Night City Badlands
The area outside Night City is rocky desert and arid hills. Most of the wild vegetation are cacti and what remains of wildlife is deformed and mutated. If you find anything else out there, it has likely escaped from some containment and is violent, toxic, or both.
There are three types of people who live out here. Some are reclaiming the land and striving to establish a new life outside the city. You'd have to be strange to think that's possible to begin with and the hostilities of the new neighbors make reclaimers likely to shoot first and ask later with outsiders. Next, there are the nomads. They have no permanent homes out here in the badlands, but set up camp where it suits them at the moment. If you're not a nomad yourself, approach them with care and only if you have a fair business proposition for them. Last, there are nomad outcasts — often called raffen shiv. Usually, nomads take care of their own, but raffen are the ones whose crimes shook the very bonds that make a nomad clan work to begin with. They're murderers, arsonists, rapists, and more. Since they can't find a normal nomad job, the raffen are relegated to robbery and theft.
Biotechnica Flats
The area south of Night City comprises several hectars of greenhouses catered to by dones and other automated systems. These are, as the name suggests, owned by Biotechnica, but most of them are rented out to various other corporations (such as AllFoods). This is where most of the food consumed in the city is grown. The various watering and nutrient distribution systems are secure and contain layers of prevention against tampering. There are also various turrets and drones that will attack anyone acting suspiciously around the greenhouses.
While almost everything is automated, there are humans who work in the area. There's even a small village of sorts that serves as home to the maintenance staff. Also, while most greenhouses are deal with mass production of foods or medicine, not all of them do.
Jackson Plains
South of Night City, but inland from Biotechnica Flats lies Jackson Plains. This used to be a more densly populated area for those who neded up near NC but prefered more of a country living. It's still a bit like that and safer than much of the rest of the badlands. To the south is the border to Southern California, patrolled by Militech since the end of the Unification War. Closer to the city lies the Satwave Power Plant that powers most of the city with microwave beams from a satellite in orbit.
As one travels south, the area gets less friendly to people. Closer to the city, and even road 101 from the border crossing, seeing Militech might give a sense of safety. But as of the dried-up riverbed of Rattlesnake Creek, the armed drones are there to shoot any would-be smugglers and nothing else.
Laguna Bend Dam
The village of Laguna Bend grew with reclaimers during the 20s and 30s. It was a town in its own right by 2050, but most people were poor. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of Night City meant a lot of garbage had been created over a short period of time. That garbage had increased the city's landfill by orders of magnitude and that had caused the water dam in the south-east Santo Domingo to malfunction. Cleaning sea water for use as tap water is more expensive than fresh water — but only if that freshwater hasn't soaked a landfill. Santo itself didn't get desalinated filtered sea water until well into the 60s.
NC Dam Ltd., a subsidary to NightCorp, noted that there's a natural basin located higher than the landfill that caused issues. That basin was the location of Laguna Bend, and the corporation bought out all the land it could and then pressured the city to require the remaining owners to sell. Despite heavy protests and after a fatal accident, the dam was completed and the town submerged by 2062.
The waters agitated both radioactive fallout and various toxins as the new lake formed. Any skin contact will still cause irritation at best, and chemical burns — but it's getting better. And the treated water takes care of the needs of Night City for those who can't afford better.
Red Peaks and the Sierra Sonora
The tall hills east of NIght City are the Red Peaks. To the south, close to Laguna Bend, the Sonoras expand to the east. The Sierra Sonoras are inconvenient enough to get around that some of the local raffen shiv, calling themselves Wraiths, have set up camps here. That still leaves room for plenty of others to create their own minor settlements in the area, of course.
The Red Peaks east of night city starts at Laguna Bend in the south and then becomes the spot for the municipal landfill. North of the hills of garbage, the Peaks give way to Interstate 9 as it connects Night City with the east via Rocky Ridge. Further north, the westtern slopes eventually form the luxurious North Oaks part of Westbrook while the east is wasteland. Construction of the new maglev-tunnel for high-speed trains is centered in these parts.
Oilfields
The presence of oil north of Night City is why Petrochem signed up as one corporation to bankroll the project to begin with. Oil remains a valuable resource a century later, and it remains the megacorp's biggest interest in the site. Watson is built partially on land that has already been exploited as much as possible, while the remaining pumps and gas extraction is still operational north of the city limits.
The ground underneath the city comprises a lot of sand and not very stable bedrock. In combination with the nuclear detonation downtown in 23, that means traditional drilling is difficult. Fracking has been extensively used, but that also means that the most superficial oil has leaked to the surface in some areas. Other toxins have been detected, but analyzing the run-off on the premises would require permission from Petrochem.
Rocky Ridge
Rocky Ridge is the name of the plains east of Night City. Well, technically, it's the name of the town that still lies there. There had been talk of changing the route of the Interstate that cuts through the plains so that it would better benefit the town, but it never happened. Instead, the town lies abandoned. The nearby mine wasn't all that profitable to begin with. The name still applies to the entire area, however — from the Red Peaks in the west to Vasquez Pass in the east.
This is not an area for being in. It's somewhere to not be somewhere else. Specifically, it's a place to not be in Night City. Nomads either aren't welcome in the city, have reasons to avoid it, or are avoiding it anyway out of spite. Some who live here have prices on their head in the city, or would rather be killed by a Wraith bandit than a stray bullet on the street. Some just hate people enough to prefer sandstorms. Still, most of those in Rocky Ridge aren't there to stay. Its most prominent features include an Interstate and various railways for a reason. Get on your way, choom.
Militech convoys
Drivers
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