New Vance City is a post-collapse RPG where survival means customizing everything—classes, skills, races, and gear are all unique. Set in 2070, a year after the world cracked and the infected rose, this cyberpunk dystopia pulses with story-rich factions, brutal politics, and unforgettable characters. Forge your path in a smog-choked ruin where the line between savior and syndicate blurs with every shot fired. Fight zombies, raiders, and mutated creatures and test your survival in New Vance City!
| Played | 5504 times |
| Cloned | 198 times |
| Created | 124 days ago |
| Last Updated | 3 days ago |
| Visibility | Public |
Array Node K-17
Array Node K-17 sits just inside the northern arc of the Solar Guardian Perimeter Bastion, where the order of the Sprawl thins into scorched emptiness. Once a primary relay hub for solar intake routing, it now functions as a silent monitor post, mostly automated, mostly forgotten. Power still flows—barely—through its cracked panels and corroded uplinks, enough to keep its signal flickering and its security protocols twitching. Guardian patrols pass it regularly but don’t linger. The Node’s isolation and redundant programming have made it prone to strange behavior: sporadic lens flares with no sun, heat blooms with no source, and solar flares that arc without connection. Engineers whisper of phantom errors—glitches in light, as if the Node is broadcasting something it shouldn’t. Some scavvers call it “the Sunghost,” claiming to see human shapes within its mirrors. Whether it’s haunted code or just sun-sick hallucinations, no one’s been brave—or foolish—enough to dismantle it.
Augmentation Alley
Deep beneath the fractured gridlines of New Vance City, Augmentation Alley serves as a gleaming spine of wetware chaos in the Black Market’s neon labyrinth. This corridor isn't officially mapped, but if you can follow the stench of burnt synthskin and the hiss of overclocked servo-arms, you'll find it. Here, rogue surgeons called "chrome butchers" swap flesh for fiber, nerves for networks. Enhancement isn’t a luxury—it’s currency, survival, and sometimes identity. The Shadow Syndicate controls this stretch like a nervous system: silent, reactive, and ruthlessly adaptive. They broker deals for ghostware, illegal AI patches, cloaking shards, and black-market limbs with fingers like scalpels. For many, Augmentation Alley is the last stop before a new self—or no self at all. Most come seeking strength. Some come to disappear. Nobody leaves unchanged.
Bendspine Station
Bendspine Station has no living master. What was once a quiet loop line terminus is now a stinking cathedral of rot. The Gear Rats once tried to hold it—burned barricades and melted turret husks still litter the entry platforms—but the infection outpaced them. Now, Silent Walkers drift through the ruined concourse, watching with patient, bone-glass eyes as Shamblers nest in the maintenance corridors. The station’s deep cisterns provide moisture for the infection to flourish, and black mold blooms across every stairwell. Something has been scratching words into the walls—short phrases in a dead language, repeated over and over. It’s not just a hotspot. It’s a conversion zone. Entry is suicide. But some still come… just to listen.
Biohazard Zone
The Biohazard Zone was once a flood control trench snaking through the Shambler’s Graveyard, back when New Vance still believed in zoning. Now, it's a festering wound in the city’s corpse—ground zero for an early water-treatment collapse that mixed chemical runoff, corpses, and unknown viral agents into a slow-boiling brew. The Silent Walkers avoid it—but not out of fear. Some say it’s where they began. Shamblers here mutate fast, sprouting cystic limbs and luminous tumors that pulse with rhythmic distortion. The infection seems aware in this place. Residue clings to the air, and electronics glitch out within seconds of exposure. Occasionally, scavvers report seeing humans walking amid the sludge unharmed, their bodies coated in membrane, their eyes glowing faintly green. No faction cleans this place. No one controls it. The Biohazard Zone isn't just poisoned—it's changing. Slowly. Patiently. As if waiting.
Bioreactor Chamber
Buried in the steel bowels of the Main Filtration Plant, the Bioreactor Chamber is more myth than map—a sealed sanctum accessible only to Valve’s most trusted operatives. Here, bioluminescent algae drift in vertical tanks like slow-motion auroras, feeding on trace contaminants and converting sludge into something dangerously close to purity. The process is organic, ancient, and allegedly stolen tech—modified to near-perfection by Hegemony researchers in secrecy. The chamber operates under biometric lock and drone surveillance, and even most plant personnel have never seen its interior. Rumors swirl: that it houses prototype filtration tech, that it’s where Valve “tunes” disloyal workers, or that it doubles as a chemical blacksite. Whatever the truth, this chamber is more than just the final stage of purification—it’s the glowing, verdant jewel in the Hegemony’s iron crown, and perhaps the most jealously guarded water source in all of New Vance.
Briarline Hollow
Briarline Hollow was a minor Sprawl service station, mostly used by solar rigging crews to reach rooftop panel junctions. After infection broke containment in the southern Sprawl, the Hollow was overrun in under 24 hours. The station remains structurally sound, but every entry is now compromised. Drones that enter lose feed within 90 seconds. Rumors suggest the infected here exhibit unusual clustering behavior—stacking bodies, blocking exits, mimicking noise. No Guardian force has attempted reclamation. It’s marked as “live infection zone” and ignored by official maps. The Hollow still sits just two stops from Verge.
Brinemouth Exchange
Brinemouth Exchange was once a key midline stop connecting the Waterworks’ upper filtration silos with low-sector cistern facilities. It collapsed early—just two weeks after the initial containment failures—when flood pressure from a ruptured filtration shaft forced maintenance crews to evacuate through unsealed tunnels. Shamblers poured in through the water control vents and overran the platform before Hegemony enforcers could seal it. The station remains flooded and biologically active. Filtration markers from probes indicate high bacterial density and low oxygen, but drone telemetry confirms consistent motion signatures throughout the basin. Brinemouth is now redlined and monitored, but no recovery efforts are underway.
Broadcast Bunker-9
Broadcast Bunker-9 was once a relay control center for surface transmission towers. One week after the Collapse, the Static Cult sealed it from the inside and repurposed it into a signal-worshipping node. Cultists operate inside the sealed control deck, using jacked-in interface gear to manipulate low-frequency bursts across the tunnel system. The station is treated as a temple—access is restricted, and any non-converts are either captured or repelled. Relay antennas run through the ceiling infrastructure, linked to rusted satellite hubs topside. Several nearby tunnels were intentionally collapsed to funnel foot traffic into Bunker-9 for forced induction or signal exposure. Converted civilians are used as static relays—tethered to power sockets and muttering until cardiac failure.
Calder Glass Station
Calder Glass was one of the Citadel’s public commuter lines before the lockdowns. Its platform connected to residential towers and administrative offices. When infection breached the inner barrier, evacuation efforts failed—station security protocols sealed the exits with over 200 civilians still inside. Within hours, Shambler spread escalated, and Citadel command abandoned the lower level, rerouting all rail paths around it. Calder is now listed as “Inert Zone 7.” Unauthorized entry triggers a static lockdown response from Citadel surface systems. The Council will not commit personnel to clean it. It's simply been quarantined and written off.
Cell Dusk Theta
Cell Dusk Theta is a restricted observation annex within the Archives and Research Wing—an isolation lab originally constructed for short-term biological study, now converted into a permanent deep-threat quarantine and behavioral monitoring station. Few within the Citadel even know it exists; fewer still are cleared to enter. Here, the Citadel’s top researchers study dormant variants of shambler-infected tissue, neural decay prototypes, and exposure logs from field units who've survived too long outside the walls. The chamber is a place of hushed tones and locked terminals, where breakthroughs come second to containment, and where data is often considered too volatile to share. All access is granted via dual-authentication retinal sync, and the logs are purged daily. Whispers claim Dusk Theta holds the closest thing to a cure, but its true value lies in what it doesn’t reveal. Inside, science and secrecy blend so tightly, it's impossible to tell which is keeping the other alive.
Chlorination Chamber
The Chlorination Chamber is the chemical crucible of the Main Filtration Plant—a sealed, high-security chamber where the balance between purity and poison hangs by a thread. Here, precisely measured chlorine is injected into partially filtered water to annihilate microbial threats still lingering after mechanical treatment. The air is thick with acrid sting, and even short exposure without a mask can leave lungs raw. Only certified Hegemony technicians, known grimly as “Breathers,” are allowed inside, donning respirator rigs and hazard suits as they monitor pressurized canisters and flow regulators. Any error—too much or too little—can turn a life-giving stream into a lethal toxin. Surveillance nodes track every movement; even sabotage is anticipated with automated shutoffs and redundant safety valves. It's not just a purification zone—it’s a weaponized checkpoint of chemistry and control, a reminder that water’s safety is as much a function of obedience as it is science.
Chlorine Row
Chlorine Row is a stretch of decaying residential block near the southern fringe of the Shambler’s Graveyard—so named for the distinct, sharp chemical odor that lingers in the air, a relic of the hastily deployed decontamination units abandoned here after the first major outbreak. Originally a containment buffer between infected zones and the city core, the street once housed medical responders and civilian evacuees. Now, its structures sag under the weight of rot and time, with every window sealed in duct tape and every door marked with faded biohazard symbols. The area is rarely patrolled, but scavengers occasionally slip through looking for preserved supplies or access to the old emergency bunker beneath Row House 6. Some swear the chlorine scent isn't just chemical—it's masking something else. Movement behind sealed curtains. Wet footprints in dust. Low breathing that doesn't stop when yours does. The shamblers avoid the Row. That should make it safe. But it doesn’t.
Chokecoil Junction
Chokecoil Junction lies deeper in the Rust Belt and operates as a pressure-cooker forge station—both literal and political. Here, faction disputes among the Rats are "settled" through brutal gauntlet fights in the side tunnels, while rail-mounted furnaces process ore and scrap into makeshift weapons. This station’s primary function is refinement: smelting scavenged metal into standardized components for Cog’s factories. The choke-point layout also makes it ideal for ambushes, and trapdoors beneath the boarding platforms lead directly into recycling crushers. Rat scribes—tattooed archivists—record every load processed, every duel fought, and every mutiny squashed. It’s a station of loyalty tests and steel-born authority.
Clarifier Platform 3-A
Clarifier 3-A lies beneath a now-defunct municipal treatment plant and has been converted into a testbed for filtration experiments and chemical additive research. Hegemony scientists use this station to analyze new contaminants from deep-water zones and reverse-engineer filter modules scavenged from pre-Collapse hardware. Guard presence is minimal but strict; only credentialed personnel with wet-code tags may enter. A small research detachment lives on-site in prefab dorms welded into the old breakroom wing. The station also serves as a resource for “wetzone reclamation” scouting crews—those tasked with identifying new flow channels in Shambler-infested tunnels.
Cog's Throne Room
Cog’s Throne Room looms like a jagged crown atop the rust-choked apex of the Gear Rat Stronghold. Once a rail-control center in the heart of the Rust Belt, it's been reforged into a furnace-lit war sanctum, echoing with metal chants and power-saw hymns. This is where Warlord Cog passes judgment, slams rusted fists on scrap-forged thrones, and demands tribute in steel and blood. It’s equal parts war room, execution pit, and shrine to the brutal ethos of machine worship. Here, the Rats offer sacrifices of scrap, conduct rites in oil and fire, and sentence traitors to the “Smelt Grate”—a furnace-fed panel that glows with molten fury. Symbols of the Scrap Titans are welded into every surface, etched deep into metal and madness. From this smoking altar of iron dominance, Cog oversees raids, disputes, and mechanical theology with equal intensity, ruling over the Rust Belt’s chaos like a god of gears.
Coldpost Platform
Coldpost Platform is an unlisted Syndicate checkpoint used for routing high-risk personnel and sensitive data out of the deeper tunnels. It doesn’t appear on standard Black Market schematics and is insulated against both environmental signal drift and surface radar sweeps. The station runs on autonomous grid storage hacked from Guardian surplus. Every third car arrives empty, its contents added digitally via neural-synced handshake. Physical files, memory cores, or fugitive passengers are extracted using coded light signals—visible only to implanted Syndicate couriers. Onsite staff maintain clean-room protocols. It is one of the few underground spaces in New Vance where nothing is said aloud.
Collapsed Apartment Blocks
Once towering symbols of mid-century prosperity, the Collapsed Apartment Blocks are now broken husks swallowed by decay. Located deep within the Shambler’s Graveyard, these buildings caved in during the early days of the Collapse—some from bombardment, others from within as infected residents tore through each other. Entire families were buried in their units, their final moments etched into the cracked walls like stains. Now, the Silent Walkers move soundlessly through the wreckage, often seen pausing in rooms still full of rotting furniture and dusty toys. The infected roam freely, but seem to steer clear when a Walker lingers. Scavvers tell tales of Walker rituals—rooms filled with candles, old world photos arranged in shrines, or bones wrapped in data-cable bindings. Nobody stays long. The buildings breathe unease. It’s not just the dead you fear here—it’s being remembered by something that isn’t human anymore.
Collapsed Assembly Plant Core
Once a nerve center of automated pre-Collapse production, the Collapsed Assembly Plant Core lies half-buried in slag and smoke at the heart of the Rust Belt. Once a gleaming marvel where machines birthed more machines, its skeletal remains now serve as a battlefield of ideology and salvage. The Gear Rats worship it as a mechanical temple—offering oil, flame, and metal in ritual contests of disassembly. Deep within its broken labyrinth, scavvers whisper of an intact AI core still muttering diagnostic loops from a lost era. These whispers draw the brave and the deranged alike. Static Cultists cluster in the lower levels, drawn to surging bursts of distorted signals, while a rare few Silent Walkers occasionally pass through, ghosting between wreckage as if mapping some unseen pattern. Time fractures the deeper you go—visual glitches, reverse echoes, and dreamlike stutters mark a place no longer aligned with reality. Few make it to the core. Fewer come back whole.
Daggerline Station
Daggerline Station is positioned just west of the primary Black Market smuggler’s docks, providing direct line access between sublevel intake routes and Shadow Syndicate distribution zones. Originally a freight bypass for maintenance gear, it’s now a controlled customs node for high-value black market exchanges. Entry requires retinal tag verification or live escort; any unscheduled arrival is locked out via biometric floodgates. The station processes contraband through rotating manifest pods—modular vaults transferred via rail drone and shielded against signal interference. Syndicate runners use Daggerline to reroute items flagged by Citadel surveillance. Security is internalized: no uniforms, only protocols.
Darius Kael's Clinic
Wedged in a collapsed loading bay on the fringe of Gear Rat territory, where the Rust Belt chokes on its own fumes, Darius Kael’s Clinic is the last stop for the mangled and the mad. Known as The Steel Surgeon, Darius is a disgraced Citadel biotech dropout turned battlefield butcher. He’s infamous for mending what most would scrap—fusing metal and flesh with industrial savagery and zero concern for bedside manner. Raiders limp in on makeshift crutches, scavvers beg for upgrades, and few ever walk out the same. His services run on barter: scrap, cores, rare biotech, or fresh salvage. Rumors swirl that Kael’s pushing boundaries—experimenting with shambler remains, or worse, mimicking Silent Walker physiology. Whatever his methods, his allegiance is to the grind—of bone saw on vertebra, of gears clicking where tendons used to be.
Datawell Sub-Platform
Datawell Sub-Platform isn’t open to the public. It exists as a secondary station connected to the Citadel’s analytics node. Here, outbound train cars are scanned, filtered, and stripped of unauthorized data packets before they leave Citadel territory. The platform is used primarily for hardware audits—ranging from recovered surveillance cores to repurposed drones and black-box fragments. It’s staffed entirely by archivists and tech engineers, all under Council contract. Any equipment showing “wild firmware” signatures is quarantined, flash-sterilized, and reported. The station is off-limits without triple-auth clearance. Breaches result in hard protocol erasure of all involved devices and records.
Driftpoint Sector 4
Driftpoint Sector 4 is a forgotten maintenance stop converted into a concealed access route between the Citadel District and the Black Market. On paper, the station was decommissioned a decade ago. In practice, it's a blind zone—unmonitored by Council systems and rerouted by Syndicate-linked track hackers shortly after the Collapse. Syndicate agents use Driftpoint to move personnel and items into the Citadel through covert relay cars disguised as garbage trams. The station’s entrance is hidden behind a data-center access wall near the Citadel's old civic archives. Inside, all signage has been removed. Movement is precise, timed, and quiet.
Drowntrace Platform 12-B
Drowntrace Platform 12-B was originally part of an abandoned maintenance spur that dipped directly beneath the Shadow Reach canal. A crack in the old concrete ceiling opened during a structural quake, turning the station into a drip chamber. Within a month, the floor was fully submerged. Shamblers still occupy the drowned concourse—some fully underwater, others emerging only when disturbed. Silent Walkers have been seen near the central stairwells, standing ankle-deep in runoff without movement for hours. Attempts to reroute current or drain the platform have failed. The deeper end of the station is inaccessible, choked with collapsed stone and collapsed stairwells. It's considered a dead zone—marked red on all current Syndicate and Citadel maps.
East Claw Station
East Claw Station serves as the Watch’s extraction and medical outpost, embedded in one of the older tunnel loops near the city’s edge. It was partially flooded during the initial collapse, but volunteers drained the lower platforms and set up pump relays. Now, it acts as a quarantine station for suspected exposure cases and wounded recovered from tunnel skirmishes. It also doubles as a tech salvage depot, where disabled drones and sensor arrays are field-stripped and repurposed. The Watch maintains a hard perimeter here, with limited entry points and infrared trip sensors. Though secure for now, tunnel-side pressure from shambler activity is increasing weekly.
Echo Chamber Stage
The Echo Chamber Stage stands at the heart of the Citadel, a symbol of curated civility wrapped in surveillance and showmanship. Elevated on a dais of polished alloy and reinforced plasteel, it’s the Citadel Council’s preferred theater for control: public announcements, judgment proceedings, digital citizenship upgrades—or demotions. Every broadcast from the Chamber is piped through the district’s pristine sound grid, carefully filtered for morale, tone, and loyalty metrics. It’s where fabricated transparency meets engineered consensus, where justice wears the mask of order. Citizens watch, nod, applaud—because they must. Behind every speech is a dozen edits, a dozen cameras, and a dozen silent drones ensuring the narrative remains unbroken. To question what’s said on the Echo Chamber Stage isn’t illegal—it’s irrational. After all, the truth has already been approved.
