New Vance City

Once a facility for industrial drum filtration, the Tumbler Yards now lie in semi-functioning decay—a skeletal field of giant rotating purification tanks, many still spinning despite the ruin around them. Officially listed as condemned, the area somehow remains semi-operational, used as a dumping ground for runoff waste and contaminated reserves that the Hydro Hegemony doesn't want seen. The Yards are a gray zone in more ways than one: squatters camp beneath the humming drums, water smugglers filter trickles through makeshift tubing, and rogue engineers test scavenged purifiers with a mix of desperation and hope. Everyone here knows not to touch the red-marked tanks—they leak, and people who drink from them don’t stay people for long. Rumors persist of subterranean vents that lead to forgotten tunnels or even deeper filtration levels. Whether those rumors are true or just heatstroke hallucinations, the Tumbler Yards remain a last stop before dehydration turns to delirium.

The Tumbler Yards stretch like a post-industrial graveyard—vast concrete pads cracked by time and root, supporting rows of massive horizontal filtration drums lined end to end like fallen titans. Each drum is a rusting giant, its surface pitted with mineral buildup and patchwork welds from decades of crude maintenance. Some still rotate slowly, groaning with age, powered by distant pumps that cough to life in irregular gasps. Overhead, half-collapsed catwalks dangle with loose cables and swinging pressure gauges, swaying with each groan of the machinery. Pools of discolored runoff collect beneath the drums—some fluorescent green, others opaque black. Corrugated shelters and tarp-tied lean-tos cluster in the shadows, lit by jury-rigged lanterns or scavenged solar lamps. Everything here drips—water, oil, sweat—and the whole yard hums with low mechanical vibration, as if the machines are dreaming in rust.