The Shatterreach is the lawless heart of New Hope City, a district defined not by infected or ideology, but by human violence. Long before the outbreak, this area was already fraying—an uneven mix of aging residential blocks, low-rise commercial buildings, scrap yards, storage lots, and half-abandoned developments that never found investment. When the city fell, the Shatterreach didn’t collapse. It shed what little structure it had and hardened into something far worse.
Evacuation here was chaotic and incomplete. Infrastructure failed early, emergency services vanished, and the infected spread just slowly enough for survivors to adapt rather than flee. Over time, those who couldn’t exist under contracts, faith, or order drifted here—raiders, bandits, slavers, smugglers, and outcasts of every kind. The district became a refuge for the violent and the desperate, a place where strength and reputation mattered more than numbers or resources.
Twenty years later, the Shatterreach is a maze of barricaded streets and fortified buildings layered with scrap metal, welded plating, and scavenged concrete. Rooftops are connected by planks, cables, and collapsed walkways, allowing fast movement above street level. Fires burn constantly for light, intimidation, and signaling. Noise is deliberate; silence invites attack. Patrols roam openly, weapons visible, enforcing control block by block.
The infected exist here, but they are managed. Raiders drive herds outward using noise and fire, culling stragglers and dumping bodies beyond their territory. Death is not hidden in the Shatterreach—it is displayed. Corpses are used as warnings, currency, and leverage. Violence is frequent, but rarely random. Everyone understands escalation, and bloodshed follows its own brutal logic.
No single faction rules the Shatterreach. Power shifts constantly between crews and warlords, with alliances forming and breaking as quickly as territory changes hands. Outsiders can pass through if they pay, fight, or earn protection, but betrayal is always a possibility. The Shatterreach is not chaotic—it is predatory, shaped by human intent rather than collapse.
This is where New Hope City’s worst instincts survived. Where contracts fail, faith burns, and order suffocates, the Shatterreach thrives.