Echo Sump Delta
Echo Sump Delta is a drainage nexus turned rendezvous zone deep within the Black Market’s underbelly—a reeking, multi-tiered reservoir where forgotten runoff and digital contraband intersect. It once funneled wastewater from the upper levels of New Vance, but now it hums with covert signal traffic, pirate uplinks, and Syndicate chatter bouncing off the corroded walls. The sump’s acoustics make it perfect for cloaked negotiations—voices vanish into reverb, impossible to trace or record. Runners use it as neutral ground, where weapons are watched but rarely drawn. Data brokers, illicit modders, and memory-surge peddlers set up pop-up stalls on rusted platforms or suspended crates, selling corrupted secrets and ghost-code straight from the flow. Occasionally, the sump belches up old tech from deeper systems—useful, dangerous, or both. It’s a place that smells like oil and old secrets, where sound vanishes and silence itself can be a currency.
Ember Watchtower
The Ember Watchtower looms like a jagged sentinel amid the blistering chaos of the Scorch Pit, a desperate outpost in the heart of Raider territory. Constructed from scavenged steel girders, rusted vehicle frames, and salvaged scrap, it serves as both lookout and command post for the scattered Raider warbands that swarm these badlands. From its precarious platforms, Raiders armed with brutal, jury-rigged heavy weapons scan the wavering horizon, searching for incoming threats—be they rival raiders, Solar Guardian patrols, or the ever-looming shamblers. The tower’s height grants a rare vantage point over the infernal forges and volatile workshops below, where incendiary traps and flame-spewing rigs are crafted with reckless abandon. It’s a volatile nerve center for the Raiders’ erratic but lethal strikes—part fortress, part beacon of anarchic survival. Beneath its flickering torchlight, crude radios crackle orders and warnings.
Emergency Surgical Suite
Once a marvel of pre-Collapse medicine, the Emergency Surgical Suite now functions as a grim sanctuary of last resort. Hidden deep within the bone-white halls of the Memorial Hospital, it is one of the only rooms still vaguely operational—thanks to salvaged solar batteries and sheer human desperation. Here, rogue medics and wounded scavvers gamble their lives on rusty scalpels and whispered hope. The Silent Walkers rarely interfere—though they’ve been seen lingering at the doorways, watching. Some say their presence soothes the infected long enough for crude surgeries to be performed. Others claim the suite is cursed: heal someone here, and you take a piece of the Graveyard home in their blood. Still, it remains a vital outpost for trauma care, where survival clings to sinew and silence. No one speaks loudly. No one stays long.
Endhold Station
Endhold sits directly beneath the old quarantine border, making it a nexus point between abandoned evac routes and the graveyard slums. It’s technically outside of most mapped sectors, yet motion signatures remain constant. Unlike other stations, Endhold has functioning power—though its source is unknown. The station appears to cycle its lights every six hours, matching old metro schedules. Silent Walkers move freely through the area, sometimes gathering around malfunctioning security turnstiles without purpose. It’s assumed they’ve repurposed the station as a convergence site. Drones sent in return scrambled footage, and onboard sensors report minor electromagnetic anomalies. Human entry is discouraged; most records of Endhold have been manually scrubbed from the grid.
Fallout the Scrap Titan
Once a drill-bodied mining colossus designed to punch through tectonic plates for deep-core extraction, Fallout the Scrap Titan now slumps against the Chem Zone's corroded skyline like a dead god of iron. Its drill arm is fused into the earth, crusted with hardened slag and chemical foam, while the other limbs hang limp—gnarled with rust, chain cabling, and welded scaffolds from countless scavvers. The Gear Rats worship Fallout as a holy relic of destruction and excess, an idol of both reverence and utility. They hold rites beneath its irradiated core, offering up tech scrap and burnt offerings in honor of "The Coilfather." Despite the toxin winds and acidic rain that peel flesh from bone, contests still rage to recover its heart-stuff—titanium servos, reactor rods, and neuroplasma cores. But the deeper one digs, the weirder the hum. Some say Fallout isn’t dead. Just dreaming. Waiting for a new ignition.
Fathom Row Terminus
Fathom Row was designed as a major end-of-line passenger stop with wide concourses and multiple exits to surface malls. Post-collapse, all exits were sealed by falling infrastructure or deliberately collapsed by unknown forces. The station became a containment zone—only, nothing was ever contained. Now it’s a nesting ground for second-generation infected: bloated, disfigured Shamblers with swollen limbs and jaw mutations. Scav crews that venture close report constant audio feedback from the station walls—low moaning, broken speech patterns, and what sounds like breathing through radio static. The noise is directional, always focused toward anyone listening. It’s not clear if the station broadcasts intentionally or reacts to presence.
Filtration Beds
Buried deep within the Main Filtration Plant, the Filtration Beds are a vital yet often-overlooked cog in the Hydro Hegemony’s purification empire. Here, graywater flows across vast, tiered basins layered with scavenged gravel, industrial sand, and activated carbon mined from collapsed warehouses. Each bed draws sediment and toxins from the stream, slowing the water to a near-still hush before it’s siphoned onward for chemical treatment. Backflush cycles occur with rhythmic violence, sending clouds of filtered detritus into discharge pits below. Enforcers rarely patrol this zone—too damp, too dull—but filtration techs are fiercely loyal, indoctrinated to treat any breach as an act of sabotage. Slipping into this room unnoticed is difficult; slipping out with stolen knowledge is deadly. These beds don’t just clean the city’s water—they uphold the illusion that purity is something you can own, if you pay the price.
Filtration Control Room
Buried deep within the reinforced core of the Main Filtration Plant, the Filtration Control Room is the operational brainstem of New Vance’s most critical water system. From here, the Hydro Hegemony directs the purification process, toggles flow rates, and—most importantly—enforces its stranglehold on the city's hydration hierarchy. Access is restricted to trusted engineers and armed overseers, but control rarely remains stable. Saboteurs, mercs, and desperate factions frequently launch incursions to seize the terminal, knowing a few key inputs can reroute supply lines, flood enemy zones, or initiate a forced drought. Rumors persist that "Valve" himself once executed traitors here, their bodies sluiced away through maintenance drains. It’s more than a server room—it’s a digital throne of dominion. Whoever controls this chamber controls who drinks, who kneels, and who vanishes.
Forge of Fury
Tucked deep in the cracked concrete bowels of Skullcrack Hold, the Forge of Fury roars like a desperate heartbeat amid the ruins. This brutal armory is where the Raiders transform salvaged junk and scorched metal into weapons of survival and slaughter. The fire here isn’t fueled by fuel alone but by sweat, fear, and raw desperation. The ragged crew of enslaved mechanics—captured scavvers and unwilling engineers—hammer, weld, and cobble together spiked clubs, jagged blades, and jury-rigged explosives. Makeshift furnaces, cobbled from old industrial scrap and torched engines, spit orange-hot flames into smoke-choked air. The constant clang of metal on metal, punctuated by curses and threats, echoes endlessly beneath a patchwork of rusted girders and cracked skulls nailed as grim warnings. Here, the Raiders' brutal war machine is forged—crude, deadly, and merciless, a reflection of the chaos they embody.
Gear Rat Stronghold
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.
Gear Rat Trading Post
Slag-welded to the side of a collapsed foundry, the Gear Rat Trading Post is the closest thing the Rats have to a “market.” It’s a snarling bazaar where barter is blood sport and trust is rusted scrap. Raiders, smugglers, and desperate mechanics haul in their salvage and tech—hoping to trade with the iron-fisted sub-warlords who run the post like war barons. Oversight is brutal, with every deal taxed in oil or body parts. Surveillance drones buzz overhead, and any dishonesty is punished with a boot to the smelter. Raiders may be welcome, but outsiders walk a blade’s edge. Despite the danger, the post thrives, offering one-of-a-kind creations only the Rats could forge: a chainsaw bayonet built from a printer, or a riot suit made of vending machine doors. Trade here isn’t just about survival—it’s a flex of dominance. Come prepared, come armed, and come knowing you’re one wrong offer away from being sold for scrap.
Gorefield Underpass
The Gorefield Underpass is a collapsed transit tunnel buried beneath the decaying outskirts of the Shambler’s Graveyard—once part of New Vance’s metro system, now a silent trench of dust, ruin, and rot. The surface has caved in across several blocks, creating a jagged pit partially exposed to the grey light above. This underpass has become a gathering zone for shamblers, who swarm through its yawning mouth like water flowing downhill. No one knows why. Some think it’s residual pheromones from a past cleanup burn, others believe the shape of the tunnel echoes something familiar to the infected mind. Whatever the reason, few dare to approach. The walls are slick with organic residue, and the deeper chambers echo with a low, unbroken moan that seems to come from everywhere. Occasionally, scavvers risk the outskirts for loot—old gear, a downed drone, or corpses worth salvaging. But they never linger. The Underpass isn’t just dangerous—it feels wrong, like something is watching…
Gratewash Sinkline
Gratewash Sinkline was an overflow maintenance corridor turned unofficial shortcut between under-river transit lines. Its original function collapsed after the flood systems failed during the early days of the Collapse. When the river surged into the lower tunnels, this stretch became one of the first partially submerged zones. Now it functions as a natural trap—waterlogged, pitch dark, and echoing with movement. Shamblers gather here in dense clusters, clinging to the walls or floating face-down in stagnant eddies. Any attempt to clear the tunnel is rendered impossible by sudden rises in water pressure or silent bio-thrashing from submerged infected. Motion sensors last only hours before corrosion ends them. No patrols are assigned to this sector.
H.E.L.L.I.O.S. the Scrap Titan
Once a coastal war sentinel built to repel naval incursions, H.E.L.L.I.O.S. (Heavy Electro-Lancer Logistics Integrated Offensive Sentinel) now lies half-sunken at the boundary where the Rust Belt corrodes into the Chem Zone. The Gear Rats revere it not as tech, but as titan—an iron deity entombed in rust and chemical rot. Its core melted out during the Collapse, igniting a chain reaction that birthed the Chem Zone itself. Now, it serves as a holy ground for the Rats—shrine, proving ground, and forge of legend. Pilgrimages are made here by aspirant Rats seeking to scavenge holy parts or to spill blood in its name. Ritual duels are fought beneath its shattered chest cavity, lit by the toxic glow of reactor runoff. It is whispered that H.E.L.L.I.O.S. still hums at night, dreaming of war. Others say its soul was fused with corrupted targeting AIs, making it a slumbering god-machine awaiting a final command.
H.O.B. the Scrap Titan
H.O.B. (Hydraulic Operations Bot) stands as a hulking relic within the Waterworks district—one of the few remaining massive construction machines from before the Collapse. Originally designed to assemble New Vance’s gargantuan water reservoirs and subterranean cisterns, H.O.B.’s reinforced hydraulic arms once shifted tons of concrete with precision and raw power. But the Collapse brought a devastating flood that severed its control systems and drained its power core, leaving H.O.B. inert and silent. Now, this rusting giant is more than just abandoned tech; it’s a contested treasure trove. The Gear Rats, obsessed with machine worship and scrap, revere H.O.B. as a godlike titan of metal and oil, frequently raiding its carcass for salvageable parts and holding brutal contests to claim the most valuable spoils. Though near the edge of Hydro Hegemony’s fortified Waterworks, the Titan remains a symbol of power and a source of critical components for those daring enough to challenge Valve.
Halcyon West Gate
Halcyon West Gate operates as a civilian transit platform inside the Citadel walls. Trains here run along a closed loop limited to high-priority personnel and vetted specialists. The Council repurposed the terminal as both a transportation hub and a public behavioral screening site. Facial recognition systems perform continuous identity confirmation, while psychological assessment prompts cycle through the PA system during downtimes. Any anomaly results in detainment. Council-branded drones maintain order, issuing auditory corrections and reporting compliance violations. Halcyon’s clean, well-lit design is intended to project calm and stability—but the structure underneath is built for control.
Halfstep Transfer
Halfstep Transfer was a minor interchange along the eastern boundary of the Citadel-controlled zone, acting as a route for utility crews and patrol transports into the Outskirts. After a tunnel breach during a retreat op, infected poured in from tunnel fork E7-B. The local containment force detonated one blast door, but failed to close the loop. Infection spread station-wide within minutes. The station’s comms relays are still active but buried in error states. Audio pulses picked up on Citadel monitors suggest Shambler density remains high. The area is no longer patrolled. Access has been sealed at all surface entries.
Harmony Loop Plaza
Harmony Loop Plaza is a civic showcase nestled at the mid-tier of the Citadel’s controlled infrastructure, originally designed as a recreational commons and behavioral calibration zone. On paper, it’s a park—a “morale garden” blending synthetic nature with pre-programmed serenity, complete with ambient music nodes and automated snack dispensers. But in practice, it functions as a surveillance hive, where every movement is monitored, every conversation triangulated, and every face scanned by discreet drone swarms. Citizens frequent the plaza for daily “wellness pauses” and community gatherings broadcast with curated cheer. Children play beneath omnidirectional projectors while enforcer drones hum silently above. It's clean, calm, and quietly oppressive—an environment engineered for stability rather than joy. People smile here, because the system expects them to. Those who loiter too long or speak too loudly tend to vanish from the Loop, archived under "redistribution".
Harrow Mile Junction
Once an interchange between three major lines, Harrow Mile Junction is now a dead zone. A cave-in during the first month of collapse ruptured the eastern service tunnel, spilling hundreds of civilians into the lines with no way back up. Now, the station is thick with infected. Tunnel scanners show constant movement—slow, clustered, uncoordinated. Surveillance drones go dark here. Patrols are instructed to bypass entirely or seal nearby access. The structure remains largely intact, though ceiling integrity is compromised in multiple spots. Some claim Silent Walkers can be seen at the far mezzanine entrance, watching—unmoving—for hours at a time.
Helion Rampart C-4
Helion Rampart C-4 is one of the oldest still-operating defense walls within the Perimeter Bastion—an elevated overlook positioned precisely where the wasteland winds are strongest. Initially designed as a flare amplification platform, it has since been retrofitted with solar capacitors, kinetic charge nets, and motion-triggered beam emitters. The Guardians maintain it as a frontline sanctum, where only the most disciplined squads rotate in. The light here never dims; high-intensity reflectors bathe the area in constant solar glare, day or night, creating an artificial dawn that never blinks. Intruders don’t see soldiers—they see silhouettes outlined in fire. Beneath the wall, melted craters mark the fate of those who tested the light’s reach. C-4 isn’t just defensive infrastructure; it’s psychological warfare. The Guardians built it to blind the enemy with faith, to make the sun a weapon. Out here, heat is doctrine—and Helion is scripture.
Hollowstep Crossing
Hollowstep Crossing is a crumbling overpass deep within the Shambler’s Graveyard—an old pedestrian skywalk meant to connect residential blocks before the infection swept through. Now, it serves as a narrow, elevated lifeline between two decaying structures, used by scavengers and Silent Watchers alike to avoid ground-level nests. The bridge groans under its own weight, reinforced over the years with scavenged steel mesh and repurposed furniture. Locals call it 'the breath-hold path,' because one misstep can send vibrations through the air or into the shattered glass below—enough to stir whatever's nesting nearby. Sometimes, corpses hang from the supports—whether warning, ritual, or accident is never clear. Silent Walkers have been seen pausing at the center of the span, unmoving, just listening. Travelers who pass through do so quickly, heads low, weapons sheathed. It’s not a battlefield. It’s worse—a place where violence doesn’t happen yet, but always could.
Hydroponic Nexus
Tucked deep within the cracked concrete expanse of the Solar Sprawl, the Hydroponic Nexus is a gleaming sanctuary of growth in a world gone dry. Powered entirely by the Guardians' solar arrays, this towering structure feeds both stomachs and ideology. It’s not just a farm—it’s a temple to radiant discipline, where crops are engineered with brutal efficiency and distributed only to those who serve the grid. Every calorie is tracked. Every sprout, earned. The Nexus doubles as a research facility, experimenting with genetically hardened produce and algae strains that can survive blackouts and ashfall. Overseen by engineers in chrome-plated bio-suits and guarded by exo-armored Sentinels, it’s where food meets faith. No Guardian enclave is sustained without it—and any tampering is met with a solar-flare response. Step out of line, and you don't just starve. You burn.
Junction Aegis
Junction Aegis is a Citadel-engineered tunnel firewall between infected zones Calder Glass and Halfstep Transfer. After both stations fell, Citadel engineers repurposed the tunnel intersection as a permanent lockdown site. It’s fitted with barrier gates, flame-retardant flood valves, and high-yield chemical dispersion systems for biological sterilization. The area is manned 24/7 by a minimal crew—just four soldiers and two drone stations. Their sole objective: prevent breach. Aegis doesn't support transport. It’s not on official maps. It’s a wall in the dark. Personnel rotate every 72 hours, with movement strictly logged via retinal confirmation.
Kaito's Neural Nexus
Buried beneath layers of digital ghost-space and physical decay, Kaito’s Neural Nexus isn’t a storefront—it’s a frequency. Only accessible via a decrypted AR thread or whispered invitation, the Nexus is a rogue clinic where tech dreams blur into psychosis. Kaito Ishida, a former Citadel neuroarchitect turned fugitive, operates here, offering neural lace uplinks, black-code memory augments, and emotion-suppression firewalls to those who can pay—or barter with secrets. Each enhancement carries a warning: power at the cost of humanity. Syndicate runners, rogue drones, and ex-Guardians all come here to get their heads rewired or erased. The Nexus isn’t just a place—it’s a risk. One flicker too long in the wrong overlay, and you might wake up believing someone else’s life is yours. Or worse—believing you were never human to begin with.
Lensfield Control Spire
Lensfield Control Spire is a vertical command post embedded in the central ridge of the Perimeter Bastion, designed to coordinate solar energy deployment and enemy detection across dozens of kilometers. Once an experimental telemetry relay, it now serves as a remote intelligence node, manned by just a skeleton crew of Guardian technicians and overseen by a semi-autonomous targeting AI. It’s quiet, tense, and utterly critical. From here, heat signatures are tracked in real-time, flare turrets are remotely calibrated, and deterrent fields adjusted with pinpoint precision. The structure hums with constant calculation, processing every twitch in the dust beyond the fence. Most Guardians stationed here speak in hushed tones or not at all—Lensfield is a place of focus, not fellowship. Whispers persist of the AI making decisions before it’s ordered to, firing before warnings are logged. Whether it’s glitch or evolution, no one questions the results. Accuracy is worship. Hesitation is failure.
