The Shambler’s Graveyard

History and Purpose of the Graveyard

The Shambler’s Graveyard began as a dense residential zone on the city’s edge. It held apartments, small shops, schools, and parks. During the Collapse, this area was one of the first to lose power and organized defense. Emergency teams tried to evacuate, but the infection spread faster than they could move people out. Street by street, the district shifted from civilian housing to a permanent quarantine.

When the Z-Virus surged through these blocks, the survivors made a hard choice. They sealed off roads, welded doors, and redirected Perimeter Watch patrols to contain the outbreak rather than rescue every last person. The area became a controlled loss, a sacrifice to keep the infection from pushing deeper into the city. Over time, people began to call it the Shambler’s Graveyard. It was not only a place of the dead; it was a place the living agreed to abandon.

After the First Accord formed, the Graveyard stayed outside all formal rebuilding plans. The Citadel Council wrote it off as a permanent exclusion zone. The Solar Guardians saw no reason to regain it, since panels there would be hard to protect. The Hydro Hegemony and the Shadow Syndicate both judged it too unstable for any long-term operation. Only the Perimeter Watch kept minimal eyes on the edges, enough to raise an alarm if the tides of infected ever swelled beyond their known patterns.

Now the Graveyard serves one main purpose for New Vance. It stands as a constant reminder that the city cannot reclaim everything it lost. It is a buffer of horror and silence between the functioning districts and the uncontrolled wilds. People tell stories about it around ration fires and in crowded markets. They do this to scare each other, but also to keep the risk clear in their minds.

Terrain, Atmosphere, and Environmental Threats

The Shambler’s Graveyard is dense and hard to navigate. Buildings lean into each other. Many roofs have collapsed under the weight of mold, rot, and standing water. Narrow alleys are blocked by fallen balconies, burned-out vehicles, and old barricades. Inside, apartments and shops are packed with debris, personal belongings, and dried biological waste. Every room can hide a nest of infected.

The air is heavy and damp. Fungal blooms climb walls and ceilings in clusters of gray, green, and sick yellow. Some of these growths release spores when disturbed. People who pass through without protection often come back wheezing, feverish, or with strange rashes. Thick mist pools in low streets and ground-level courtyards, especially at night and in the early morning. This mist hides movement, muffles sound, and makes simple navigation difficult.

Windows ooze slow trails of bio-sludge from old infection sites. This residue gathers in gutters, stairwells, and sunken lots, forming slick patches that can send a person to the ground in an instant. Puddles may look calm, but many hold active viral traces or chemical runoff. Open wounds are dangerous here even without a bite. A badly timed fall can mean infection, even without direct contact with a shambler.

Streetlights still stand in many places, but the grid is shattered. Some lamps flicker on and off at irregular intervals, powered by leftover or redirected current. Their glow often lines up with strange pulses and surges in the local environment. To many survivors, these synchronized flashes feel unnatural. They mark sudden waves of shambler movement, or the silent passage of the Walkers. No one has mapped these light patterns in a reliable way. Too many who tried did not return.

Shambler Behavior and Nesting Patterns

There are more shamblers in the Graveyard than in any other single district of New Vance. Most are slow, twitching figures that drift through halls and streets without clear purpose. They bump into walls, furniture, or each other, then sway and reset. At first glance, they seem random. But over long observation, distinct loops appear. Many follow repeated paths through their old homes, workplaces, or regular walking routes from before the Collapse.

Some buildings act as hives. Inside, infected pack into small spaces, layered in piles that barely move until sound or heat draws them out. Stairwells and basement storage rooms often serve this role. Disturbing such a hive is usually fatal. The surge of bodies is fast and overwhelming, and the tight spaces leave little room for escape. Scavvers who know the district learn to read subtle signs: claw marks around a doorway, thick mold trails, or the smell of enclosed rot.

Compared to shamblers near the Perimeter or in open streets, Graveyard infected show more coordinated surges. Groups will turn corners at the same time, or shift direction together toward a noise that should be out of range. Sometimes entire blocks fall silent for long stretches, with shamblers standing perfectly still in doorways and roads. Survivors call these “quiet hours.” They rarely risk travel during them, because what follows is often a sudden wave of synchronized movement.

