The Far East
The air is drier here, hotter, carrying dust from the eastern Wastes on winds that smell of dried grass, sage, and something chemical that nobody can identify. The sound thins — fewer engines, fewer voices, fewer machines — replaced by wind, the creak of decaying suburban infrastructure, and the occasional distant boom from the Wastes whose origin nobody investigates. At night, the surveillance arrays on Diablo's summit blink red, and the eastern horizon is dark in a way that the Sprawl's core never is.
You live at the edge of the map, where the last bus stop meets the first mile of nothing, and you learn to tell the difference between the wind and something moving in it.
Pre-Collapse Identity
Concord was suburban sprawl and a decommissioned naval weapons station. Walnut Creek was affluent shopping centers and families who measured their distance from the eastern sectors in both miles and ideology. Pleasant Hill was pleasant. Martinez had a refinery and a marina. The Sentinel rose above it all, a state park where people hiked on weekends and pretended the suburbs below were temporary.
Current Character
The eastern edge of the Sprawl — the place where civilization thins to a membrane and the Wastes begin. The Sentinel rises as the eastern sentinel, its summit bristling with surveillance arrays that watch for threats from the irradiated and abandoned territories beyond. The Undergrid corridor through the the East Bore Tunnel is the sector's lifeline, connecting the edge to the inner ring through a single chokepoint that makes the tunnel one of the Sprawl's most strategically valuable pieces of infrastructure. No single corporation has established dominance here. Guardian runs border patrols. Independent settlements dot the valley floor. Scavengers work the edge, bringing back materials from the Wastes. The sector has the feel of a frontier — not lawless in the romantic sense, but ungoverned in the way that means nobody is coming to help.
Terrain & Atmosphere
Valley floor and foothills — Concord's flat suburban grid transitions through Walnut Creek's gentle hills to the steep slopes of the Sentinel at 1,173 meters. The terrain is drier than the bay side, hotter in summer, and more exposed. The eastern horizon is the Wastes: brown, empty, and carrying the faint shimmer of heat or radiation or both. Pre-Cascade suburban infrastructure — strip malls, housing developments, parking lots — persists in various states of decay and repurposing. The the East Bore Tunnel mouth is the sector's western gate, fortified and fought over.
Corporate Presence
No corporation dominates, which is both the sector's curse and its appeal. Guardian patrols the border and the tunnel approaches, extracting tolls and providing the security theater that justifies their presence. Independent factions control pockets of territory — the valley floor, the Diablo foothills, the tunnel approaches. The surveillance arrays on the Sentinel's summit are a shared resource that every faction wants and nobody fully controls.
Key Locations
The Sentinel (eastern sentinel — surveillance arrays, contested summit, 1,173m), the East Bore Tunnel (the Undergrid corridor connecting the Far East to the inner ring — strategic chokepoint), the Edge (transitional zone where Sprawl meets Wastes).
Sub-Sectors
Eight grid squares at the edge of the map, where the suburban grid dissolves into foothills and the Wastes begin without ceremony.
The Sentinel
191.6 km²
The eastern sentinel itself — 1,173 meters of rock, scrub oak, and surveillance infrastructure. The summit bristles with antenna arrays, signal intercept dishes, and long-range optical systems that watch the Wastes with an attention no human could sustain. Every faction wants the peak. No faction holds it for long. The trails up are mined, booby-trapped, and patrolled by whoever claimed the summit most recently, which means the approach routes change weekly and the bodies don't always get recovered. From the top, on clear days, you can see the curve of the Sprawl to the west and the infinite brown nothing of the irradiated territories to the east.
Locations
- Mount Diablo — Eastern sentinel of the Sprawl. Surveillance arrays, contested peak.
Landmarks
- The Sentinel — Eastern mountain — 1,173m. Surveillance arrays watch the Wastes.
Factions
The Eastern Valley
180.3 km²
The valley floor east of the hills, where pre-Cascade suburban grids persist in various states of habitation and decay. Strip malls repurposed as trading posts. Cul-de-sacs turned into defensible compounds. Parking lots converted to open-air markets where scavengers sell Wastes salvage to inner-ring buyers who don't ask about radiation exposure. The population is frontier-sparse — independent operators, small-holding families, and people who came here because everywhere closer was already claimed. Power comes from solar panels scavenged from a thousand rooftops. Water comes from wells that nobody tests.
Locations
- The Tombs — Orbital derelict data centers - off-world mystery, mapped to Far East frontier.
- The Tombs Pilgrimage Route — LEO pilgrimage to dead data centers - linked to The Tombs.
- The Void Market — Outer Lattice belt trading post - off-world commerce, Far East frontier.
Landmarks
- The Eastern Valley — Valley floor with suburban grids stretching to the horizon.
Factions
The Last Road
196.8 km²
The Wastes border — where the last maintained road ends and the irradiated territory begins. Warning markers rust in the wind. Scavenger crews stage here before crossing into the brown, loading up on rad-tabs and courage in equal measure.
Locations
- The Wastes (general reference) — General reference for the irradiated/abandoned territory beyond the Sprawl's borders.
Factions
The Ghost Suburb
195.0 km²
Dry hills north of the valley, covered in dead grass and the foundations of houses nobody rebuilt.
The Final Pole
159.1 km²
Foothill transition zone, where the grade steepens and the last power lines end.
The Bare Plateau
89.1 km²
Scrubland plateau between the valley floor and the Sentinel's lower slopes, wind-scoured and treeless.
The Relay Ridge
181.1 km²
Northern ridgeline, uninhabited except for relay stations that blink in the dark.
The Dust Threshold
178.7 km²
Eastern exposure, fully Wastes-adjacent — the dust here carries a faint metallic taste.