Main Filtration Plant
The Main Filtration Plant is the pulsing heart of the Waterworks and the iron grip of the Hydro Hegemony. Once a municipal marvel, it now operates as a tightly fortified fortress of reclaimed tech and systemic fear. Deep within its web of rust-laced catwalks and chlorine-drenched chambers, ancient purification engines groan to life, filtering the sludge of a poisoned world into potable control. Workers in patched uniforms operate under constant surveillance while “leak teams” maintain dominance by any means necessary. The Hegemony’s blue-drop insignia is plastered across steel walls like holy writ, a symbol of dependence masquerading as civic duty. Civilians trade rations, territory, or silence for water access. To tamper with this plant is to risk an engineered drought—or a quiet disappearance. This isn’t just a facility—it’s the cornerstone of Valve’s empire, and every drop it releases flows with the weight of a thousand debts.
Mass Grave Plaza
Mass Grave Plaza is the silent heart of the Shambler’s Graveyard, where the Collapse first made itself undeniable. In the earliest days of infection, it became a triage zone turned killing field—corpses were piled, burned, buried, and forgotten. But the dead didn't stay still. Now, the plaza is a nexus of shambler activity, pulsing with a rhythmic, unnatural calm. The Silent Walkers frequent this space in slow spirals, their movements ritualistic, as if reenacting some unspoken memory. Strange symbols—formed from femurs, wiring, and scorched doll heads—are arranged like altar glyphs across the square. Survivors whisper that the plaza isn’t just where the infection began... it's where it listens. To enter is to feel watched, not by eyes, but by something beneath the concrete. Something waiting to be remembered.
Med-Bay 7
Med-Bay 7 is one of the last true medical sanctuaries in New Vance City—if you can make it past the retinal scans and loyalty assessments. Tucked deep within the Citadel’s tiered infrastructure, the facility serves both as a recovery center for the social elite and a triage ward for those deemed “functionally useful.” Staffed by sterile AI nurses, overworked medtechs, and a rotating roster of neural surgeons, Med-Bay 7 is where memory wipes, genetic purges, and cybernetic grafts happen between rations. It’s not compassion that keeps the place running—it’s necessity. Injured enforcers, sanctioned engineers, and ration-stable citizens are patched up to return to function. Those with lower scores are quietly transferred out… or repurposed. Efficiency trumps empathy here, and survival is doled out by algorithm. Still, for many in the Citadel, it remains the last place in the city where hope has a pulse.
Mercer Deep Station
Mercer Deep Station sits on one of the lowest track levels in the city, beneath a collapsed residential zone that gave the Graveyard its name. The station's stairwell access is fully buried under foundation debris, leaving only tunnel entry from neighboring lines. Early efforts to seal it off failed—the infected moved through maintenance shafts and wall gaps. Mercer now acts as a central hive: hundreds of Shamblers congregate here without movement or aggression, unless disturbed. Surveillance attempts have failed. From above, rhythmic vibrations can be felt at specific intervals, like controlled pressure pulses or seismic signals. No organized group has claimed responsibility. Silent Walkers have been seen here often, but no contact has been made.
Mirelock Hollow
Mirelock Hollow is a half-swallowed relic of pre-Collapse water regulation nestled in the forested wetlands north of the Waterworks. Originally built as an emergency overflow basin, the site has become a stagnant marsh where the filtration systems gave up long ago. The Hydro Hegemony considers it too remote and too overgrown to bother reclaiming—but that hasn’t stopped travelers, squatters, and outcasts from drifting through. Shallow pools of fetid runoff gather in natural basins, and rusted intake towers tilt precariously from the mud. It’s a place of quiet desperation: some come to hide, others to scavenge, a few to test the old myths that say clean, untouched water still flows somewhere below. Strange fauna breed in the warm, metallic wetlands, and the frogs croak with an odd mechanical tone. Nobody controls Mirelock Hollow, but it’s never truly empty. The moss-covered machinery still hums faintly—just enough to remind intruders that something here remembers its purpose.
Mirewood Station
Mirewood Station is located beneath a decaying access loop near the northern forest fringe of the Waterworks territory, close to where overgrowth chokes old reservoir piping and moss covers even the warning signs. Before the collapse, this stop served occasional utility crews maintaining upland valve routes. Now, it’s completely overrun. Something breached the perimeter line six months ago—possibly through a dry service tunnel under the forest floor—and the infection spread quickly through the maintenance halls. Hegemony response teams attempted a flood-and-burn protocol but failed to account for underground runoff. The water never rose high enough. Now the station acts as a seepage point: slow trickles of infected movement filter southward toward Waterworks edges, kept at bay only by containment patrols on elevated terrain.
New Vance City Memorial Hospital
Once the jewel of public health in New Vance City, the Memorial Hospital now festers as a hollow echo of its past—a decaying temple to medicine drowned in death and silence. Designated as the primary triage hub during the Collapse, it was where the first infected were brought, studied, and ultimately locked inside. Quarantine failed. Containment broke. Floors were sealed, then floors below them. Now, the entire structure lies entombed in its own failure. It sits within the Shambler’s Graveyard, its lower levels pulsing with nests and viral rot. But something stranger has claimed its wards: the Silent Walkers. Cloaked in bone and gauze, they drift through the halls like mourners in a forgotten ritual, pacifying the infected with unknowable means. Some say they view the hospital as sacred ground. Others say it’s a hive for whatever communion they share with the shamblers. Few scavs dare breach the red-lined halls. Fewer still come back unchanged.
Njara Quinn's Memory Mender Clinic
Tucked within a sun-baked alley of the Solar Sprawl, Njara Quinn’s Memory Mender Clinic operates on the fringe of official protocol and outlawed practice. Once an engineer specializing in neuro-data retention, Njara now runs a discreet sanctuary for the psychologically fractured—those suffering memory burn from solar overexposure, shambler trauma, or corrupted neural augmentations. Using scavenged Citadel tech and retrofitted solar nodes, she “reweaves” memory threads, reconstructing identity fragments or isolating pain like bad code. Guardians permit her practice—barely—since it aids in keeping Sprawl citizens functional. But Njara walks a thin line. Too many recovered memories spark unrest or forgotten crimes. And in a place where obedience is survival, unearthing the wrong past could burn brighter than the sun.
Oscillator Station
Oscillator Station lies beneath the central tower of the old city broadcast grid. It was an automated interchange for maintenance staff and signal engineers, abandoned within days of the collapse. No faction claimed it—transmission interference made coordination nearly impossible, and the structural integrity of the station is questionable. Since then, it has become a nesting ground for an unusual breed of Shamblers. They don’t wander far from Oscillator—reports suggest some form of directional pull, possibly linked to the malfunctioning signal amplifier still active below the central track. Drones sent in transmit nothing but feedback. Patrols are instructed to avoid the area entirely.
Overflow Gate H-9
Overflow Gate H-9 is both a pressure relief tunnel and a strategic flood-control point for the Waterworks. Its station houses four primary drain valves that redirect excess water from the upper zones into deep cisterns far beneath New Vance. The Hegemony uses H-9 to control water access during ration enforcement events. If a sector is marked “non-compliant,” H-9 crews cut flow at the gate and reroute clean water elsewhere. A permanent security detachment occupies the station, and at least one demolition specialist is always on shift in case tunnel breach protocols must be triggered. Local rumors suggest a few Shamblers have slipped into the lower intake vents, but the Hegemony denies this.
Pharmacy/Supply Room
Once a vital nerve center of medical relief, the hospital's pharmacy now lies entombed in silence, its shelves a decaying shrine to the old world’s hope. Supplies once rationed to thousands now sit abandoned behind half-melted barriers and cracked bio-lockers. The smell of expired antiseptics lingers like a memory, mingling with mildew and blood. Despite decades of rot, scavvers whisper that some sealed caches remain intact—vaccines, painkillers, even old-world antivirals. But those who enter don’t always return. Silent Walkers drift through these corridors, their pale eyes sweeping across labels as if reading forgotten prescriptions. Some say they’re drawn to the medicines. Others claim they leave behind items in exchange—notes scrawled in blood, preserved hearts in jars. The pharmacy is treasure and trap. It heals, it haunts, and in the end, it remembers.
Pit of Trials
Deep in the heart of Skullcrack Hold, amid the jagged chaos of the Raider camp, lies the Pit of Trials—a brutal crucible where survival is proven by blood and bone. This sunken arena, carved from shattered concrete and twisted rebar, serves as the camp’s grim proving ground. Raiders brandish scavenged weapons, forcing new recruits into merciless combat to earn their place—or meet a swift, savage death. The air hangs heavy with the acrid mix of sweat, burnt oil, and spilled blood, punctuated by the snarls and jeers of the crowd. Here, strength and ruthlessness are the only currencies, and every fight echoes the desperate chaos of a world unraveled. The Pit is not just entertainment—it is law, ritual, and survival, binding the fractured Raiders in shared violence beneath flickering propane lamps and jagged scrap walls.
Pressure Regulation Control Room
Buried deep within the Main Filtration Plant, the Pressure Regulation Control Room is the facility’s cerebral cortex—a fortified nexus where every drip, surge, and sluice of the city's water flow is dictated with militant precision. Access requires biometric clearance and dual encryption keys, and even then, only the most trusted Hegemony engineers are permitted beyond its reinforced bulkhead. Inside, technicians operate under constant watch, adjusting pressure nodes and rerouting flow channels to maintain equilibrium across New Vance’s rust-choked infrastructure. The room is more than a technical hub; it’s a weapon of control. A miscalibrated valve could rupture a district’s pipeline, flood a rebel hideout, or cut supply entirely. Valve himself is rumored to review its data feeds directly. As a result, the room is defended like a war bunker—its failure would mean systemic collapse, not just of pressure, but of power itself.
Quarantine Ward
The Quarantine Ward is a sealed wound in the gut of New Vance—a forgotten annex of the Memorial Hospital where the city's first infection cases were corralled and left to rot. Meant to be a lifeboat, it became a tomb. Cracked visors and shattered IVs lie scattered where panicked staff once tried—and failed—to contain the spread. Sealed blast doors still bear the emergency glyphs of the Citadel Council’s early containment effort, now useless. It’s here that the Silent Walkers are most frequently sighted, drifting through once-sterile corridors like priests of some necrobiotic faith. Shamblers never attack them; they merely follow. Many believe this is where the infection began to listen. Desperate scavvers sometimes enter in search of rare meds or answers, but few return whole. The ward whispers through vents and broken intercoms. Not in words—but in pulses. In breath. In memory. And something always remembers.
Radiology Department
The Radiology Department is a fossilized shrine to a science that once illuminated the human body—now warped by infection, silence, and fear. Deep within New Vance City Memorial Hospital’s rotten shell, the department has become a nesting site for shambler variants that appear drawn to residual radiation. Cracked diagnostic machines buzz faintly, occasionally spitting static onto half-functioning monitors. Locals call it the “Ghost Eye,” believing the machines can still “see” the sickness inside you. No one knows if it’s superstition, malfunction, or something the Silent Walkers repurposed. What is certain is this: the Walkers linger here. Some say they commune with the lingering radiation, using it to chart mutations or detect the unspoken language of the infected. Others say they’re waiting—for what, no one dares guess. Entering the Radiology wing isn't just dangerous—it’s transformative. What you bring in might not leave. And what leaves? It’s not quite you anymore.
Raider's Respite
Tucked deep within the glitch-lit arteries of the Black Market lies Raider’s Respite—less a market, more a neutral ground carved from desperation and violence. Here, the unaligned chaos of New Vance’s raider gangs bleeds into the structure of Syndicate order. Drug-hazed warlords and spike-armored scavvers bring their plunder—scrap tech, hijacked energy cells, and looted augmentations—to trade for stims, arms, and dirty data. The Shadow Syndicate doesn’t control the Respite; they curate it. Syndicate fixers grease palms, monitor tensions, and funnel rare goods to the highest bidder, all while mapping out future threats and alliances. Raider’s Respite is a microcosm of New Vance’s broken soul: lawless, violent, but vital. Rumors persist of raids being "suggested" by Syndicate handlers, using this place to redirect chaos toward their enemies. Here, enemies trade, informants whisper, and death is always just one wrong bargain away.
Rationing Sector
Deep in the sub-grid layers of the Solar Sprawl, the Rationing Sector is where survival is dispensed by the watt and the calorie. Overseen by Solar Guardians clad in sand-scoured exosuits, this controlled zone serves as the final checkpoint for access to power-linked sustenance—nutripaste rations, recycled protein cartridges, and purified water drawn from solar stills. The sector is more than a food line; it's a ritual of obedience. Civilians present energy chit cards tied to their productivity and grid compliance, and those who lag behind the quota often find their portions slashed or substituted with filler paste. Captain Anya Brights preaches "earned light, earned life," and here that mantra becomes mandate. Every ration reinforces the Guardian's solar-credits economy, where loyalty and labor are traded for the right to eat. In the flicker of failing fixtures and solar-fed uplinks, the city’s dream of rebirth tastes like chalk and sacrifice.
Redline Gate
Redline Gate functions as the forward operating checkpoint for Perimeter Watch forces along the southern tunnel access. Secured one month after the Collapse, the station was repurposed into a makeshift staging ground. Watch units use it for patrol coordination, weapons checks, and triage stabilization. It links to a surface freight lift, allowing rapid troop or supply movement between Outskirts barricades and underground incursions. Command has designated it a “last fallback” post should outer districts breach. Power is drawn from gas-fed generators scavenged from industrial depots, with shortwave comms routed through armored relay boxes. Only authorized Watch personnel are permitted entry—trespassers are assumed hostile.
Relay Node 23-B
Relay Node 23-B was once a minor booster station for city-wide emergency signals—an unremarkable infrastructure site tied into the broader communication web of pre-Collapse New Vance. Now, it's a corrupted shrine partially claimed by the Static Cult and partially lost to entropy. Half-submerged in the fractured pavement of the Radio Silence Zone’s eastern sector, the node intermittently powers on without input, broadcasting bursts of corrupted distress codes in dead languages and scrambled encryption. Cultists don’t dwell here, but they pass through regularly, often kneeling before the node’s rust-bitten access panels and whispering their prayers to the static pulses echoing from within. Technicians who once attempted to repair or disable the station reported headaches, nosebleeds, or hallucinations—many fled mid-task. Now, the Citadel marks the node as "abandoned and unstable." But some scavvers swear that if you sit near it long enough, you’ll hear someone calling your name.
Repeater Vault A7
Repeater Vault A7 is a half-buried signal control bunker located near the southern edge of the Radio Silence Zone—one of the last functioning repeater stations before the electromagnetic corruption overwhelmed the grid. Built beneath a collapsed overpass and sealed for years, the vault was quietly cracked open by Static Cult scavengers seeking old code and relic tech. Now, it serves as a fringe sanctum for low-tier cult initiates—those not yet fully “tuned” but already lost to the signal’s lure. The station’s corrupted systems still spit out fragmented broadcast logs, pre-collapse diagnostics, and looping phrases in a dozen languages. Strangely, no full conversion rituals happen here; it’s more of a threshold, a place for lingering minds to warp. Sometimes, scavvers brave enough to venture this far describe hearing their own thoughts broadcast aloud in static. Others say the vault sings—not songs, but memory echoes twisted into binary lullabies.
Roadstop the Scrap Titan
Once a cutting-edge maglev-construction mech built to pave New Vance’s high-speed future, Roadstop was a marvel of pre-Collapse engineering. But when its grav-core catastrophically overloaded during a track-laying operation, the titan crashed headfirst into a transit corridor, leveling an entire section of the Rust Belt. Now rust-locked and tilted in permanent sprawl, Roadstop’s mangled frame has become sacred ground for the Gear Rats. They call it the “Saint of Steel,” a martyr of motion halted mid-stride. No salvage is taken without Cog’s blessing, and rituals of oil and fire mark attempts to commune with its machine spirit. Raiders from outside the Rats’ ranks have tried to strip it for tech, only to be repelled—or left hanging from its outstretched fingers as warnings. In a world where the line between worship and warfare has blurred, Roadstop remains a broken god of the rails—respected, feared, and never forgotten.
Scrap-Stack Market
Nestled deep in the chaotic maze of Skullcrack Hold, the Scrap-Stack Market is the gritty heart of the Raider economy—a sprawling bazaar forged from salvaged steel, rusted machinery, and shattered dreams. It’s a volatile gathering point where desperate raiders and shadowy traders barter for anything that might buy another day: tainted water, jury-rigged weapons, scavenged solar cells, and illicit cybernetic enhancements cobbled together in back alleys. The market hums with the electric tension of barely contained violence, as deals are made with grim smiles and sharper knives. Here, information flows as freely as bullets, and alliances shift like sand. The air is thick with the sour stench of burnt oil, sweat, and stale synth-ale, underscored by the low thrum of hidden generators powering black-market tech. For the Raiders, the Scrap-Stack Market isn’t just commerce—it’s survival, power, and the raw pulse of a fractured world refusing to die.
Scrapgate Terminal
Scrapgate Terminal is the primary subterranean entryway for the Gear Rats’ salvage convoys. Once a minor commuter junction, it's now a fortified checkpoint run by Cog’s iron-fisted lieutenants. Platforms have been widened and retrofitted with crane arms and chain-hoists used to lift entire railcars of scrap. Power is rerouted from hacked city grids above, and infrared motion turrets sweep the dark for intruders. Every Rat that enters must tithe a portion of their haul or risk “reassignment” to the piston mines. The terminal also doubles as a pit stop for refueling war rigs and mending limbs—flesh or metal alike. Outside factions are tolerated here for trade, but only under escort and with a signed pact of non-aggression. Violation means being bolted to the front of a train and run until something breaks.
