//Key Locations & Landmarks

▸The Spine

nu-Eden's central transit artery and the most crucial piece of infrastructure in the city. This massive vertical megastructure is a tower of steel, maborite, and dark intentions—a 3km pillar that connects The Cloud above with the Hollows below. The The Spine houses transit systems, data conduits, and power distribution networks. Control of the Spine means control of the entire city's circulation. For this reason, every faction—corporate, criminal, and resistance—has a piece of it.

Appearances: Constant flow of corporate transit pods, surveillance drones circling like vultures, emergency barriers, nERF sabotage points.

▸Maborite Wellspring

The deepest central point of maborite concentration, located at the absolute bottom of the Hollows, maybe 5km below sea level. It's not a single deposit but an entire ecosystem of crystalline maborite formations—some pulsing with energy, others dormant, all radiating reality-warping potential. Being near it grants individuals strange sensations: visions, temporal distortions, or spontaneous psychic episodes.

Every faction fights for access: the corporations want to extract it (and control the reality-distorting technology it enables), the Triads want to sell it on black markets, Empire of Draconis wants to weaponize it, and the nERF wants to either destroy it or use it as a last-resort doomsday device.

Status: Highly contested, surrounded by mined tunnels, trapped passages, and reality anomalies.

▸The Shattered Observatory

A pre-Sundering astronomical facility built in the glory days of old-Earth science. When the Sundering occurred, it shattered into a archipelago of floating platforms suspended by gravitational anomalies and salvaged maborite tech. The nERF repurposed the remains into a command post and sanctuary—a place where the fractured sky can be studied directly.

The Observatory is simultaneously:

• ▪A living monument to what humanity lost
• ▪A scientific research facility studying the Sundering
• ▪A nERF safe house and strategic command centre
• ▪A reminder that even before collapse, humanity couldn't avert catastrophe

Atmosphere: Melancholic, tinged with desperate hope. Walls covered in star charts and equations no one fully understands anymore.

▸Tsunagaya Junction Station

A massive underground transit hub where multiple The Grid lines intersect. Named after an old Japanese city, Tsunagaya has become the commercial and cultural heart of the Hollows—a lawless but thriving marketplace where anything can be bought: food, weapons, information, favours, or oblivion.

Shops include:

• ▪Familiar Marts — Corporate-owned convenience stores (even here)
• ▪Torikizoku — Legendary yAkirari stands with queues that stretch for hours
• ▪MDCT (Tsunagaya Markdown City) — A sprawling mega-mall where stolen goods are laundered through legitimate sales
• ▪Black Markets — Hidden alcoves selling nanite scrubbers, merit-score forgeries, and weapons

Note: The nERF often uses Tsunagaya as a gathering point, ostensibly for "team bonding" over meals, though actual strategic planning happens in encrypted back-rooms.

▸Draconis Border Wall

A 500-meter-high fortified boundary separating nu-Eden territory from the Empire of Draconis—a structure of brutalist concrete, surveillance networks, and automated defense systems. Both sides maintain aggressive military presence. The wall is scored with bullet holes, blast marks, and graffiti in a dozen languages.

It's not just a military barrier; it's a symbol: nu-Eden's wealth and tech on one side, Empire of Draconis's cold discipline on the other. Occasionally, defectors cross in either direction, usually under cover of darkness and military gunfire.

Strategic Importance: Critical choke point for any large-scale conflict.

▸The Hollows

The deepest level of the Hollows, maybe 3–5km below the surface. Here, maborite presence reaches critical density, and reality becomes genuinely unstable. Time moves inconsistently, gravity functions unpredictably, and spatial geometry itself becomes questionable.

Things that exist in the Hollows:

• ▪Maborite Wellspring (center) — The source of all power and all chaos
• ▪Temporal Loops — Pockets where the same moment repeats eternally
• ▪Dimensional Rifts — Tears leading into other realities or timelines
• ▪Failed Experiments — Corporate bioweapons, discarded AI cores, half-transformed humans
• ▪The Kraken of Physics — Chaotic maborite accumulations that ignore causality

The nERF ventures here only when desperate. Team Lumicon was famously sucked into temporal anomalies here multiple times; Conrad McGuire-Sun died in the same plane crash six separate times in different iterations of the same moment before breaking the loop.

Warning: Reality consensus breaks down. Navigation by normal means is impossible. Those who venture too deep sometimes return speaking only in fractured timelines or exhibiting zero-entropy entropy.

▸Tsunagaya (The District)

A dense, vertical district in The Stacks where Team Lumicon operates. Named after an old Tokyo ward, it's characterized by:

• ▪Cramped housing blocks stacked vertically
• ▪Endless neon signage (both corporate and individual merchants)
• ▪High foot traffic from morning to late night
• ▪A mix of corporate wage-workers and black-market entrepreneurs
• ▪Constant ambient Reflexio feeds on every surface

Story beats set here include dangerous encounters in crowded streets, pursuits through packed markets, and quiet moments at small ramen shops where the team debates mission priorities over food.

▸Wards of nu-Eden

nu-Eden is divided into five administrative wards, each with its own character, controlling conglomerates, and strategic significance:

▸Beyond the City