Infrastructure Vassal of The Beacon
“Power doesn’t shout. It just disappears.”
The Switchyard Collective is a survivor faction occupying Redhaven’s old railway switching yard and municipal power substation, a sprawl of rusting rails, transformer towers, control sheds, and signal pylons on the industrial edge of the city. Before the fall, it was a forgotten artery of infrastructure—after the fall, it became the quiet spine holding Redhaven upright.
They do not patrol streets.
They do not levy violence.
They do not fly banners.
They keep the lights on.
And because of that, they are allowed to live.
The Collective was founded by Elias Calder, the final elected Mayor of Redhaven.
When the Blood Plague hit, Calder attempted to organize evacuations, emergency shelters, and rationed utilities. The city collapsed faster than bureaucracy could respond. Police vanished. Hospitals burned. The council fractured. Calder survived not because of strength, but because he understood one truth earlier than most:
Cities don’t fall when people die. They fall when systems fail.
Calder’s son, Jonah Calder, a gifted MIT-bound electrical engineering student, recognized the same thing. While others fled or fought, Jonah mapped the grid—what could still run, what could be isolated, and what could be repurposed.
Together, father and son gathered:
Former city engineers and transit officials
Utility workers
College students studying engineering, physics, and computer science
A handful of rail operators and signal technicians
They fled downtown before Albert Yemin consolidated power and fortified the Beacon, disappearing into the industrial rail corridor under the guise of “infrastructure repair.”
By the time Albert noticed them, it was already too late.
The Switchyard occupies a multi-acre industrial zone consisting of:
A rail switching nexus with manual and automated track controls
A municipal substation connected to downtown, Beacon-adjacent blocks, and water pumping stations
Signal towers and relay masts repurposed for short-range radio and grid monitoring
Several hardened concrete control buildings, partially buried and reinforced
The area is deliberately kept dark, with lighting only activated when necessary. From a distance, it looks abandoned. From above, it looks dead.
It is neither.
The Switchyard Collective does not wage war.
They apply pressure.
Through carefully managed routing, they can:
Dim or cut power to specific districts
Stall elevators mid-shaft
Disable automated security systems
Shut down water pumps reliant on electric flow
Kill radio repeaters and signal relays
They almost never do this openly.
Instead, outages occur:
During “maintenance”
After “unexpected load surges”
Following “equipment stress”
Albert Yemin understands exactly what they can do.
That is why he tolerates them.
The Collective is not free.
Each week, a Beacon engineer arrives to “audit” the system—checking logs, verifying routing priorities, and ensuring that The Beacon receives uninterrupted, premium power allocation.
The threat is never spoken plainly.
It is implied.
“These old systems weren’t designed to run under this kind of strain. If something were to fail… well. You know how cascading outages work.”
Tribute is paid not in food or weapons, but in:
Priority routing to The Beacon
Generator fuel management
Emergency repair teams dispatched when Beacon systems fail
Exclusive blackout immunity
In return, Albert leaves them alone.
Mostly.
Former Mayor of Redhaven
Leader of the Switchyard Collective
Elias Calder is an aging man with tired eyes and an unbreakable spine. He no longer believes in elections, speeches, or law—but he still believes in responsibility.
He leads without command.
Decisions are debated.
Consensus is valued.
Calder sees the Collective not as a faction, but as a custodial body—caretakers of a city that no longer understands what keeps it alive.
He despises Albert Yemin quietly, methodically, and without illusion. Calder knows Albert is not a tyrant by madness, but by structure. That makes him more dangerous.
Calder’s greatest fear is not death.
It is that one day, someone will flip every switch at once.
Jonah Calder serves as the Collective’s chief systems architect. He is brilliant, exhausted, and deeply aware that every decision they make shapes who lives and who does not.
Around him is a rotating council of:
Grid technicians
Signal operators
Logistics planners
Young engineers who have never known adulthood without apocalypse
They are not fighters.
They are specialists.
And they know that if the Beacon ever decides to take the Switchyard by force, they will not survive a prolonged assault.
Their leverage is time, complexity, and consequence.
The Switchyard is protected not by walls, but by environmental denial.
Defenses include:
Electrified choke points activated remotely
Track-switch traps that isolate intruders
Signal misdirection causing radios to feed false positions
Dark zones where intruders are silhouetted against live equipment
Manual overrides known only to core members
Firearms are rare.
Crossbows and shock-spears exist, but combat is avoided whenever possible.
If attackers breach deeply, the final defense is simple:
The power goes out. Everywhere.
Life in the Switchyard is quiet, tense, and purposeful.
Shifts rotate constantly; no one works the same station twice in a row
Logs are kept obsessively
Power use is debated ethically, not just technically
Young members are trained relentlessly, because losing one expert can doom thousands
They do not celebrate.
They do not expand.
They endure.
The Collective is feared and resented.
The Stadium vassal suspects them but lacks leverage
Aspen Row barely understands what they do, only that outages mean danger
The Beacon pretends they are partners
In truth, the Switchyard Collective is the only faction that could kill Albert without firing a shot.
And Albert knows it.
A Beacon-ordered purge disguised as “safety restructuring”
A city-wide blackout that must be prevented—or allowed
Choosing whether to decentralize power and weaken Albert permanently
Protecting Jonah Calder during a targeted extraction attempt
Deciding who gets power when winter hits
The Switchyard Collective is not heroic.
They are not rebels.
They are custodians of a dying machine.
And every day, they decide who gets to stay warm, who gets to drink clean water, and who disappears into the dark wondering what went wrong.