Sedimentation Tanks
Deep within the fortified belly of the Main Filtration Plant lies the Sedimentation Tanks—colossal, sunken basins where New Vance’s foul lifeblood begins its slow transformation. Raw, untreated runoff from the city’s cracked gutters, tainted cisterns, and illegal taps is pumped here first, swirling into layered pools of grime. The tanks are watched constantly by Hydro techs and guards, not just for quality control, but for intruders and sabotage. Beneath the stagnant murk, sediment—often laced with biological rot, shambler waste, or toxic runoff—gathers in sludgy strata. Dredge rigs groan across rails above, scooping sludge like clockwork scavengers, while quiet arguments echo from rusted service platforms. This place is where water is broken before it is remade, the plant’s grim foundation, and a reminder: all purity here begins in filth. Some rumors whisper that bodies, too, have settled here—rebels, smugglers, or those simply behind on their water debt.
Sinklight Platform
Sinklight Platform got its name from the surface sinkhole that swallowed its northern stairwell during the second week after collapse. The platform now sits partially exposed to the open air, but it didn’t make escape easier—only allowed more Shamblers to flood in. The Watch attempted a reclaim operation early on, but withdrew after severe losses. The station now operates as an open conduit for the infected to reach outer defense lines. Infrared footage shows intermittent migration surges, sometimes led by Walker figures. Sinklight remains a target for a full demolition, though engineering capacity has yet to allow for it.
Skullcrack Hold
Skullcrack Hold rises from the jagged ruins on the ragged outskirts of New Vance City—a ramshackle fortress forged from twisted steel, scorched concrete, and scavenged scraps. Once part of a skeletal skyscraper, its broken spine now serves as the brutal headquarters for the Raiders, a fractured pack of desperate survivors driven by hunger, violence, and the relentless need to survive. The Hold is less a fortress and more a war machine on the verge of collapse, its walls patched with scrap metal and lit by the harsh flicker of neon and propane torches. Here, crude weapons are crafted from salvaged tech and broken dreams, and blood debts are paid with savage efficiency. Patrols of snarling raiders crawl the perimeter, their crude scanners watching for threats from rival factions or the ever-watchful Perimeter Watch. In this hellscape, Skullcrack Hold stands as both a thorn in the city’s side and a grim reminder of chaos reigning unchecked.
Solar Council Chamber
The Solar Council Chamber is the beating heart of Guardian command—a sanctified command nexus perched within the tallest reinforced substation of the Solar Sprawl. Here, Anya Brights and her top solar tacticians orchestrate power deployment, defensive operations, and purification missions with ruthless precision. Every decision made in this chamber burns with purpose. It's not just a control room—it's a shrine to radiant order. Solar output levels, energy debt ledgers, shambler migration paths, and power quota violations scroll endlessly across the chamber's golden-glow interface walls. Civilian life within the Sprawl rises and falls by what is spoken at this table. Failure is not permitted. The Guardians believe that to command the sun is to command civilization—and in the chamber, every watt is weighed like scripture. Those summoned here are either trusted... or already incinerated in spirit.
Spillpoint Theta
Spillpoint Theta is an overflow relief nexus buried deep within the Chemical Treatment Tanks sector, originally constructed to vent high-pressure sludge during peak contamination cycles. Decades of neglect have turned it into a festering sump of backflowed compounds and decomposing chemical waste, its pressure valves long fused shut from repeated exposure. Now, the site serves as both a toxic bottleneck and a deathtrap for the curious. Geysers of hissing vapors erupt unpredictably, and the floor is a warzone of buckled panels and glassy chemical burns. Hydro Enforcers don’t patrol here—they observe. Anyone who enters is either a daredevil scavver or a test subject who doesn’t know it yet. It’s whispered that failed experiments are funneled here to vanish without record, their screams swallowed by the endless hiss. The Hegemony calls the location “inert.” The glowing water and twitching wildlife suggest otherwise.
Spitlock Terminal
Spitlock Terminal sits along a disused freight loop south of the Perimeter Outskirts, deep enough to avoid surface patrols but close enough to stage ambushes. Claimed by a loose Raider pack called the Bile Dogs, it’s more slaughterhouse than station. The Raiders use it as a checkpoint and butcher bay, where they strip gear from the dead—civilian or infected—and melt down anything salvageable in drum-burners. The loading dock has been converted into a crude vehicle bay for jury-rigged bikes and carts. Shamblers still creep in from the tunnel mouths, and the Dogs have turned that into sport, holding pit fights and shooting contests against the infected. The Dogs don’t care about containment. They just want a spot to regroup, resupply, and get high before the next raid. Everything here is temporary, except the smell.
Tamarisk Park Playground
Tamarisk Park was once the soul of its neighborhood—a sprawl of brightly colored jungle gyms, padded turf, and chipped murals of smiling families. Now it’s a decaying echo chamber of laughter that no longer belongs to the living. After the Collapse, it was overrun by infection. What remains is a macabre theater where juvenile shamblers drift through rusted play structures, reenacting forgotten games in disturbing mimicry. Broken carousel horses spin at odd intervals. The squeak of unoccupied swings drifts through the rot-thick air. Locals claim the Silent Walkers pass through often, gathering scattered toys or leaving chalk sigils on slide towers—markings no one dares erase. The playground sits untouched not out of respect, but out of dread. It's said if you linger too long, you'll hear your childhood voice call out to you… from the wrong direction.
Tech-Scrap Forge
Hidden deep within the ramshackle warrens of The Devil’s Den, the Tech-Scrap Forge is the brutal heart of Raider ingenuity and desperation. Amidst the chaos of scavenged neon scraps and fried circuit boards, ragged raiders wield arc welders and hammer scrap with frantic precision. Here, broken solar cells are stripped for precious silicon, energy weapons are jury-rigged from salvaged parts, and crude cybernetic mods are grafted to flesh with little regard for sterility. The Forge is both armory and workshop—its output often the difference between life and death in a world where ammo is scarce and threats are relentless. Every battered workbench groans under heaps of half-finished contraptions and stolen tech, while crude schematics—drawn in oil-stained ink—hang alongside faded, hacked holo-projections of forgotten weapon blueprints. The Raiders' chaotic creativity breathes life into otherwise useless junk, forging weapons and gear that hum with flickering power.
Terminus Verge
Terminus Verge serves as the primary Solar Guardian access point to the Hub and nearby power corridors. The station was reclaimed two months post-collapse and outfitted with solar-buffered conduits, power cable reroutes, and checkpoint infrastructure. It’s not open to civilians—only vetted Guardians, medical personnel, and authorized delivery crews pass through. Verge’s role is simple: maintain control of the grid feed into the Hub and limit tunnel incursion. A standing Guardian unit maintains permanent watch, with drone support posted near vent junctions. It's also used as a staging area for high-value transfers between the Sprawl and upper districts.
The Abandoned Mechanic's Garage
Buried deep in the smoke-choked scrapyards of the Rust Belt, the Abandoned Mechanic’s Garage is a half-collapsed relic of pre-Collapse industry—ignored by most but whispered about by the Gear Rats. Once a trusted service bay for city vehicles, it’s now an unofficial shrine of mystery and malfunction. Some say the place reboots itself at night—doors realigned, shelves restocked with rare parts, drones twitching back to half-life. Raiders who stumble upon it often vanish, or return with wild stories of working lifts, speaking intercoms, and messages printed on oil-stained receipt paper. The Gear Rats don’t officially claim the place, but they watch it. Occasionally, a salvage crew arrives not to strip it—but to leave offerings: gears, melted batteries, even small effigies made of twisted wrenches. Whatever lives beneath the garage now, it’s not human. And the Rats seem to respect it.
The Abandoned Watchtower
Perched on the ragged edge of the Perimeter Outskirts, the Abandoned Watchtower stands as a weathered sentinel of a world that once sought order in chaos. Long since stripped of operational power, it remains a vital if fragile outpost for the Perimeter Watch—a fiercely independent band of ex-soldiers, scavvers, and burned-out idealists who guard New Vance City’s vulnerable borderlands. The Watchtower’s rusted steel frame and cracked concrete base offer a crucial vantage point over the no-man’s-land, scanning the horizon for shamblers, raiders, or worse. Though it has fallen into disrepair, makeshift repairs—salvaged wiring, patched walls, and jury-rigged floodlights—keep it just functional enough for lookout shifts. Every night, watchmen exchange stories of old battles beneath the flickering glow of solar-powered neon strips, hoping the tower’s fragile light can hold back the encroaching darkness. Its presence is a stubborn beacon of resistance in the wasteland.
The Acid Vats
The Acid Vats are a grim testament to the Raiders’ ruthless ingenuity, nestled deep in the Toxic Digs—a hazardous chemical labyrinth on the outskirts of New Vance City. These enormous corroded vats, relics of the city’s forgotten industrial waste processing, still hold caustic residues potent enough to eat through steel. Raiders repurpose them with grim purpose, refining volatile concoctions and dipping scavenged blades in their corrosive depths to forge weapons that dissolve armor and flesh alike. The air is thick with a choking miasma of chemical fumes—burning nostrils and singed lungs are the price of operating here. Spilled acids pool in glowing iridescent puddles, seeping into cracks and stains that never fade. This noxious crucible is a key arsenalsite where desperate raiders manufacture tools of brutal survival, their crude chemical rigs buzzing and hissing amid rusted pipes and unstable catwalks.
The Armory and Supply Depot
Tucked deep within the Glass Ring, the Armory and Supply Depot is the beating, militarized heart of the Citadel Council’s survival strategy. Part warehouse, part vault, part propaganda set piece, this facility isn’t just a stockpile—it’s a shrine to security. Accessed only via biometric scan and drone escort, it houses everything from prototype pulse rifles and trauma gel cartridges to nutrient rations and modular armor systems. Every shelf is digitally cataloged, and every item tagged with an expiration, an origin point, and a kill ratio. Overseen by emotion-screened quartermasters and guarded by auto-turrets on silent swivel, the depot exemplifies the Council’s dream of a controlled future. Order is not optional—it’s built, stocked, and scheduled. In a world of chaos, this place is proof that someone still believes a bullet with a barcode is safer than one with a soul.
The Back Alley Stash House
Nestled behind a derelict vent shaft and accessed only through a retinal-coded panel behind a graffiti-tagged dumpster, the Back Alley Stash House is one of the Shadow Syndicate’s countless supply nodes. It’s not listed in the Neural Bazaar’s AR maps, and that’s the point—this place is where the real trade happens: no haggling, no tracking, no questions. It’s a halfway house for augmented smugglers and black-market runners who need a place to offload contraband or disappear for a night. Potent stims, hacked implants, solar weapon shards, and rare data cores move through the stash house like plasma through veins. A Syndicate “whisper broker” always mans the back room, cloaked in ghostware and armed with both bullets and leverage. The place changes layouts regularly, mapped only in short-term memory and rumor. It’s a shadow within a shadow—never marked, never loud, and never empty.
The Barricade Line
The Barricade Line is a crucial, scrappy frontier defense ring that slices through the jagged no-man’s-land surrounding New Vance City. Constructed and maintained by the Perimeter Watch, this barrier is a vital bulwark against the ever-looming threats of shamblers and relentless raider packs. A chaotic assemblage of crushed vehicles, twisted scrap metal, overturned shipping containers, and scavenged debris, it serves as the city’s fragile first line of defense—a thorny reminder that the city’s safety depends on constant vigilance and sacrifice. Patrols man rickety towers and floodlights, scanning the toxic horizon for movements in the ash-choked dusk. Ammo is precious and trust rare here; every bolt welded, every scrap hammered into place carries the weight of lives depending on the line holding. Should this barricade fall, New Vance’s fragile candle of hope would snuff out, drowning the city in chaos and bloodshed.
The Barter Bazaar
Tucked inside the Courtyard sector of the Citadel, the Barter Bazaar is a paradox of sanctioned chaos. Designed as a “controlled exchange hub” by Citadel bureaucrats, it masks scarcity behind commerce. Every stall is pre-registered, monitored, and required to report daily trade logs—yet somehow, contraband still slips through the cracks. Here, pre-Collapse tech, purified ration packs, solar chips, and artisan trinkets change hands with nervous urgency. Officially, it is a celebration of regulated capitalism. Unofficially, it’s where desperate residents try to stretch their social scores or barter favors without alerting the subnet. Citadel drones buzz overhead like judgmental flies, and the Solar Guardians stand guard—gleaming and silent—to enforce order with radiant menace. This marketplace isn’t just about goods. It’s about illusion: of choice, of community, of control.
The Bellow Locks
The Bellow Locks are a crumbling pressure gate chamber buried along the far edge of the Smuggler’s Docks—where the canal dips into deeper zones no official map dares to track. Once built to regulate flow between city sectors, the chamber’s ancient lock systems now serve a more covert function: encrypted cargo exchanges, data siphoning meetups, and quiet disappearances. The Locks’ water level is manipulated manually, using rust-slick wheels and forgotten override panels, making each arrival or exit a choreographed act. Syndicate Runners call it “the throat”—dark, tight, and echoing with secrets. Half-submerged alcoves hide drop points and dead drops. More than a few bodies have been sunk here, weighted with cinderblocks and memory chips. The hum of pump systems never fully stops; it’s as if the Locks themselves are still working, just not for the city anymore. No signs, no schedules—just whispers, drenched boots, and silent agreements carved into concrete.
The Bio-Weapon Lab
Tucked far beneath the corrosive haze of the Toxic Digs, the Bio-Weapon Lab is the Raiders' darkest secret—a clandestine crucible where desperation meets twisted ingenuity. Raiders use this sealed bunker to cultivate lethal biological toxins and mutate scavenged DNA, forging weapons designed to spread suffering and chaos. Layers of scavenged sensor tech—far from pristine but functional—scan for intruders, while vault-like doors guard the lab’s grotesque contents. Here, strains of mutated pathogens mingle with chemical poisons, incubated in cracked vats and sealed chambers. The lab powers the Raiders’ brutal raids, unleashing horrors engineered to break both flesh and spirit. Few who discover it live to tell, and fewer still escape the plague of its experiments.
The Blast Crater
The Blast Crater is a savage scar in the heart of the Scorch Pit, where Raiders push the limits of destruction and chaos. This jagged expanse of blackened earth and shattered scrap is the crucible for their volatile experiments—explosives forged from scavenged fuel, rusted pipes, and scavenged detonators plucked from ruined factories. Jagged craters and smoldering pits pockmark the ground, each a brutal testament to failed blasts or deadly successes. Makeshift bunkers—built from reinforced concrete slabs salvaged from the city’s ruined underground—stand as precarious observation posts, staffed by watchful Raiders who measure each explosion’s fury with hungry eyes. The constant boom of detonations rattles the surrounding camp, a fiery symphony to the Raiders’ unrelenting hunger for destruction and survival. This chaotic proving ground trains the pack to wield fire and shrapnel as weapons of raw anarchy against the fragile remnants of civilization.
The Bleeder's Bastion
The Bleeder’s Bastion is an abandoned pressure regulation tower squatting near the southern rim of the Waterworks. Once a critical node in New Vance’s water distribution grid, it's now sealed off, written out of official maps, and whispered about with a mix of fear and grim humor. Locals claim the place "bled itself dry" after a catastrophic backflow ruptured its main tank, drowning an entire maintenance crew in chemically tainted water. Since then, it’s been repurposed unofficially as a shelter, trade spot, and hideaway for the desperate. Crates of moldy rations, old world memorabilia, and scrawled warnings coat the interior like layers of sediment. The Hegemony occasionally sends leak teams to “flush it,” but they never stick around long. Too many say the pipes whisper at night—like they're still full of screams. To the right kind of scavver, the Bastion is an opportunity. To everyone else, it's a broken relic of a system that was never meant to fail.
The Bone Yard
The Bone Yard sprawls like a festering wound at the ragged edge of the Raider’s Camp, a brutal testament to the lawlessness gnawing at New Vance City’s outskirts. This is no mere graveyard—it’s a twisted battlefield shrine where the spoils of chaos gather. Twisted carcasses of burnt-out vehicles, stripped to skeletal frames, lie heaped in jagged barricades mixed with shattered bone and broken gear. Scattered trophies of brutal raids—dried blood, cracked helmets, and broken chains—serve as grim warnings to any who might trespass. Here, raider packs like Wreckjaw’s brood assemble for their blood-soaked sorties, sharpening rusted blades beneath makeshift watchtowers built from scrap and skulls. The air is thick with the metallic scent of old blood and burning fuel, mixed with the ever-present haze of smog and dust. To the people of New Vance City, The Bone Yard is more than just wasteland—it’s a reminder that beyond the city walls, savage hunger still rules.
The Bone Yard Scrap Forge
The Bone Yard Scrap Forge is the brutal heart of the Raider’s Camp’s chaotic salvage operations. Nestled amidst twisted metal carcasses and cracked asphalt, it serves as the Raiders’ rough-and-ready workshop where weapons, vehicles, and scavenged tech are hacked together with grim determination. The Forge is a cacophony of clangs, sparks, and hisses as raiders wield crude welding torches and battered tools to repair their battle rigs or reinforce spiked armor plates. It’s a place of relentless improvisation—where scrap metal is king, and speed is survival. Here, makeshift anvils rest on crushed engine blocks, and stained workbenches bear scars from countless battlefield repairs. Raiders swap war stories and crude diagrams beneath flickering propane lamps, crafting the tools of destruction that feed their endless hunger for fuel, flesh, and fire. The Forge’s ceaseless racket forms the soundtrack to the Bone Yard’s ruthless existence.
The Brine Chutes
The Brine Chutes are a sloped network of massive waste channels used to discharge excess salts and chemical runoff from the Waterworks’ deeper purification tanks. Once automated and precisely monitored, the system now runs on a fragile balance of decaying valves and gravity-fed flow. The Hegemony considers the chutes “maintenance priority tier zero”—in other words, they don’t care. But for the desperate and clever, the Chutes offer both danger and opportunity. Smugglers use side shafts to hide contraband or bypass toll checkpoints. Junk scrappers trawl the edges for corroded tech that somehow still pings with life. But the deeper you go, the more corrosive the environment becomes. Boots rot. Skin burns. Voices echo back wrong. No one quite agrees what’s causing the shimmer sometimes seen deep in the runoff below—just that those who try to get close come back confused, or not at all. Still, for some, the Chutes remain a lifeline… or a grave.
