This district was once New Hope City’s primary freight and maritime logistics hub, a dense waterfront sprawl of container yards, bonded warehouses, shipping offices, cranes, rail spurs, and ferry terminals packed tightly along the bay. Before the outbreak, it never slept. Cargo moved day and night, containers stacked like city blocks, forklifts and gantries crawling constantly over steel decks while ships queued offshore to unload.
When the city fell, the Docklands didn’t burn or evacuate—it fractured. Ships were abandoned mid-loading. Containers were left sealed, mislabeled, or lost entirely in the chaos. Warehouses were broken into, fortified, stripped, and re-fortified again. The bay remained accessible, and that made this place too valuable to die.
Twenty years later, the Docklands are crowded, dangerous, and alive. Power still runs in parts, feeding floodlights, crane motors, and jury-rigged generators. The shoreline bristles with docks and makeshift piers, some functional, some collapsing, all contested. Container stacks have become vertical neighborhoods, storage vaults, and sniper nests. Narrow corridors between steel walls funnel movement and trap sound, making ambushes common and escape difficult.
This district is ruled not by law or ideology, but by control of ships and cargo. Pirate-style crews oversee sections of the docks, operating like maritime gangs—armed, territorial, and pragmatic. They tax everything that moves through the bay: boats, cargo, people, fuel, information. Their authority comes from firepower, numbers, and control of access to water routes no other district possesses.
The Docklands are rough, loud, and transactional. Deals are made face-to-face. Disputes are settled fast and publicly. Infected are kept to the margins through constant noise, movement, and patrols, but outbreaks still happen when a sealed container is opened or a warehouse collapses. Bodies often end up in the water, weighted and forgotten.
The Docklands feel lawless, but they are not chaotic. Everything here has a price, a handler, and a consequence. If Greenhaven hides and the Exchange negotiates, the Docklands moves. It is the city’s mouth to the sea—scarred, violent, indispensable, and impossible to ignore.