The Wastelands Beyond Neo-Europa refer to the fractured, irradiated, and often lawless zones outside the fortified megacity limits of Neo-Europa. These territories—once recognizable as rural Belgium, northern France, the Netherlands, and western Germany—have devolved into a chaotic patchwork of ruined towns, scorched forests, rusted mega-infrastructure, and nomadic enclaves.
Origins and Collapse
Following the Great Fragmentation War (2030–2039) and the Climate Exodus of the mid-21st century, the outlying regions surrounding Brussels collapsed into disrepair. Floodwaters drowned farmlands, supply chains disintegrated, and aerial bombardments by rogue drones and AI-led militias turned once-inhabited zones into biochemical scarfields. In the absence of centralized governance, nature, ruin, and desperation reclaimed the land.
Zones of Note
🔥 Red Soil Corridor
A radioactive trench south of the former Leuven blast zone, the Red Soil Corridor is infamous for its crimson dust storms, collapsed overpass-ruins, and glassed-out craters. It is believed some rogue CyberNecro cults conduct memory-harvesting rituals here.
🌲 The Green Veins
A dense, mutated woodland northwest of the city. Overgrown with bioluminescent flora and semi-aware fungal networks, these forests are avoided by most sane travelers. It is whispered that experimental gene-monks and off-grid bio-cells dwell deep within the Veins.
🛠️ The Scav Markets
Located around the remains of the Antwerp-Haven corridor. These mobile junk bazaars drift from ruin to ruin, peddling black-market implants, derelict drone parts, and smuggled neural archives. The Stormrunners and The Driftroot frequently stop here to trade.
❄️ The Cracked Ice Fields
North of the drowned lowlands, these salt-flaked, permafrost zones are remnants of experimental terraforming projects gone wrong. Now a bitterly cold wasteland punctuated by frozen relay towers and ghost signals.
⛓️ Border Reclaim Zones
Technically within Neo-Europa’s digital border, these zones are the focus of ongoing re-capture operations by Serolov Conglomerate and Swert Systems. They are militarized and unstable, where fences hum with power and drone patrols enforce proto-laws.
Life in the Wastes
Despite the dangers, life persists. Exiles, Nulls, survivalist cults, rogue Spacers, AI remnants, and nonhuman bioforms have all carved out tenuous, adaptive existences. Some are descended from old Earth resistance factions; others are post-human or entirely new species of intelligence.
Travel and Navigation
Traveling through the Wastelands is perilous without preparation:
- Signal Blackouts – Cypherspace connections are erratic or nonexistent. Only localized Veil nodes remain, many corrupted or haunted by Depth Witches.
- Wasteland Technologies – Survivors make use of hybrid tech: wind-harvesters, filtered gas-rebreathers, Solshade domes, and retrofitted bCred codexes.
- Threat Levels – AI predation, feral cyberbeasts, rogue ICE, and memory bandits make safe passage rare.
Notable Groups
- The Driftroot – A nomadic caravan-tribe adapted to survival through Solshade camps and barter networks.
- Stormrunners – High-risk couriers delivering data cores, implants, and recovered relics back to the city.
- Memory Vultures – Scavenger guilds who harvest mind-fragments and sell them to black-market Reconstructors.
Strategic Importance
The Council of Nobles officially regards the Wastelands as "non-integrated buffer zones," though each Family deploys agents to harvest, monitor, or suppress developments. Rumors persist that the Council is searching for relics buried beneath old earth—possibly from before the Cypher Crash.