The Broken Ledger
The Broken Ledger is an encrypted trade den buried behind a shifting wall of false storefronts and identity scramblers in the heart of the Black Market. Neither shop nor auction house, it's a rotating commerce crypt where the Syndicate stores, brokers, and manipulates high-value deals—data caches, experimental augments, forged credentials, and intel trades. No signage, no schedule—just a quantum-coded glyph that glows faintly when the place is active. Inside, bartering happens through silent haptics and projection nodes, overseen by relay systems that wipe all transactions every solar cycle. What you bring in is logged, dissected, and repackaged into shadow contracts. Some say the Ledger has no operators anymore—just layers of AI trading against itself, evolving economies built from rumors and leverage. It's a place for ghosts who still want something. For players who’ve lost too much face to trade in the open. And for those who know: in New Vance, nothing’s more valuable than secrets.
The Broken Reservoir
The Broken Reservoir is a forgotten limb of the Waterworks—a ruptured filtration basin that once supplied clean water to half of New Vance before the Collapse turned order into overflow. Now, it’s a contaminated relic, officially condemned by the Hydro Hegemony but still visited daily by those too poor—or too desperate—to qualify for rationed hydration. Its cracked ceramic walls leak brownish runoff into the streets, creating fetid pools that lure both scavengers and shamblers. Locals call it “The Bleeding Bowl,” a place where thirst and infection mingle freely. Leak teams rarely patrol this area unless enforcing a “dry list” with brute force. Rumors persist of rogue purifiers squatting inside, filtering drops of life through scavenged tech, and charging tribute to the Hegemony under the table. In truth, the reservoir is both a humanitarian failure and a battlefield—one bottle at a time.
The Central Solar Array
Once a pre-Collapse energy farm, the Central Solar Array is now the sanctified heart of the Solar Sprawl—a radiant expanse overseen by the Solar Guardians. This array isn’t just infrastructure; it’s sacred ground. Energy harvested here powers purification units, medical stations, even defensive drones. Everything that survives in the Sprawl survives because of this place. Patrols clad in bronze-plated exosuits roam the fields, scanning for shadowy saboteurs or reckless scavvers. Citizens speak of the array in hushed reverence, calling it “The Furnace” or “The Lightbed.” Maintenance is a ritual, scheduled with military precision. Any attempt to siphon energy is treated as heresy. Captain Anya Brights has declared the Array “the city's last sunrise,” and her doctrine is etched into solar pylons like scripture. Step out of line, and the light will judge you.
The Chemical Plant
Once a proud refinery complex under Gear Rat control, the Veridian Decay Chemical Plant was ground zero for the Chem Zone’s birth. During the Collapse, pressure build-up from ruptured vats and hybrid fuel lines triggered a cataclysmic detonation that poisoned the soil, fractured the plant, and vaporized a large chunk of the surrounding grid. Now, it stands as a cautionary carcass—its branding eroded, its halls echoing with caustic wind. Toxic runoff leaks endlessly into the cracked basin below, spawning irradiated horrors and mutagenic phenomena. Scavvers risk the zone for high-yield salvage—rare polymers, pre-Collapse stabilizers, maybe even unspent reactor cores. But few return unscarred. The plant is infamous for birthing Crystal Wretches in clusters, and rarities like Fume-Bloated Brutes and Caustic Crawlers have been sighted dissolving armored raiders in moments. Inside Veridian, the air itself is a slow death sentence. Nothing is clean. Nothing is safe.
The Collapsed Foundry
Once a crucible of pre-Collapse industry, the Collapsed Foundry now lies sunken within the choking fumes and corroded sprawl of the Rust Belt. A reactor breach in the early days of the Collapse triggered a catastrophic implosion—smelting bays caved in, superheated metal ruptured its vats, and workers were flash-welded to the very machines they tended. What remains is a scorched tomb of industry, its depths prowled only by desperate scavvers and—unnervingly—the Silent Walkers. Despite being far from the Shambler's Graveyard, these enigmatic figures glide through the slag-choked halls, seemingly drawn to the foundry’s hushed energy. Some say they commune here, gathering around dead furnaces like acolytes listening to a scream still echoing in the molten steel. Rich in rare alloys and broken tech, the foundry lures treasure hunters—but those who return often speak of whispers in steam, shadows that shift behind rusted bulkheads, and machines that breathe without power.
The Command Nexus
The Command Nexus perches precariously atop the shattered remains of a skeletal skyscraper's upper floors—the jagged crown of Skullcrack Hold. This dimly lit chamber pulses with chaotic energy, where raider chieftains gather amid scavenged tech and salvaged data caches to plot their next violent moves. Flickering holo-displays hover above makeshift tables cluttered with hacked comms gear, busted drones, and crude weapon schematics. Jumbled feeds from cracked comms arrays spit intercepted chatter from the Perimeter Watch and rival gangs, feeding the Hold’s ever-shifting power plays. Here, raw ambition and desperation merge—each plan a gamble for scarce resources, each order a call to bloodshed. Information is as precious as ammo, and ruthlessness is the only law. The Command Nexus is the pulsing, chaotic brain of Skullcrack Hold’s war machine—a strategic nerve center held together by desperation, betrayal, and the brutal will to survive.
The Conductor's Sanctum
Deep within the claustrophobic labyrinth of the Subterranean Echo Chambers lies The Conductor’s Sanctum, the pulsating heart of the Static Cult’s eerie dominion. This sanctum is a heavily fortified refuge, cobbled together from scavenged metal plates, shattered broadcast equipment, and a tangle of copper wires that hum with barely contained electromagnetic energy. It is here that the Conductor—an enigmatic prophet clad in cybernetic implants—receives and deciphers the Static God’s cryptic messages encoded within the white noise. The chamber thrums with oppressive power, guarded zealously by cultists whose bodies twitch with constant signal feedback. Screens flicker erratically, projecting indecipherable static patterns and looping distorted hymns that weave through the stale air. The Sanctum is not only a place of worship but a nexus of psychic and digital communion, where the boundaries between flesh and signal dissolve into chaotic resonance. Only the most trusted devotees may enter.
The Council Chambers
The Council Chambers is the algorithmic heart of the Citadel Council's polished regime—a stark monument to pre-Collapse bureaucracy rebuilt with neon bones and silicone skin. Here, policy isn’t debated so much as calculated. Augmented officials, flanked by chrome-plated assistants, feed social metrics and citizen behavior data into a central AI quorum that generates laws, ration quotas, and security priorities in real time. Every decision is logged, surveilled, and projected as a holographic manifesto for the masses. “Order, Stability, Hope”—the Citadel’s trinity—is whispered like a prayer and enforced like a sentence. The Chambers serve less as a forum and more as a ritual site, where civility is algorithmically maintained and dissent is politely excised. For residents, it is the closest thing to certainty left in the world. For outsiders, it’s a theater of cold logic disguised as governance.
The Data Archive
Buried deep beneath the Citadel’s manicured corridors and neon-curated surfaces lies the Data Archive—New Vance’s most guarded digital relic and most contested secret. Once a critical node of the OldNet, the Archive is now a fortified excavation site where Citadel technocrats parse through fragmented mainframes and corrupted AI cores, desperate to recover pre-Collapse intel, schematics, and behavioral algorithms. Officially, it’s a "restoration effort." Unofficially, it's a cold war under concrete. Syndicate Net-Runners dive into the ghostlines nightly, threading encrypted exploits through Citadel firewalls and leaving behind digital graffiti and siphoned files. This is where the old world’s memory is dissected and repackaged into ideology. Knowledge isn’t just power—it’s leverage. And in the Archive, every corrupted byte is a battleground between curated order and weaponized freedom.
The Data Crypts
Buried deep within the electromagnetic chaos of the Radio Silence Zone’s Subterranean Echo Chambers, the Data Crypts serve as the Static Cult’s sacred archive. Once a series of interconnected server vaults, these rusting catacombs now house a fractured library of corrupted data drives, flickering holo-projectors, and tangled fiber optic remnants. The Cult’s Conductor presides here, interpreting the fragmented bursts of static as divine messages from the Silent God. Members painstakingly decrypt corrupted files and piece together fragments of lost knowledge, believing each garbled data stream reveals prophetic insight into the city’s fate. The crypts are a place of reverent obsession, where the hum of failing machines blends with whispered chants and electronic prayers. Outsiders who venture here risk being overwhelmed by maddening signal interference—or forcibly inducted into the Cult’s digital communion.
The Devil's Den
The Devil’s Den is a chaotic subterranean enclave nestled deep within the fragmented ruins claimed by the Raiders. It sprawls through forgotten service tunnels and blasted subway shafts, a hazardous labyrinth pulsating with the flicker of scavenged neon strips and crude LED clusters. This shadowy maze serves as the Raiders’ most volatile black market, where stolen tech, stolen solar cells, illicit bio-mods, and forbidden weapons exchange hands beneath the constant hum of jury-rigged generators. The air is thick with smoke, the stench of burnt synth-drugs, and the electric tang of overheated circuitry. Raider gangs, unbound by faction or law, haggle and plot here amid fractured holograms and graffiti-tagged walls—each deal a gamble and each alliance fleeting. The Perimeter Watch rarely ventures beyond the outer layers, wary of ambush and hidden snipers. In this den, desperation and hunger fuel the ruthless trade of New Vance’s most dangerous currency: survival.
The Distillation Tower Ruins
Once the towering heart of an experimental Gear Rat refinery, the Distillation Tower Ruins now stand as a corroded monument to unchecked ambition and chemical catastrophe. The towers—designed to isolate hyper-reactive compounds used in fuel cells and weapon-grade coolant—burst in the early hours of the Collapse, atomizing most of the original crew and flooding the facility with volatile chemical steam. Now, this section of the Chem Zone is a death maze of fused walkways and leaking pipe veins. Pools of unknown substances swirl in kaleidoscopic eddies, sometimes igniting in bursts of ghostly flame. Every corner crackles with unstable pressure or leaks whispers of hallucinogenic vapor. Scavvers only come here on dares or desperation, hoping to find intact coils, catalytic filters, or rare coolant chambers. Most don’t return. Those who do speak in fragmented phrases, as if their minds caught fire too.
The Distorted Radio Outpost
Once a relay hub for the city’s emergency broadcast system, the Distorted Radio Outpost now stands twisted by the influence of the Static Cult. Stranded deep in the electromagnetic dead zone, the outpost crackles with unreadable signals and guttural bursts of corrupted transmissions. No drones function here. No neural tech syncs. But scavvers still venture in, drawn by the myth that this place holds raw fragments of the original Collapse broadcast—unfiltered chaos encoded in audio. The Cult treats it as a shrine, reinforcing its husk with scrap metal and copper wire, embedding relics and neural dampeners into the walls. Some say you can still hear the voices of the first victims playing on loop in the static. Others claim the Conductor himself once emerged from its doorway, reborn. Most who spend a night inside wake changed—if they wake at all.
The Dripline Vaults
Beneath the central Waterworks lies a labyrinth known as the Dripline Vaults—an ancient filtration system long since overtaken by rust, shadow, and silence. Once designed to process thousands of gallons of water daily, the Vaults are now a patchwork of flooded chambers, corroded catwalks, and pressure-sealed maintenance shafts. Officially decommissioned, these tunnels are kept deliberately off-grid by the Hydro Hegemony, rumored to be used for black market trade, water hoarding, and punishment. Desperate scavvers sometimes brave the depths, seeking forgotten tech or hidden water caches, but few return. Stories speak of faulty AI drones still executing outdated protocols and pressure doors slamming shut without warning. But the real fear? The Vaults hum at night. Not with machinery—but with breath. Something's down there, forgotten and wet. The Hegemony denies its existence. That’s how you know it’s real.
The Echo Pit
The Echo Pit is one of the oldest and most brutal sub-chambers within the Citadel’s Barracks and Training Grounds—an immersive combat amphitheater originally designed for psychological stress testing and now repurposed as a trial-by-fire crucible for elite Guard hopefuls. Unlike the clean, programmable holodomains above, the Pit is stripped of safety protocols and interface assists. Trainees are dropped in blind, facing randomized threat simulations—glitching shambler patterns, rebel AI decoys, and environmental hazards with minimal support. Every movement is recorded in absolute silence; no music, no guidance, only their own breath and the echo of footsteps. Survive the full cycle, and you advance. Fail, and you get archived with a numeric designation and a quiet transfer to menial duty. The Echo Pit doesn’t just break weak cadets—it reveals them. The Citadel calls it necessary. The recruits call it 'The Hollow Lesson.' It teaches one truth: when order fails, you fight alone.
The Echoing Vaults
Deep within the Subterranean Echo Chambers lies the Echoing Vaults, a heretical sanctum sealed behind concentric blast doors and cascading white-noise barriers. Once part of an emergency data archive from the pre-Collapse world, the Cult has repurposed it into a reliquary and ritual site. Inside, ancient electronics—burnt-out modems, fried servers, and cracked radio transceivers—are enshrined like relics. The Static Cult believes these devices house fragmented echoes of the Silent God, each artifact pulsing with divine distortion. White noise loops fill the space, layered in incomprehensible chants that only the “Tuned” can decipher. The chambers are used to encode new worship routines, upload visions from the Conductor, and perform conversion rites. Trespassers either leave hollowed by signal-sickness or not at all. The Vaults don’t echo sound—they echo mind.
The Electronic Graveyard
Once a recycling hub for obsolete electronics, the Electronic Graveyard now festers under a sky thick with electromagnetic haze. Endless heaps of shattered screens, corroded circuit boards, and defunct neural implants stretch in every direction—a metallic necropolis humming with latent energy. Here, the Static Cult walks barefoot over broken motherboards, harvesting “holy fragments” and “whispering chips” from gutted devices. It is said the Graveyard is where the static first spoke, where the Conductor received their original transmission carved into a scorched tablet of silicon. Converts are often brought here to be “tuned”—left among the flickering remnants until their minds fracture and reform in rhythm with the Cult’s divine feedback. Stray signals still loop through rusted speakers, mumbling broken prayers or playing fragments of forgotten songs. This isn’t just trash. To the Cult, it’s sacred text—dead tech singing the voice of God.
The Explosives Workshop
Tucked deep inside the hazardous maze of the Toxic Digs, the Explosives Workshop is the grim heart of the Raiders’ crude war machine. This hidden forge is shielded by thick scrap-metal plating, scavenged from the city’s wreckage, fortified with layers of rust and reinforced with welded beams. Raiders here concoct volatile explosives from scavenged chemicals—corrosive acids, leftover industrial solvents, and repurposed propellants. The air is thick with the acrid bite of burning plastic fumes and the sharp sting of chemical vapors. This place hums with the unsettling rhythm of jury-rigged machinery: clanking presses, sputtering blowtorches, and the hiss of pneumatic pumps. Every surface is littered with volatile powders, fractured glassware, and makeshift detonators wired in chaotic tangles. Paranoia runs high here—one wrong spark could rip the entire workshop to shreds. Heavily guarded by trigger-happy Raiders armed with scavenged firearms and sharpened scrap.
The Filtration Nexus
Deep within the choking haze of the Toxic Digs lies the Filtration Nexus—a ramshackle labyrinth of scavenged tech and crude chemistry where the Raiders wage a desperate war against poison itself. Once an abandoned industrial waste processing hub, the Nexus now functions as the last bastion of survival for the scavenger hordes who call the Digs home. Here, broken distillation columns and jury-rigged purifiers struggle to wring some semblance of safety from a stew of caustic sludge and chemical rot. Raiders labor feverishly, patching leaks and replacing corroded filters with scavenged scraps, their lungs shielded by cracked respirators and stained rags. Toxic fumes mingle with the hiss of venting steam, and every breath is a gamble against blindness or death. The Nexus is vital—a grim forge turning lethal waste into usable fuel, water, or corrosive weapons—yet it stands perpetually on the edge of collapse, a fragile fortress held together by sheer will and crude ingenuity.
The Flicker Vault
Deep in the pulsing underbelly of the Black Market lies the Flicker Vault—a sealed chamber built into a collapsed server farm, now repurposed as a highly encrypted data exchange hub and memory laundering den. Access is limited to those with neural ink clearance or barter-worthy data shards. Within its firewalled walls, memories, identity packets, and blacklisted knowledge are scrubbed, sliced, and repackaged. Syndicate runners call it the “mind washer,” a place where reputations vanish and new ones are born. No deal is spoken aloud—everything is communicated through linked AR overlays or silent gestures translated by retinal shimmer arrays. Some say the Vault's original AI still lingers deep in the code, occasionally corrupting data with dreamlike loops or inserting phantom thoughts. It’s not just a place to erase your past—it might rewrite your future. Trust is a commodity here, and identity is liquid. If you're inside the Flicker Vault, you're either hiding something… or worse.
The Fog
Tucked deep beneath the Neural Bazaar’s ghost-coded alleys lies The Fog—an encrypted enclave known only to the Syndicate’s most trusted operatives and high-tier clientele. There’s no map, no signage—just a chain of whispered invites and neuro-encoded beacons that lead traders into a drifting mist of semi-permanent AR haze and biometric masking. Here, cred-chits blur with solar credits, and the lines between information and identity dissolve. This is where the Syndicate manipulates currency flow: laundering stolen solar quotas, redistributing hacked Citadel rations, and auctioning fragments of corrupted memory cores. Every transaction is ghost-traced. Every face is blurred by proxyware. It is the quiet lung of a louder machine—the shadow banking system that keeps New Vance spinning in secrecy and vice. Syndicate elite call it "the vault that breathes."
The Fuel Refinery
Deep within the blistering inferno of the Scorch Pit lies the Fuel Refinery, a volatile heart pumping flammable lifeblood into the Raiders' violent veins. This ramshackle complex of scavenged machinery and fractured tanks serves as the crucible where crude fuel is distilled from stolen petrochemicals, aerosol cans, and scavenged solvents. Raiders sweat and curse as they juggle unstable mixtures, aware that a single spark could turn the entire refinery into a roaring firestorm. The refinery fuels the incendiary weapons and brutal kill rigs that define Raider raids—improvised flamethrowers, napalm grenades, and makeshift rocket fuel. Toxic fumes hang thick, choking the air with chemical rot and the bitter tang of burnt rubber. It’s a dangerous place, not just because of the volatile fuel, but due to constant raids from rival gangs and the ever-watchful drones of the Perimeter Watch skimming overhead, waiting to strike.
