New Vance City

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 Sacred Reservoir is a cavernous, domed cistern sunk deep beneath layers of steel bulkheads and humming filtration grates. Soft cyan light emanates from the algae-coated walls, casting ripples across the mirror-smooth surface of the central basin. Massive ribbed pipes feed into the chamber like artificial veins, releasing vapor with rhythmic hisses. Suspended walkways curl around the upper edges, guarded by patrolling Hydro Enforcers clad in deep-blue hazmat armor, their helmets glowing with lens halos. The water itself glows faintly in the gloom, pristine and unnaturally still, disturbed only by slow pulsing beneath—like the chamber itself is breathing. Embedded control panels flicker with ancient diagnostics, many unreadable but still active. A grand bronze relief of a faucet-shaped deity looms over the far wall, its open spout trickling into the basin in a perpetual, silent drip—a final, ironic offering to thirst.