[ERF] Locale: The Drassa Enclave

THE DRASSA ENCLAVE
The Drassa Enclave was sited on a trio of overlapping plates at the south tip of the Southern Industrial Corridor in Cloneston. Two down low still stand today. One lofted high now lies as the High Plate Ruins, heaped from northwest to southeast across the Enclave's extents. Two enormous walls across the eastern plate show off Drassa's history like rings on a tree, with the easternmost wall serving as its final border. Shanties and slums are arranged in classic redworlder pyramids around the southern sides - wherever the Marrazoch didn't wipe them out. Better buildings and industrial parks pack together in Cloneston-standard plate neighborhoods around the north.

Prior to 1311, the Drassa Enclave was the redworlders' slice of Cloneston. The architecture was a bit different and the faces all looked the same, but Drassa wasn't any different from the rest of the city. It had its slums, it had its crime, it had its own way of keeping order without the help of the clones. It had its hackers, its mercenaries, its economic flow, and its ever-present sense of vertigo. Greys lived in the kind of high-rising squalor only Cloneston could provide, the same as the rest of the city. The ones that didn't, up in the High Plate's rich district, were all just the same as the well-heeled hackers all over Cloneston.

The only two major differences were the culture and chemical constitution of its citizens. Drassa was the only place in the city where redworlders could really find others of their own kind. Even as much as they were still denizens of the mean streets, there was a scrappy kind of unity in the population. It was marked out best with the Drassa Self-Defense Committee, or SDC, which ruled the plates as a kind of government institution. It policed the Enclave, kept business running smoothly, and kept Pedro outside the walls when he wasn't wanted. It treated everyone fairly, equally, and effectively - as long as they had three fingers instead of five.

These days, the Enclave is nothing but a meat-blasted slum, even where it used to be opulent. One in every four buildings is a pile of rubble or a burnt-out husk. One in ten is home to a miniature meatscape, screaming and gurgling all night and day. Clone zombies stalk the alleys. Grey meat monsters own the streets. Corpses lie out in the open, covered in bubbly tumors and wriggling meat worms. Inside the plate's underground, monsters rule the day - wherever the doors haven't been shut up for good.

Redworlders hide in the last few buildings still standing, up in the northern parts of the lower plates. They run sorties out to gather supplies from the dead and the damned outside their fortress-shanties. They spend all day on lookout for knife-fingered freaks, expecting claws in the night every time they go to sleep. There's still something left of the old days in their little hideouts. They're still packed together with that same redworlder sense of community and family. These days, it's all layered over with a fresh coating of fear and desperation.

• The SDC North Headquarters building is one of the biggest safe zones in the Enclave. Residents know the place as the Batz-Vis'Kedar, or "Little Big Tower". When it started out, it was housed in one of the skyscrapers reaching up near the High Plate. Its staff included dozens of the SDC's top officers and best-paid mercs. Today, it's the home of about 800 redworlders, civilian and militiaman alike. Before everything blew up, it was clean and orderly. Now, it's boarded up, barred at the front, and cramped so tight with refugees that it's hard to tell it wasn't a shantytown before. Underground floors are all blocked off by layers and layers of land mines, sentry guns, and doors welded shut.
  
  Outside, rings of barbed wire and concrete barriers beat a path up to a main courtyard and parking space. Most of it is walled off with sandbags and SDC scrap tanks. Most of the tanks don't go anywhere anymore; fuel is too precious and their guns are too vital to second-line defenses. Improvised scaffolds hang off the skyscraper as guard posts, with SDC and mercenary rifles leaning over every rail. All across the bottom, civilians try to go about their lives in a sprawling tent city. Little bazaars pop up whenever a scavenging team heads out to prowl the ruins, hoping to buy whatever doesn't end up in the supply stores.
  