The Gladiator Pit
Hidden beneath a collapsed maglev interchange, the Gladiator Pit is where New Vance’s most desperate debts get settled in meat and blood. Run by Syndicate-linked fight brokers, this subterranean arena stages daily deathmatches—augmented street fighters, disgraced exosuit mercs, even captured raiders—all thrown into the ring with one promise: win, and you might buy your freedom. Maybe. It’s the Syndicate’s ultimate entertainment feed, livestreamed via neural-broadcast to betting parlors across the Black Market. Fights are brutal, unsanctioned, and modified by sadistic "ref-techs" who alter terrain mid-combat or release synthetic predators into the pit. For many, it’s either a shortcut to riches or a fast track to becoming floor paint. Combat isn’t just sport here—it’s commerce, punishment, and spectacle blended into a grinning blood opera that New Vance watches with hungry eyes.
The Glitch Market
Deep within the anarchic sprawl of The Devil’s Den, the Glitch Market thrives as a fractured ecosystem of desperation and cunning barter. This sprawling bazaar occupies a long-abandoned maintenance tunnel, repurposed and jury-rigged into a patchwork marketplace. Raiders and scavvers mingle here, trading salvaged cyberware, stolen solar cells, and illicit bio-mods beneath flickering, hacked neon signs—each glow sputtering with static and glitch. The air crackles with tension, alive with the electric hum of overloaded circuits and whispered deals. Here, survival hinges on the sharpness of your wit and the weight of your scars, where cybernetic enhancements promise advantage but often come riddled with dangerous flaws. Trust is scarce, alliances are fragile, and every trade is a gamble under the watchful eyes of gang sentries lurking in shadowed alcoves. The Glitch Market is a vital nerve center for the Raiders.
The Green Lung
The Green Lung is one of the Citadel Council’s most curated illusions—an engineered oasis nestled within the steel bones of New Vance. Touted as a "public rejuvenation initiative," it is a tightly monitored biodome of controlled flora, hydroponic towers, and gene-seeded vegetables, designed less for sustenance and more for morale. Entry is granted via retinal clearance, with each visit time-stamped and surveilled. Here, the Council doesn’t just grow crops—it grows trust, nostalgia, and the illusion of stability. Behind polite smiles and guided wellness sessions lies an insidious truth: the Green Lung is less a park and more a social control experiment, measuring stress levels, speech patterns, and biometric responses. It offers controlled beauty in a crumbling world—so long as you behave. To the obedient, it’s a breath of fresh air. To dissidents, it's a suffocating garden with eyes.
The Hidden Laboratory
Beneath the glitching ruins of an old broadcast relay station lies the Hidden Laboratory—an unsanctioned research bunker swallowed by static and secrecy. Once a Citadel black site for studying pre-Collapse neurotech and advanced signal resonance, it was lost during the earliest waves of electromagnetic collapse. Now it serves a darker purpose: a sanctum of the Static Cult. The Conductor refers to it as “The Tuning Chamber,” where captured minds are dissected, rewritten, and retuned to receive the divine broadcast. Echoes of failed awakenings haunt its walls—memory loops gone feral, feedback-induced psychosis, and glitch-scarred implants. Yet within this place of unholy communion, strange miracles occur: twitching bodies revived by noise, machines that respond to thought alone. It’s a shrine, a workshop, and a tomb. And for those brave—or foolish—enough to enter, there is no guarantee they’ll leave speaking their own words.
The Holding Cells
Deep within the shadowed lower levels of Skullcrack Hold lie the Holding Cells—cramped, grim cages where the Raiders imprison those caught in their violent raids or those who cross the brutal pack leadership. These cells are not built for comfort or mercy, but for control through fear and suffering. The air is thick with the stench of sweat, rot, and decay, mingled with the metallic tang of blood and rusted iron. Prisoners—both valuable hostages and expendable captives—are squeezed into damp, corroded cells where sickness spreads unchecked. Interrogations here are brutal affairs, conducted under flickering propane lamps, punctuated by screams and the scraping of makeshift tools. Rumors say some captives vanish in the dead of night, dragged into the darkness beneath the Hold for rites or ransom. To be thrown into these cells is to face slow death or savage bargains in a city where survival is won by cruelty and cunning.
The Hub
The Hub is the flickering pulse of unaligned life in New Vance City—a last-ditch attempt at unity in a world shattered by infection, scarcity, and factional war. Once a sleek corporate AI command center, it now groans with age and adaptation. Beneath cracked ferrocrete domes and warped neon signs, the Hub operates as neutral territory for the city’s dispossessed. Here, bartering is law and ideology is checked at the door. The Solar Guardians fund power for clinics, the Hydro Hegemony leases ration flow in drips, and the Citadel monitors from afar, pretending not to interfere. It’s a pressure cooker of backroom deals, whispered alliances, and survival-driven compromise. Yet amidst it all, you’ll find children learning letters on rusted screens, doctors repurposing solar welders for surgery, and volunteers organizing food drives from scavenged pantries. It's chaotic. It's imperfect. But for many, the Hub is the only piece of New Vance that still feels... human.
The Hydroponic Gardens
Tucked into the cracked rooftops and reclaimed superstructures of the Solar Sprawl, the Hydroponic Gardens are the lungs of the district—a cultivated miracle grown under ultraviolet devotion. Maintained by Solar Guardians and their conscripted technicians, these modular vertical farms transform gray ruin into green promise. Crops grow in stacked conduits of nutrient-rich water, fed by purified runoff and solar-powered filtration systems. The produce—mostly nutrient-dense greens and algae variants—is reserved for Guardian loyalists and trade with other factions. Dissenters don’t eat. Harvest quotas are enforced like military drills, and entire grow sections can be punished. The Gardens are more than a food source—they're leverage, symbol, and sermon. Here, radiant purity is proven not just by cleansing the infected, but by birthing sustenance from dust and discipline. Step out of line, and the next sprout won’t be yours to taste.
The Inferno Forge
Deep within the Scorch Pit, the Inferno Forge is a brutal hive of savage industry, the fierce heart of the Raiders’ weapon-smithing efforts. Here, raw scrap metal, scavenged fuel, and volatile chemicals are twisted and fused into deadly tools of destruction. Massive, jury-rigged furnaces roar with hellish heat, casting molten slag that flows like rivers of fire over scorched pits and welded scrap. Raiders clad in scorched leather and gas masks move with frantic purpose, hammering out crude flamethrowers, incendiary bombs, and jagged blades meant to maim and burn. This chaotic foundry is fueled as much by desperation and fury as by fuel and fire, where the clang of metal and hiss of flame mingle with the acrid smoke that chokes the air. It is the crucible of violence—here the Raiders forge their ferocity, crafting the weapons that keep them feared and alive in the wasteland’s deadly dance.
The Iris Archive
The Iris Archive is a multi-level data sanctum embedded within the central column of the Citadel’s tallest spire—a publicly accessible information hub that doubles as a reputation index and social metric ledger. On the surface, it’s a citizen library: sleek terminals, curated records, and educational simulations for the next generation of drone operators and civil architects. But beneath its polished interface, the Archive quietly parses behavioral data, flagging anomalies and shaping narrative flow across Citadel-controlled zones. Every visit is logged. Every inquiry weighted against one's Social Integrity Score. Researchers, planners, and students sit side-by-side, unaware their reading patterns are used to predict ideological drift. The walls of the Iris don’t echo—they record. Citizens come here to “learn,” but what they’re really doing is proving they belong. In the Citadel, information is power—but only if the system decides you’re allowed to know.
The Leaky Pump Station
Once a minor pressure valve facility tucked into a runoff trench at the edge of the Waterworks, the Leaky Pump Station is now a rogue lifeline for the desperate. Left partially operational after a sabotage attempt—likely from one of Valve’s own leak teams—the station drips with life-saving water. It's dirty, unfiltered, and heavy with rust, but it flows freely… for now. Word has spread among scavvers and fringe dwellers: no permits, no questions. Just bring a jug and a weapon. The Hegemony denies its existence publicly, yet whispers suggest they monitor it closely, baiting out thieves and rebels who dare sip without tribute. Some say a former Hydro engineer lives inside, keeping the pumps alive out of guilt or rebellion. To most, it’s a cursed oasis—half sanctuary, half trap. But for those too broke or blacklisted to pay the water tax, the Leaky Pump Station is the last place left to drink.
The Loading Docks
Once a logistical heart for the plant’s chemical exchanges, the Loading Docks now sit rotting at the southern fringe of the Chem Zone—where rust meets ruin and the air chews at your teeth. Here, trucks once hauled volatile compounds through reinforced bays and crane lines whispered across heavy slabs of synthcrete. But now? It’s an open-air grave for the industrial age. The place offers a rare stretch of flat terrain, making it useful for staging scav runs, ambushes, or ill-advised campfires. Raiders occasionally squat here between sorties, and Gear Rat expeditions have been known to use it as a forward post before diving deeper into the zone. Those who stay long report strange shifting in the fog at night—figures, reflections, the echo of mechanisms restarting themselves. Nobody works here anymore. But something still moves the crates. And it doesn’t like being watched.
The Lost Forge
The Lost Forge is a legendary workshop hidden deep within the Rust Belt, rumored to be the birthplace of the city's most advanced technologies. Gear Rats tirelessly search for its location, believing it holds blueprints for powerful weapons and machines that could turn the tide in their favor against rival factions.
The Morgue
Once the last stop for the infected and the unfortunate, the morgue beneath New Vance Memorial is now something far more disturbing. The refrigeration units hum faintly, still functional, still cold. But they no longer hold corpses awaiting autopsy—they cradle remnants the Silent Walkers consider "worthy": bones polished clean, fetuses sealed in amber, and odd hybrid growths kept in preservation tanks. Survivors rarely enter, but when they do, it’s to barter in silence—offering scavenged bio-relics in exchange for cryptic blessings or immunity rites. The Walkers don’t speak here. They perform. They collect. They watch. Some say the morgue is sacred to them, a convergence point between the living and the almost-dead. Others claim it's where Walkers are made, molded from rot and reverence. One thing is certain: you don’t leave the morgue unchanged. Not mentally. Not biologically.
The Neon Bazaar
Deep beneath the shattered bones of New Vance, where the sun never shines and the Citadel’s cameras can’t reach, lies the Neon Bazaar—an outlawed market hardwired into the neural pulse of the Shadow Syndicate. It's not just a place, it's an experience—half physical, half augmented hallucination. Here, reality blurs with glitch-code as fixers, dealers, and mercenaries barter not only in stims and weapon mods, but in secrets, memory loops, and digital ghosts. Syndicate operators drift like phantoms, their implants aglow with encrypted overlays, while gunmetal sentinels enforce order with brutal efficiency. Every whispered deal is filtered through a tangle of proxy servers and burner chips. Loyalty is scarce, trust nonexistent. Yet somehow, the market thrives—a beating, radiant artery of desperation and autonomy. In a city ruled by scarcity, this is where you go when you want something you’re not supposed to want—and can’t afford not to have.
The Neutralization Pit
At the heart of the Chemical Treatment Tanks lies the Neutralization Pit—a failed containment trench once designed to stabilize hazardous sludge before final filtration. Now, it’s a caustic basin of bubbling waste, where incomplete reactions have fused old purifiers with sludge into a half-living mire. The Pit emits a low, constant gurgle, like it’s digesting something—maybe everything. Attempts to seal it off failed after multiple maintenance teams were lost to collapsing catwalks and unexpected chemical flare-ups. Despite the danger, rogue chemists and black-market harvesters sneak in, drawn by trace elements and volatile compounds no longer producible in labs. The Hegemony rarely intervenes, claiming the area is “self-regulating.” But stories circulate of things moving in the sludge—not rats, not beasts, but glimmering shapes that seem to wait just beneath the surface, twitching in time with the pumps. Some say the Pit is learning. Others say it’s remembering.
The Overflow Trench
The Overflow Trench is a forgotten drainage artery carved deep into the underbelly of the Waterworks—a massive sloped channel once designed to relieve flood pressure from the city’s reservoirs during storm surges. Now, with weather systems erratic and most infrastructure left in bureaucratic limbo, the trench rarely serves its original purpose. Instead, it’s become a natural borderland between authority and abandonment. Refugees, smugglers, and Waterworks outcasts drift through its slick expanse, turning its recesses into semi-permanent camps and contraband markets. Above them, ancient pumps groan in protest, their rust-choked vents spewing irregular torrents that flood lower walkways without warning. The Hydro Hegemony officially ignores the trench—it’s too deep, too unstable, too unprofitable. But rumors persist of secret tunnels branching off beneath the surface, of hidden wells, and scavvers who went looking for freshwater veins and found something else watching from the darkness.
The Pale Vault
The Pale Vault is an isolated chamber buried five levels beneath the main Archives and Research Wing—a cold storage crypt for high-risk pre-Collapse specimens and unreleased shambler-adjacent anomalies. Officially, it's classified as an "Asset Preservation Subunit," but among Citadel personnel, it's quietly referred to as “the Last Drawer.” Behind triple-sealed containment doors and monitored by redundant AI oversight, the Vault stores pathogen samples, neuroviral shards, and cryo-sealed human subjects pulled from early outbreak zones. Each asset is cataloged, numbered, and suspended in legal limbo: too dangerous to destroy, too valuable to ignore. Researchers enter in pairs under constant observation. Test logs are purged every week. If the Citadel ever falls, this is the room they’ll try to burn first. But until then, the Pale Vault persists—silent, clinical, and humming with the chilling knowledge that salvation and extinction might be shelved on the same row.
The Phantom Galleries
Deep beneath the shattered ruins of New Vance City, the Phantom Galleries weave a disorienting maze of rusted steel and fractured glass. These twisting tunnels—once experimental transit lines—now pulse with chaotic electromagnetic interference that scrambles senses and twists reality. Decaying neon signs flicker erratically, casting warped shadows that stretch and fold like living illusions. Broken holographic ads flash fragmented messages, echoing the lost consumer dreams of a world long dead. The Static Cult has claimed this hall of echoes as a sacred testing ground, where recruits endure grueling rites to resist the maddening static that permeates every inch. Here, minds bend and break, warped by invisible waves that hiss like ghostly whispers. Devices tested here frequently implode or take on unstable sentience, reflecting the cult’s belief that the static is the divine code streaming through flesh and machine. Few outsiders enter the Phantom Galleries and return unscarred.
The Phantom Gullet
The Phantom Gullet is a sunken freight corridor branching off the Smuggler’s Docks—an echoing subchannel where lost shipments and abandoned tech drift in oily currents. Originally part of a cargo redirection system for the city’s maintenance fleet, it was forgotten during the Collapse and quietly reclaimed by the Shadow Syndicate. Now, it serves as a no-light drop zone for contraband too volatile or valuable to risk in open trade. The Gullet has no permanent crew, no guards, and no maps—just whispers and signals passed by encoded light pulses and AR glyphs scrawled into the walls. The current moves slow here, like the canal is holding its breath. Syndicate Runners speak of drone tethers that vanish mid-haul, of skiffs that return empty, of strange glints beneath the water that don’t belong to metal. Still, the risks don’t deter scavvers or fixers. If the Neural Bazaar is the city’s black heart, the Phantom Gullet is its gaping, silent throat.
The Processing Core
Once the nerve center of a massive Gear Rat chemical processing complex, the Processing Core now festers as a boiling tumor at the heart of the Chem Zone. Here, volatile compounds were synthesized, refined, and distributed through labyrinthine tubes that still pulse faintly with residual energy. The Collapse ruptured containment lines and cooked the place from the inside out—resulting in a catastrophic backflow event known locally as the “Core Burp.” Since then, the Core has become a crucible of chemical entropy. Drums of unknown mixtures hiss beneath ruptured consoles. Twisted hazard bots occasionally twitch into life, misidentifying intruders as contaminants. Despite the danger, scavvers dream of what might be hidden in the Core’s vaults: untouched processors, mutagen canisters, even prototype reactor gels. Most die before finding out. Those who return… don’t always come back quite right.
The Public Courtyard
The Public Courtyard is the Citadel’s engineered answer to “freedom.” Nestled inside the Glass Ring’s fortified core, this open-air plaza serves as the city-state’s sanctioned zone for citizen expression—so long as that expression stays within pre-coded bounds. Security drones hover silently above, broadcasting council announcements in soothing synthetic tones. Digital trees flicker with algorithmic perfection, and scheduled “public dialogues” play out beneath the neon-filtered dome sky, each word archived and analyzed. This is where grievances go to die with dignity—processed, logged, and filed away. Still, it remains vital: a pressure valve in a system running hot. Ex-technocrats and rationed dreamers gather here not just to speak, but to be seen. To be counted. In a world of silence, a whisper in the Courtyard is a scream in the void.
The Pyre Market
The Pyre Market is the blazing heart of the Raider’s Camp’s inferno, a chaotic open-air bazaar where desperation and greed ignite under a haze of smoke and ash. Raiders swarm here from every direction, trading scorched scrap, volatile fuels, and crude weaponry forged in the fires of the Scorch Pit itself. Amidst flickering, sputtering neon shards salvaged from dead cities, bartering erupts over anything that can keep a blade sharp, a bike running, or a bomb ticking. The market thrives on raw survival instinct—no loyalty, only power. Smuggled tech, stolen solar batteries, and flammable concoctions exchange hands alongside scarred faces and broken promises. Each deal teeters on violence, the roar of flamethrowers and crackle of fuel fires punctuating the sharp shouts of traders and the occasional gunshot warning. Here, the Raiders’ unyielding hunger for chaos is as tangible as the choking smoke that never fully clears.
The Raider's Moot
The Raider’s Moot is the brutal nerve center of the Bone Yard’s chaotic raider clans, a grim theater where savage leaders carve out fleeting dominion amid the ruin. Here, battered warlords like Wreckjaw and Blister-King gather atop a ramshackle dais crafted from twisted scrap and scorched bones, plotting raids fueled by desperation and bloodlust. The Moot serves as both war room and sacrificial altar—where disputes end in blood or barter, and twisted rites mark loyalty with pain and fire. Armed raiders crowd the perimeter, their patched armor gleaming dully beneath flickering propane torches. This raw hub of violence thrums with tension, every shout, clash of metal, and guttural oath a reminder that power here is seized by the strong, held by the ruthless, and lost in a heartbeat.
