East Oakland Dregs
Pre-Collapse Identity
East Oakland was the Bay Area's open wound — the highest crime rates, the deepest poverty, and communities of extraordinary resilience that built culture in the spaces between violence. International Boulevard, the old East 14th Street, was the corridor where everything happened: commerce, crime, community, survival. Fruitvale was the center of Latino culture on the East Bay side.
Current Character
The most dangerous urban sector in the Sprawl, and Guardian Security's headquarters — two facts that are not coincidental. Guardian is headquartered here because this is where violence is highest, and Guardian creates the conditions that make their product necessary. The Watchtower, a former public housing complex retrofitted into an armored fortress, sits on International Boulevard like a declaration of war against the neighborhood it claims to protect. Protection rackets, enforcement patrols, and street-level survival define the corridor. The Fiber Guild operates from this sector, running the physical data networks that even Nexus depends on. Hector is from here. The rhyme holds: Hector from Sector 12.
Terrain & Atmosphere
Flat urban grid — the Oakland flats stretching from the bay floor edge to the gradual slope toward the hills. The streets are wide enough for armored patrol vehicles, which is convenient because armored patrol vehicles use them constantly. The architecture is fortified residential: windows reinforced, doors heavy, rooftops converted to lookout positions by both Guardian patrols and the communities that watch them back. The bay floor edge to the west drops toward Sector 9, and the traffic between the Dregs and East Oakland is constant — people moving between ungoverned territory and enforced territory, calculating which kind of danger they prefer.
Corporate Presence
Guardian Security dominates with the heaviness of an occupying army. The Watchtower commands sight lines down International Boulevard in both directions. Patrol routes are predictable enough to be navigated, variable enough to be feared. Guardian doesn't just provide security here — they ARE the security environment, including the threats that make security necessary. Street gangs operate in the spaces between patrols, some independent, some on Guardian's informal payroll.
Key Locations
The Watchtower (Guardian Security HQ — armored fortress on International Boulevard), International Boulevard corridor (the Sprawl's most notorious street — enforcement, commerce, and survival), Fiber Guild operations (physical network infrastructure maintained by guild workers).
Sensory Detail
The sound is sirens, boot leather, and the mechanical click of checkpoint barriers cycling. The smell is street food, exhaust, and the ozone discharge of Guardian's perimeter defense systems. Light is harsh — Guardian floods International Boulevard with high-intensity security lighting that eliminates shadows, turning night into an interrogation. In the residential blocks, people counter with blackout curtains and signal-dampening paint.
Daily Life
You pay protection to Guardian or you pay consequences to Guardian, and the mathematics of the difference is the only algebra that matters.