Forget the official grid the Corpos put out. The city isn’t a map; it’s a living, breathing beast with distinct territories. Where you are defines who you are, what you can get, and how you’re likely to die. Let’s take a walk.
Sputnik (The Heart)
This is the core, the guts, the main grind where most people live, work, and die. Sputnik is a concrete jungle of interconnected, slummy brutalist towers that blot out the sky, a vertical nightmare stacked on top of itself. Multi-tiered roadways carve through the buildings, with armored transports rumbling overhead while the lower streets are choked with foot traffic and steam erupting from grates. This is the chaotic, densely packed maze you’ll call home, a constant assault of glowing advertisements, sizzling noodle stalls, and black market clinics operating in damp alleyways. If it can be bought, sold, or stolen in the Bastion, it happens here. This is the pulse of the city.
Chrome (The Lungs)
You’ll smell Chrome before you see it. This is the city’s furnace, the industrial sector where colossal smokestacks belch a permanent, amber-tinted haze into the upper atmosphere. This is where the factories scream, the forges burn, and the real heavy work gets done, day in and day out. But when the shifts end, the noise just changes. By night, Chrome is home to the biggest, loudest nightclubs in the Bastion, full of workers trying to deafen the ringing in their ears with synth-music and cheap stims. You come here to earn a living with your hands, or to lose your mind in the noise.
Atomic (The Ghost)
This isn’t a district; it’s a scar on the fringes of the city that refuses to heal. This is Atomic, the skeletal remains of the pre-Fall “Atomic Wonderland” theme park. No one lives here. You only come here if you’re desperate, a cultist, or a Mnemonic chasing a particularly nasty ghost. The place is thick with haunting memories and rumors, a place where the barrier between then and now feels thin. They say on a clear night, when the Whispers are loud, you can see the static on the horizon above the ruins flicker with glimpses of the corruption, a stain of impossible darkness rooted into this world and lingers from the day the world broke.
Rust (The Scab)
This is the edge of the world. The wound where The Bastion ends and the Amber Wastes begin. Rust is a heavily fortified border district, a chaotic blend of oppressive Civil Authority checkpoint security, sprawling Outlander bazaars, and smoky smuggling dens . It’s where scavenged tech and mutated hides from the wastes get traded for city-made goods and a few hours of warmth. The air here feels thinner, colder, and carries the scent of the vast, dead world just beyond the walls—a constant reminder of what you’re hiding from. This is the last stop for supplies before heading out, and the first taste of civilization when you limp back.