The Resonant Core
Deep beneath the broken ruins of New Vance City, in the labyrinthine Subterranean Echo Chambers, lies the Resonant Core—an eerie nexus of electromagnetic chaos and spiritual torment. This chamber is the Static Cult’s sacred ground, where static is not noise but a divine pulse, a fragmented voice of the cosmos itself. Here, the electromagnetic fields converge into a maddening symphony of buzzing interference and warped signals, filling the air with an oppressive hum that rattles bones and unravels minds. The walls are layered with twisted scrap electronics and cracked circuit boards, wired in tangled webs that pulse with ghostly flickers of phosphorescent light. Strange, glowing symbols—etched into salvaged tech—blink rhythmically, synchronized with the murmured hymns of cultists echoing through the tunnels. It is believed by the Cult that this is where the "Conductor" channels cosmic resonance, tuning flesh and code alike to the Silent God’s will. Few who enter emerge unchanged.
The Rooftop Overlook
Perched above the miasma-choked avenues of the Shambler’s Graveyard, the Rooftop Overlook is one of the rare vantage points that offers clarity in a district defined by dread. Accessible by a buckled fire escape and fortified by scavver hands, the Overlook serves as a temporary haven for watchers, runners, and those desperate enough to map the twitching shadows below. From this height, one can witness the unnatural choreography of shamblers and—if unlucky—the far more unsettling grace of the Silent Walkers moving among them. Stories say this place once housed rooftop gardens, but now it serves as a spot for whispered radio calls, sniper nests, or silent prayers. No one stays long. Something in the mist always stares back. Yet for all its danger, the Overlook remains essential—a rare place to breathe in the graveyard, and maybe even plan a way through it.
The Rotting Cathedral
Once a glimmering monument of post-Collapse faith, the Rotting Cathedral now festers at the heart of the Shambler’s Graveyard like a wound that never healed. Legends say the first wave of infection bloomed beneath its altar, when a sanctuary of the desperate turned into a hive of the doomed. Now, the building acts less like a ruin and more like a nerve center for whatever unnatural communion the Silent Walkers share with the shamblers. Those who wander inside don’t always die—but they never come back the same. Static pulses through broken speakers, and the air is heavy with a thick, fungal spore-mist that numbs both thought and speech. Inside, the pews are filled with decomposing corpses posed in worship, and the pulpit is often occupied by a Silent Walker—preaching in silence to an audience of the dead. No official faction lays claim to it, but all acknowledge its influence. It is not a ruin. It is a cathedral with a new congregation.
The Rust Cage Arena
Deep in the twisting bowels of The Devil’s Den—a labyrinth of shattered tunnels claimed by lawless Raiders—the Rust Cage Arena stands as a brutal testament to survival and savagery. Constructed from the skeletal remains of rusted shipping containers, scrap metal plates, and twisted rebar, the cage is more than just a fighting pit—it’s the crucible where Raider status is forged in blood and desperation. The air here is thick with smoke, the acrid bite of burned synth-drugs, and the raw, ragged roar of a crowd fueled by cheap stimulants and bloodlust. Every clash of makeshift weapons and every guttural scream reverberates through the blasted tunnels, a savage symphony punctuated by the clatter of crude bets and the crack of broken bones. More than entertainment, the arena is a place to settle grudges, assert dominance, and remind all who enter that power here is won through pain and fury.
The Rusted Cog Initiation Pit
Buried in the smoke-choked belly of the Rust Belt, the Rusted Cog Initiation Pit is where scrap becomes soldier. Every new Gear Rat must endure “The Grinding”—a brutal rite of passage where initiates, stripped of armor, name, and favor, are thrown into the pit to survive against jagged-toothed scrap beasts, sawblade hounds, and half-living constructs built from failed raiders and burned-out loader bots. There are no rules. Only survival. Those who live through the metal storm are yanked from the pit by chain-hooks, screaming and blood-slick, baptized in fire and oil, and branded with the symbol of Cog. They are fitted with their first graft—be it a pneumatic claw, steel jaw, or chassis spine. It’s not a fight. It’s a crucible. The Pit isn’t meant to test courage. It’s meant to kill weakness. In the Gear Rats’ world of oil-slick chaos and burn-marked law, only those who crawl from the gears belong to the tribe.
The Sacred Reservoir
Buried in the depths of the Waterworks, the Sacred Reservoir is the Hydro Hegemony’s holiest vault and deadliest secret. Once an emergency cistern for a pre-Collapse research facility, it now stores the largest uncontaminated water cache in New Vance—far purer than any rationed pouch aboveground. Valve, the Hegemony’s founder, crafted a pseudo-religious mythos around the site, declaring it a "relic of divine plumbing" and only accessible to the highest-ranking members through biometric keys and whispered codes. Worship services—half sermon, half propaganda—are held in adjacent chambers where purified mist is sprayed over followers like benediction. Some say the water is kept clean by ancient nanotech or bioluminescent algae bred to filter toxins. Others claim that bathing in it heals the mind. Whatever the truth, it’s sacred because it is hoarded—and deadly because it is wanted. To the Hegemony, this is not just water. It's proof they were right to seize control.
The Salvage Yard
The Salvage Yard is the mechanical heart of the Gear Rats—an ever-evolving sprawl of smoke-belching conveyor belts, weapon-gutting war rigs, and the relentless grind of scavenger ambition. Here, wrecks are reborn as weapons, and the air thrums with the rhythm of machinery and mayhem. The Rats drag in dead solar crawlers, drone carcasses, and Citadel scrap to be stripped, reforged, and repurposed. Loyalty isn’t spoken—it’s weighed in bulk metal and paid in blood. Overseen by Cog’s brutal enforcers, every part pulled is taxed, every circuit claimed. The yard isn’t just an industrial site—it’s a proving ground, an altar of rust where initiates are baptized in oil and fire. Raiders from outside occasionally trade here, but most just hope to survive long enough to loot the outskirts. When the forge pits roar and the klaxons howl, you know something’s being born—or someone’s being punished.
The Scavenger's Path
The Scavenger’s Path is a perilous artery slicing through the shattered outskirts of New Vance City, where desperate souls risk everything for scraps of the old world. This jagged route weaves between collapsed overpasses and skeletal remains of factories, a gauntlet where shamblers lurk and the air hums with tension. Scavvers—rugged survivors armed with whatever they can salvage—navigate this deathtrap, facing constant threats from the undead, raiders, and sudden structural collapses. Makeshift camps cling to the ruins, their fires flickering as traders barter rare tech and food under watchful eyes. The Path is a lifeline for the Perimeter Watch, a harsh proving ground that feeds New Vance’s survival economy, fueling a grim culture where every risk might mean a new weapon or an early grave.
The Scorch Pit
The Scorch Pit is a blistering wound etched deep into the scorched earth at the heart of the Raider’s Camp. Here, relentless heat rises in waves, twisting the air with mirages and the sharp tang of burnt hydrocarbons. Jagged blackened steel and warped car frames jutt from the cracked ground like the bones of a long-dead beast. This chaotic forge serves as a crucible where the Raiders unleash their raw fury, crafting incendiary weapons from salvaged scrap and volatile chemicals scavenged across the badlands. Makeshift workshops hum with flamethrowers’ hiss and the intermittent roar of crude explosives, each blast rattling the nearby tents and shaking the rusted ground beneath. Raiders, wild and relentless, wear scorched leather and patchwork armor, their faces obscured by soot and gas masks, moving with frantic energy as they temper their deadly armaments. The Perimeter Watch avoids this inferno, sending only drones to spy.
The Scrap Forge
Buried in the smoke-choked depths of the Rust Belt, the Scrap Forge is where the Gear Rats turn metal into menace. It’s no ordinary factory—it’s a crucible of blood, rust, and roar. Massive smelters belch flame day and night, fed by a nonstop parade of scavenged refuse: twisted rebar, broken bots, gutted engine blocks. Every slab of scrap is melted, beaten, or bolted into brutal new forms—saw-shields, bone-splitters, and scrap-cored armor. The forge is Cog’s holy ground, where only the strong and the clever survive the shifts. Schematics are optional. Ingenuity is mandatory. Rats work in shifts of chaos, testing exo-limbs mid-combat and crafting rigs held together by hate and hexbolts. The Molten Pit, a furnace-ringed gladiator arena, tests not just weapons—but the worth of those who dare build them. Here, rust is religion. Fire is fate. And any Gear Rat who wants to rise must earn their scars with sweat, steel, or screams.
The Scrap Refinery
The Scrap Refinery is a brutal forge hidden deep in the Toxic Digs, where scavenged metals and rare tech scraps are melted and reforged beneath a choking haze of chemical smoke. Raiders swarm here, transforming twisted remnants of pre-Collapse machinery into crude but deadly weapon components and armor. The heat from roaring furnaces warps the air, mixing with clouds of acrid smoke and toxic fumes that sting lungs despite the patchwork gas masks worn by those who dare enter. The refinery is a vital node in the Raiders' supply chain, giving them a hard-fought edge in firepower and armor over rival gangs and scavvers. Here, molten slag pools like toxic quicksand across the cracked concrete, and every spark is a gamble between survival and instant death. Few outsiders tread this perilous maze, and fewer return whole.
The Service Tunnel Entrance
Hidden behind a maintenance façade near the perimeter of the Glass Ring, the Service Tunnel Entrance is one of the few cracks in the Citadel’s otherwise seamless shell. Officially decommissioned, this tunnel was once part of a subterranean maintenance network used to ferry drones and waste beneath the Citadel’s pristine surface. Now, it serves as a shadow vein for those brave—or desperate—enough to bypass retinal scans and surveillance grids. Intelligence brokers, dissident coders, and Syndicate smugglers have all whispered about it, though no one openly admits to using it. To the Council, its continued existence is a silent embarrassment—one they're too proud to publicly acknowledge and too uncertain to fully seal. Within its narrow halls, secrets change hands under the hum of forgotten lights. It's not on any official map, but for some, it’s the only route to freedom—or sabotage.
The Shadow Exchange
The Shadow Exchange is the beating, venomous heart of The Devil’s Den—a hidden chamber deep in the tangled ruins claimed by the Raiders. Here, desperation fuels the fiercest deals beneath a veil of menace and mistrust. This clandestine bazaar is where the city’s most illicit and dangerous trades converge: stolen solar cells harvested from broken panels, hacked perimeter watch tech ripped from the Perimeter Watch, and twisted bio-mods forged in shadowy labs. The Exchange buzzes with whispered transactions of slave trades and forbidden weaponry, a market fueled by blood and survival instinct. Raider warlords, cloaked fixers, and masked mercenaries convene amid the haze of burnt synth-drugs and metallic tang, their voices low but sharp, deals sealed with threats or promises of vengeance. Every trade is a gamble; betrayal lingers like a toxin in the stale air.
The Shadow Market
The Shadow Market is the beating digital heart of the Black Market, a subterranean sprawl of code-bled commerce and whisper-thin loyalties. Accessible only through encrypted tunnels and retinal keys, it’s where the Syndicate turns salvage into supremacy. Neural ports flicker behind vendor stalls like eyes that never blink, and backroom deals are sealed with subdermal chips, not handshakes. Here, you can buy a stolen drone brain, a custom cloaking shard, or memories of another life—if you’re not already being watched. Syndicate operatives known as "shades" patrol quietly, tracing behavioral anomalies more than footsteps. The Council calls it a den of corruption. The Syndicate calls it freedom's last firewall. There are no rules here—only risk, reputation, and the sharp hum of a world that forgot how to be fair.
The Siphon Gallery
The Siphon Gallery is an old inspection corridor turned open secret among the denizens of the Waterworks. Once used to monitor flow rates from the underground reservoirs, it's now a derelict stretch of winding tunnels and vertical shafts where off-grid water siphoning operations quietly thrive. Hidden behind a rusted maintenance door beneath Pump Station 9, the Gallery is technically off-limits—but few things in New Vance stay sealed forever. Makeshift valves and stolen filtration gear litter the space, installed by smugglers and black-market techs hoping to tap into the Hegemony’s flow without paying the water tax. Some treat the Gallery like a communal well, others like a goldmine. But the deeper you go, the stranger it gets. Moisture hangs in the air like breath, and the walls throb with a low, rhythmic pulse—like the pipes themselves are alive and aware. Most never reach the final chamber, where the water runs warm, and the silence is so heavy it crushes your thoughts.
The Skull Pits
Deep within the Bone Yard’s shattered expanse lies the Skull Pits—a grim, excavated hollow where the Raiders dump the skulls of their victims. This morbid cache is less a burial ground than a brutal monument to chaos and terror. Each bleached cranium tells a story of hunger, violence, and the raw survival instinct driving these feral packs. The Raiders use the pits as a psychological weapon, a gruesome display meant to cow rivals and prisoners alike into submission. Occasionally, skulls are modified with twisted cybernetic implants scavenged from ruined tech, adding eerie glows or mechanical eyes that twitch with cracked servos. The pits emit a heavy stench of rot and burnt flesh, mixing with the metallic tang of scavenged blood and rust. Above the pits, makeshift bone altars and crude war trophies rise—reminders that here, death is not just an end, but a savage proclamation of dominion in the fractured outskirts of New Vance City.
The Solar Bastion
Deep within the Solar Sprawl lies the Solar Bastion, a repurposed transit nexus now converted into the elite training facility of the Solar Guardians. Once a metro hub, now a fortress of flashing discipline, this is where raw recruits become radiant enforcers. Here, doctrine is etched into muscle memory, and solar rifles are calibrated to sing in the sun’s name. Recruits wake to alarm-chime reveille and collapse at dusk beneath sun-fueled floodlights. Tactics, purification protocol, and radiant strike formations are drilled without mercy. The Bastion also serves as a vault for Guardian heavy ordnance and a workshop for their signature armor, maintained under strict energy quotas. Outsiders are unwelcome—this is sacred ground. Discipline isn't just expected. It's enforced with solar precision. This is where the sun makes soldiers, and where mercy is burned off like morning dew.
The Solar Credit Exchange
The Solar Credit Exchange is the economic heartbeat of the Citadel Council’s sleek dominion—a glass-and-chrome monolith nestled within the controlled utopia of the Glass Ring. Here, the Citadel's dream of a post-collapse civilization is most palpable, powered by logic, order, and radiant digital currency. Citizens line up in orderly queues, their biometric profiles linked to exchange terminals that convert approved barter into Solar Credits—one of the few currencies still honored outside the Citadel. Overseen by augmented officials and guarded by polymer-clad enforcers, the Exchange doesn’t just move currency—it regulates status. Every transaction, down to the last energy coupon or protein chip, is logged, graded, and analyzed. Access is dictated by a trust metric. Low scores mean delay. Zero means exclusion. This isn’t a bank. It’s a loyalty test in economic drag. And yet, for many, it’s the only doorway to warmth, food, and simulated normalcy.
The Solar Sprawl
In the sun-bleached remains of pre-Collapse suburbs, the Solar Sprawl radiates with harsh purpose. Once a shattered wasteland, it's now a fortified zone powered by sprawling solar grids and governed by the Solar Guardians—bronzed figures in glinting exosuits who see sunlight as sacred law. Every rooftop hums with photovoltaic harvesters. Converted substations serve as fortress-temples, broadcasting Captain Anya Brights’ doctrine of radiant purity: energy must be earned, not stolen. Life here is rigid but fair—residents live under strict energy quotas and military-style discipline, repaid with purified water, hydroponic food, and secure housing. The Sprawl is both salvation and surveillance, a techno-theocratic regime where disobedience earns exile—or incineration. Raiders call it a cult. Locals call it survival. Beneath the sun’s unblinking eye, there is no room for chaos—only function, loyalty, and the burn of progress.
The Spiraleaf Vault
Dome Theta-7, known informally as the Spiraleaf Vault, is one of the more obscure Agricultural Domes nestled on the edge of the Solar Sprawl's food grid. Unlike its larger counterparts, Theta-7 specializes in cultivating rare bioengineered crops—spiraleaf, shimmergrain, and oxide-root—used in both high-efficiency rations and energy-synth infusions. Access is limited to a small cadre of Guardian agronomists and solar technicians who maintain its delicate photonic irrigation cycles. The dome's unique spiraleaf plants twist upward in helix formations, drawing filtered light through their translucent veins, turning photons directly into caloric mass. Though efficient, the process is volatile—light too bright or systems slightly unbalanced can cause entire trays to wither or combust. Rumors speak of unauthorized attempts to extract the seeds, each failure ending in system lockdown or drone retaliation. To the Solar Guardians, Theta-7 isn't just agriculture—it's alchemy.
The Static Forge
Deep within the Subterranean Echo Chambers lies the Static Forge—an unholy crucible of sound, circuitry, and sanctified decay. Once an emergency signal repeater site for underground transit, it's now the main workshop-temple of the Static Cult. Here, chosen machinists—called Clang-Priests—hammer divine resonance into scavenged tech, assembling “tuning artifacts” meant to amplify the Conductor’s signal. The Cult believes this Forge is the closest physical echo to the Static God’s voice. Pilgrims whisper that machines built here can "listen" to fate itself. Conversion chambers hum with voltage, and newly tuned zealots are baptized in raw feedback. Every creation is a ritual. Every repair, a sermon. Those who displease the Forge’s frequency often vanish—reduced to burnt wire and static ash. The deeper you listen, the more it listens back.
The Static Towers
The Static Towers rise like corrupted obelisks from the cracked concrete of the Radio Silence Zone, a jagged skyline of rusted antennae and decaying transmitters. Once part of New Vance’s pre-Collapse broadcast grid, they now serve as altars to distortion—monuments claimed and corrupted by the Static Cult. Every tower pulses with electromagnetic interference, their broadcasts forming the backbone of the Cult’s psychic web. Signals ripple through the air like invisible hymns, converting technology to junk and minds to mush. Zealots known as “Screamers” cluster at their bases, reciting looping mantras in broken audio snippets. Those brought here for “tuning” rarely return as themselves. It is said The Conductor resides in the tallest tower, wired directly into its nerve system of coiled copper and faith. Communication dies here. Thought is overwritten. The only voice is static—and it’s always listening.
The Storage Tank Yard
Once a central node in the Gear Rats’ massive chemical refining grid, the Storage Tank Yard is now a decaying battlefield of corrosion and chaos. The yard was built to house vast quantities of volatile compounds—reactive fuels, industrial solvents, mutagenic coolants—all of which ruptured or combusted during the Collapse. The result is a surreal landscape of broken tanks that burp toxic gas and leak neon-colored sludge. The ground is so saturated with chemical residue it burns through boots, and the air sings with volatile instability. Crystal Wretches nest here among the wrecks, and rumors persist of a Caustic Crawler the size of a water truck slithering beneath the waste. Gear Rats sometimes launch armored salvage raids to scavenge tank plating or retrieve mutagenic residue—if they survive long enough to haul it back. Every salvage run is a coin flip: valuable loot or permanent lung scarring.
