyage. Raiders stalk the banks like vultures, and shambler sightings are growing near the northern bends. Even the Hydro Hegemony has begun levying silent tariffs on cargo that "crosses their flow." Still, it remains the city’s most crucial unofficial trade route—a floating gray market where factions trade what they can’t officially admit they need. Survivors whisper that if the Torrent dries up, the city’s veins will collapse with it.
Trainyard Graveyard
Once a cargo hub for freight and transit, the Trainyard Graveyard now rots as a no-man’s-land deep within the Rust Belt, overrun by derailed locomotives, bent tracks, and hulking rust-fused cars. It's a war zone where Gear Rat cliques skirmish for salvage rights and old-world tech—steel bones picked clean only to be reforged into weapons or armor in nearby foundries. The screech of metal and howl of saw-rigs echo day and night as rival salvage gangs clash in brutal, grease-slicked brawls. Loyalty here is paid in scrap tonnage, and betrayal is welded into your coffin. Warlord Cog tolerates the chaos as long as it produces parts and blood. For outsiders, the Trainyard is a deathtrap—and for the Rats, it's a proving ground. Survive the Graveyard, and you're a Rat for real.
Underground Subway Tunnels
Beneath New Vance’s fractured skeleton lies the Subway Undernet—a sprawling, dangerous hive of activity built into the city's decaying mass transit lines. The deeper you go, the more you see: not just the infected, but every faction crawling through the shadows. Shamblers shuffle in the open like background noise, but around them are trading hubs, smuggler nests, and warzones. Static Cultists whisper between malfunctioning intercoms. Syndicate black markets shimmer in AR behind rusted terminals. Hydro Hegemony leak teams stalk the drainage veins, and Gear Rats use sections of rail like a scrapyard forge. Solar Guardians maintain radiant checkpoints near surface lines, incinerating threats with precision. Even Raiders carve out drug dens in abandoned service stations. The Silent Walkers move undisturbed through it all—observing. It’s a living artery of chaos, commerce, and conflict—part catacomb, part corridor, part crucible. Everyone wants something down here.