Perimeter Watch

Origins and Purpose of the Perimeter Watch

The Perimeter Watch grew out of the first year of chaos after the Collapse, when New Vance still had no clear borders. People tried to flee when shambler outbreaks hit the inner blocks. Others tried to push in from the wastes, bringing infection, raiders, and unstable tech with them. Every street edge was a gap. Every gap was a risk.

Small groups of ex-soldiers, scavvers, and local defenders started building rough barricades on their own. They welded cars together, dragged concrete into place, and stacked scrap until it formed walls of a sort. No one paid them. No one sent orders. They simply understood that if someone did not hold the outer streets, then the city would shrink a little more every week, until nothing was left.

Over time, these scattered groups began to recognize one another. They met in burned-out checkpoints and agreed on simple rules: share warning signals, share sighting reports, and do not abandon a position without telling the next post down the line. There was no official name at first. People just called them “the line guards” or “those at the edge.” The name Perimeter Watch came later, when other factions needed a way to refer to them in plans and trade talks.

The Watch does not exist to gain territory, profit, or political leverage. Its purpose is narrow and clear. It keeps infection and uncontrolled violence from crossing into the city in force. Shamblers, raider war parties, and unstable experimental hazards are their main targets. When outbreaks or assaults occur, the Watch tries to absorb the first impact. This gives inner districts time to lock down or evacuate.

They know they cannot win a final victory against the threats outside. New Vance sits in the middle of a wider ruin that keeps producing new dangers. The Watch’s goal is not to end the threat. It is to manage it, slow it, and make survival inside the city possible for another day.

Structure, Outposts, and Daily Life

The Perimeter Watch is not a formal army. It has no central headquarters in the Glass Ring, no long chain of ranks, and no official budget. Instead, it runs as a loose network of outposts, each adapted to the specific block, highway, or broken district it covers.

Typical outposts use whatever the defenders can weld, stack, or dig. Many are built from burned vehicles, shipping containers, toppled storefronts, and fencing. Some use old military barriers and blast walls left from pre-Collapse security lines. Others reinforce natural choke points, such as collapsed overpasses or narrow alleys between fallen towers.

Each outpost holds a core group of permanent defenders and a small number of rotating volunteers or short-term fighters. They share bunk spaces, ammo crates, and food stocks. In most cases, they have a simple field medbay, a cache of masks or improvised protection gear, and a few radios or signal rigs. Many posts also have signal fires, flare guns, or crude siren systems wired into leftover infrastructure.

Daily life in the Watch is repetitive and stressful. Shifts divide into patrol, overwatch, maintenance, and rest. Patrols move through ruined streets and fringe zones, checking for breaches, shambler tracks, and raider signs. Overwatch teams man the walls, scanning with scopes or salvaged sensors. Maintenance crews repair barricades, clear kill-zones, and keep weapons in working order. Rest periods are short and rarely feel safe, because no one fully trusts the quiet.

Meals are simple. Supplies are inconsistent. Most posts rely on irregular shipments from sympathetic factions, small-scale trade with nearby settlements, and whatever they can salvage. Ammunition is their most precious resource after medical kits. Many fighters re-use casings, reload by hand, and hoard functional magazines.

Despite this, the outposts maintain basic routines. They raise and lower simple flags or signals at set times to confirm they are still holding. They log raids and outbreaks in battered notebooks or jury-rigged tablets. They track which neighboring posts are active and which have gone silent, then decide whether they can spare people to check on them.

Leadership, Recruitment, and Culture

The Perimeter Watch has no single leader. Command is local and practical. The person who has the most experience in actual combat, logistics, and infection response usually leads a given outpost. Titles are informal: Captain, Old Man, Sarge, Chief, or simply “Lead.” If that person dies, the next most capable defender takes over.

There is, however, a loose council of respected veterans who move between posts to coordinate larger actions. These individuals do not give formal orders. They share intelligence, relay warnings, and argue for where to reinforce or where to fall back. Other factions sometimes try to deal with these veterans as if they were commanders, but the Watch treats any agreement as a promise between people, not between institutions.