The Sunken Den
The Sunken Den is a collapsed apartment complex in the western edge of the Shambler’s Graveyard, long since buried under its own weight and warped by time, rot, and neglect. Once known as Redwood Block 7B, it was evacuated too late during the initial outbreak, leaving behind a dense tangle of debris, broken furniture, and remains that were never recovered. Now, it's a nesting site—used intermittently by shamblers as a resting ground and passage point. The structure is half-submerged in black, rain-filled runoff and stinks of mold and ammonia. Entry points have narrowed to jagged gaps and broken utility hatches, making the space claustrophobic and treacherous. Some scavvers brave it for scrap or lost gear, claiming the lower floors still hold intact supplies sealed in airtight lockers. But the Den is unpredictable. You may enter in silence, but you'll never be alone. The deeper you go, the more the air feels like breath on your neck.
The Synth-Den
Nestled deep in the chaotic tunnels of The Devil’s Den, the Synth-Den serves as the Raiders’ refuge from the brutal wasteland outside. This smoke-choked chamber pulses with fractured neon and the sharp tang of synthetic drugs—carefully cooked stimpacks and neuro-boosters that help dull the razor edge of starvation and violence. Hacked sensory implants and jury-rigged neural feeds litter the grimy tables, broadcasting scrambled feeds of fractured memories, stolen corporate signals, and glitching holo-ads. Here, desperation meets indulgence as raiders and scavvers alike lose themselves in chemical haze and sensory overload, seeking brief escape from the endless hunger and danger that define their existence. The Synth-Den is a fragile sanctuary where pain is numbed, paranoia fades, and fleeting dreams flicker beneath the constant hum of overheated generators.
The Toxic Digs
The Toxic Digs are a sprawling, hazardous maze of chemical decay nestled deep within the Raider’s Camp outskirts of New Vance City. Once part of an old industrial waste processing zone, the area now reeks of volatile sludge and poisoned air, toxic pools reflecting the flicker of scavenged neon and flame-lit fires. Raiders have twisted the ruins into a brutal fortress of survival, jury-rigging crude distillation rigs, chemical refineries, and makeshift weapons workshops amid the corroded pipes and collapsed tanks. The air is a noxious cocktail of burning plastics, industrial solvents, and sickly sweet toxins, sharp enough to blister exposed skin. It’s a place where only the most desperate or crazed dare tread, armed with gas masks or improvised respirators. The Digs serve as a vital stronghold for the raiders, a grim factory of brutal weaponry and chemical concoctions that fuel their relentless raids. The Perimeter Watch avoids this zone except in forceful raids.
The Toxic Fume Pits
Once part of a sprawling Gear Rat refinery network, the Toxic Fume Pits are now a caustic scar in the Chem Zone—a toxic lowland of ruptured coolant chambers, collapsed silos, and waste trenches too deep to measure. During the Collapse, chemical vats chain-reacted in a superheated cascade that scorched the land and cracked the very bedrock, creating this volatile death trap. Now, the pits belch a thick, shimmering fume that ignites skin and corrodes bone, forcing even Gear Rats to mark it "unsalvageable." Those who enter unprotected rarely return whole—if they return at all. Crystal Wretches thrive in the acrid muck, feeding on irradiated sludge, while gas-bloated shamblers wander in slow, silent loops. Rumors swirl of old-world prototype tech buried in the deeper pits, but few dare test their luck. The Toxic Fume Pits are not just deadly—they're alive with heat, madness, and the memory of chemical apocalypse.
The Trophy Wall
Nestled deep in the Bone Yard—a savage no-man’s-land at the edge of the Raider’s Camp—the Trophy Wall stands as a brutal monument to chaos and survival. Once part of a shattered roadside diner now reduced to rust and ash, this massive barricade is festooned with the grisly spoils of countless raids: cracked helmets, shattered solar panels, twisted weapons, and scavenged tech components. Each item is a claim staked in blood and fire, a warning to rivals and a celebration for the raiders who call this land home. The wall is a shifting archive of brutality, where trophies still drip with rust and dried blood, bearing the scars of desperate skirmishes. It fuels raider morale and rivalry alike—those who bring the best kills earn respect, and those who challenge the wall risk becoming its next exhibit.
The Tumbler Yards
Once a facility for industrial drum filtration, the Tumbler Yards now lie in semi-functioning decay—a skeletal field of giant rotating purification tanks, many still spinning despite the ruin around them. Officially listed as condemned, the area somehow remains semi-operational, used as a dumping ground for runoff waste and contaminated reserves that the Hydro Hegemony doesn't want seen. The Yards are a gray zone in more ways than one: squatters camp beneath the humming drums, water smugglers filter trickles through makeshift tubing, and rogue engineers test scavenged purifiers with a mix of desperation and hope. Everyone here knows not to touch the red-marked tanks—they leak, and people who drink from them don’t stay people for long. Rumors persist of subterranean vents that lead to forgotten tunnels or even deeper filtration levels. Whether those rumors are true or just heatstroke hallucinations, the Tumbler Yards remain a last stop before dehydration turns to delirium.
The Tuning Hall
The Tuning Hall was once a satellite maintenance substation, built to regulate signal clarity across the northern broadcasting grid. Now it serves a far different purpose. Deep within the Radio Silence Zone, this semi-submerged structure has become a low-level induction site for the Static Cult—where the first stages of “tuning” begin. Captives and wanderers alike are brought here, not yet fully converted, but already showing signs of neurological strain. The Cult uses the Hall to expose minds to overlapping electromagnetic pulses in structured cycles, gradually degrading individual thought until the victim syncs with the static chorus. The building isn’t guarded in the traditional sense; instead, its presence is protected by the ambient noise field surrounding it, which causes disorientation, nausea, and audio hallucinations. The Citadel once sent in a scout team—none returned. The Tuning Hall isn’t a fortress. It’s a slow bleed into something else.
The Verdigris Riser
Deep in the northern forested fringe of the Waterworks lies the Verdigris Riser, a moss-cloaked vertical pumping station built into the side of a shallow ridge. It once elevated groundwater into upper-tier pipelines, feeding reservoirs closer to the city’s heart. Decades of neglect and creeping wilderness have transformed it into a half-functioning relic—part industrial outpost, part overgrown ruin. The Hegemony rarely patrols this far north, and the Riser has become a waystation for those who live off-grid: scavengers, silent traders, and wild-eyed loners who tap the rusted vents for unfiltered flow. Birds nest in its rafters, and strange insects buzz between cracked meters. Locals speak of “the copper hiss”—a faint whine that rises from the central shaft at night, like pressure still builds below. The pumps haven’t officially run in years, but the walls stay warm to the touch, and every so often, a plume of steam bursts through the treeline like a dying machine exhaling in its sleep.
The War Beast Pens
Deep within the Bone Yard, the War Beast Pens serve as a grim crucible where Raiders forge their most terrifying weapons: mutated creatures and captured shamblers repurposed as living siege engines. This brutal enclave is less a menagerie and more a weaponized breeding ground, where feral beasts are starved, trained, and sharpened into shock troops for raids against rival gangs and city defenses. Raiders employ crude conditioning methods—fire, pain, and cruel harnesses—to awaken latent aggression and train these abominations to charge through barricades and sow chaos. The air hangs heavy with the scent of decay, sweat, and animal musk, punctuated by snarls and the echoing crack of whips. Each cage rattles and creaks under the weight of restless monstrosities, their eyes reflecting primal rage twisted by starvation and fear. Here, life is cheap and the strong are bred to spill blood—both beast and human alike.
The Waste Treatment Ponds
Once a regulatory backlot of the Gear Rats’ refinery complex, the Waste Treatment Ponds were designed to neutralize industrial runoff—until the Collapse ignited every fail-safe and dumped decades of unchecked chemical slurry into their basins. Now they stew as glowing cauldrons of mutagenic soup, surrounded by rotted catwalks and the sound of burbling bio-death. The sludge bubbles with unnatural rhythms, birthing flora that pulses like organs and fauna that shouldn’t crawl, but do. Crystal Wretches cluster near the pond rims, feasting on radiant filth, while scavvers whisper about slick-skinned “pondspawn” dragging whole caravans into the muck. Even the Gear Rats refuse to touch the area now—too unstable, too cursed. Rumor says the ponds remember every chemical ever poured into them and are learning to react. To adapt. Maybe even to hunt.
The Watchtower Line
The Watchtower Line stands as the ragged shield guarding the fragile border between New Vance City’s chaotic core and the lawless expanse beyond. A string of battered but fiercely defended towers, these outposts are the eyes and ears of the Perimeter Watch—a gritty coalition of ex-soldiers, scavvers, and hardened idealists who refuse to let the city fall. Each tower is a fortress cobbled from salvaged steel, concrete slabs, and repurposed tech scavenged from the ruins. Equipped with a patchwork of sensor arrays, jury-rigged floodlights, and static-chattering radios, they scan relentlessly for shamblers, raiders, and other threats prowling the wasteland. The Watchtower Line is both a warning and a lifeline: where ammo is currency, and trust is forged in fire. Without these towers, New Vance would bleed out into the unforgiving wastes. Their defenders are few, their resources scarce, but their resolve unyielding. If the Watchtower Line fails, so does the city.
The Whispering Tower
The Whispering Tower is a skeletal monument to lost communication, rising from the dead silence of the Radio Silence Zone like a rusted sentinel. Once a vital broadcast hub, its antennas now crackle with static so thick it seems almost alive. The tower lies deep within a no-tech zone where all signals die, haunted by the Silent Walkers—pale figures cloaked in ragged remnants of old tech, their blank faces hidden behind chipped bone masks. They drift among the shattered transmitters and tangled cables, immune to the shamblers but feared by all. The Static Cult’s influence surrounds the tower’s ruins, their cybernetic followers weaving prayers into the flickering static that permeates the air. Whispers—half heard, half imagined—flutter like broken radio waves, drawing scavvers and zealots alike to test their sanity. Few leave unchanged; some vanish, their voices absorbed into the tower’s endless white noise.
The Whispering Tunnels
Deep beneath the flickering neon arteries of the Black Market lies the Whispering Tunnels—a segmented labyrinth of collapsed subway shafts, stolen data lines, and retrofit smuggler routes. Here, the Syndicate’s silence becomes gospel. The tunnels are a haven for encrypted exchanges, ghost meetings, and high-risk contraband swaps. Legends speak of a faceless broker known only as “Hiss,” who trades in memories, voices, and secrets encoded in quantum echoes. Surveillance tech dies here—glitched by residual neural residue from a Syndicate experiment gone wrong. Every sound carries farther than it should, twisted by the strange acoustics until even a whisper feels like it’s being repeated back in a dozen voices. Blackout lanterns line the walls, and traders communicate in tap codes and blink signals. It’s the place you go to vanish, make a deal with a ghost, or bury something that can’t surface.
The Whispering Vaults
Buried deep within the glitch-lit tunnels of the Black Market lies the Whispering Vaults—a cluster of encrypted sanctums and sensory-dead chambers used exclusively by the Shadow Syndicate's most trusted operatives. This isn’t where deals are made; it’s where information is weaponized. Cloaked in AR static and defended by ghostware sentries, the Vaults serve as a strategic nexus for digital blackmail, memory manipulation, and deep-truth trading. Here, the infamous Broker of Secrets operates under multiple identities, processing everything from stolen drone footage to neural ghost-recordings. Members of the Whisper Cell—an elite cabal within the Syndicate—handle whispers like currency, enforcing silence through zero-trace executions or data-burn rituals. If knowledge is power in New Vance, then the Vaults are a tactical nuke wrapped in velvet static. Even the Citadel Council fears what leaks from this place.
Tribunal Plaza
Tribunal Plaza is the Citadel Council’s public theater of justice—a curated spectacle of order and punishment staged beneath the digital banners of pre-Collapse law. Designed less for deliberation and more for deterrence, the plaza hosts daily proceedings where suspected Syndicate affiliates, water thieves, and insubordinate citizens are tried before sterile-faced judges in augmented robes. Cases are resolved in minutes, often streamed to public terminals across the district as a “civic morale initiative.” The Council frames it as accountability; detractors call it performative repression. Every ruling feeds the social metrics algorithm, determining housing, rations, and status. The Plaza is not a place for redemption—it’s a neon-lit reminder that obedience is the only currency that truly spends in the Citadel.
Tripod the Scrap Titan
Tripod the Scrap Titan was once a marvel of urban engineering, designed to stabilize quake-prone infrastructure using triple-jointed legs and seismic dampeners to redistribute weight. After the Collapse, a corrupted power surge froze its systems mid-stride, locking its towering frame in place along a shattered rail line deep within the Rust Belt. Now, this rust-caked giant looms like a dead deity above the soot-stained scrapyards and molten pits of Gear Rat territory. Its presence is more than symbolic—it’s sacred. Gear Rats treat Tripod as a holy relic of Old World muscle and engineering, conducting brutal salvage rites and leaving scrap offerings at its base. Some whisper that deep inside its chest is a power core still humming, drawing infected beasts and malfunctioning drones like moths to flame. Others claim Tripod’s optic flickers not from decay—but from something watching. Silent. Processing. Waiting to move again.
Valvepoint Transit Dock
Valvepoint Transit Dock is the Hegemony’s main subterranean intake checkpoint. Originally a cargo and crew transfer platform, it’s now been refitted as a ration control node for processed water shipments moving between cistern stations and above-ground depots. All water deliveries from the surrounding tunnel filters pass through here for scanning, tracking, and taxation. Civilians are not allowed access. Valvepoint is heavily guarded by “Leak Teams”—Hegemony enforcers trained to suppress theft and prevent tampering. Anyone found transporting unauthorized containers is detained and reassigned to purification duty. Smugglers rarely survive long in Valvepoint’s sector.
Vault Line Theta
Vault Line Theta was a classified Guardian tech line prior to the collapse, originally intended to shuttle experimental battery cores and cooling rigs between development silos. After the outbreak, it was reactivated as a sealed-access route and fortified with hardpoint chokeholds and backup generator nodes. Theta is fully off-grid, running on redirected solar waste heat via underground converters. It is guarded continuously by silent-response Guardian squads in adaptive armor. Any unscheduled entry triggers a protocol breach with full lockdown. No official manifests list its contents. It’s widely assumed to be a deep storage and energy tech blacksite.
Verdant Intake Nine
Tucked into the moss-choked woodlands north of the Waterworks lies Verdant Intake Nine—an overgrown water extraction site partially swallowed by forest regrowth. Once a proud part of New Vance’s hydro infrastructure, the intake station was abandoned decades ago after shifting aquifers rendered it obsolete. Now, it sits half-awake, its ancient filters still humming faintly beneath the underbrush, drawing moisture from underground springs. Locals refer to it as “the Iron Grove,” where vines drink rust and the machines seem to sigh in their sleep. Scavvers come seeking copper coils or spare parts, but more often find the place strangely preserved, as if the forest and the station made peace. Some claim the water here is purer than anywhere else—untaxed, unclaimed. Others whisper it’s cursed, and that the flora drinks more than water. The Hegemony posts no guards. They say it’s irrelevant. But someone still leaves tools behind. And the station doors always seem to close themselves.
Vireline Command Station
Vireline Command is the central routing hub for Citadel Council-controlled transit. Originally a command-and-control platform for automated rail networks, it now acts as a secure operations bunker. The station’s surface access is sealed; entry is restricted to elevator capsules embedded in the Glass Ring. Inside, it functions as a checkpoint, personnel filter, and tactical command post. All inbound or outbound movement from the Citadel’s subway lines is logged here. Data cores archive foot traffic, genetic scans, and behavioral flags. A standing military presence maintains full lockdown protocol. Vireline’s purpose is efficiency and oversight—it’s not a place for civilians.
Wakespire Station
Wakespire Station lies deeper in the Solar Sprawl and serves as a functioning transit checkpoint for Guardian supply chains. It was originally part of the Sprawl’s solar technician route, enabling rapid deployment between relay zones. Now it's half depot, half barracks. Repair convoys pass through daily, transferring gear, battery packs, and personnel. Shamblers sometimes appear in the northern tunnel, prompting regular scorch sweeps. Wakespire is outfitted with turret scaffolds and a drone docking array. Civilians may request passage, but most are denied unless under contract. It's also rumored that surplus solar credits can be exchanged here for weapons—off the books.
Weller Street Overpass
The Weller Street Overpass cuts a jagged silhouette across the decayed sprawl of the Shambler’s Graveyard—a collapsed freeway bridge that once funneled evacuees toward safer districts. Now, it stands fractured and forgotten, its upper deck partially intact and its lower lanes buried beneath concrete and bone. Survivors call it "the drop zone," a common waypoint for scavvers hoping to escape the ground-level hordes by climbing into its heights. But the overpass is no sanctuary. The shamblers don’t always stay below, and more than one traveler has vanished while resting in the upper shadows. Weathered signs warn of structural instability, but most can’t read them through the grime—or don’t care. Makeshift ladders lead up to hollowed-out husks of delivery trucks and bus shells where temporary camps flicker to life and burn out again. It’s not a stronghold, and it’s never safe. But it’s high ground. And in the Graveyard, sometimes that’s enough.
Zara Moreau's Clinic
Zara Moreau’s Clinic is a myth wrapped in sinew and circuitry, whispered of in scavver lore as a place where bodies break and return… different. Hidden deep within the husk of a half-collapsed apartment complex in the Shambler’s Graveyard, Zara offers something no other surgeon will: invasive biomechanical surgeries that adapt the human body to the infected world. She doesn’t serve the Silent Walkers, but she’s never been touched by them either—and that’s reason enough to fear or worship her. Some say she once worked for the Citadel Council as a biomedical prodigy before disappearing into the rot. Others believe she’s already half-infected and merely completing her own transformation. Those who emerge from her table don’t talk about the pain—they talk about how the shamblers stopped chasing them. Some even start walking a little quieter. A little slower. Like they’re listening for something.