  The Batz-Vis'Kedar didn't turn into a refugee hub until 1311, when the Cult landed. When October and the meat came knocking, the North HQ was second to the Overlook HQ in the High Plate. That didn't stop it from ending up as the SDC's front door. In the first few weeks, when the monsters were confined down in the south, it was just the closest for people fleeing northward. When the High Plate's outbreak kicked off in November, it turned into one of the only places left. At the same time, there were so many meat monsters taking to the streets that the North HQ was forced to wall itself off. Nothing much has changed since. Even the Marrazoch explosion didn't leave much of a mark.
• The Sarza Plaza Bazaar used to be a bazaar before the meat took to the streets. It was set up near the center of Drassa and used to be a major hub for small businesses. As of the Siren Lights Quarantine in 1311, it's been remade into a scrap fortress for the redworlders too weak, slow, or scared to head north to the Batz-Vis'Kedar. It's all built as a series of scrap walls, boarded-up slums, and ramshackle guard towers. A massive tent city swallows up its namesake plaza. Mazes of barbed wire, ditches, and holes through the plate lead up to every entrance. Most people get in and out through scrap bridges and walkways instead, over the roofs of nearby buildings.
  
  Scavengers still trade for food, medicine, and fresh hardware, but the 230-or-so people inside are living teeth-rattling lives. Meat monsters are thick around the Bazaar. Most guards can expect to spend at least a few hundred rounds of ammunition just getting out of bed in the morning. The old and infirm are required to wear gas masks at all times to keep meat vapors from turning them feral. Every day is screaming, gunfire, and occasional explosions. Help from other holdouts is but once a week. Electricity, food, and water are all on a tight leash. Not one person is happy to be there.
  
  Sarza's misery had its start at the very beginning of the Ezima'Thres Drassa. In October of 1311, when the news first popped up that meat monsters were taking the streets, the Bazaar stood strong. Stall owners and shopkeepers held fast to their livelihoods. They expected the SDC to have it contained before the week was out. Attitudes changed when the SDC used it as a temporary staging ground on the 27th - and withdrew only a few days later. The walls started going up right away. Refugees flooded in. Merchandise turned to rations. The meat monsters came running, and the neverending siege kicked off. The Marrazoch blast hit a month later and wiped out half of the Bazaar's population and defenses. Deaths stayed high until the walls were finally mended. Even with the defenses up and running again, most agree it's living on borrowed time.
• The SDC Northeast Headquarters building used to be a redworlder holdout, but it's now flying under the S&C banner as Exploratory Outpost D-01A. It's the only foothold Gregor Chuikov's ever been able to grab in Drassa. It's not much different from its grey counterpart, the Batz-Vis'Kedar; around 124 Chuikov mercenaries and human refugees are crowded together in a building only just big enough to keep them sheltered. S&C sharpshooters keep watch on every inch of road. Before the Marrazoch, they used to let humans in. Today, after the blast, it's open season on everyone.
  
  Improvised fortifications stand behind a sea of barbed wire, mines, and barricades. Mercenaries keep a cold peace with a mixed bunch of alienized humans. Belts tighten daily. All around is redworlder food. Not a single morsel is safe for mankind. Dark halls and temperamental temperatures remind everyone inside about the power crisis. Dwindling ammunition serves as a doomsday clock. All the while, calls for extraction fall on deaf ears. Between the ongoing quarantine and escalating clone raids, all S&C can do on the outside is listen to their men starve.
  
  When Chuikov's grunts showed up on October 25th of 1311, it seemed like a sound plan of action. It was a chance to observe the fighting, analyze the meat, and dredge up a few grudges with redworlder mercs. They pushed in, kicked the greys out of the Northeast HQ, and quietly took over. As soon as November rolled in, so did the Siren Lights Quarantine. Getting out wasn't an option anymore. Human refugees started trickling in around the middle of the month, as the rest of Drassa realized it couldn't support them. Open doors and lukewarm compassion ended when the Marrazoch ripped open down south. Now, everyone's wondering which'll happen first; cannibalism, or suicide-by-clones.