Recruitment is constant, because attrition is constant. Some recruits are ex-military or ex-corporate security who could not stand the politics of the Citadel Council or the harsh control of the major factions. Others are scavvers, Outlanders, or former raiders seeking some form of purpose or redemption. A third group comes from ordinary citizens who have lost homes or family to outbreaks and refuse to stay behind walls again.

Initiation into the Watch is simple but serious. New recruits are tested on weapons handling, basic field medicine, and discipline under threat. They must serve at least one real shift on a hot perimeter, sometimes during a controlled burn or a live engagement. There are no long speeches. If they hold their position and do not break under pressure, they are accepted. If they panic or abandon their post, they are sent back to the inner districts and barred from returning.

Culturally, the Watch is blunt. Status comes from reliability, not from birth or wealth. People judge one another by who shows up when the alarm sounds and who keeps their head when shamblers press against the barricades. They respect straight talk and shared hardship. They are suspicious of formal uniforms and polished promises.

They do not use symbols or banners on the same scale as other factions. Many outposts mark their walls with simple stencils, hash marks, or lists of the dead. Some keep short written oaths on metal plates, reminding everyone why they stand there: to keep the city from losing more ground, and to keep outbreaks from spreading inward unchecked.

Relations with Other Factions

The Perimeter Watch sits outside most formal power structures. This independence creates both respect and tension. Every major faction in New Vance relies on them in some way, but not all are willing to admit it.

The Citadel Council understands the practical value of the Watch. If the outer edges collapse, the Council’s controlled districts will face more frequent outbreaks, more panicked refugees, and more pressure on already strained resources. The Council sometimes sends medical supplies, ammunition, and technical support to key outposts, especially those near important approach routes. However, it also tries to influence the Watch by tying supplies to certain “requests,” such as clearing specific routes first or prioritizing certain evacuation paths. The Watch often accepts the supplies but rejects any attempt at direct control.

The Solar Guardians respect the Watch as fellow defenders, even if they operate very differently. Guardians hold fortified solar farms and energy routes. The Watch holds broken streets and ruined edges. When large threats move toward the city, Guardians and Watch units sometimes coordinate, sharing spotter reports and fallback points. Guardians may lend heavy weapons or vehicles for major defensive efforts. In return, the Watch may help guard power convoys or alert Guardians to sabotage near their installations.

The Hydro Hegemony views the Watch in more transactional terms. Some perimeter outposts guard access to intake points, pipe corridors, or cistern routes. In these cases, the Hegemony negotiates direct support in exchange for defense obligations. Where water infrastructure is not directly at risk, the Hegemony is more distant, preferring to let others handle outer security while it focuses on its own assets.

The Shadow Syndicate deals with the Watch on a case-by-case basis. Syndicate smugglers sometimes use perimeter routes to move goods in and out of the city. In some zones, quiet agreements exist: the Watch looks the other way in exchange for ammo, medicine, or information about raider movements and shambler dens. In other zones, relations are hostile, especially when Syndicate operations threaten the stability of key defensive lines.

The Gear Rats and Raider gangs are more direct threats than partners. Gear Rat war rigs sometimes clash with Watch positions when scrap routes overlap with defensive lines. In some rare cases, they briefly cooperate against large shambler swarms, but trust is thin and temporary. Raider bands often probe for weak points or try to rush barricades to loot inner blocks. The Watch responds with disciplined fire and, when possible, pre-emptive strikes against forming war parties.

Through all of this, the Watch tries to keep one rule: no alliance that undermines the core mission. If a deal would weaken the line, they refuse it, no matter how promising the reward.

Threats, Strain, and the Future of the Line

The Perimeter Watch lives under constant strain. Every year, the outer blocks deteriorate further. Buildings collapse, streets sink, and old defensive works rot or crack. New threats emerge from the wastes: mutated shambler strains, raider groups with heavier weapons, and unstable tech relics that can poison or burn whole sectors. For now, their role remains the same as it has been since the first barricade went up. They take their place at the city’s edge. They keep the infection and chaos outside as long as they can.