New Vance City

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.

The fortress looms like a mechanical hive—stacked train cars jut at odd angles, their hulls scorched and bolted into defensive towers. Twisted radio masts arc skyward, pulsing with static light, while lazy turbine blades spin over roaring vents. Oil-slick flames flicker from rusted barrels, casting long shadows across a patchwork of bone-charred tarps and scaffold bridges. Sparks rain constantly as grim silhouettes hammer iron prayers into war machines beneath the smog.