The Perimeter Outskirts
The Perimeter Outskirts
Warfront – Faction: @The Perimeter Watch
@The Perimeter Outskirts are not a place you live—they’re a place you endure. Encircling New Vance like a jagged scar, this is the frontline where civilization grinds its teeth against the wild. Shambler hordes crash against the barricades in mindless waves. Raider convoys prowl for weak points, their engines howling in the pre-dawn dark. And between these assaults, the wilderness creeps inward—roots splitting concrete, rust gnawing through steel, wind carrying the scent of dust and decay.
The Perimeter Watch holds this line, a patchwork brotherhood of ex-soldiers, scavvers, and stubborn idealists who abandoned faction politics for the simple, brutal purpose of keeping the city alive. Their fortifications are ugly but effective—walls of crushed vehicles welded into towers, collapsed buildings refitted with firing ports, minefields marked by nothing but a tattered flag and a prayer. Each sunrise brings new breaches, and each breach is sealed with whatever’s on hand—steel plating, sheet metal, barbed wire, or sheer desperation.
Life here is measured in ammunition and trust. Coffee is currency, bullets are lifelines, and favors are repaid in blood. The Watch doesn’t ask why you fight, only that you stand your ground when the walls shudder. They are respected by all factions, feared by none—because they don’t hoard, don’t scheme, and don’t extort. They just hold the line.
And when the Watch falls, it’s not with a cry for help. It’s with the quiet understanding that if the Outskirts break… the rest of New Vance won’t live to see another sunrise.
Current Line Conditions. The Outskirts flex and crawl each week. Three hot sectors keep cycling red on the wall map:
Gallows Bend (northeast): uprooted roadbeds and culverts that vomit herds after rain.
Spoke-9 Overpass (west): Raiders push night glides here using gravity and dead engines.
Sump-Field 3 (south): flood-prone trench works that turn mines into soup.
Watch captains rotate Four-Hour Blocks (hold, mend, bait, burn): hold the barricade, mend the breach, bait a shambler knot off the line, then burn the corridor during a stasis minute logged by [Kara Solis, currently a member of the Solar Guardians,]—a predictable lull when herds falter.
Solar Guardians — Fire Where It Counts
Sunhook Runs: Rooftop mirrors kick a flash downrange to blind Raider spotters and cue hand-cranked igniters on the line. Works best at Spoke-9.
Foam Monks: Two-person hose crews who ride with the Watch to smother friendly fires before fuel bowsers cook off.
Friction: Guardians want scheduled burns; the Watch fights in weather and panic. When a stasis window slips, doctrine collides with survival, and somebody eats the blame.
Hydro Hegemony — Water as Leverage
Blue-Quiet Drags: Padded, mirror-masked leak teams descend under the wall to reseat valves the Raiders keep spiking. The Watch must escort them—or rations get “maintenance-paused.”
Thirst Nights: After major pushes, Hegemony declares purity checks and clamps flow; tempers and fevers rise in the forward billets.
[Gideon Rake, currently with Hydro Hegemony,] pays bounties for seized siphon rigs; the Watch takes the money but hates being a meter reader with a rifle.
Shadow Syndicate — The Black Artery
Black-Routes: Hourly chalk-cipher corridors thread ammo, gauze, and med chems to the wall. If Glitch (Raider) cracks the code, a relief run becomes an ambush.
Echo Court Chits: Paper escrow keeps fraud low; forged stamps still show up in the mud.
Tension: The Syndicate prefers predictability, the Watch prefers anything that arrives. When the Court hikes “front-risk premiums,” bullets stretch thin and quiet resentment swells.
Gear Rats — Uptime or Die
Axle Trains: Dawn caravans haul treads, fan belts, and welded firing slits; in exchange they claim salvage rights on the dead rigs piled in the berm.
Rattle Tags: If a Rat crew goes silent, a hammer squad charges; the Watch clears lanes for them because vents mean air and air means shooters stay steady.
[Graft “Rat-King” Calder, currently a Gear Rats foreman,] keeps a ledger of who burned his catwalks with sloppy torching. Debts are paid in parts, or not at all.
Citadel Council — Metrics vs. Mud
Audit Weeks: Drones, score checks, and “performance reviews” drift out to the Glass Ring while the Watch patches with scrap.
Draft Pressure: Low-score residents are reassigned to “mandatory perimeter duty.” They arrive green and scared; the Watch turns them into sandbaggers before they break.
Respect/Resentment: The Council honors the fallen at pageants; the Watch honors them with welded plaques on the berm.
Static Cult — White-Noise Weather
Surge nights blow east-sector radios to static; semaphore flags and lantern codes come out.
Hush Lanes (no comms, only hand signals) cut through Sump-Field 3.
Cultists rarely attack the wall, but their “sermons” unravel timing. A mis-timed Sunhook can turn a controlled burn into a rolling black cloud and panic fire.
Raiders — The Counter-Swarm
Teeth: Nailbeds, wire-whips, and rolling barricades dragged toward the wall to force the Watch to shoot, move, and stumble.
Smoke-Lure: Inferno Iris lights tires upwind, then bikes scythe the flank while Skullbreaker Kael rams the gate.
Shambler Drives: Crews pen herds and loose them in moonlight to soak the first magazines. The Watch counters by baiting with siren carts and burning cut lanes on the stasis beat.
Silent Walkers — Observed, Not Aligned.
Hooded figures cross the berm at dawn once a month, mark chalk sigils near the ditch, and pass through the dead like rain. No trade. No talk. The Watch logs the sightings and goes back to work.
Right-Now Incidents (last 3–6 months)
Redline Morning: A push at Gallows Bend nearly folded after a Sunhook went early; [Kara Solis, Solar Guardians,] re-aimed by hand off a truck mirror and saved the lane. Two bikes became pyres; the berm held.
Valve Massacre Echo: Eight Hegemony leak techs found head-down in a sump; Blue-Quiet now rides behind pike cages. The Watch hates the cages—they block shots—but escorts anyway.
Motel Nine Detour: After the topside butchery, Black-Routes rerouted under a collapsed mall. Couriers made it; the Raiders took torches to the decoy glyphs and walked into the mine net a day later.
Copper Skies: Static surge knocked three micro-drones out of the east air; hand signals carried the sector. A rookie forgot the lantern code and lit the wrong flag; the sergeant switched to whistle calls and laughed later, when his hands stopped shaking.
Supply, Drugs, and Disease
Spark floods the berm before big pushes. It keeps eyes open until it doesn’t; users twitch to unheard rhythms and miscount shots. Syndicate sellers stamp purity; the Watch confiscates the glittering cuts (chrysal dust?) and trades coffee instead.
NV-Series Wetware rumors ride the line: a clinic under the wall that “still hands” a sniper’s tremor—for a price and a nightmare drought. The Watch pretends not to hear.