Sprawl Districts
The Planet-Spanning Megacity
The Sprawl isn't one city—it's a thousand cities merged, layered, and welded together over a century of growth. Each district has its own character, economy, and power structure. What follows are key districts beyond Sector 7G and Nexus Central, showing the variety of life in the planet-spanning megacity.
The Neon Mile
Entertainment ZoneThe Neon Mile is where the Sprawl goes to forget. Casinos, clubs, pleasure palaces, and experiences that would be illegal anywhere else operate openly here. The consortium that runs it doesn't care what you do as long as you pay.
The aesthetic is overwhelming—holographic advertisements covering every surface, music bleeding from every doorway, sensory stimulation designed to keep you spending. It's the brightest place in the Sprawl, and somehow the emptiest.
Key Locations
- The Eternal Night: A casino running for 37 years straight
- The Flesh Market: Legal body modification and cosmetic surgery
- The Memory Palace: Experience sims—live other people's memories
The Foundry
Industrial ZoneIf Ironclad is the Sprawl's muscle, The Foundry is where that muscle lives. Kilometers of factories, refineries, and fabrication plants operating around the clock. The air is thick with particulates. The ground vibrates with machinery. Everything is coated in industrial residue.
Workers here are tough, practical, and loyal. Ironclad treats them better than most corps—decent wages, functional housing, medical care. It's not idealism; it's investment. Healthy workers build better.
Key Locations
- The Crucible: Primary steel production, visible from orbit
- Worker's Row: Dense, functional, well-maintained housing
- The Union Halls: Ironclad allows unions. Tame ones they control.
The Veil
Banking ZoneThe Veil is where the real power lives—not the visible power of Nexus or Ironclad, but the quiet power of those who control money. The Banking Consortium predates the Cascade and somehow survived it. They hold debts, arbitrate disputes, and maintain the credit systems that make the Sprawl economy function.
The district is physically beautiful—preserved architecture, clean air, actual trees. Entry is restricted. They don't take sides between corporations. They profit from all of them.
Key Locations
- The Reserve: Central credit processing. Holy ground.
- Arbitration House: Where corporate disputes are settled
- The Ledger: Supposedly, every transaction since the Cascade
The Stacks
Vertical CityThe most densely populated place in human history. The Stacks grew upward when they ran out of ground—buildings on buildings, platforms on platforms, a vertical maze kilometers high. At the top: corporate penthouses with natural light. At the bottom: crushing darkness and people who've never seen the sun.
Navigation is three-dimensional. "Address" includes level number. Wrong turn, wrong level, wrong neighborhood. Consequences. Everything is for sale in the Stacks. Everything.
Key Locations
- The Crown: Upper levels, corporate controlled, almost pleasant
- The Midsection: Where most people live. Functional. Crowded.
- The Depths: Below Level 50. Light doesn't reach. Neither does law.
The Reclaim
Engineered ZoneThe Reclaim is what happens when you try to rebuild an ecosystem. Vertical farms produce real food (not vat-grown). Water is clean. Air is filtered naturally through engineered plant life. It's the closest thing to "nature" most citizens will ever experience.
It's also deeply weird. The plants aren't natural—they're designed. The animals are engineered. The ecosystem is optimized. It feels alive but wrong, like a very good simulation.
Key Locations
- The Greenhouses: Beautiful, productive, slightly unnerving
- The Reservoir: Most valuable resource in the district
- The Nursery: Where new lifeforms are designed. Restricted.
Blackout Zone 7
Abandoned SectorSome parts of the Sprawl never recovered from the Cascade. Blackout Zone 7 is the worst—a massive urban dead zone where the power grid failed and was never restored. Officially uninhabited. Actually home to millions living in conditions worse than the Wastes.
Corporations avoid it. There's nothing worth taking. The people here are truly forgotten—those who fell through every crack. It's not lawless. It's invisible. Surveillance doesn't reach. Maps don't show it.
Key Locations
- The Ember Markets: Trade without surveillance, barter and pre-Cascade currency
- The Underground: Tunnel networks where some light still works
- The Witness: A pre-Cascade broadcast tower someone keeps running
District Glossary
Vertical position in multi-story districts
Official district subdivision
Unofficial or abandoned area designation
Upper levels of any vertical district
Lower levels of any vertical district
Transitional area between districts