New Vance City

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 Processing Core resembles an ironclad heart cracked open mid-beat. Its skeletal superstructure towers like a crown of warped smokestacks and buckled scaffolding, wrapped in layers of frayed hazard tape that flutter like warning pennants in the chemical winds. The sky above is stained jaundice-yellow, and toxic condensation drips from corroded piping like slow venom. Every surface is corroded, blistered, or branded with corrosion sigils and half-burnt safety symbols. Inside, shadows are tinted green by the pulsating ooze trapped in shattered tanks, while shattered glass and crystallized waste crunch underfoot. Malfunctioning screens blink cryptic system errors, flickering over a dead console bank that sometimes hums a lullaby of static. The whole space trembles faintly—like it’s breathing. Or waiting.