The Z-Virus acts with the same basic rules here as anywhere else in New Vance. A bite, a deep claw wound, or contaminated blood in a cut is enough to start the process. Within hours, fever and delirium set in. Without antigen within the twenty-four-hour window, the victim becomes one more body in the Graveyard’s slow tide. Few carry antigen vials into this district. People who enter expect that if they are bitten, they will not be saved. This harsh truth shapes every decision made at the edge of the zone.

The Domain of the Silent Walkers

While the infected fill the streets, the Shambler’s Graveyard belongs to the Silent Walkers. Other factions say this bluntly. The district is marked on many maps not only as a quarantine zone, but also as “Walker ground.” Patrols, scouting parties, and raiding bands respect this line. Even the most reckless Raiders avoid deep pushes into these blocks. The risk is not only the shamblers. It is the Walkers themselves.

Silent Walkers wear patchwork clothing built from rags, tarps, and scraps of old uniforms. Bone, cable, and small metal pieces are woven into their robes and hoods. Some cover their faces with cracked masks. Others bear pale, expressionless faces that do not react to fear, pain, or threat. They move with slow, steady steps that resemble the swaying gait of shamblers, but with more control. They do not run. They do not rush. They glide.

The most unsettling fact is simple: shamblers do not attack them. Walkers can step within arm’s reach of infected, bend down to pick an object from the ground, and continue on their way without incident. The infected may twitch or turn to follow them with dead eyes, but they do not lunge. No one has confirmed why this is true. Some say the Walkers carry a modified strain of the virus. Others believe their bodies or implants broadcast signals that soothe, override, or blend with the swarm’s instincts.

Their purpose in the Graveyard remains unknown. Witnesses report that they collect personal items rather than practical ones. They take old toys, photos, jewelry, damaged devices, and sometimes full bodies, both fresh and long dead. They carry these away into deeper zones or down into the tunnels below. There are stories of entire families vanishing from a safehouse near the Graveyard edge. Days later, one of them is seen walking among the Walkers, eyes empty, gait calm, skin free of bite marks.

People who return from close encounters with the Silent Walkers often show signs of change. They become distant and quiet. They speak less and sleep poorly. Some drift back toward the Graveyard again and again, as if drawn there by something they cannot name. A few disappear on these repeat visits and are never seen again. Those who knew them say that the person was already gone before the final trip. The body just took time to follow.

Faction Attitudes, Rumors, and Reasons to Enter

Every major power in New Vance has an official stance on the Shambler’s Graveyard: stay out. The Citadel Council labels it a black zone on all internal maps. Patrol drones are programmed to avoid deep entry, even when chasing targets. The Solar Guardians view the district as a dead circuit with no strategic return. The Hydro Hegemony sees no water to claim there that would justify the risk. The Shadow Syndicate uses rumors of the Graveyard to scare off inexperienced competition.

The Perimeter Watch keeps limited observation posts facing the Graveyard from safer blocks. They track large movements of infected that might drift toward the outer walls. Some veterans once pushed into the district to thin numbers or rescue trapped families. Most of those missions ended in heavy losses or unexplained disappearances. Now, they mark the Graveyard as a place where a bullet is better spent on a warning shot than on a rescue attempt.

Despite all warnings, people still enter. Shadow Syndicate fixers sometimes send crews in to recover specific data cores, experimental devices, or biotech caches left from early Collapse research. Rumors speak of a lost lab under the Graveyard where antigen formulas and advanced viral notes were stored. Others talk about sealed panic rooms belonging to pre-Collapse elites, filled with valuables, backups, and clean supplies. The risk of infection and Walker attention makes every such job a near-suicidal task, which means the pay can be high.

For ordinary citizens, the Graveyard is both a threat and a story. Parents warn their children that if they wander too far at night, the Walkers will come and lead them away without a sound. Street preachers claim the district is proof that the city is already dead and only pretending to function. Glowers and other outcasts sometimes speak of it as a place where a person can vanish without judgment, taken in by the quiet and the mist.

Shamblers drift. Walkers collect. Buildings fall by degrees. The city looks at this district and understands the cost of failure in clear, concrete terms.