Zone of Exclusion

After the Xenos invasion, the population was relocated to designated habitation areas. Officially because it would be easier to protect, support and uplift the Nyo’mundan people, unofficially because it would be easier to indoctrinate and keep an eye on them. It also freed up a lot of real estate, which the influential Trade Cartels could use to experiment and exploit to their heart’s content.

Everything else was designated “The Exclusion Zone”, and anyone found inside was effectively outlawed and deemed a non-citizen, bereft of any rights.

The Zone of Exclusion mostly consists of a countryside composed of desolate forests and fields, dotted with abandoned villages and the ruined, bombed out shells of former cities, both of which nature has been quick to reclaim. Rusted machinery and decomposed servitors stand as sad reminders of times gone by. Here and there, groups of skeletal remains can be found arrayed in circles, remnants of the mass suicides that took place in the wake of the Xenos invasion.

In hidden and remote locations, Trade Cartels operate massive industrial plantations and mines, and conduct research in secret labs. Slaves and experimentation fodder are rounded up or bred in refugee internment camps. Xenos deathsquads roam the land, hoping to find and execute troublesome terrorists that hold out in this forgotten wasteland. It is a nasty place, but it also offers a harsh natural beauty to those willing to explore it.

And loot, ofcourse.

The ruins of cities, hives, manufactora and military bases are interesting sources when it comes to salvaging equipment and supplies. However, most of these were heavily damaged in the wake of the invasion, whether due to the Imperium’s scorched earth policy, Xenos bombardments or simple neglect.

These places are dangerous not only because of the crumbling infrastructure, but also because of the radiation and chemicals polluting many of these areas, resulting from the destruction and abandonment of heavy machinery. More disturbing still are the strange psychic anomalies and ghostly apparitions that manifest in some places, defying the rules of physics.

And ofcourse, you might not be the only one sifting through the remains of Neomunda’s fallen civilization…

Inspirational images

Remnants of a fallen planet

Cities destroyed during the civil war and the Second Xenos War lie in ruins, slowly succumbing to natural overgrowth

Though insignificant in galactic terms, Neomunda’s Commercia’s were fairly popular in the local star sector

Train networks connected the burgeoning hive cities to smaller local communities

Before the war, the Neomundan countryside was still largely rural, with both small, lowtech family farms and large mechanized agricultural cartels managing to thrive

In the before times, each village had a Basilicanum Minoris. Once painstakingly built and lovingly cared for by the local parish, they now lie in ruins

Fortifications once built to hold off the Tyranid flood proved easily circumvented by T’au orbital bombardments and surgical striketeams

Signs of long lost lives are not an uncommon sight in the Exclusion Zone

With noone to maintain them, worn out servitors lie rotting, until only their rusting augmetics remain

Remains of old war machines, valuable sources of scrap, litter the landscape

Two decades after the invasion, supplies like food, medicine and clothing have grown rare

Other survivors are just as likely to shoot you as they are to rob and stab you

The hazards of the Zone

Unexploded ordinance and leaking chemicals are common dangers

Strange automatons haunt the lives and dreams of those living in the Exclusion Zone, whether they are produced by the T’au Earth Caste or Nyo’mundan Trade Cartels

Civil Protection forces are deployed en masse when a suspected hideout belonging to terrorists from the Imperial Resistance Army is found

Though derelict manufactora are a good source of salvage, these rusting hulks offer more dangers than just crumbling concrete and unstable girders

Scenes of sudden, gruesome death on a massive scale are often seemingly haunted by the ghosts of those that passed away. How else to explain the strange anomalies dotting the landscape of the Exclusion Zone?

In such dangerous areas, auspexes are a dire necessity to sweep a way forward for oneself.

Some regions are almost entirely uninhabitable, covered in strange growths, owing to the use of biological weapons by some of the T’au Empire’s Xenos Auxiliaries, though the few surviving elders warn of a return of the foe of the first Xenos war

Survivors know better than to risk going near the mysterious walled complexes operated by the Trade Cartels, but the desperate…

Usually well guarded by the Trade Cartels, some secret research sites have been abandoned, leaving one to wonder what might be found inside…

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